LAUTRÉAMONT, Comte de

Born in Uruguay of French parents, Lautréamont came to Paris to prepare for the polytechnical high school. Failing in this mission, and plagued by poverty, he began a prose poem, Les Chants de Maldoror (posthumously published in 1890), which, while reflecting classical literature, became a precursor of Surrealism. As his protagonist, Maldoror, suffers gruesome misfortunes, Lautrémont's language becomes extremely hallucinatory: Who could have realized that whenever he embraced a young child with rosy...