Ethics, Change, and Lautréamont

Ethics, Change, and Lautréamont Steven Winspur T HE REPUTATION FOR SCANDAL that has been firmly tied to Lautréamont’s writings since their re-discovery by the Surrealists is often seen as a symptom of their revolutionary enterprise.1 Such was the viewpoint put forward in the 70s by members of the Tel Quel group, for instance. Writing in the wake of Julia Kristeva’s La Révolu­ tion du langage poétique (in which Lautréamont looms large), Christian Pringent could declare without controversy in 1977 that “ Lautréamont retournait la rhétorique, en montrait les dessous.” 2 But do the spatial metaphors of “ upturning” or “ rotating” on which this notion of a “ Lautréamont revolution” depends accurately describe the sort of change that Les Chants de Maldoror and the Poésies bring to literature and morality? In particular, does the three-dimensional, Euclidean space that is presupposed by these metaphors correspond to the figurative space of language and morals in which Lautréamont’s texts are embedded? By replying negatively to these questions I shall attempt to justify an alternative view of Lautréamont’s innovations. Rather than see Maldoror as the “ epic of evil” to which we have grown accustomed,3I shall argue that the work pushes to the extreme humankind’s history of conflicts (with the Creator, in particular), so as to extract from these con­ flicts a new notion of the Good. From this standpoint, I am in total agreement with Michel Pierssens’ recent study of Maldoror which argues persuasively for a continuity between the latter work and the program­ matic claims of the Poésies (claims such as “ Le bien est la victoire sur le mal, la négation du mal. [...] Je ne chante pas ce qu’il ne faut pas faire. Je chante ce qu’il faut faire,” OC 279-80).4What interests me, however, in this continuity of purpose is how Lautréamont’s writing manages to alter our understanding of earlier Romantic literature. For while it is wrong to read Lautréamont as /mmoral (as Pierssens reveals, Maldoror is a pro­ foundly ethical work), it is still undeniable that Lautréamont’s texts radically change our conception of ethics and of literature’s connection to ethics. To explain this radical change, while at the same time avoid misleading metaphors of revolution or upturning, is my aim in the following pages. 82 Su m m e r 1987 WlNSPUR Much has already been written about the reading models contained in Maldoror’s opening sentence.5 Nevertheless, aside from its important metaphorical function, the sentence clearly lays out the moral impasse that the book is designed to clear away (and not merely publicize, as many readers have suspected): Plût au ciel que le lecteur, enhardi et devenu momentanément féroce comme ce qu’il lit, trouve, sans se désorienter, son chemin abrupt et sauvage, à travers les marécages désolés de ces pages sombres et pleines de poison; car, à moins qu’il n’apporte dans sa lec­ ture une logique rigoureuse et une tension d’esprit égale au moins à sa défiance, les émana­ tions mortelles de ce livre imbiberont son âme comme l’eau le sucre. (OC 45) The book contains, in other words, a threat to any reader not alerted to its purpose. For unless the reader concentrates on the arguments that follow this early warning, and traces through their underlying logic, he or she risks becoming “ bogged down” by the unsavory trappings in which the arguments are clothed. Put plainly, Lautréamont tells us that his text will be dealing with evil, but that its goal is to take us through and beyond this realm, provided that we hold on to the staff of reason. The very start of the book consequently hints at the “ method behind the madness” that follows, a method whose ethical goal might perhaps get lost (as the reader might also), but is there all the same. The shift that occurs between Maldoror and the Poésies is therefore not one of goals (to praise Good in the latter work instead of Evil) but rather, as M. Pierssens has shown, one...