Susan Sontag

Amongst the jackals, panthers, bitches,

Apes, scorpions, vultures, serpents,

Yelping, howling, snarling, groveling monsters,

In the squalid menagerie of our vices,

There is one uglier, filthier and most wicked! Although

it manages no grand gestures or screams, It would

gladly make the earth a shambles And swallow up the

world with a yawn.

Boredom!--involuntary tears burden its eye, As it

dreams of gallows and smokes its hookah.

Reader, you know this dainty monster well,

Hypocrite reader--my match--my brother!

Charles Pierre Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to

recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified

by revulsion.

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation