"Let me begin by explaining my position. I have written of evil, as Mickiewicz, Byron, Milton, Southey, A. Musset, Baudelaire, etc., have all done. Naturally I have exaggerated the pitch along the lines of that sublime literature which sings of despair only to cast down the reader and make him desire the good as remedy. Thus one is always, after all, writing about the good, only by a more philosophical and less naive method than the old school, of which Victor Hugo and some others are the only representatives who are still alive..."

Comte de Lautremont, in defense of Maldoror.