It has long been known that the text of The Songs of Maldoror is a fabric of borrowings, more or less manipulated. This means they are difficult to discover, the author having carefully avoided indicating them or giving us the means to discover them. Finding one is most often a matter of chance. This is to say how surprised I was when I made this discovery, which I hastened to share with Noël Arnaud and François Caradec, to be certain that no one had mentioned it before and especially to know where I would be best read on this subject. The latter assured me that the Cahiers Lautréamont were the best place for a publication of this nature. Which I did, contenting myself with sharing the borrowing. Whereupon Jean-Pierre Lassalle hastened to verify the phrase in Helmoltz's book and to publish the page in question in the same Cahiers. This is why I give here my text accompanied by the reproduction, as I did later in the essay Lights on Maldoror.
This discovery gave rise to another, since Jean-Jacques Lefrère noted that Helmoltz's work on harmony had given rise to a partial publication in a journal before that of the work mentioned in my article.

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