REVIEWS 215 In textual correctness, finally, this edition is also impressive. Misprints are few (on pp. 37,40,128,147,210,212,216) and concern mainly wrong accents or missing characters. The reading queried by the editor on page 133 is, however, perfectly correct. s L LocKERBrE STIRLING Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/XXXIII/2/215/585103 by guest on 01 October 2021 A-t-on lu Lautriamont? By ROBERT FAURISSON. (Les Essais, CLXX). Paris: Gallimard. 1972. 433 pp. Lautriamont. By WALLACE FOWLTE. (Twayne's World Author Series, 284). New York: Twayne. 1974. 135 pp. $5.95. Lautriamont: The Violent Narcissus. By PAUL ZWEIG. (Series on Literary Criticism). Port Washington, New York and London: Kennikat Press (National University Publications). 1972. 122 pp. $7.95. The works of Lautreamont have been misunderstood for a century — this is the simple but bold thesis advanced by M. Faurisson. Rather than being examples of wild romantic revolt, as so many readers have thought, Les Chants de Maldoror are really works of comic satire, in the great tradition of Rabelais, Moliere, and Monnier. Previous readers have failed to see that Lautreamont makes Maldoror into a pompous figure of fun, who reveals his bitise prudhommesque (p. 21) in the derisively inflated rhetoric of his speech and actions. This collective blindness is to be attributed to the pernicious myth-making of the Surrealists, and to the unfortunate tendency of both traditional scholarship and la nouvelle critique to neglect the plain meaning of literary texts in favour of extraneous considerations (pp. 23-24). M. Faurisson's purpose is to show that the key to a correct understanding lies in a direct return to the text and a determined effort to read it in and for itself (p. 24). Serrez le texte is a rallying cry to which many readers would gladly respond. But, unfortunately, M. Faurisson fails to carry out his own programme. Far from submitting the text to a careful and dispassionate analysis, he claims, in a patently circular argument, that the real nature of Lautreamont's style is so self-evident as to render such an exercise superfluous (pp. 25, 51). Close reading is, therefore, replaced by extended resumes of the Chants and the Poisies, which the reader is then invited to accept as objective proof of the interpretation being offered. But, in fact, these rather laborious summaries simply beg the question on a grand scale. Offering only flat assertion and blank statement in place of stylistic analysis, they are very far removed from the careful, direct study of the text that the author was sup- posedly advocating, and carry little conviction. M. Faurisson, moreover, has further surprises in store. Having begun by deploring the preoccupations of traditional scholarship with biographical research, he proceeds to devote a large part of the book to precisely this kind of activity, on the odd pretext that this is what the reader expects (pp. 25, 36). Thus, in somewhat random order, we find notes on Lautreamont's life, 2l6 REVIEWS known and presumed associates, contemporary periodicals, and other source material. Some patient endeavour and skill have gone into this research, and minor discoveries of interest have been made, concerning, for example, the dedicatees of the Poisies (pp. 273-92), or the correct place of the advertise- ments and the Avis in this work (p. 293). Yet one cannot but feel that this is a very meagre and incidental harvest to gather from a book of such considerable dimensions and ambitious aims. Sadly, one must conclude that neither the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/XXXIII/2/215/585103 by guest on 01 October 2021 aims nor the dimensions have been justified. Unlike M. Faurisson, Professor Fowlie believes that Lautreamont is a writer of genuinely savage ferociousness (p. 11), whose work bears vivid testimony to his belief that 'the art of literature, in its highest form, is the catharsis of the irrational' (p. 18). He therefore offers a psychoanalytical interpretation of Les Chants de Maldoror, that bears some resemblance to the one put forward by Jean and Mezei in various books and articles since 1947. However, whereas Jean and Mezei develop a sustained and closely reasoned argument, Professor Fowlie embeds his interpretation in a critical summary of Maldoror, stanza by stanza, that does not allow much attempt at substantiation. This means that, while the summary is lucid and intelligent enough in itself, and while, on close inspection, some interesting variations and elaborations on Jean and Mezei's reading can be detected, Professor Fowlie plays, on the whole, too passive a role as a commentator to give the psychoanalytical interpretation