Published in a new translation, and for the first time in a
single-volume edition, On Wine and Hashish collects Baudelaire’s
notions of the artificial paradises available to all drinkers and
drug takers. In equal parts a celebration of the human capacity
to escape the immediacy of the world as it is, and a warning
against indulging the escapist impulse, On Wine and Hashish draws
on its author’s experiences as a member of the famous ’Club des
hachichins’ in Paris. It elaborates themes raised in his famous
prose poem collection, Le Spleen de Paris, in which drunkenness -
as provided by wine, poetry, or virtue - is celebrated in
remarkable style.
Baudelaire claims that wine and hashish bring about a flight
away from narrative time, initiating a relationship with the
unknown: the ambivalence of memory, and a dangerous timelessness.
Inebriating in its anecdotal detail and thought-provoking in
its depiction of the phoney exotica of excess, On Wine and
Hashish illuminates Baudelaire’s own uncertain attitude to
addiction.
目录
Foreword by Margaret Drabble
Introduction
On Wine and Hashish
Notes
The Poem of Hashish
Notes
Appendix (Letter of Dedication)
Biographical note
