Les Chants de Maldoror

In August 1868, the first canto of Les Chants de Maldoror was published, printed at the expense of the author — who remained anonymous — by Balitout, Questroy et Cie. Isidore Ducasse was then twenty-two years old, with a life of little outward incident behind him, one whose extreme interiority left few traces: just enough to give rise to the Lautréamont mystery that surrounds this essential work with an aura “beyond the ordinary.”

This first tremor had, as yet, no discernible effect on the literary world (though Victor Hugo received a copy of the pamphlet and replied with a letter now lost). It was followed, after a year of uninterrupted work, by the publication of the complete cantos by the Belgian publisher Albert Lacroix. Lacroix, no doubt alarmed by the sheer enormity of the text and its possible legal consequences, never actually placed the book on sale. The stock was reused in 1874 by the maverick publisher-bookseller Jean-Baptiste Rozez, who altered the title page, half-title and cover, omitting any publisher’s name and inventing a fictitious printer (Wittmann).