Writings On Hashish And Alcohol: Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

Apr 2013 · SCB Distributors

About this ebook

In the 1840s, Charles Baudelaire was a regular member of the infamous Club des Hashischins ("Club of the Hashish-Eaters”), a Parisian literary group dedicated to the exploration of altered states of consciousness, principally through the use of hashish (a concentrated form of cannabis resin). Other notable members of this group included Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gerard de Nerval, Honoré de Balzac, and Théophile Gautier, all dedicated to experimenting with drugs and drug-induced states. As a denizen of the Hashishin Club, Charles Baudelaire was well-placed to turn his drug experiences, and those of others, into literature. Inspired by Thomas de Quincey's 1821 Confessions Of An Opium-Eater (which he would also translate into French), he turned his writing to drug intoxication around 1850, eventually producing a collection of drug-related writings titled Artificial Paradise, published in 1858. As well as a modified version of an earlier essay, now titled "On Wine And Hashish”, Artificial Paradise contained "The Poem Of Hashish”, a lengthy dissertation on the effects of prolonged hashish use. This special ebook edition of Baudelaire's writings on hashish and alcohol contains both "On Wine And Hashish”and "The Poem Of Hashish”, plus the bonus text "Get Drunk”, a prose-poetic exhortation to perpetual inebriation.

About the author

Charles Baudelaire, 1821 - 1867 Charles Baudelaire had perhaps had an immeasurable impact on modern poetry. He was born on April 9, 1821, to Joseph-Francois Baudelaire and Caroline Archimbaut Dufays in Paris. He was educated first at a military boarding school and then the College Louis-le-Grand, where he was later expelled in 1839. Baudelaire then began to study law, at the Ecole de Droit in Paris, but devoted most of his time to debauchery. After an abortive trip to the East, he settled in Paris and lived on an inheritance from his much despised step father, while he wrote poetry. During this period he met Jeanne Duval, a mulatto with whom he fell in love with and who became the "Black Venus," the muse behind some of his most powerful erotic verse. Baudelaire strove to portray sensual experiences and moods through complex imagery and classical form, avoiding sentimentality and objective description. Thus he profoundly influenced the later French symbolist writers, including Mallarme and Rimbaud, and such English-language poets as Yeats, Eliot, and Stevens. With much of his inheritance squandered, Baudelaire turned to journalism, especially art and literary criticism, the first of which were "Les Salons". Here he discovered the work of Edgar Allan Poe, which became an influence on his own poetry. While continuing to write unpublished verse, Baudelaire became famous as critic and translator of Poe. This reputation enabled Baudelaire to publish his most famous collection of poetry, "Les Fleurs du Mal" (The Flowers of Evil) in 1857. The result was an obscenity trial and the banning of six of the poems. Though he continued to write journalism with some success, he became increasingly depressed and pessimistic. Baudelaire attempted suicide in 1845, an attempt to get attention, and became minorly involved in the French Revolution. Today Baudelaire's work is considered the "last brilliant summation of romanticism, precursor of symbolism and the first expression of modern techniques". It was his originality that set him apart and ultimately proved to be his end. Baudelaire died, apparently from complications of syphilis, on August 31, 1867, in Paris.