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CHAPTER III -
THE PLAYGROUND
OF THE SERAPHIM
W
H A T does one
experience? What does one
see?
Marvellous things, is it not so?
Wonderful sights? Is it very
beautiful? and very
terrible? and very
dangerous? Such are the usual
questions which, with a
curiosity mingled with
fear, those
ignorant of
hashish address to its
adepts. It is, as it were, the childish impatience
to know, resembling that of those people who have never quitted their
firesides when they meet a man who returns from distant and unknown countries.
They imagine hashish-drunkenness to themselves as a
prodigious country, a
vast theatre of
sleight-of-hand and of
juggling, where all is
miraculous, all unforeseen. -- That is a
prejudice, a complete mistake. And
since for the ordinary run of readers and of questioners the word "hashish"
connotes the idea of a strange and
topsy-turvy world, the expectation of
prodigious dreams (it would be better to say
hallucinations, which are, by
the way, less frequent than people suppose), I will at once remark
upon the important difference which separates the effects of hashish from the
phenomena of
dream. In dream, that adventurous voyage which
we undertake every night, there is something positively miraculous. It is a
miracle whose
punctual occurrence has blunted its mystery. The
dreams of man are of two classes. Some, full of his ordinary life, of his
preoccupations, of his desires, of his vices, combine themselves in
a manner more or less
bizarre with the objects which he has met in his
day's
work, which have carelessly fixed themselves upon the vast
canvas of his
memory. That is the natural dream; it is the man himself.
But the other kind of dream, the dream
absurd and unforeseen, without
meaning or connection with the character, the life, and the passions of the
sleeper: this dream, which I shall call
hieroglyphic, evidently
represents the
supernatural side of life, and it is exactly because it is
absurd that the ancients believed it to be
divine. As it is inexplicable by
natural causes, they attributed to it a cause external to man, and even
to-day, leaving out of account
oneiromancers and the fooleries
of a philosophical school which sees in dreams of this type sometimes a
reproach, sometimes a warning; in short, a
symbolic and
moral picture
begotten in the spirit itself of the sleeper. It is a
dictionary which one
must study; a
language of which sages may obtain the key.
I N T H E intoxication of hashish there is nothing
like this. We shall not go outside the class of natural dream. The
drunkenness, throughout its duration, it is true, will be nothing but an
immense dream, thanks to the intensity of its colours and the rapidity of
its conceptions. But it will always keep the idiosyncrasy of the individual.
The man has desired to dream; the dream will govern the man. But this dream
will be truly the son of its father. The idle man has taxed his ingenuity to
introduce artificially the supernatural into his life and into his thought;
but, after all, and despite the accidental energy of his experiences, he is
nothing but the same man magnified, the same number raised to a very high
power. He is brought into subjection, but, unhappily for him, it is not by
himself; that is to say, by the part of himself which is already dominant.
"He would be angel; he becomes a beast." Momentarily very powerful, if,
indeed, one can give the name of power to what is merely excessive
sensibility without the control which might moderate or make use of it.
L E T I T be well understood then, by
worldly and ignorant folk, curious of acquaintance with exceptional joys,
that they will find in hashish nothing miraculous, absolutely nothing but
the natural in a superabundant degree. The brain and the organism upon
which hashish operates will only give their ordinary and individual
phenomena, magnified, it is true, both in quantity and quality, but always
faithful to their origin. Man cannot escape the fatality of his mortal and
physical temperament. Hashish will be, indeed, for the impressions and
familiar thoughts of the man, a mirror which magnifies, yet no more than
a mirror.
H E R E I S the drug before your eyes: a
little green sweet-meat, about as big as a nut, with a strange smell; so
strange that it arouses a certain revulsion, and inclinations to nausea
-- as, indeed, any fine and even agreeable scent, exalted to its maximum
strength and (so to say) density, would do.
A L L O W me to remark in passing that this
proposition can be inverted, and that the most disgusting and revolting
perfume would become perhaps a pleasure to inhale if it were reduced to
its minimum quantity and intensity.
T H E R E! there is happiness; heaven in a
teaspoon; happiness, with all its intoxication, all its folly, all its
childishness. You can swallow it without fear; it is not fatal; it will
in nowise injure your physical organs. Perhaps (later on) too frequent an
employment of the sorcery will diminish the strength of your will;
perhaps you will be less a man than you are today; but retribution is so
far off, and the nature of the eventual disaster so difficult to define!
