The Seraphim Theater

"Soon the links that bind your ideas become so frail, the thread that ties your conceptions so tenuous, that only your accomplices can understand you. And here again you cannot be completely certain; perhaps they only think they understand you, and the illusion is reciprocal. These outbursts of loud cries and laughter, which resemble explosions, seem like true madness, or at least like the ravings of a madman, to all those who are not similarly intoxicated.

Likewise will wisdom, good sense, and the logical thoughts of the sober, prudent observer, delight and amuse you like a particular form of dementia. The roles are reversed. His detachment drives you to extremes of sarcastic mockery. Now is this not really a mysteriously comic situation, when a man is moved to incomprehensible mirth by a person whose condition differs from his own? The lunatic pities the sane man, and henceforth the idea of his own superiority begins to dawn on his intellect's horizon. Soon it will explode like a meteor." (Charles Baudelaire)