[Lautréamont] Dazet, the silky-eyed octopus
If there is a central enigma for the exegetes of Lautrémont, at the origin of often contradictory hypotheses, it is probably the Dazet mystery.
First dedicatee of Poetry I - first version of Les Chants du Maldoror (1868) - Georges Dazet (1852-1920), school friend of Isidore Ducasse in Tarbes, is an important figure in the Song I. Called by its name in the first version, it becomes D... in the next, before disappearing in the final version, metamorphosed into more or less grotesque animal epithets. In the absence of any direct evidence of the relationship between Dazet and Ducasse, the artefacts that belonged to Dazet have particularly intrigued researchers, first and foremost Jean-Jacques Lefrère, who in 1977, while painstakingly analysing the Dazet family archives, discovered the only known photograph of Lautréamont.
Here we present an extract from these archives, an exceptional collection comprising prize books received in Tarbes by student Dazet, a letter to his mother, a play and an unpublished poempoems dedicated to him and a unique photograph where you can discover the "silken eyes" that so fascinated Lautréamont.