“As everybody knows, one never sees the sun in one’s dreams, even though one is often aware of a light far more luminous.”

Gérard de Nerval, 1853

 

“Creation is composed of an infinite number of universes, separated from one another by abysms of nothingness, and the world is only a portal by means of which errant souls are precipitated into glory and become stars in their turn. Eternity is endless and the number of universes is similarly unlimited. To the right and left, on high and down below, everything vibrates, everything palpitates, everything exists, and always progressing, because you cannot only take a single step forward.”

Jane de La Vaudère, 1893

"Who is this suspicious ‘person’ with no head? I asked myself. A symbol of course, what else! But what did the symbol want to tell me? That disaster was approaching, I sensed."

Gustav Meyrink, 1927

 

"Is this another hallucination?" I queried. 

"No; it is a reality. Let us advance to the brink." 

John Uri Lloyd, 1895

“Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed.”

Éliphas Lévi, 1854

“Enjoy the good country air while you may. Here it is foul and pestilential. And the streets are swarming with provincials trailing bewildered wives and squalling brats behind them–all with their noses in the air, gaping at the rooftops and spelling out the names of the streets. The need for a little wholesale slaughter becomes evident. Anyway, what the blazes do they want here, all these people?”

J-k Huysmans, 1912

 

“I may have eaten something rotten, but I am a God.”

Charles Baudelaire, 1860

“Debussy not only heard sounds that no other ear was able to register, but he found a way of expressing things that are not customarily said. He had an almost fanatical conviction that a musical score does not begin with the composer, but that it emerges out of space, through centuries of time, passes before him, and goes on, fading into the distance (as it came) with no sense of finality.”  

George Copeland, 1955

“And he said aloud: ‘This is the future.’ Suddenly, without any reason, this thought came to him and flew through the night like a bright meteor.”   

Hanns Heinz Ewers, 1910

“The Sâr Peladan surrounded by Rosicrucians took possession of the studio. One smelled incense and the candles’ waxen tears; a lectern held an old Bible. On the dark grey walls I had written Arab proverbs in chalk and quotations from Shakespeare, profundities from Plato. Ladies with their hair in precise braids and their waists thin as stalks sighed and palpitated. Men smoked enormous pipes. Their velveteen suits, stained with ink, paint or clay, carried the signature of their profession. I was happy.”

Georgette Leblanc, 1911

“Wagner, if one may be permitted a little of the grandiloquence that suits the man, was a beautiful sunset that has been mistaken for the dawn."

Claude Debussy, 1910

 

“Anyone who is sensitive and still open to spiritual development can, during the time of this great war, distinctly feel powerful new forces flowing into them. These come from the many dying soldiers”

Gustav Meyrink, 1917

 

“My originality consists in bringing to life improbable beings, and making them live according to the laws of probability, by putting the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible.” 

Odilon Redon, 1915

“Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever from us, and from all ruin, unto the wise, as melody from Memnon to the Sun.”

Edgar Poë, 1833

“The discovery of the microscope was sufficient to prove to us that our senses are deceptive and that we cannot see things as they are. Nature appears to us grandiose and poetic, does it not? But if we were able to see it as it really is, in its all-devouring actuality, it is probable that we would shiver more in horror than enthusiasm.”

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, 1866

 

“We are in the full assembly of the Sabbat of Sabbats here, and I put it to you that every evening, every arena of Parisian society—including the Opéra and the gatherings of the great and the good of France—is a rendezvous of necromantic mages.”

Jean Lorrain, 1891

"Space is swarming with microbes, is it any more surprising that it should also abound in spirits and spectres?"

J.-k. Huysmans, 1891

 

“Soon the world’s clock will strike twelve; the number on the dial is red, is dipped in blood, and by that you will recognize it.” 

Gustav Meyrink, 1916

 

“Nothing wrong with Debussy that a few weeks in the open air wouldn’t cure.”

Carl Ruggles, 1915

 

“My eyes were strange and vague, a gray sea of boredom seemed to have poured into it entirely, my head leaned over my body, like a flower on its stem. I thought I was a fantastic character of Edgar Poe.” 

Liane de Pougy, 1899