Jul 6, 2024 9:40 AM
One of those French books that has somehow fallen through the cracks and failed to take root in the English speaking cannon, (see also Salammbô, or all of Flaubert actually - sans Bovary).
I tried, and failed miserably, to read this in the original - I've previously managed to stumble and stammer my way through most French classics, armed only with a trusty Cambridge bilingual dictionary, intermediate French and some misplaced confidence, and that has generally more than sufficed for Hugo, Rimbaud et all but here I could barely even get through the first canto and by the end I begrudgingly admitted defeat and switched to a translation (by the by, I recommend Alexis Lykiard's).
It's not a very long book, and it's quite similar content-wise to Prometheus Unbound or Paradise Lost in that it's about fighting against God, in a more or less literal sense. Prose-wise, of course, it has little in common with the other two - this is one of the Ur-texts of surrealism, and by far one of the best.
I always have trouble with surrealist writing, typically it's a chore to get through and often there's a pseudo intellectual self-aggrandizing undercurrent present; I love Mallarmé and now Lautréamont, but can't stand the thinly veiled navel-gazing so terribly apparent in Breton and also Apollinaire. So it's generally late surrealism have a problem with; I think much like cubism (also a movement populated largely by incorrigible narcissists), it got too enamoured with itself and stopped separating the chaff from the corn and poisoned the whole supply in the process.
Be that as it may, for anyone who's wanted to try and dip their toes into the weird and wonderful world of French surrealism, I think this book is the perfect place to start - and maybe even stop!