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C H A P T E R IV -
T H E M A N - G O D
I
T I S time to leave on one side all
this
jugglery, these big marionettes, born of the smoke of childish
brains. Have we not to speak of more serious things -- of modifications
of our
human opinions, and, in a word, of the "
morale" of hashish?
Up to the present I have only made an abridged monograph on the
intoxication; I have confined myself to accentuating its principal
characteristics. But what is more important, I think,
for the spiritually minded man, is to make acquaintance with the action
of the poison upon the spiritual part of man; that is to say, the
enlargement, the deformation, and the exaggeration of his habitual
sentiments and his
moral perception, which present then, in an
exceptional
atmosphere, a true phenomenon of refraction.
T H E M A N who, after abandoning
himself for a long time to opium or to hashish, has been able, weak
as he has become by the habit of bondage, to find the energy necessary
to shake off the chain, appears to me like an escaped prisoner. He
inspires me with more admiration than does that prudent man who has
never fallen, having always been careful to avoid the temptation.
The English, in speaking of opium-eaters, often employ terms which can
only appear excessive to those innocent persons who do not understand the
horrors of this downfall -- "enchained, fettered, enslaved." Chains,
in fact, compared to which all others -- chains of duty, chains of
lawless love -- are nothing but webs of gauze and spider tissues.
Horrible marriage of man with himself! "I had become a bounden
slave in the trammels of opium, and my labours and my orders had taken
a colouring from my dreams," says the husband of Ligeia. But in how
many marvellous passages does Edgar Poe, this
incomparable poet, this never-refuted philosopher, whom one must
always quote in speaking of the mysterious maladies of the soul,
describe the dark and clinging splendours of opium! The lover of the
shining Berenice, Egoeus, the metaphysician, speaks of an
alteration of his faculties which compels him to give an abnormal and
monstrous value to the simplest phenomenon.
"T O M U S E for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some
frivolous device on the margin or in the typography of a book; to
become absorbed, for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint
shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose
myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or
the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a
flower; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by
dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the
mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of
absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in: such
were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by
a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether
unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like
analysis or explanation."
A N D T H E nervous
Augustus Bedloe, who every morning before his walk swallows his dose
of opium, tells us that the principal prize which he
gains from this daily poisoning is to take in everything, even in the
most trivial thing, an exaggerated interest.
"I N T H E meantime the
morphine had its customary effect -- that of enduing all the external
world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of
a leaf -- in the hue of a blade of grass -- in the shape of a
trefoil -- in the humming of a bee -- in the gleaming of a
dew-drop -- in the breathing of the wind -- in the faint odours
that came from the forest -- there came a whole universe of
suggestion -- a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical
thought."
T H U S expresses himself, by the mouth of his
puppets, the master of the horrible, the prince of mystery. These two
characteristics of opium are perfectly applicable to hashish. In the one
case, as in the other, the intelligence, formerly free, becomes a
slave; but the word "rapsodique," which defines so well a
train of thought suggested and dictated by the exterior world and the
accident of circumstance, is in truth truer and more terrible in the case
of hashish. Here the reasoning power is no more than a wave, at the mercy
of every current and the train of thought is infinitely more accelerated
and more "rapsodique;" that is to say, clearly enough, I think, that
hashish is, in its immediate effect, much more vehement than opium, much
more inimical to regular life; in a word, much more upsetting. I do not
know if ten years of intoxication by hashish would being diseases equal
to those caused by ten years of opium regimen; I say that, for the
moment, and for the morrow, hashish has more fatal results. One is a
soft-spoken enchantress; the other, a raging demon.
I W I S H in this last part to define
and to analyse the moral ravage caused by this dangerous and
delicious practice; a ravage so great, a danger so profound, that
those who return from the fight but lightly wounded appear to me like
heroes escaped from the cave of a multiform Proteus, or like Orpheus,
conquerors of Hell. You may take, if you will, this form of language
for an exaggerated metaphor, but for my part I will affirm that
these exciting poisons seem to me not only one of the most terrible and
the most sure means which the Spirit of Darkness uses to enlist and
enslave wretched humanity, but even one of the most perfect of his avatars.
