Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 16:53:50 -0700
From: "gary patrick norris" <ngary2-AT-qwest.net>
Subject: Re: Maldoror


>I read a preview of a multi-director, super-8 film of Lautreamont's book
>- specifically about a showing in Bristol. I'm curious - has anyone seen
>this film yet?


http://bak.spc.org/maldoror/


I have been a fan of the book for ages.

I gotta say:  I don't understand how this narrative can be translated 
onto film, unless as a strictly symbolic adaptation.

But, Guy Debord pulled it off with Society of the Spectacle.

Sounds exciting,


gary norris


maldoror's visions certainly prefigure film theory:

"On the wall of my room what shadow outlines with an incomparable 
power the phantasmagoric projection of its shriveled silhouette?"


"Well, then: since your own blood and your own tears do not disgust 
you, be nourished with confidence upon the blood and the tears of the 
child.  Blind his eyes while you are rending his palpitating flesh; 
and having listened for hours to his sublime outcries which resemble 
the the piercing shrieks from the throats of the dying wounded on a 
battlefield, rush away from him like an avalanche; then return in 
haste and pretend to be coming to his assistance.  You will unbind 
his hands with their swollen nerves and veins, then restore sight to 
his wild eyes, and you will again begin to lap up his tears and 
blood.  How real a thing, then, is repentance!  The divine spark that 
dwells within us and shows itself so rarely appears: too late!  How 
your heart overflows with joy that you are able to console the 
innocent whom someone has hurt!
	Child, who have suffered such cruel pain: who could have 
perpetrated such a crime upon you, a crime for which I can find no 
name!  Wretched infant, how you must have suffered! . . . Alas!  What 
is good and evil?  Are they one and the same thing, by which we 
savagely bear witness to our impotence and our passion to attain the 
infinite, even by the most insensate means?  Or are they two 
different things?  Yes...they had better be one and the same, for if 
they are not what will become of me on the Day of Judgment?"


-- 
Every visible power is threatened, especially when it
rests on a usurpation that alienates both its victims
and its accomplices.  Thus the detective's tactics are
those of the minister and the Chief of State.  Power will
be shady or will not be at all. . .
     --H de Balzac, Introduction to Une tenebreuse affaire


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