"It is a power stronger than will. Could a stone escape from the laws of gravity? Impossible. Impossible, for evil to form an alliance with good"
About this Quote
Fatalism, in Lautreamont, isn’t a mood; it’s an engine. By yoking morality to physics, he smuggles an unsettling claim under the calm authority of natural law: good and evil don’t negotiate. They don’t even share a room. “Stronger than will” strips the reader of the comforting liberal premise that choice is the ultimate human power. If gravity is indifferent, then this “power” is equally impersonal, a force that governs conduct the way mass governs motion.
The subtext is a pointed attack on sentimental moral fusion: the belief that virtue can redeem corruption through mere proximity, that a pure intention can launder a tainted act. Lautreamont doesn’t argue; he pronounces, with the clipped certainty of a theorem. The repetition of “Impossible. Impossible” performs the very inevitability he asserts, turning rhetoric into a kind of hammering constraint. The stone image matters because it’s anti-heroic: no grand sinner, no tragic choice, just a dumb object obeying its nature. That’s the insult. Humans, he implies, may be less free than they pretend.
Context sharpens the edge. Writing in the late 19th century’s ferment of scientific prestige and moral panic, Lautreamont raids the language of determinism to poison moral optimism. In Les Chants de Maldoror, evil isn’t a lapse; it’s a cosmology. This line functions like a manifesto for that worldview: not a warning to avoid temptation, but a refusal to believe in ethical compromise at all. It’s cynicism dressed as natural philosophy, and that disguise is the point.
The subtext is a pointed attack on sentimental moral fusion: the belief that virtue can redeem corruption through mere proximity, that a pure intention can launder a tainted act. Lautreamont doesn’t argue; he pronounces, with the clipped certainty of a theorem. The repetition of “Impossible. Impossible” performs the very inevitability he asserts, turning rhetoric into a kind of hammering constraint. The stone image matters because it’s anti-heroic: no grand sinner, no tragic choice, just a dumb object obeying its nature. That’s the insult. Humans, he implies, may be less free than they pretend.
Context sharpens the edge. Writing in the late 19th century’s ferment of scientific prestige and moral panic, Lautreamont raids the language of determinism to poison moral optimism. In Les Chants de Maldoror, evil isn’t a lapse; it’s a cosmology. This line functions like a manifesto for that worldview: not a warning to avoid temptation, but a refusal to believe in ethical compromise at all. It’s cynicism dressed as natural philosophy, and that disguise is the point.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Les Chants de Maldoror (1869), Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautreamont). French original contains lines commonly translated as: "C'est une puissance plus forte que la volonté... Impossible, impossible qu'il se forme une alliance entre le mal et le bien." |
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