“Un son si étrange”: Writing Dissonance in Les Chants de Maldoror
2024; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 53; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/ncf.2024.a941905
ISSN1536-0172
Autores Tópico(s)Musicology and Musical Analysis
ResumoAbstract: This article considers the role of unpleasant sound, dissonance, and noise in Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror . The author presents his writing as dissonance, allegorizing his text as a strange-sounding lyre as he recounts the nefarious adventures of the misanthropic Maldoror. Despite the sonic nature of this text, evident even in its title, few have engaged with the sounds of Lautréamont’s work. I argue that Lautréamont uses dissonance as a metaphor for writing and that unpleasant sound in the form of frightening moans and a primal scream catalyzes the protagonist’s exploration of his fraught identity and facilitates his coming to writing within the narrative. Considered alongside emerging sound technologies from the time, Les Chants de Maldoror compels us to rethink modernist aurality in nineteenth-century France.
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