author
comte de Lautréamont
1846–1870
A mysterious poet whose brief life left one of the strangest and most influential works in modern literature. Writing under a borrowed aristocratic title, he helped inspire later movements from Surrealism to the avant-garde.
2 Audiobooks
Les Chants de Maldoror
by comte de Lautréamont
Poésies
by comte de Lautréamont
About the author
Born Isidore Lucien Ducasse in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1846, he wrote in French and became known by the pen name Comte de Lautréamont. He died in Paris in 1870 at just twenty-four, leaving behind a tiny body of work and a lasting literary myth.
His best-known book, Les Chants de Maldoror, shocked early readers with its dark imagination, violent imagery, and fierce rebellion against moral and literary convention. He also wrote Poésies, a very different, compact work that shows another side of his mind: sharp, paradoxical, and deeply engaged with language itself.
Though little recognized in his lifetime, Lautréamont became hugely important to later writers and artists. The Surrealists in particular admired his daring style, and his work has continued to attract readers drawn to literature that is unsettling, inventive, and hard to forget.