Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror and the Dynmics of Reading

As the apparent chaos of Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror frustrates the reader's initial attempts at interpretation, and as the reader begins to relate certain static/dynamic and emerging/resurging patterns to each other, he inevitably becomes aware of his own response as reader, oscillating between involvement in and detachment from the text. In the attempt to create consistency ("illusion-forming") he moves toward a "center," but the text continually pushes him out to the periphery, where he reflects on the activity of reading. The famous description of the flight of the starlings, as well as the text's predominant movement of "tourbillon," thus finds an analogy in the dynamics of reading. (LE)