Can anyone find an English translation of this drug-lit classic by Baudelaire? Or his "Poem of Hashish" translated by somebody other than Aleister Crowley?
Artificial Paradise contained this "The Poem Of Hashish" but I can only find Crowley's translation of that and nothing of the rest. The value of this book is up there with Aldous Huxley in the English language.
Goodreads: Baudelaire captures the dreamlike visions he experienced during his narcotic trances. These hallucinations, sometimes exquisite, sometimes disturbing, and the delusions of grandeur that often accompanied them, constitute the Paradis Artificiels, the gorgeous yet false worlds of ecstasy that eventually led to his ruin.
Amazon: Baudelaire was a regular member of the infamous Club des Hashischins ("Club of the Hashish-Eaters"), a Parisian literary group dedicated to the exploration of altered states of consciousness, principally through the use of hashish. Other notable members of this group included Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gerard de Nerval, Honore de Balzac, and Theophile Gautier, all dedicated to experimenting with drugs and drug-induced states.
Baudelaire describes the effects of the drugs and discusses the way in which they could theoretically aid mankind in reaching an "ideal" world...[he] analyzes the motivation of the addict, and the individual psychedelic experience of the user. His descriptions have foreshadowed other such work that emerged later in the 1960s regarding LSD".
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And if you have never read his poem entitled, Be Drunk, here you go. You're welcome.
Be Drunk
Charles Baudelaire
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking...ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
Intriguing. I was only able to find a French copy: Les Paradis Artificiels. If you can read French, I can upload an epub of it.
I got the French text from the Internet Archive. There's some good translations of Baudelaire's other work available online but not this, strangely. There is a promising English translation available on Amazon but no kindle version, although I did buy the kindle version of a work that is considered the precursor by about 10 years.
I found an English translation in kindle format but Amazon blocks me from downloading the file to my computer -- I can now only send it to my device.
Is there a way to get a softcopy version of books off Kindle devices?
I learned how to pirate/rip audiobooks off of Audible using a program called inAudible. It is fairly easy once you get used to it. Similarly, there is apparently a way to strip ebooks of copyright or DRM as well, but requires a few different programs etc. I think I can find a tutorial on one of the ebook sites I am on, but I have never learned myself how to do it.
Have you searched on http://gallica.bnf.fr/ the repository of digitalized French archives now in the public domain?
you will surely find multiple French editions of the book, and perhaps an English translation too
Thanks for suggesting this resource, it was new for me.
I had fun looking through it but my topic of interest is apparently very limited -- only one copy of this book in French. But it's all good, I've done my homework now and know which English translations are available. I still have to buy the book because it's a little better quality translation than the kindle version I got but it's all good. French poetry and Russian novels were 100 years ahead of English. They're good stuff.