Be Drunken!!
One should always be drunken.
That's all there is, that’s all that matters;
that's our one imperative need.
Lest you feel the horrible burden of time break you down and bend you to the earth,
you must continually be drunken.
With what? With wine, with poetry, or virtue, as you please.
But be drunken.
And if, at some time, on steps of a golden palace,
or in the cool green grass of a ditch,
or in the bleak solitude of your room,
you should wake and find that the drunkenness has begun to half fade,
ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,
all that which flies,
all that which cries,
all that which crawls,
all that which sings,
all that which speaks, ask them, what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock, they will all reply:
It is time to be drunken!
So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,
be drunken, be drunken, relentlessly without ease!
With wine, poetry, or virtue,
as you please!"
-Charles Baudelaire
Today is the Birthday of one of my greatest childhood influences (I think that says a lot). Charles Baudelaire was born in 1821, his Father died early in his childhood. His stepfather was an ambassador that afforded him a good education. He pursued a literary career early and achieved success after the publishing of his first book of poetry, Les Fleurs du mal ("The Flowers of Evil"), The book addressed themes of death, sex, a life of excess, and a search for profound meaning. He was a catalyst of the most precious and imperative literary times, the golden age of existentialism the 1860`s. However as result of his search and individual excess he was an alcoholic, addict, he went bankrupt, suffered a massive stroke, and eventually succumbed to the symptoms of encephalitis at the age of 46
'The King of poets, a true God'. -Arthur Rimbaud
'the greatest poet of the nineteenth century'. -Arthur Vigny
'technical mastery which can hardly be over praised ... has made his verse an inexhaustible study for later poets’ -TS Eliot
One should always be drunken.
That's all there is, that’s all that matters;
that's our one imperative need.
Lest you feel the horrible burden of time break you down and bend you to the earth,
you must continually be drunken.
With what? With wine, with poetry, or virtue, as you please.
But be drunken.
And if, at some time, on steps of a golden palace,
or in the cool green grass of a ditch,
or in the bleak solitude of your room,
you should wake and find that the drunkenness has begun to half fade,
ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,
all that which flies,
all that which cries,
all that which crawls,
all that which sings,
all that which speaks, ask them, what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock, they will all reply:
It is time to be drunken!
So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,
be drunken, be drunken, relentlessly without ease!
With wine, poetry, or virtue,
as you please!"
-Charles Baudelaire
Today is the Birthday of one of my greatest childhood influences (I think that says a lot). Charles Baudelaire was born in 1821, his Father died early in his childhood. His stepfather was an ambassador that afforded him a good education. He pursued a literary career early and achieved success after the publishing of his first book of poetry, Les Fleurs du mal ("The Flowers of Evil"), The book addressed themes of death, sex, a life of excess, and a search for profound meaning. He was a catalyst of the most precious and imperative literary times, the golden age of existentialism the 1860`s. However as result of his search and individual excess he was an alcoholic, addict, he went bankrupt, suffered a massive stroke, and eventually succumbed to the symptoms of encephalitis at the age of 46
'The King of poets, a true God'. -Arthur Rimbaud
'the greatest poet of the nineteenth century'. -Arthur Vigny
'technical mastery which can hardly be over praised ... has made his verse an inexhaustible study for later poets’ -TS Eliot
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