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Many of you have never read Songs of Maldoror (1868) and this shows. When the French surrealist prose poem was first introduced to me by a friend as “the most evil book ever written,” it wasn’t so much the content that confirmed the claim, but the atmosphere that permeated as I read it—it was as if the temperature in the room dropped as I absorbed each a word; words that in turn consumed me as well. It documents the character Maldoror’s misanthropic confession of violent action and dark worldview, but it also contains passages of unfathomable beauty and unexpected reverence, such as the ten pages of “Hail, Old Ocean,” which suggests that the sea is the only thing on the forsaken planet worthy for his respect. Even in its most historical form, The songs of nausea is a heavier experience than de Sade, who seems comical in contrast to Lautréamont’s delirious blasphemy, removed from the former’s giddy pageantry.
The new edition, released this month by Infinity Land Press, is a gorgeous update of the masterpiece, with full-color artwork by Karolina Urbaniak and stylish, revealing essays by Audrey Sass and Jeremy Reed. It has been masterfully translated into modern English by RJ Dent, who has also translated Baudelaire, De Sade, Bataille, Artaud and Rimbaud for previous works. I spoke to Dent to rediscover him Songs of Maldorora book called by JG Ballard, “… the Black Bible… almost the primary dream text of surrealism.”
What is your story and attraction to The songs of nausea? Was it a personal long-standing goal to update his translation or something that fell into your lap?
I read nausea in my twenties. The first version I read was the Penguin Books edition. This particular English translation always felt a bit imprecise to me, and therefore some of the meaning of the book was lost or unclear. I also didn’t realize that the translator didn’t translate nausea in its entirety; this particular translation is missing over fifteen significant paragraphs from Lautréamon’s original text.
A few years later, when I wanted a project to follow my English translation of Charles Baudelaire The flowers of evilI was considering trying my own translation of the The Songs of Maldoror, and I probably inevitably wondered if I could translate it in a way that would make its meaning clearer. So yes, it has been a personal long-standing goal to take Lautréamon’s text and bring it into the twenty-first century. No matter when it was written, it is a twenty-first century text.
… a very dark and very disturbing novel in which he describes a whole range of paraphilias and horrors, including sadism, masochism, necrophilia, rape, bestiality and murder, in the most festive tone possible.
I’ve seen book translations go three ways: 1.) The literal word-for-word approach — which often leads to clunky reading like some attempts at Bataille, 2.) An emphasis on poetics that can sometimes be misleading and undermine the author intentions and 3.) A conscious effort towards brevity which after comparing this new version with several older versions of nausea, seems to have been your approach. What was your personal goal with this translation project?
With my translation of nauseaI have tried to stay as close as possible to Lautréamon’s original text, but I have also tried to translate the text into the English text that Lautréamon might have written if he had written nausea in twenty-first century English.
There were four English versions of the nausea when I began to translate it: John Rodker (1924), Guy Vernam (1943), Alexis Lickyard (1970) and Paul Knight (1978). I had to work my way between the four of them using my own vocabulary, mainly because, as you may have noticed, each of them uses a rather old-fashioned language full of archaic phrases and words, many of which have fallen out of use. Paul Knight’s version is over forty years old and was the most recent translation before mine.
I start the translation process with a sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-to-paragraph conversion. When I finish it, it’s the first draft. Even then, certain words or phrases from nineteenth-century French will not translate because their meaning has been lost over time or there are too many choices in English. When this happens, and it happens regularly, I tend to choose the word or phrase in English that is trendiest and has the most resonance.
An example of this is a short text I translated from a story by the Marquis de Sade. In history, someone said that once a person mentions something, pretty soon what they mentioned will appear. The saying was: “Quand on parle du loup on en voit la queue,” which is, “When we mention the wolf, we soon see his tail.” This is an old French saying, once literal, now figurative, which derives from a phrase used once in shepherding communities. I had to decide whether to keep the phrase as it was, but in English, or change the whole phrase to something more modern – and more familiar to English readers. I won’t divulge what my final choice was, since this particular story isn’t in print yet, but it’s a decision I often have to make during the translation process.
I first heard about Lautréamont when my first editor was reviewing my manuscript. The next day he bought me a copy of nausea, presenting it as “the most evil book ever written”. In the afterword to this new edition, Jeremy Reed writes that Lautremont “was by nature a psychic terrorist, and certainly the most dangerous writer the 19th century had to produce.” What are your thoughts on these pervasive claims?
I’m not sure nausea is “the most evil book ever written,” but it is a book in which many evil deeds are described. The narrator describes his misdeeds in great detail. The author does not hesitate to write about them and his tone is festive. This sensibility is evident in the book’s illustrations. Karolina Urbaniak created 37 full-color illustrations for this book – her pictures look like paintings and really capture the darkness and despair of nauseaas well as touch the wild beauty that is at its heart.
