Absinthe and the Muse

Absinthe is an alcoholic drink that gained a reputation for being a drink for poets and artists. Absinthe rose to popularity in late‑19th‑century France, especially in the cafés of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter — the same places where poets, painters, and musicians gathered. 

Some of the most famous absinthe‑drinking poets were Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and later Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. Absinthe became associated with poets because it was cheap, strong, ritualistic, and mythologized as a way to summon "the Muse." 

That Muse was la fée verte, the Green Fairy, a muse who whispered inspiration to drinkers. Absinthe was high-proof and relatively cheap, and it became the drink of choice for the "Green Hour" (L'Heure Verte), a daily ritual in cafes.  

There was a ritual connected to absinthe that seemed almost alchemical and added to the mystery and myth. You would drip iced water over a sugar cube perched on a slotted spoon over the absinthe-filled glass. This turned the green drink a cloudy white. This also lowered the alcholic hit and bitterness but brought forward floral notes. This theatricality made it feel more like a potion than a beverage. Artists embraced the idea that it opened the mind to visions, even though its supposed hallucinogenic effects were much exaggerated. 

Charles Baudelaire is one of the earliest literary figures linked to absinthe. Although he didn’t write poems about absinthe directly, his fascination with altered states, decadence, and artificial paradises made the drink a natural part of his mythos. His prose work Les Paradis Artificiels explores intoxication and creativity.

In "Le Poison" (The Poison) by Baudelaire from his Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), he compares the mind-altering effects of wine and opium before introducing a third intoxicating power. While he does not say the word "absinthe" explicitly, it is widely accepted by literary scholars that the third verse is an ode to it, playing on its signature color and its nickname as a liquid lake of dreams.

All this is nothing to the poison that spills
From your eyes, from your green eyes
Lakes where my soul trembles and is turned upside down...

Paul Verlaine was a heavy absinthe drinker whose turbulent life — including his relationship with Rimbaud — became part of the Green Fairy legend. Absinthe appears in his letters and memoirs, and its haze fits the languor and melancholy of his Symbolist style.

Arthur Rimbaud drank absinthe with Verlaine during their infamous Paris and London years. His visionary, hallucinatory poetic style helped cement the idea that absinthe unlocked new modes of perception.

In the prose poem "Absinthia Taetra" by Ernest Dowson, a central figure in the English Decadent movement, he captures the aesthetic, sensory experience of preparing the drink.

Green changed to white, emerald to opal; nothing was changed. The man let the water trickle gently into his glass, and as the green clouded, a mist fell from his mind.

Ernest Hemingway is one of the 20th‑century devotees who helped revive absinthe’s mystique. He wrote about it in For Whom the Bell Tolls and drank it in Paris and Spain. His “Death in the Afternoon” cocktail was absinthe mixed with champagne.

James Joyce also drank absinthe in Paris during his early years. While not central to his writing or the mythology, it was part of the bohemian café culture that shaped Modernism.  

Read further about the science and mythology of absinthe

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"The Clock" - a prose poem for a lady

I am neither a big fan of the poet Baudelaire nor am I a big fan of prose poems, but this one got my attention.

I'll admit that the opening got my interest and I wanted to know how, but I too often find prose poems to be just prose. Like flash fiction. Poetic language? Perhaps, but many novelists have poetic language but I would not call a novel an epic prose poem. 

I'm told that intent is key in making a prose poem a poem. That is a tough one to evaluate.

Feel free to educate me on this with a comment.

"L'Horloge" (The Clock)

a prose poem by Charles Baudelaire [translated by David Lehman]

– for a lady

How do the Chinese tell time? By looking at the eyes of their

cats. Here’s how.

A lost missionary, afoot in a sleepy suburb of Nankin, had

forgotten his watch and asked a little boy what time it was.

After a moment’s hesitation, this street urchin of the celestial

Empire said: ‘‘Wait, I will tell you.’’ A few seconds later, he

reappeared with a very fat cat in his arms, looked into the 

whites of her eyes, and said, ‘‘It is almost but not quite noon.’’ 

Which was the case.

As for me, if I favor my beautiful Feline, so felicitously named –

the honor of her sex, the pride of my heart, and the perfume 

of my spirit, day and night, rain or shine – in the depths of her

 adorable eyes I can always tell what time it is, and it is always

 the same time, an hour vast, solemn, limitless as space undivided

 into minutes and seconds – a lingering hour no clock observes, 

soft as a sigh, swift as a glance.

And if an intruder came to disturb my study of this enchanting dial,

if some malevolent genie, some demon of ill fortune, were to address

me as a vain and idle mortal and say: ‘‘What are you staring at?

What are you looking for in the eyes of that creature? Is time told there,

 and can you tell it?’’ I would reply without hesitation. ‘‘I know what time

it is; it is Eternity.’’

Madame, is not this a most meritorious bagatelle, and as full of vain

self-regard as your high and mighty self? Frankly, my dear, it has given me

so much pleasure embroidering this pretentious piece of puffery that I ask

nothing of you in return.

from the Summer 2019 issue of The Yale Review, in which four other prose poems by Charles Baudelaire appear.

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Baudelaire, Sex, Death and Banned Poems

Portrait de Charles Baudelaire
 en 1844 par Émile Deroy 

I don't recall reading the French poet Charles Baudelaire in my college days. He is most famous for his collection of prose poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil). I think I would remember poems about sex and death. When the book was published in 1857 it made Baudelaire famous. 

There were 126 poems. Six are about lesbianism. The poems linked sexuality, love and death, and touched on lesbian love and some of the seamier side of Paris. One 1857 reviewer wrote: “Never has one seen so many breasts bitten or even chewed in so few pages.” 

In this time where we hear about so many books being banned and attacks on the LGBTQ community, it seems like a moment to revisit his problems publishing in the 19th century.

The entire book was considered obscene enough that Baudelaire, his printer, and his publisher were put on trial. The six poems were banned from future printings of the book and banned in France. Baudelaire responded, “Give them only carefully selected garbage.” The judgment of obscenity was finally reversed in 1949 and the poems were restored. T.S. Eliot called Baudelaire “the greatest exemplar in modern poetry in any language” 

One of the banned poems is "À Celle qui est trop gaie" (To One Who Is Too Gay), which though it is in the old sense of gay meaning "happy," seems like a curious coincidence to a modern ear. 

...To whip your joyous flesh
And bruise your pardoned breast,
To make in your astonished flank
A wide and gaping wound,

And, intoxicating sweetness!
Through those new lips,
More bright, more beautiful,
To infuse my venom, my sister!
   (translated by William Aggeler)

Baudelaire barely made a living from his writing. Besides his poetry, he did art reviews and articles and translated Edgar Allan Poe’s works into French. He became addicted to laudanum, then opium. He became quite ill, moved in with his mother, and the last two years of Baudelaire’s life were spent in semi-paralysis in an aphasic state. He died in 1867 at the age of 46. Most of his poetry was published after his death and then it sold well.

  

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