Les Chants de Maldoror is based around a character called Maldoror, a figure of unrelenting evil who has forsaken God and mankind. The book combines an obscene and violent narrative with vivid and often surrealistic imagery. In 1917, French writer Philippe Soupault discovered a copy of "Les Chan

Atmospheric, Baroque, Excessive, Grotesque, Hallucinatory, Perverse, Rebel, Surrealist poetry, Violent, Visceral

Viewing the human condition as a "confused impurity," Pablo Neruda wrote what he called "impure poetry." His childhood in remote Temuco, Chile, was spent voraciously reading Spanish and French literature. The boy "hunted poems" in the mountains and forests nearby, and published several pieces in Te

Dreamy, Ecstatic, Erotic, Intimate, Lush, Political, Rebel, Romantic poetry, Saturated, Surrealist poetry

Salvador Dali was half-artist, half-imp, and all lunatic. Heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud's theories of dream interpretations and the subconscious, Dali sought to depict not visible objects but their associated images and subconscious meanings. For Dali, the life of the mind was life itself, and

Biomorphic, Death, Distorted, Dreamy, Excessive, Grotesque, Hallucinatory, Surrealist art, Surrealist literature, Surrealist poetry