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Arthur Rimbaud – from Rimbaud Complete [translated by Wyatt Mason]

All this is really about making one’s soul into a monster; like some comprachio!  Like some man sewing his face with a crop of warts.

I mean that you have to be a seer, mold oneself into a seer.

The Poet makes himself into a seer by a long involved and logical derangement of all the senses. 

Every kind of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself; he exhausts every possible poison so that only the essence remains.  He undergoes unspeakable tortures that require complete faith and superhuman strength, rendering him the ultimate Invalid among men, the master criminal, the first among the damned – and the supreme Savant! For he arrives in the unknown! 

For, unlike everyone else, he has developed an already rich soul!  He arrives at the unknown, and when, bewildered, he ends up losing his understanding of his vision, he has, at least, seen them!