Charles Baudelaire on alcohol and hashish
Related: artificial - Paradise - 1850s - drugs - alcohol - Charles Baudelaire
On Wine and Hashish (1851) - Charles Baudelaire
Du vin et du haschisch (1851) was first published in Le Messager de l'Assemblée, a French periodial. The article served as preliminary study for Les Paradis artificiels (1860). Baudelaire outlines the potential role of artificial stimulants, taking for his starting point for the section on wine Hoffmann's prescriptions from the Kreisleriana for particular types of wines to enhance particular types of musical experience. He also praises Balzac.
Initially composed for newspaper publication, and inspired by Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, Baudelaire’s musings on wine and hashish provide acute—and fascinating—psychological insight into the mind of the addict. On Wine and Hashish asserts the ambivalence of memory, urging a union of willpower and sensual pleasure as Baudelaire claims that wine and hashish bring about an escape of narrative time. This characteristic theme anticipates his famous prose poems, “Le Spleen de Paris,” in which drunkenness—as induced by wine, poetry, or virtue—is celebrated in extraordinary style. Foreword by Margaret Drabble. -- amazon.com
See also: 1851 - E.T.A. Hoffmann - Honoré de Balzac
Artificial Paradises (1860) - Charles Baudelaire
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Though Du vin is Baudelaire's own contribution on the subject, Les Paradis artificiels is his montage of translated excerpts (including comments) of Thomas De Quincey's Confession of an English Opium Eater (1821). [Mar 2006]
Les paradis artificiels ("Artificial Paradises") is a book by French poet Charles Baudelaire, first published in 1860, about the state of being under the influence of opium and hashish. Baudelaire describes the effects of the drugs and discusses the way in which they could theoretically aid mankind in reaching an "ideal" world. The text was heavily influenced by Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_paradis_artificiels [Dec 2004]
See also:
1860 -
Thomas De Quincey -
Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821)