T H I S T I M E, to shorten my task
and make my analysis the clearer, instead of collecting scattered
anecdotes I will dress a single puppet in a mass of observation. I must,
then, invent a soul to suit my purpose. In his
"Confessions" De Quincey rightly states
that opium, instead of sending man to sleep, excites him; but only
excites him in his natural path, and that therefore to judge of the
marvels of opium it would be ridiculous to try it upon a seller of oxen,
for such an one will dream of nothing but cattle and grass. Now I am
not going to describe the lumbering fancies of a hashish-intoxicated
stockbreeder. Who would read them with pleasure, or consent to read
them at all? To idealise my subject I must concentrate all its rays
into a single circle and polarise them; and the tragic circle where I will
gather them together will be, as I have said, a man after my own heart;
something analogous to what the eighteenth century called the
"homme sensible," to what the romantic school named the
"homme incompris," and to what family folk and the mass of
"bourgeoisie" generally brand with the epithet "original." A
constitution half nervous, half bilious, is the most favourable to the
evolutions of an intoxication of this kind. Let us add a cultivated
mind, exercised in the study of form and colour, a tender
heart, wearied by misfortune, but still ready to be made young again;
we will go, if you please, so far as to admit past errors, and, as a
natural result of these in an easily excitable nature, if not positive
remorse, at least regret for time profaned and ill-spent. A taste for
metaphysics, an acquaintance with the different hypotheses of
philosophy of human destiny, will certainly not be useless
conditions; and, further, that love of virtue, of abstract virtue,
stoical or mystic, which is set forth in all the books upon which
modern childishness feeds as the highest summit to which a chosen soul
may attain. If one adds to all that a great refinement of sense -- and
if I omitted it it was because I thought it supererogatory -- I think
that I have gathered together the general elements which are most
common in the modern "homme sensible" of what one might call
the lowest common measure of originality. Let us see now what will
become of this individuality pushed to its extreme by hashish.
Let us follow this progress of the human imagination up to its last
and most splendid serai; up to the point of the belief of the
individual in his own divinity.
I F Y O U are one of these souls your
innate love of form and colour will find from the beginning an immense
banquet in the first development of your intoxication. Colours wil
take an unaccustomed energy and smite themselves within your brain with
the intensity of triumph. Delicate, mediocre, or even bad as they may be,
the paintings upon the ceilings will clothe themselves with a tremendous
life. The coarsest papers which cover the walls of inns will open out
like magnificent dioramas. Nymphs with dazzling flesh will look
at you with great eyes deeper and more limpid than are the sky and sea.
Characters of antiquity, draped in their priestly or soldierly costumes,
will, by a single glance, exchange with you most solemn confidences. The
snakiness of the lines is a definitely intelligible language where you
read the sorrowing and the passion of their souls. Nevertheless a
mysterious but only temporary state of the mind develops itself; the
profoundness of life, hedged by its multiple problems, reveals itself
entirely in the sight, however natural and trivial it may be, that one
has under one's eyes; the first-come object becomes a speaking symbol.
Fourier and Swedenborg, one with his analogies, the other with his
correspondences, have incarnated themselves in all things vegetable and
animal which fall under your glance, and instead of touching by voice
they indoctrinate you by form and colour. The understanding of the
allegory takes within you proportions unknown to yourself. We shall
note in passing that allegory, that so spiritual type of art, which the
clumsiness of its painters has accustomed us to despise, but which is
really one of the most primitive and natural forms of poetry, regains
its divine right in the intelligence which is enlightened by
intoxication. Then the hashish spreads itself over all life; as it
were, the magic varnish. It colours it with solemn hues and lights up
all its profundity; jagged landscapes, fugitive horizons, perspectives
of towns whitened by the corpse-like lividity of storm or illumined
by the gathered ardours of the sunset; abysses of space, allegorical
of the abyss of time; the dance, the gesture or the speech of the
actors, should you be in a theatre; the first-come phrase if your eyes
fall upon a book; in a word, all things; the universality of beings
stands up before you with a new glory unsuspected until then.
The grammar, the dry grammar itself, becomes something like a book of
"barbarous names of evocation." The words rise up again, clothed with
flesh and bone; the noun, in its solid majesty; the adjective's
transparent robe which clothes and colours it with a shining web;
and the verb, archangel of motion which sets swinging the phrase.