of Maldoror the kind of further development that one might have hoped for. Other chapters on Poisies, biographical facts and surmises, and the history of Lautreamont criticism, confine themselves to giving succinct but informa- tive accounts of the present state of studies in the subject. This leaves, as Professor Fowlie's most personal and original contribution, an introductory and a final chapter which assess Lautreamont's place in what is called the 'movement of decadence'. Here, Lautreamont is compared at some length with Baudelaire, and more briefly with later poets in the Symbolist-decadent tradition, and with many other modern writers. The spirit of Maldoror is likened to the rebellious outlook of modern American youth, and a parallel is drawn with such a striking manifestation of modern sensibility as the film A Clockwork Orange. Even though this eclectic survey often seems hasty and approximate, it offers a panoramic view that could well whet the appetite of a new reader, both for Lautreamont and modern literature generally. With its combination of compactly presented information and wide-ranging cultural survey, therefore, this book will make a useful introduction to Lautreamont, although one regrets that it does not fulfil its occasional promise to probe more deeply into the subject. Lautriamont: The Violent Narcissus, by Paul Zweig, is something of a hybrid work, which one would expect to appeal to two quite different audiences. The first of its three parts is a straightforward introduction, presumably meant for readers new to the subject. As an introduction it is shorter and much less comprehensive than Professor Fowlie's similar exercise, but often REVIEWS 217 judicious and interesting in its brief appraisals of the spirit and style of Lautreamont's work. The second part, however, is pitched at a much higher level of difficulty, and will require a greater degree of literary interest and sophistication from the reader. This is an ambitious study of the themes which make up the deep unity of Les Chants de Maldoror. It was first published in French some years ago (Lautriamont ou les violences du Nardsse, Archives des Lettres Modernes, no. 74, Minard, 1967), but has now been substantially Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/XXXIII/2/215/585103 by guest on 01 October 2021 revised. Two major themes are identified: a narcissistic quest for a semblable, and an aggressive drive characterized by the dynamic image of the tourbiUon; but round these central themes Mr Zweig picks out a complex pattern of secondary symbols and impulses. Several interesting ideas are thrown out, and the treatment of already recognized features of the work is always given a personal and original slant. This is notably the case with the themes of incest and homosexuality, and the image of the tottrbillon, where Mr Zweig skirts the territory of Jean and Mezei, yet develops a different interpretation with its own emphasis and consistency. Although perhaps too complicated and tortuous in argument, this essay is nevertheless a thoughtful and challenging account of Lautreamont's work. The third part consists of a selection of passages from Maldoror translated into English. Presumably this section is again directed at the uninitiated reader: to grapple with Mr Zweig's central essay, one would need to have read the works in full, and in French. o T T S. I. LOCKERBIE STIRLING Prelude a ''Maldoror'. Vers une poitique de la rupture en France, 1820-1870. By JEAN DECOTTIGNIES. (Etudes romantiques). Paris: Colin. 1973. 230 pp. 38 F. The prodigious French phase of Mesmer's career ended during the Revolu- tion. But he left behind him in France a sturdy new generation of animal magnetists who ensured that wonders continued to be performed, and edifices of mesmeric speculation to be built, far into the nineteenth century. (A useful brief survey of the cult is to be found in Fred Kaplan's Dickens and Mesmerism, Princeton University Press, 1975, pp. 3—33). In exploring the work of these inheritors, M. Decottignies seeks to discredit certain fashionably condescending views of mesmerism and to instate it as a main component of the Romantic imagination He argues that the currency of Mesmer's theory of'fluidic' communication between men, and between mankind and the cosmos, gives us a valuable means of understanding the breakdown of narrative, and the dissolution of the hero, within the fantastic tale. And this double disruption of literary conven- tion serves in turn to explain how Les Chants de Maldoror and, beyond it, Surrealism became possible. The book is not an intellectual history of the period but a series of trial encounters between various of its theoretical and.