MAY it please heaven that the reader, emboldened and having for the time being become as fierce as what he is reading, should, without being led astray, find his rugged and treacherous way across the desolate swamps of these sombre and poison-filled pages; for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and a tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve his soul as water does sugar.
—Comte de Lautréamont (aka Isidore Ducasse) (translated by Paul Knight) —found in Maldoror and Poems (1978; Les Chants de Maldoror originally published 1868)