Music, that other language dear to the idle or the profound souls who
seek repose by varying their work, speaks to you of yourself, and
recites to you the poem of your life; it incarnates in you, and you
swoon away in it. It speaks your passion, not only in a vague,
ill-defined manner, as it does in your careless evenings at the opera,
but in a substantial and positive manner, each movement of the
rhythm marking a movement understood of your soul, each note
transforming itself into Word, and the whole poem entering
into your brain like a dictionary endowed with life.
I T M U S T not be supposed that
all these phenomena fall over each other pell-mell in the spirit, with
a clamorous accent of reality and the disorder of exterior life; the
interior eye transforms all, and gives to all the complement of
beauty which it lacks, so that it may be truly worthy to
give pleasure. It is also to this essentially voluptuous and
sensual phase that one must refer the love of limpid water, running
or stagnant, which develops itself so astonishingly in the
brain-drunkenness of some artists. The mirror has become a pretext
for this reverie, which resembles a spiritual thirst joined to the
physical thirst which dries the throat, and of which I have spoken above.
The flowing waters, the sportive waters; the musical waterfalls; the blue
vastness of the sea; all roll, sing, leap with a charm beyond words.
The water opens its arms to you like a true enchantress; and though I
do not much believe in the maniacal frenzies caused by hashish, I should
not like to assert that the contemplation of some limpid gulf would be
altogether without danger for a soul in love with space and crystal,
and that the old fable of Undine might not become a tragic reality
for the enthusiast.
I T H I N K I have spoken enough of
the gigantic growth of space and time; two ideas always connected,
always woven together, but which at such a time the spirit faces without
sadness and without fear. It looks with a certain melancholy delight
across deep years, and boldly dives into infinite perspectives. You have
thoroughly well understood, I suppose, that this abnormal and tyrannical
growth may equally apply to all sentiments and to all ideas. Thus, I
have given, I think, a sufficiently fair sample of benevolence. The
same is true of love. The idea of beauty must naturally take possession
of an enormous space in a spiritual temperament such as I have invented.
Harmony, balance of line, fine cadence in movement, appear to the
dreamer as necessities, as duties, not only for all beings of creation,
but for himself, the dreamer, who finds himself at this period of the
crisis endowed with a marvellous aptitude for understanding the immortal
and universal rhythm. And if our fanatic lacks personal beauty,
do not think he suffers long from the avowal to which he is obliged,
or that he regards himself as a discordant note in the world of
harmony and beauty improvised by his imagination. The sophisms of
hashish are numerous and admirable, tending as a rule to optimism,
and one of the principal and the most efficacious is that which
transforms desire into realisation. It is the same, doubtless,
in many cases of ordinary life; but here with how much more ardour
and subtlety! Otherwise, how could a being so well endowed to
understand harmony, a sort of priest of the beautiful, how could
he make an exception to, and a blot upon, his own theory? Moral
beauty and its power, gracefulness and its seduction, eloquence and
its achievements, all these ideas soon present themselves to correct
that thoughtless ugliness; then they come as consolers, and at last as
the most perfect courtiers, sycophants of an imaginary sceptre.
C O N C E R N I N G love, I have heard many
persons feel a school-boy curiosity, seeking to gather information from
those to whom the use of hashish was familiar, what might not be this
intoxication of love, already so powerful in its natural state, when it
is enclosed in the other intoxication; a sun within a sun. Such is the
question which will occur to that class of minds which I will call
intellectual gapers. To reply to a shameful sub-meaning of this part of
the question which cannot be openly discussed, I will refer the reader to
Pliny, who speaks somewhere of the properties of hemp in such a way
as to dissipate any illusions on this subject. One knows, besides, that
loss of tone is the most ordinary result of the abuse which men make
of their nerves, and of the substances which excite them. Now, as we are
not here considering effective power, but motion or susceptibility,
I will simply ask the reader to consider that the imagination of a
sensitive man intoxicated with hashish is raised to a prodigious degree,
as little easy to determine as would be the utmost force possible to the
wind in a hurricane, and his senses are subtilised to a point almost
equally difficult to define. It is then reasonable to believe that a
light caress, the most innocent imaginable, a handshake, for example,
may possess a centuple value by the actual state of the soul and of
the senses, and may perhaps conduct them, and that very rapidly, to
that syncope which is considered by vulgar mortals as the
"summum" of happiness; but it is quite indubitable that hashish
awakes in an imagination accustomed to occupy itself with the
affections tender remembrances to which pain and unhappiness give even a
new lustre. It is no less certain that in these agitations of the mind
there is a strong ingredient of sensuality; and, moreover, it may
usefully be remarked -- and this will suffice to establish upon this
ground the immorality of hashish -- that a sect of Ishmaelites
(it is from the Ishmaelites that the Assassins are sprung) allowed
its adoration to stray far beyond the Lingam-Yoni; that is to say,
to the absolute worship of the Lingam, exclusive of the feminine half
of the symbol. There would be nothing unnatural, every man being the
symbolic representation of history, in seeing an obscene heresy, a
monstrous religion, arise in a mind which has cowardly given itself
up to the mercy of a hellish drug and which smiles at the degradation
of its own faculties.
S I N C E we have seen manifest itself in
hashish intoxication a strange goodwill toward men, applied even to
strangers, a species of philanthropy made rather of pity than of love
(it is here that the first germ of the Satanic spirit which is to
develop later in so extraordinary a manner shows itself), but which goes
so far as to fear giving pain to any one, one may guess what may happen
to the localised sentimentality applied to a beloved person who plays,
or has played, an important part in the moral life of the reveller.
Worship, adoration, prayer, dreams of happiness, dart forth and
spring up with the ambitious energy and brilliance of a rocket. Like
the powder and colouring-matter of the firework, they dazzle and vanish
in the darkness. There is no sort of sentimental combination to which
the subtle love of a hashish-slave may not lend itself. The desire to
protect, a sentiment of ardent and devoted paternity, may mingle
themselves with a guilty sensuality which hashish will
always know how to excuse and to absolve. It goes further still. I
suppose that, past errors having left bitter traces in the soul, a
husband or a lover will contemplate with sadness in his normal
state a past over-clouded with storm; these bitter fruits may, under
hashish, change to sweet fruits. The need of pardon makes the
imagination more clever and more supplicatory, and remorse itself,
in this devilish drama, which only expresses itself by a long
monologue, may act as an incitement and powerfully rekindle the
heart's enthusiasm. Yes, remorse. Was I wrong in saying that hashish
appeared to a truly philosophical mind as a perfectly Satanic
instrument? Remorse, singular ingredient of pleasure, is soon
drowned in the delicious contemplation of remorse; in a kind of
voluptuous analysis; and this analysis is so rapid that man, this
natural devil, to speak as do the followers of Swedenborg, does not
see how involuntary it is, and how, from moment to moment, he
approaches the perfection of Satan. He admires his remorse, and
glorifies himself, even while he is on the way to lose his freedom.
T H E R E, then, is my imaginary man, the mind
that I have chosen, arrived at that degree of joy and peace where he is
compelled to admire himself. Every contradiction wipes itself out; all
philosophical problems become clear, or at least appear so; everything is
material for pleasure; the plentitude of life which he enjoys inspires
him with an unmeasured pride; a voice speaks in him (alas, it is his
own!) which says to him: "Thou hast now the right to consider thyself
as superior to all men. None knoweth thee, none can understand all
that thou thinkest, all that thou feelest; they would, indeed, be
incapable of appreciating the passionate love which they inspire in thee.
Thou art a king unrecognised by the passers-by; a king who lives, yet
none knows that he is king but himself. But what matter to thee? Hast
thou not sovereign contempt, which makes the soul so kind?"
W E M A Y suppose, however, that
from one time to another some biting memory strikes through and
corrupts this happiness. A suggestion due to the exterior world may
revive a past disagreeable to contemplate. How many foolish or vile actions
fill the past! -- actions indeed unworthy of this king of thought, and
whose escutcheon they soil? Believe that the hashish-man will bravely
confront these reproachful phantoms, and even that he will know how to
draw from these hideous memories new elements of pleasure and of pride!
