The falsehood of subject – the falsehood of transcendence. Study of the oppression in Comte de Lautreamont’s Songs of Maldoror Cover Image

Kłamstwo podmiotu – kłamstwo transcendencji. Studium opresji w „Pieśniach Maldorora” Comte de Lautréamonta
The falsehood of subject – the falsehood of transcendence. Study of the oppression in Comte de Lautreamont’s Songs of Maldoror

Author(s): Mateusz Grabowski
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: romanticism; gnosis; subject; transcendence

Summary/Abstract: The "Songs of Maldoror" are one of the most mysterious romantic writings. This Lautreamont’s main work wasn’t at first accepted by critics and readers. It wasn’t until an accidental discovery made by surrealists that the most known Ducasse’s writing began to be studied. The "Songs…" were considered to be the work of a lunatic, an emanation of wild and mad imagination, and the evidence of the author’s mental illness. Recently, however, scientists who had studied this writing, noticed that earlier critical judgements were not objective. The Songs are undoubtedly the kind of writing that teases, disturbs and raises ethical and aesthetic discord. That was the author’s main goal – to create writing of which the brutality and blasphemy snatches readers away from the bourgeois indifference. The "Songs’…" universe is a grotesque portrait of tyranny and power, which converge in the falsehoods of subject and transcendence. By exposing this deception one unveils the horrific truth about reality and the society. A truth in which culture becomes the space of ceaseless oppression – the prison from which there is nowhere to hide or escape.

  • Issue Year: 30/2015
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 49-64
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish