I have written of evil as Mickiewicz, Byron, Milton, Southey, A. de Musset, Baudelaire and others have all done. Naturally I pulled the registers in a slightly exaggerated way, in order to create something new in the sense of a sublime literature that sings of despair only in order to oppress the reader, and make him desire the good as the remedy. Thus it is always, after all, the good which is the subject, only the method is more philosophical and less naive than that of the old school, of which Victor Hugo and his consorts are the sole remaining representatives.Β
Is that evil? No, certainly not.
Comte de LautrΓ©amont in a letter to Auguste Poulete-Malassis, Oct. 23, 1969
