Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings , livre ebook

Alma Books - Thomas De Quincey

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

59 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

In an examination of his laudanum addiction and the dreams and visions the drug engendered, Thomas De Quincey lays bare the celestial pleasures and infernal lows of an existence dependent on "subtle and mighty opium". At once moving and rhapsodic, and suffused with a poetic and lyrical beauty, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater hauntingly evokes frightful scenes and phantasmagorical night-time wanderings, while reality, dream and memory blur and intertwine in a nebulous and protean haze.Published anonymously in The London Magazine, the Confessions were an immediate success, and soon speculation was rife as to the identity of the mysterious Opium-Eater. The work, which introduced the literary world to De Quincey's unique "impassioned prose", is now widely deemed to be De Quincey's masterpiece.

Sujets

Short story

Informations

Publié par	Alma Books
Date de parution	23 janvier 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780714549361
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Thomas De Quincey

ALMA CLASSICS

Alma Classics an imprint of
alma books ltd 3 Castle Yard Richmond Surrey TW10 6TF United Kingdom www.almaclassics.com
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater first published in 1821 This edition first published by Alma Classics in 2019
Cover design by Will Dady
Extra Material © Alma Books Ltd
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
isbn : 978-1-84749-763-5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

Contents
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Notice to the Reader
T o the Reader
Part I: Preliminary Confessions
Part II
The Pleasures of Opium
Introduction to the Pains of Opium
The Pains of Opium
Note on the Text
Notes
Extra Material
Thomas De Quincey’s Life
Thomas De Quincey’s Works
Select Bibliography

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Notice to the Reader
The incidents recorded in the preliminary Confessions lie within a period of which the earlier extreme is now rather more – and the latter extreme less – than nineteen years ago. Consequently, in a popular way of computing dates, many of the incidents might be indifferently referred to a distance of eighteen or of nineteen years – and, as the notes and memoranda for this narrative were drawn up originally about last Christmas, it seemed most natural in all cases to prefer the former date. In the hurry of composing the narrative, though some months had then elapsed, this date was everywhere retained – and, in many cases, perhaps, it leads to no error, or to none of importance. But in one instance, viz. where the author speaks of his own birthday, this adoption of one uniform date has led to a positive inaccuracy of an entire year: for, during the very time of composition, the nineteenth year from the earlier term of the whole period revolved to its close. It is, therefore, judged proper to mention that the period of that narrative lies between the early part of July 1802 and the beginning or middle of March 1803.
– Oct. 1, 1821 .

to the Reader
I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life. According to my application of it, I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, but, in a considerable degree, useful and instructive. In that hope it is that I have drawn it up, and that must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honourable reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that “decent drapery” * which time, or indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn over them. Accordingly, the greater part of our confessions (that is, spontaneous and extrajudicial confessions) proceed from demi-reps, * adventurers or swindlers, and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. * All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this or any part of my narrative to come before the public eye until after my death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published), and it is not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step that I have, at last, concluded on taking it.
Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude, and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr Wordsworth)
…Humbly to express A penitential loneliness. *
It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it should be so; nor would I willingly, in my own person, manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings; nor in act or word do anything to weaken them. But, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did , the benefit resulting to others, from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt. They approach, or recede from, the shades of that dark alliance in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence, in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not yet recorded * of any other man, it is no less true that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and have, at length, accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man – have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist that, in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure.
Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge, and if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of confession, in consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium-eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago, by computing, at that time, the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talents, or of eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent ——, the late Dean of ——, Lord ——, Mr ——, the philosopher, a late under-secretary of state (who described to me the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words as the Dean of ——, viz. “that he felt as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his stomach”), Mr —— * and many others, hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single enquirer), it was a natural inference that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I doubted until some facts became known to me which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will mention two: 1 . Three respectable London druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the number of amateur opium-eaters (as I may term them) was, at this time, immense, and that the difficulty of distinguishing these persons, to whom habit had rendered opium necessary, from such as were purchasing it with a view to suicide, * occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This evidence respected London only. But, 2. (which will possibly surprise the reader more) Some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton manufacturers that their workpeople were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating – so much so that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which, at that time, would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits; and, wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease, but, as I do not readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted
That those eat now who never ate before, And those who always ate now eat the more. *
Indeed the fascinating powers of opium are admitted even by medical writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his ‘Essay on the Effects of Opium’ (published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead * had not been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counteragents, etc., of this drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms ( φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσι ): * “Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made common; and as many people migh