Confessions of an English opium eater
I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with this view I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age a most painful affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had originally been caused by extremities of hunger, suffered in my boyish days.
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- I disagree, strongly. Most modern translations try to be "accessible" which means they're written in a lukewarm, boring style that avoids difficult (but artistically relevant) language. This is especially true with Victorian-era English, which is criticized for being overly verbose today. Sometimes, maybe that's true. But if say, Confessions of an English Opium Eater had been written in French and was only read as a contemporary translation, you'd completely miss the beauty of De Quincey's writing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu...
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-de-quincey/confessi...
- Here's an example: Confessions of an English Opium Eater ( http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2040/2040.txt ). Short for a biography, long for an article (couple hours read). The eloquent language itself makes going back to ordinary Internet English a pain. More on topic, he describes a year of abject suffering, 8 years of bliss and 9 years of abject suffering. (In really exceptional language.)
- Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey
Good quick read.
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-English-Opium-Eater-Pengui...
For an extra $5 you can pick up this which is fantastic: http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Relativity-Fourth-Dimension-R...
- if we could find characters or signs appropriate for expressing all our thoughts
Precursor to De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium Eater as axiomatic Euclidean geometry.
[1]:https://archive.org/details/confessionsofeng01dequ/page/n2/m...
- You should say yes to history instead. I can think of another drug that was also lionized among the intelligentsia of their time, both for its medicinal uses and its spiritual or creative benefits. That drug was opium.
"But I took it—and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me—in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a [Greek text] for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach."
-Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, John De Quincey.
It sounds eerily a lot like the current push for psychedlica, and it originally started with upperclass knowledge workers then, too. But as the dangers of the drug became widely known, and it filtered downwards, it became regarded as a horror, and prohibition came not because the government was a killjoy and wanted to ruin people's recreational fun, but because the human toll was high and as it filtered down the criminal element took control.
The addict or user always glorifies the damn thing in the honeymoon phase, its after when the effects become known and widespread do we get the pushback. It's always the answer to everything that ails you till it isn't.
- Since 1532 according to https://wonderclub.com/Wildlife/mammals/norwegian_lemming.ht...
Lemming suicide is also mentioned on page 66 of the first edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey: https://archive.org/stream/confessionsofeng00dequ_1#page/66/...
This was published in 1832 and revised in 1856.
