Book I, Stanzas 1-9 Summary

Stanza 1: The narrator warns the reader about reading the poems that follow. He says that if the reader does not approach them with a "rigorous logic and a tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness" that the book will corrupt him and make him like its subject, Maldoror. The narrator urges the reader, therefore, to stop reading and close the book forever.

Stanza 2: The narrator promises that hatred, imagined here as an odor, will please the reader.

Stanza 3: Maldoror was a good person during his early years but when he realized that he had, actually, been born filled with evil, his life turned in a different direction. At first, he tried to repress his true nature but in time, he could not hold it back any longer and embraced his evil heart.

Stanza 4: The narrator...