Lautréamont, comte de (1846–1870)

French poet, born in Montevideo, Uruguay. With Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Sade, he is perhaps the most influential figure in modern French literature. His long sequence of prose poems, Les Chants de Maldoror 1868, was acclaimed as a forerunner of their work by the Surrealists. The Poésies were published 1870. Very little is known about his life, but his work inspired fine literary criticism.