We have seen how the problematization of theory implies for Joyce a detour through particulars before witnessing theory's own disappearance. I shall now focus on one of those particulars, the image of lice in Joyce's works, so as to point out the links between the reversibility of the sublime and the ridiculous and the applicability of this theme to Joyce's overall esthetic project. Since The Songs of Maldoror were published in the pages of The Egoist at the same time as the editors of the magazine started their collaboration with Joyce, it is quite possible that he came across Lautréamont's famous hymn to lice: “If the earth was covered with lice, as the seashore with sandgrains, the human race would be annihilated, dying in horrible pain. What a spectacle! And I, with angel's wings, motionless, contemplating it.” The remarkable translations of The Songs of Maldoror by Aldington were serialized in The Egoist from October 1914 to January 1915, and then they stop abruptly on a misleading “To be continued.” For Ducasse, lice provide an image of aggression and debasement, introducing a gothic esthetic of excess in universal destruction. Aldington started his serialized version of The Songs of Maldoror by translating a general introduction to Lautréamont by Remy de Gourmont which described the poet as talented but “diseased” and half-crazy, a “mad genius,” whose irony nevertheless redeems a baroque and violent imagery.