Roberto Calasso - Literature and the Gods

The premise that lies behind such methods is that the whole world — and in particular every literary form of whatever level — is inevitably cloaked in a poisonous blanket of parody. Nothing is what it claims to be. Everything is already a quotation the moment it appears. This enigmatic and unsettling development, of which few at the time were aware, can be seen as a manifestation of the fact that the whole world, as Nietzsche would soon announce, was going back to being a fable again. Except that now the fable is a heedless whirlwind where the various simulacra are constantly changing places in an egalitarian dust cloud. “Where there are no gods, the phantoms reign,” Novalis had prophesied. Now one could go a step further and say: gods and phantoms will alternate on the scene with equal rights. There is no longer a theological power capable of taking charge and putting them in order. In which case, who will risk dealing with them, arranging them? Another power, one that hitherto has been forever denied its independence, forever obliged to serve society, but which now threatens to hoist anchor for good and set sail, sovereign and solitary, as the vessel that brings together all the simulacra and wanders about the ocean of the mind for the pure pleasure and play of the gesture: literature. Which in this mutation may also be called absolute literature.

That parody is the governing principle behind all Lautréamont’s work is not easily demonstrated. For strictly speaking with Lautréamont nothing can be demonstrated. With great discipline he left not a single sentence — not even in his letters — that we might with any confidence take seriously . In vain does one look for some sort of declaration of his poetics, unless that poetics resides precisely in the suspicion that every word he wrote is a spoof. It’s a suspicion that will become overwhelming when we turn to look at the second phase of his work: the slim collection entitled Poésies . And even more so if we hear how he spoke of the book before it appeared. In October 1869 Lautréamont wrote to Poulet-Malassis: “I have celebrated evil as did Mickiewicz, Byron, Milton, Southey, A. de Musset, Baudelaire, etc. Of course I exaggerated the pitch a bit to do something new along the lines of that sublime literature that celebrates desperation only so as to oppress the reader and have him desire the good as a remedy.” These lines themselves are sharp with the bracing air of mockery. But here we must reconstruct what they leave implicit: the Chants de Maldoror were at that time languishing in printed sheets stacked in the warehouse of a publisher tormented by the prospect of prosecution. At first, according to Lacroix, Lautréamont “refused to amend the violence of his text.” He still hadn’t paid Lacroix an outstanding balance of 800 francs for the print run, and refused to do so unless the book was distributed. The situation was deadlocked, something that was in the interests of neither author nor printer. It was thus that they turned to Poulet-Malassis, a bibliophile and publisher experienced in finding the right channels for unloading risky books. Eager to come to an agreement, Lautréamont writes to Poulet-Malassis, “Sell them, I won’t stop you: what do I have to do in return? Dictate your terms,” and at the same time, to suggest how he might launch the book, he resorts to the ludicrous idea of the writer who celebrates evil to “oppress the reader” and thus have him turn to the good. Oddly, the publisher accepts the suggestion. Only two days later, in the Bulletin trimestriel des publications défendues en France imprimées à l’étranger , a publication Poulet-Malassis used to announce his new titles, Lautréamont’s book is presented thus:

“There are no more Manichaeans,” Pangloss used to say. “There is me,” Martin would answer. The author of this book belongs to a species no less rare. Like Baudelaire, like Flaubert, he believes that the aesthetic expression of evil implies the keenest appetite for the good, the highest possible morality.

Poulet-Malassis was far more perceptive and worldly-wise than Lacroix, whom Baudelaire loathed. So the same mockery implicit in Lautréamont’s letter — was he thinking, when he spoke of having “exaggerated the pitch a bit” at least as far as the erotic was concerned (for that was the area Poulet-Malassis specialized in), of the description of “long, chaste, and dreadful” sex between Maldoror and an “enormous female shark,” a coupling that would one day delight Huysmans? — that same mockery is now echoed in the publicity for the book. It’s as if in writing to his new distributor Lautréamont had given him instructions on how to camouflage the book so that it could be introduced into the world. Yet, at the end of the same letter, we hear a different tone creeping in. Having begged Poulet-Malassis to send the book to the most important reviewers, Lautréamont adds: “They alone will pass judgment in first and last instance on the beginning of a publication that will see its end of course only later when I myself have seen mine. That’s why the moral at the end isn’t there yet. But there is immense pain on every page. Is that evil?” The final, piercing question is one of those rare flickers where Lautréamont seems to speak to us directly . without the mediation of the outrageous and mocking. But it’s worth noticing another detail: he refers to Maldoror as a sort of carmen perpetuum that will be over only when the author himself is dead. Before then we can’t know what “the moral at the end” will be. Implication: perhaps “the good” the text is supposed to prompt us toward is also a temporary conclusion, to be turned on its head at will. And this is another of those hints that light up Maldoror like a phantasmagoria teeming with snares and pitfalls.

Four months after the first letter to Poulet-Malassis, on February 21st, 1870, Lautréamont writes another. It seems there has been no progress: “Has Lacroix handed over the edition or done anything else with it? Or have you rejected it? He hasn’t told me anything. I haven’t seen him since.” But during those months Lautréamont’s lucubration had taken him a decisive step forward. As he immediately goes on to announce:

You should know that I have repudiated my past. These days I celebrate only hope; but in order to do that I must first of all attack the century’s doubt (melancholies, sadnesses, griefs, desperations, lugubrious whinnyings, sham nastinesses, infantile prides, laughable calamities, etc., etc.). In early March I will be giving Lacroix a book where I take the finest poems of Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Byron, and Baudelaire, and correct them so that they celebrate hope; I show how they should have been written. At the same time I correct six of the worst passages of my accursed book.

This is how he presents the Poésies . In those four months, then, Lautréamont seems to have realized that in order to introduce his monstrous Maldoror into the world, it wouldn’t be enough to claim he was celebrating evil to turn people to the good, an argument dangerously similar to that of pornographers who claim they are operating in defense of chastity. So why not celebrate the good directly? Thus a new method of working takes shape, one that is even more offensive and pernicious than that used in creating Maldoror, one, you might even say, that raises monstrosity exponentially to the power of two: he will correct other people’s writings “in order that they celebrate hope.” The premise now is that every boundary between literary properties has been pulled down. Authors are stooges. Literature is a continuum of words to be interfered with as one pleases, by transforming every sign into its opposite, if that’s what we want. But having set out along the path of total mockery, Lautréamont can’t stop himself, even if he wants to. What has been squared may just as well be cubed. So, why restrict oneself to correcting authors celebrating evil by turning their work round toward the good? Why not correct the authors who represent the good? And who would they be? By definition, the authors you read in school.