S U C H W I L L be the evolution of
his reasoning. The first sensation of pain being over, he will curiously
analyse this action or this sentiment whose memory has troubled his
existing glory; the motive which made him act thus; the circumstances
by which he was surrounded; and if he does not find in these
circumstances sufficient reasons, if not to absolve, at least to
extenuate his guilt, do not imagine that he admits defeat. I
am present at his reasoning, as at the play of a mechanism seen
under a transparent glass. "This ridiculous, cowardly, or vile action,
whose memory disturbed me for a moment, is in complete contradiction
with my true and real nature, and the very energy with which I condemn
it, the inquisitorial care with which I analyse and judge it, prove my
lofty and divine aptitude for virtue. How many men could be found in
the world of men clever enough to judge themselves; stern enough to
condemn themselves?" And not only does he condemn himself, but he glorifies
himself; the horrible memory thus absorbed in the contemplation of ideal
virtue, ideal charity, ideal genius, he abandons himself frankly to
his triumphant spiritual orgy. We have seen that, counterfeiting
sacrilegiously the sacrament of penitence, at one and the same time
penitent and confessor, he has given himself an easy absolution;
or, worse yet, that he has drawn from his contemplation new food for
his pride. Now, from the contemplation of his dreams and his schemes
of virtue he believes finally in his practical aptitude for virtue;
the amorous energy with which he impresses this phantom of virtue
seems to him a sufficient and peremptory proof that he possesses
the virile energy necessary for the fulfilment of his ideal. He
confounds completely dream with action, and his imagination, growing
warmer and warmer in face of the enchanting spectacle of his own
nature corrected and idealised, substituting this fascinating image
of himself for his real personality, so poor in will, so
rich in vanity, he ends by declaring his apotheosis in these clear
and simple terms, which contain for him a whole world of abominable
pleasures: "I am the most virtuous of all men." Does not that remind
you a little of Jean-Jacques, who, he also having confessed to the
Universe, not without a certain pleasure, dared to break out into the
same cry of triumph (or at least the difference is small enough) with the
same sincerity and the same conviction? The enthusiasm with which
he admired virtue, the nervous emotion which filled his eyes with tears at
the sight of a fine action or at the thought of all the fine actions
which he would have wished to accomplish, were sufficient to give him a
superlative idea of his moral worth. Jean-Jacques had intoxicated
himself without the aid of hashish.
S H A L L I pursue yet further the analysis of
this victorious monomania? Shall I explain how, under the dominion of
the poison, my man soon makes himself centre of the Universe? how he
becomes the living and extravagant expression of the proverb which says
that passion refers everything to itself? He believes in his virtue and in
his genius; can you not guess the end? All the surrounding objects are
so many suggestions which stir in him a world of thought, all more
coloured, more living, more subtle than ever, clothed in a magic glamour.
"These mighty cities," says he to himself, "where the superb buildings
tower one above the other; these beautiful ships balanced by the waters of
the roadstead in homesick idleness, that seem to translate our thought
'When shall we set sail for happiness?; these museums full of lovely
shapes and intoxicating colours; these libraries where are accumulated
the works of science and the dreams of poetry; this concourse of instruments
whose music is one; these enchantress women, made yet more charming by
the science of adornment and coquetry: all these things have
been created for me, for me, for me! For me humanity has toiled; has
been martyred, crucified, to serve for pasture, for pabulum to my
implacable appetite for emotion, knowledge, and beauty."
I L E A P to the end, I
cut the story short. No one will be surprised that a thought final
and supreme jets from the brain of the dreamer: "I am become God."
B U T A savage and burning cry
darts from his breast with such an energy, such a power of
production, that if the will and the belief of a drunken
man possessed effective power this cry would overthrow the angels
scattered in the quarters of the heaven: "I am a god."
B U T S O O N this hurricane of
pride transforms itself into a weather of calm, silent, reposeful
beatitude, and the universality of beings presents itself
tinted and illumined by a flaming dawn. If by chance a vague
memory slips into the soul of this deplorable thrice-happy
one -- "Might there not be another God?" -- believe that he will
stand upright before Him; that he will dispute His will, and
confront Him without fear.
W H O W A S the French
philosopher that, mocking modern German doctrines, said: "I am a
god who has dined ill"? This irony would not bite into
a spirit uplifted by hashish; he would reply tranquilly:
"Maybe I have dined ill; but I am a god."
- Charles Baudelaire
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