What is it that you risk? A little nervous fatigue tomorrow -- no more.
Do you not every day risk greater punishments for less reward? Very good
then; you have even, to make it act more quickly and vigorously, imbibed
your dose of extrait gras in a cup of black coffee. You have
taken care to have the stomach empty, postponing dinner till nine or ten
o'clock, to give full liberty of action to the poison. At the very most you
will take a little soup in an hour's time. You are now sufficiently
provisioned for a long and strange journey; the steamer has whistled, the
sails are trimmed; and you have this curious advantage over ordinary
travellers, that you have no idea where you are going. You have made your
choice; here's to luck!
I P R E S U M E that you have taken the
precaution to choose carefully your moment for setting out on this
adventure. for every perfect debauch demands perfect leisure. You know,
moreover, that hashish exaggerates, not only the individual, but also
circumstances and environment. You have no duties to fulfil which
require punctuality or exactitude; no domestic worries; no
lover's sorrows. One must be careful on such points. Such a
disappointment, an anxiety, an interior monition of a duty which
demands your will and your attention, at some determinate moment,
would ring like a funeral bell across your intoxication and poison your
pleasure. Anxiety would become anguish, and disappointment torture.
But if, having observed all these preliminary conditions, the weather is
fine; if your are situated in favourable surroundings, such as a
picturesque landscape or a room beautifully decorated; and if in particular
you have at command a little music, then all is for the best.
G E N E R A L L Y speaking, there are three
phases in hashish intoxication, easy
enough to distinguish, and it is not uncommon for beginners to obtain
only the first symptoms of the first phase. You have heard vague chatter
about the marvellous effects of hashish; your imagination has
preconceived a special idea, an ideal intoxication, so to say. You long
to know if the reality will indeed reach the height of your hope;
that alone is sufficient to throw you from the very beginning into an
anxious state, favourable enough to the conquering and enveloping tendency
of the poison. Most novices, on their first initiation, complain of the
slowness of the effects: they wait for them with a puerile impatience,
and, the drug not acting quickly enough for their liking, they bluster long
rigmaroles of incredulity, which are amusing enough for the old hands who
know how hashish acts. The first attacks, like the symptoms of a storm which
has held off for a long while, appear and multiply themselves in
the bosom of this very incredulity. At first it is a certain hilarity,
absurdly irresistible, which possesses you. These accesses of gaiety,
without due cause, of which you are almost ashamed, frequently occur and
divide the intervals of stupor, during which you seek in vain to
pull yourself together. The simplest words, the most trivial ideas,
take on a new and strange physiognomy. You are surprised at yourself for
having up to now found them so simple. Incongruous likenesses and
correspondences, impossible to foresee, interminable puns, comic sketches,
spout eternally from your brain. The demon has encompassed you; it is
useless to kick against the pricks of this hilarity, as painful as
tickling is! From time to time you laugh to yourself at your
stupidity and your madness, and your comrades, if you are with others,
laugh also, both at your state and their own; but as they laugh
without malice, so you are without resentment.
T H I S gaiety, turn by turn idle or acute,
this uneasiness in joy, this insecurity, this indecision, last, as a
rule, but a very short time. Soon the meanings of ideas become so vague,
the conducting thread which binds your conceptions together becomes so
tenuous, that none but your accomplices can understand you. And, again,
on this subject and from this point of view, no means of verifying it!
Perhaps they only think that they understand you, and the illusion
is reciprocal. This frivolity, these bursts of laughter, like explosions,
seem like a true mania, or at least like the delusion of a maniac, to
every man who is not in the same state as yourself. What is more, prudence
and good sense, the regularity of the thoughts of him who witnesses, but has
been careful not to intoxicate himself, rejoice you and amuse you as if
they were a particular form of dementia. The parts are interchanged; his
self-possession drives you to the last limits of irony. How monstrous
comic is this situation, for a man who is enjoying a gaiety
incomprehensible for him who is not placed in the same environment as he!
The madman takes pity on the sage, and from that moment the idea of his
superiority begins to dawn on the horizon of his intellect. Soon it will
grow great and broad, and burst like a meteor.
