The Songs of Maldoror
By: Le Comte de Lautréamont ; [with illustrations by Salvador Dali ; translated by R.J. Dent]
Contributors: Dalí, Salvador, 1904-1989; Dent, R. J. (Russell J.)
Series: Solar nocturnal
Publisher: Solar Books; Brand: Solar Books
Published: 2011
Place of publication: [Washington, D.C.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9780982046487
Subjects: Translations into English
Work titles: Chants de Maldoror
Description: Le Comte de Lautreamont was the nom de plume of Isidore Ducasse (1846-70), a Uruguayan-born French writer and poet whose only surviving major work of fiction, Les Chants de Maldoror, was discovered by the Surrealists, who hailed the work as a dark progenitor of their movement. It was in Les Chants de Maldoror that Andre Breton discovered the phrase that would come to represent the Surrealist doctrine of objective chance: 'as beautiful as the random encounter between an umbrella and a sewing-machine upon a dissecting-table.' Artists inspired by Lautreamont include Man Ray, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Yves Tanguy, and, in particular, Salvador Dali, who in 1933 produced an entire series of illustrations for Les Chants de Maldoror. Twenty of those illustrations are included.