Comte de Lautréamont

Uruguayan born French poet, Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870)

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Lived 1846–1870, aged 24France

France WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
44 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1846–1870
Aged 24

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

He wrote one savage prose-poem under a fake title, died at 24, and half a century later the Surrealists dug him up and declared him their prophet. The work was *Les Chants de Maldoror*, and it reads like fever breaking into language.

Biography

About

Isidore Lucien Ducasse was born in Uruguay on 4 April 1846 and took the pen name Comte de Lautréamont when he began writing in France. He published *Les Chants de Maldoror* and *Poésies*, then died on 24 November 1870, just past his twenty-fourth birthday. For decades the work sat in obscurity. Then the Surrealists found it—and in Lautréamont's violent, hallucinatory verses they saw a blueprint for everything they wanted poetry to do. The Situationists followed. A poet who barely lived became a corner pillar of modern literature.

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Comte de Lautréamont

Comte de Lautréamont

said1870

I replace melancholy by courage, doubt by certainty, despair by hope, malice by good, complaints by duty, scepticism by faith, sophisms by cool equanimity and pride by modesty.

— Poésies I (1870)

Comte de Lautréamont

said1868