The bewilderment produced by surreal appearances in the Black Dahlia homicide case is unbounded, mystifying those at the crime scene and everyone else ever since.   These surreal signatures are designed to create confusion, destabilize the untrained eye, and conceal an inside reference or pun that only the inner circle of surrealists can fully understand.   Although implanted surreal messages were often intellectual or even humorous in nature, this murder represents a homicidal instance of surreal appearance, a brutal, psychopathic act for history to witness in baffled horror.

Here are excerpts from surrealist literature and influential precursors, prose ranging from intellectual libertarianism to misogyny and sadistic, criminal behavior.   All cited literature predates the Black Dahlia murder.   This material was published both in French and English, including Chants de Maldoror by Isadore Ducasse, a long, lurid poem that captivated many surrealists.   Large tracts of Maldoror appeared in Surrealism by Julien Levy, published in New York by The Black Sun Press in 1936.   Levy's startling and perceptive book introduced the American public to surrealist ideas, presenting a comprehensive review that referenced critical source material, including Minotaure and La Révolution Surréaliste.

"When surrealist methods extend from writing to action, there will certainly arise the need of a new morality to take the place of the current one, the cause of all our woe."

Surrealism: "Dictates of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, beyond all control aesthetic or moral."

"Living and ceasing to live are imaginary solutions.  Existence is elsewhere."

"Beauty will be convulsive or nothing."

- André Breton, Manifeste du Surréalisme, 1924, and What is Surrealism?, 1936

"To intensify experience – The surrealists often deliberately propose to shock and surprise, so that you may be deprived of all preconceived standards and open to new impressions. . . .   To shock as the bull-fighter first bares the nerves of his audience by the willful shedding of blood and disemboweling of defenseless horses, so that the super-sensitized public might the better respond to the grace and agility of subsequent performance."

"Hans Bellmer [promising surrealist newcomer] carries his exciting little girl dismembered in a suitcase or immobilized in the plate-holder of his camera or, built of bricks, she becomes a break-water for the high seas and a temptation for ships."

- Julien Levy, Surrealism, 1936

"Verily it must be that crime is an enchanting affair, for, in truth, from the flames by which it licks us is kindled the torch of our lust.   Only crime is sufficient, it alone inflames us, and only crime can ravish pleasure through all degrees of our sensibility."

- Marquis de Sade, Juliette, or Vice Amply Rewarded, 1797-1801

"The poet becomes a seer by a long, enormous, and reasoned derangement of all his senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness. He seeks himself. He exhausts in himself every poison, retaining only their quintessence. Ineffable torture, in which he requires supreme faith, superhuman strength in which he becomes among all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the one accursed—and the supreme sage!"

-Arthur Rimbaud

"The body was drained of blood- exsanguinated- and her hair and skin were washed clean."

- Steve Hodel, Black Dahlia Avenger, p. 227

"Better to wash with spittle than not to wash at all, after an entire night passed in vice and crime."

- Isadore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont), Chants de Maldoror, excerpt from Chant III

"Each day I traversed a narrow street; each day, a slim young girl, ten years old, would follow me, at a distance, respectfully, the length of the street, watching me with curious and sympathetic eyes. . . .   Perhaps that girl was not what she seemed.   Beneath a naive exterior perhaps she hid a huge deceit, the weight of eighteen years, and the charm of vice. . . .   I imagine her mother must strike her because she does not ply her trade with sufficient skill. . . .   Look here, maiden, I urge you never to appear in my sight, if ever again I pass through that narrow street.   It might cost you dear! Already the blood mounts to my head in boiling tides of hate. . . .   They do not love me, those creatures! . . .   Maiden, you are not an angel, and you will become, in short, like other women.   No, no!  I beg of you; do not reappear before my frowning and suspicious eyes.   In a misguided moment I might seize your arms, twist them as one would wring water from a cloth, or break them with the crackling of two dry twigs and force you to eat them.   I might, while taking your head between my hands, with a caressing and gentle mien, force my avid fingers into the lobes of your innocent brain, to extract therefrom, with a smile on my lips, an efficacious unguent with which to bathe my eyes, sore from the eternal insomnia of living.   I might, sewing your eyelids with a needle, deprive you of sight and make it impossible for you to find your way; it would not be I who would serve you as guide.   I might, lifting your virginal body with an arm of iron, seize you by the legs, whirl you about my head, like a sling, putting all my strength into describing the last circle, and hurl you against the wall. . . .   No doubt the body has remained plastered on the wall, like a ripe pear, and has not fallen to the floor; but dogs can jump high, if one does not take care."

- Isadore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont), Chants de Maldoror, excerpt from Chant II

Script introduction to Un Chien Andalou: "[The film is] a desperate, passionate call to murder."

- Luis Buñuel, 1929

"It is dark truths which appear in the work of the true poets; but they are truths, and almost everything else is a lie."

"One good mistress deserves another."

-Paul Éluard

"There is a surrealist light . . . the light of flashlights on murder victims and on love."

"A new vice has been given to man: Surrealism, son of frenzy and darkness."

- Luis Aragon, A Wave of Dreams, 1924