I really like Jeremy Reed’s afterword; it’s fun and very informative. His claim that Lautréamon “was by nature a psychic terrorist” is interesting in light of the effect which nausea has on some readers, as well as the fact that the Surrealists discovered and defended nausea. Another way in which Lautréamon can be seen as a “psychic terrorist” is because Lautréamon is the pen name of Isidore Ducasse, a young man who writes Songs of Maldorora very dark and very disturbing novel in which he describes a whole range of paraphilias and horrors, including sadism, masochism, necrophilia, rape, bestiality and murder, in the most festive tone possible.
As for Lautrémont being the “most dangerous writer” of the nineteenth century, I think Jeremy Reed is right about that. Some years ago someone said, “After you read nauseayou will never forget reading it – and you will never recover from reading it.” Having read it several times and now translated it, I completely agree – it is an unforgettable reading experience and it is a book that once read, changes the reader in the same way that reading does The room by Hubert Selby Jr., will change the reader.
Because so little is known about his life, Lotreamon is assumed, or rather imagined, to be like his hero Maldoror. Yet after the book came under fire, Ducasse may have caved to the pressure when he said, “I have exaggerated the subject a little to do something new in the direction of that lofty literature that sings of despair only to oppress the reader and to make him desire the good as medicine.” Do you really believe that was his intention, or could he have avoided simply standing behind his brutality?
Only the work should be trusted, not the author’s claims about the work. Lautréamont was the pen name Isidore Ducasse used when publishing Songs of Maldoror, therefore nothing Lautréamon says is true, or rather everything Lautréamon says is fiction. I also feel that there should be a very clear distinction between Isidore Ducasse, who published his first book, Songs of Maldororusing the pseudonym Le Comte de Lautréamont, and Isidore Ducasse, who published his second book, poems, under his own name. This is the age-old dilemma – the author’s intention. We can never know what Lautréamon intended – and even if we could interview him, he may have had answers specially prepared and designed to promote the book.
Do you think Lautreamon might have been stung by the darkness he touched and it really terrified him? When he said in 1870 with the publication of poems“I have completely changed my method to sing exclusively about hope, optimism, PEACE, happiness, DEBT”, this contrasts sharply with nauseanegativity.
The sentence you just quoted is from one of Ducasse’s letters, and is complicated by the fact that it is Isidore Ducasse, the author of poemswho makes this claim about nausea. He wrote this letter a year later nausea was published and therefore can be read as an exercise in damage limitation. He was also trying to prepare the way for his second book, poems, who was then writing. He would continue to present poems as the polar opposite of nauseawith poems like the white, good, yang book and nausea like the black, evil, yin book. So, no, I’m not stung by the darkness; more a case of wanting to make sure potential readers know that nausea and poems were opposite sides of the same literary experiment.
It’s also helpful to remember that Ducasse considered cutting some of the more extreme passages from nausea. In the letter you quoted he said, “I might in subsequent editions cut out some of the passages which are too strong.” It is very fortunate for us that Isidore Ducasse did not do this. Some writers continue to revise their work throughout their lives – Walt Whitman is a famous example; he never stops revising, editing and adding Leaves of grass; the 1855 edition is very different from the “deathbed” edition. Many consider the 1855 edition to be the more powerful collection—and perhaps rightly so, since it was the edition that launched Whitman’s career in poetry. Later editions are considered weaker. It is horrifying to think that if Ducasse had successfully excised the passages he considered “too powerful,” nausea perhaps he had become weaker, perhaps even lost to us forever.
How would you interpret Audrey Sasse’s quote from her foreword: “You don’t find Maldoror – it finds you.”?
I think this is a reference to the character of Maldoror, not the book itself. I think that’s probably true, but with one small edit: I think the quote should be: “You don’t find nausea – finds you.” The book finds its way to some readers. Not everyone is confronted nausea. It appears only in the lives of certain people. It’s definitely not for everyone. It’s been around since 1868, and yet only a few people have read it. The litmus is: do you know four people who have read nausea?
I like the fact that at the beginning of his book Lautréamon warns his readers to stop reading nausea, as it is most likely not for them, and may harm them if they read on: “It is not right for all to read the following pages; very few will be able to taste this bitter fruit without danger. Therefore, stop, turn around, do not continue. Listen to what I’m telling you: stop, turn around, don’t go on…”
Lautréamon’s warning, which some say is actually a dare or a challenge, is clear enough— nausea not a book for everyone. It is dark, corrupt and deranged. The book is dangerous to read. It leaves readers bruised. Changed. Songs of Maldoror is a largely underground classic of French literature. There is nothing else like it.
Take it Songs of Maldoror at Infinity Land Press
Learn more at the official RJ Dent website
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