I W A S once witness of a scene of this
kind which was carried very far, and whose grotesqueness was only
intelligible to those who were acquainted, at least by means of
observation of others, with the effects of the substance and the enormous
difference of diapason which it creates between two intelligences
apparently equal. A famous musician, who was ignorant of the properties of
hashish, who perhaps had never heard speak of it, finds himself in the
midst of a company, several persons of which had taken a portion. They
try to make him understand the marvellous effects of it; at these
prodigious yarns he smiles courteously, by complaisance, like a man who
is willing to play the fool for a minute or two. His contempt is quickly
divined by these spirits, sharpened by the poison, and their laughter
wounds him; these bursts of joy, this playing with words, these altered
countenances -- all this unwholesome atmosphere irritates him, and forces
him to exclaim sooner, perhaps, than he would have wished that this is a
poor role, and that, moreover, it must be very tiring for those who have
undertaken it.
T H E comicality of it lightened them all
like a flash; their joy boiled over. "This role may be good for you,"
said he, "but for me, no." "It is good for us; that is all we care
about," replies egoistically one of the revellers.
N O T knowing whether he is dealing with genuine
madmen or only with people who are pretending to be mad, our friend thinks
that the part of discretion is to go away; but somebody shuts the door and
hides the key. Another, kneeling before him, asks his pardon, in the name
of the company, and declares insolently, but with tears, that despite his
mental inferiority, which perhaps excites a little pity, they are all
filled with a profound friendship for him. He makes up his mind to remain,
and even condescends, after pressure, to play a little music.
B U T T H E sounds of the violin,
spreading themselves through the room like a new contagion, stab -- the
word is not too strong -- first one of the revellers, then another. There
burst forth deep and raucous sighs, sudden sobs, streams of silent tears
The frightened musician stops, and, approaching him whose ecstasy is
noisiest, asks him if he suffers much, and what must be done to relieve
him. One of the persons present, a man of common sense, suggests
lemonade and acids; but the "sick man," his eyes shining with ecstasy,
looks on them both with ineffable contempt. To wish to cure a man
"sick of too much life," "sick" of joy!
A S T H I S anecdote shows,
goodwill towards men has a sufficiently large place in the feelings
excited by hashish: a soft, idle, dumb benevolence which springs
from the relaxation of the nerves.
I N S U P P O R T
of this observation somebody once told me an adventure which had
happened to him in this state of intoxication, and as he
preserved a very exact memory of his feelings I understood perfectly
into what grotesque and inextricable embarrassment this difference of
diapason and of pity of which I was just speaking had thrown him. I do not
remember if the man in question was at his first or his second
experiment; had he taken a dose which was a little too strong, or was
it that the hashish had produced, without any apparent cause, effects
much more vigorous than the ordinary -- a not infrequent occurrence?
H E T O L D me that across the
scutcheon of his joy, this supreme delight of feeling oneself full
of life and believing oneself full of genius, there had
suddenly smitten the bar sinister of terror. At first dazzled by the
beauty of his sensations, he had suddenly fallen into fear of them. He had
asked himself the question: "What would become of my intelligence and
of my bodily organs if this state" (which he took for a supernatural
state) "went on always increasing; if my nerves became continually more
and more delicate?" By the power of enlargement which the
spiritual eye of the patient possesses, this fear must be an
unspeakable torment. "I was," he said, "like a runaway horse galloping
towards an abyss, wishing to stop and being unable to do so. Indeed, it
was a frightful ride, and my thought, slave of circumstance, of
milieu, of accident, and of all that may be implied by the word chance,
had taken a turn of pure, absolute rhapsody. 'It is too late, it is too
late!' I repeated to myself ceaselessly in despair. When this mood, which
seemed to me to last for an infinite time, and which I daresay only
occupied a few minutes, changed, when I thought that at last I might
dive into the ocean of happiness so dear to Easterns which succeeds this
furious phase, I was overwhelmed by a new misfortune; a new anxiety,
trivial enough, puerile enough, tumbled upon me. I suddenly remembered
that I was invited to dinner, to an evening party of respectable people.
I foresaw myself in the midst of a well-behaved and discreet crowd,
every one master of himself, where I should be obliged to conceal
carefully the state of my mind while under the glare of many lamps.
