Editing Comte de Lautréamont (section)

==Surrealism==
In 1917, French writer [[Philippe Soupault]] discovered a copy of ''Les Chants de Maldoror'' in the mathematics section of a small Parisian bookshop, near the military hospital to which he had been admitted. In his memoirs Soupault wrote:

<blockquote>By the light of a candle that was permitted to me, I began reading. It was like an enlightenment. In the morning I read the ''Chants'' again, convinced that I had dreamed... The day after, [[André Breton]] came to visit me. I gave him the book and asked him to read it. The following day he brought it back, enthusiastic as I had been.</blockquote>

Due to this find, Lautréamont was introduced to the [[Surrealism|Surrealists]]. Soon they called him their prophet. As one of the ''[[poète maudit|poètes maudits]]'' (accursed poets), he was elevated to the Surrealist pantheon beside [[Charles Baudelaire]] and [[Arthur Rimbaud]], and acknowledged as a direct precursor to Surrealism. In the first edition of the [[Surrealist Manifesto|Manifeste du Surréalisme]] (1924) Breton wrote: "With ''Les Chants de Maldoror'' the Surrealism was born. Older examples can only be traced all the way back to the time of prophets and oracles".<ref>André Breton ''Manifest du Surrealisme'', Èditions du Sagittaire, October 15, 1924.</ref> [[André Gide]] regarded him — even more than Rimbaud — as the most significant figure, as the "gate-master of tomorrow's literature", meriting Breton and Soupault "to have recognized and announced the literary and ultra-literary importance of the amazing Lautréamont".

[[Louis Aragon]] and Breton discovered the only copies of the ''Poésies'' in the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France|National Library of France]], and published the text in April and May 1919 in two sequential editions of their magazine ''Literature''. In 1925, a special edition of the Surrealist magazine ''Le Disque Vert'' was dedicated to Lautréamont, under the title "Le cas Lautréamont" (The Lautréamont case). It was the 1927 publication by Soupault and Breton that assured him a permanent place in [[French literature]] and the status of patron saint in the Surrealist movement. In 1930, Aragon called Lautréamont the "veritable initiator of the modern marvelous",<ref>Louis Aragon, "La peinture au défi". Reprinted in ''Les Collages'' (Paris: Hermann, 1965), p. 39.</ref> with "the marvelous" being a primary feature of Breton's Surrealism.<ref>André Breton, "Manifesto of Surrealism" [1924], in ''Manifestoes of Surrealism'', transl. [[Richard Seaver]] and [[Helen R. Lane]] (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1972).</ref> In 1940, Breton incorporated him into his ''Anthology of Black Humour''.

The title of an object by American artist [[Man Ray]], called ''L'énigme d'Isidore Ducasse'' (''The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse''), created in 1920, contains a reference to a famous line in Canto VI, Chapter 3. Lautréamont describes a young boy as "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nga.gov.au/International/Catalogue/Detail.cfm?IRN=43741|title=International Paintings and Sculpture &#124; The enigma of Isidore Ducasse|website=nga.gov.au}}</ref> Similarly, Breton often used this line as an example of Surrealist dislocation. In direct reference to Lautréamont's "chance meeting on a dissection table", [[Max Ernst]] defined the structure of the surrealist painting as "a linking of two realities that by all appearances have nothing to link them, in a setting that by all appearances does not fit them". Referencing this line, the debut record by the experimental/[[industrial music]] group [[Nurse with Wound]] is titled ''[[Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella]]''.

''Maldoror'' inspired many artists: [[Fray De Geetere]], [[Salvador Dalí]], [[Man Ray]], [[Jacques Houplain]], [[Jindřich Štyrský]], [[René Magritte]], [[Georg Baselitz]] and [[Victor Man]]. Individual works have been produced by [[Max Ernst]], [[Victor Brauner]], [[Óscar Domínguez]], [[André Masson]], [[Joan Miró]], [[Aimé Césaire]], [[Roberto Matta]], [[Wolfgang Paalen]], [[Kurt Seligmann]] and [[Yves Tanguy]]. The artist [[Amedeo Modigliani]] always carried a copy of the book with him and used to walk around [[Montparnasse]] quoting from it.

[[File:Lautréamont by Vallotton.jpg|thumb|An imagined portrait of Lautréamont by [[Félix Vallotton]] in ''The Book of masks'' from [[Remy de Gourmont]] (1898).]]
[[Félix Vallotton]] and Dalí made "imaginary" portraits of Lautréamont, since no photograph was available.