Lautréamont's Maldoror: Translated by Alexis Lykiard | Characters & Character Analysis

Lautramont's Maldoror: Translated by Alexis Lykiard Characters

Maldororappears in throughout

Maldoror is the main character of these poems. As the poems, at least until the sixth and final book, are not meant to form any kind of cohesive narrative, Maldoror's character and nature are not always consistent throughout. The most dramatic example of this inconsistency is Book IV, Stanza 4, in which Maldoror is presented as an ancient, immobile body in which various animals have nested; such a state is clearly not consistent with other passages, in which Maldoror is depicted as deftly sneaking around cities.

Maldoror's most significant quality, for Lautreamont's purposes, is that he has completely rejected God, religion, and morality. As such, he freely gives into his various sadistic and "perverse" instincts. He is an habitual murderer—he murders or tries to murder several people in various stories in the book and several other murders are referenced—and a homosexual with an interest particularly in young boys, a "vice"...
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