Unexorcised Conscience: The Byronic Complex of Maldoror

“quelque chose dans le genre du Manfred de Byron … mais cependant bien plus terrible” ‘something in the style of Byron’s Manfred … but much more terrible’

(Ducasse 382).

More terrible indeed. The jaded posturing of the Byronic hero that so shocked Regency England hardly seems to constitute an act of transgression in the way Les Chants de Maldoror does, even today. And yet, by allowing Maldoror to overshadow his British precursor, as Ducasse clearly expected him to, we may be ignoring a locus of intertextuality that is far from simple. While a number of critics are aware of Byron’s influence on the later poet, few have stopped to consider the manner in which this influence is actually manifested in the work of Ducasse. In what is generally considered the definitive study of this relationship, “Lautréamont et l’héritage du byronisme,” Michel Pierrsons suggests that where Byron is present in the work of Ducasse, it is in the form of a consciously manipulated and controlled “archi-texte” (78). As profound as Byron’s influence on Ducasse clearly was, he concludes, the later poet was ultimately able to “liberate” his writing from the clichés of the Byronic:

Présence centrale mais ambiguë, à la mesure même de la difficulté qu’il y eut pour Ducasse à s’extirper d’un irrésistible envoûtement dont toute son œuvre témoigne. Et ce n’est qu’en choisissant la figure la plus exemplaire de ce dont il voulait se défaire, en travaillant dans la matière de son texte et de son mythe, que Ducasse s’est mis de lui-même en position d’énoncer les principes désormais libres d’une toute autre littérature: tout à coup s’y renverse et s’y annule l’image devenue inutile d’un Byron dépossédé de sa fascination.

A central, if ambiguous presence, precisely because of the difficulty for Ducasse to extricate himself from an irresistible enchantment which is evident throughout his work. And it is in choosing the most exemplary figure of that from which he wanted to liberate himself, working in the material of his text and his myth, that Ducasse positioned himself to elaborate the principles, henceforth free, of an entirely other literature: suddenly the image, now useless, of a Byron dispossessed of his fascination is overcome and annihilated

(85).

The present study will suggest that Ducasse may not in fact have been entirely successful in breaking the spell of the Byronic elements he introduced into his writing. After re-examining the frequently cited passages that have come to define our understanding of this relationship, in close readings of both poets’ work, we actually find an inversion of the roles we would expect. Not only did Byron, the first poète maudit (cursed poet) negotiate his relation to the persona he had created with a subtlety not always attributed to him. We observe that the later poet, in dismissing the Byronic stance for its apparent limitations, can be found repeating the very clichés he claims to transcend—an instance of regression that sabotages the innovative freedom often attributed to this text, perpetuating the poet’s “anxiety of influence.”¹

Whatever we may think of Byron and his work—and the critical opinion varies widely, to this day—his influence on modern, occidental culture is undeniable. From the instant of his initial celebrity, unheard of for a literary figure before or since (one book on the phenomenon is titled Byromania, cf. Works Cited), the English poet has been both lauded and condemned; an idol that can be located at the origin of numerous literary “cults,” whether for or against.² Just as a whole generation of readers and writers throughout Europe and America embraced the Byronic hero, with his dark if privileged destiny, his proud scorn for an inferior humanity, a succeeding generation would quickly condemn such a figure as the production of a narcissistic, adolescent psyche; a passing fad, limited to a particular historical moment in European culture.³

If one individual could be said to embody the ambiguous extremes of...