On Wine and Hashish
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On Wine and Hashish (French:Du vin et du haschisch) is a non-fiction book by Charles Baudelaire first published in 1851 Le Messager de l'Assemblée, a French periodial.
The article served as preliminary study for Les Paradis artificiels (1860). Baudelaire outlines the potential role of artificial stimulants, taking for his starting point for the section on wine Hoffmann's prescriptions from the Kreisleriana for particular types of wines to enhance particular types of musical experience. He also praises Balzac.
Initially composed for newspaper publication, and inspired by Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, Baudelaire’s musings on wine and hashish provide acute—and fascinating—psychological insight into the mind of the addict. On Wine and Hashish asserts the ambivalence of memory, urging a union of willpower and sensual pleasure as Baudelaire claims that wine and hashish bring about an escape of narrative time. This characteristic theme anticipates his famous prose poems, “Le Spleen de Paris,” in which drunkenness—as induced by wine, poetry, or virtue—is celebrated in extraordinary style. Foreword by Margaret Drabble. -- amazon.com