I was fairly certain of success, but at the same time my heart almost gave
up at the thought of the efforts of will which it would be necessary
to bring into line in order to win. By some accident, I know not what,
the words of the Gospel, "Woe unto him by whom offences come!" leapt
to the surface of my memory, and in the effort to forget them, in
concentrating myself upon forgetting them, I repeated them to myself
ceaselessly. My catastrophe, for it was indeed a catastrophe, then
took a gigantic shape: despite my weakness, I resolved on vigorous
action, and went to consult a chemist, for I did not know the
antidotes, and I wished to go with a free and careless spirit to the
circle where my duty called me; but on the threshold of the shop a
sudden thought seized me, haunted me, forced me to reflect. As I passed
I had just seen myself in the looking-glass of a shop-front, and my
face had startled me. This paleness, these lips compressed, these
starting eyes! -- I shall frighten this good fellow, I said to myself,
and for what a trifle! Add to that the ridicule which I wished to
avoid, the fear of finding people in the shop. But my sudden
goodwill towards this unknown apothecary mastered all my other
feelings. I imagined to myself this man as being as sensitive as I
myself was at this dreadful moment, and as I imagined also that his
ear and his soul must, like my own, tremble at the slightest noise,
I resolved to go in on tiptoe. 'It would be impossible,' I said to
myself, 'to show too much discretion in dealing with a man on whose
kindness I am about to intrude.' Then I resolved to deaden the sound
of my voice, like the noise of my steps. You know it, this hashish
voice: grave, deep, guttural; not unlike that of habitual
opium-eaters. The result was the exact contrary of my intention;
anxious to reassure the chemist, I frightened him. He was in no
way acquainted with this illness; had never even heard of it; yet
he looked at me with a curiosity strongly mingled with mistrust.
Did he take me for a madman, a criminal, or a beggar? Nor the
one nor the other, doubtless, but all these absurd ideas ploughed
through my brain. I was obliged to explain to him at length
(what weariness!) what the hemp sweetmeat was and what purpose
it served, ceaselessly repeating to him that there was no danger,
that there was, so far as he was concerned, no reason to be alarmed,
and that all that I asked was a method of mitigating or neutralising
it, frequently insisting upon the sincere disappointment I felt in
troubling him. When I had quite finished (I beg you well
to understand all the humiliation which these words contained for
me) he asked me simply to go away. Such was the reward of my
exaggerated thoughtfulness and goodwill. I went to my evening
party; I scandalised nobody. No one guessed the superhuman struggles
which I had to make to be like other people; but I shall never
forget the tortures of an ultra-poetic intoxication constrained by
decorum and antagonised by duty."
A L T H O U G H naturally prone to sympathise
with every suffering which is born of the imagination, I could not
prevent myself from laughing at this story. The man who told it to me is
not cured. He continued to crave at the hands of the cursed confection
the excitement which wisdom finds in itself; but as he is a prudent and
settled man, a man of the world, he has diminished the doses, which has
permitted him to increase their frequency. He will taste later the
rotten fruit of his "prudence"!
I R E T U R N to the regular
development of the intoxication. After this first phase of childish gaiety
there is, as it were, a momentary relaxation; but
new events soon announce themselves by a sensation of coolth at
the extremities --- which may even become, in the case of certain
persons, a bitter cold --- and a great weakness in all the limbs. You
have then "butter fingers"; and in your head, in all your being, you
feel an embarrassing stupor and stupefaction. Your eyes start from
your head; it is as if they were drawn in every direction by implacable
ecstasy. Your face is deluged with paleness; the lips draw themselves
in, sucked into the mouth with that movement of breathlessness which
characterises the ambition of a man who is the prey of his own great
schemes, oppressed by enormous thoughts, or taking a long breath
preparatory to a spring. The throat closes itself, so to say; the
palate is dried up by a thirst which it would be infinitely sweet
to satisfy, if the delights of laziness were not still more
agreeable, and in opposition to the least disturbance of the body.
Deep but hoarse sighs escape from your breast, as if the old bottle,
your body, could not bear the passionate activity of the new wine, your
new soul. From one time to another a spasm transfixes you and makes
you quiver, like those muscular discharges which at the end of a
day's work or on a stormy night precede definitive slumber.
- Charles Baudelaire
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