The artist makes himself a seer by a long, immense, and calculated derailment of all the senses. All the forms of love and suffering and madness; he seeks himself and exhausts in himself all the poisons, keeping only the quitessences. Unspeakable torture, in which he needs all the faith, all the superhuman strength, by which be becomes the great invalid, the great criminal, the great pariah, above all others - and the supreme Savant! - For he attains the unknown! Since he has cultivated his soul, which was rich to start with, more than anyone else! He reaches the unknown, and if, finally overwhelmed, he turns out to lose the meaning of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die in his surge through things unheard of and beyond naming: other horrible workers will come after him and begin at the horizons where he sank succumbed!
Poetry will no longer just set action to rhythms; it will, itself, take the lead.
Arthur Rimbaud
