Confessions of an English opium eater

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Confessions of an English Opium-Eater , 2d ed. London 1923

Confessions of an English Opium Eater is an autobiographical book by the English author Thomas de Quincey . The text was first published anonymously under the title Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in September and October 1821 in London Magazine , followed by publication as a book in 1822 and another edition reviewed by De Quincey in 1856. The book is De Quincey's first work, it is considered the first literary representation of self-experienced states of intoxication and made its author known in one fell swoop.

content

The book is divided into three parts. After a brief biographical introduction, De Quincey describes the joys of opium, followed by an account of the sufferings of the opium consumer, and finally the chapter “The horrors of opium”.

In the first part, De Quincey, who has been orphaned since he was seven and grew up under the negligent guardianship of four people, describes his school days in boarding school. At the age of 17, he escaped from boarding school after successfully begging an elderly lady from his circle of friends for money. He makes his way to London and befriends the young prostitute Anna. The money is spent quickly and he finds shelter in a demolished house that belongs to a shady lawyer . He lives on waste and mostly goes hungry. There is no project to earn money with literary work.

In 1804 he was in London and, on the advice of a college friend, took opium in the form of laudanum for the first time because of severe headache and facial pain. The calming effect of the drug, the positive effect on mental equilibrium and mental clarity and creativity lead to a moderate and controlled consumption of opium over the next eight years, which is repeatedly interrupted by longer phases in which he can do without drugs.

He now lives in a lonely farmhouse and is still studying German “metaphysicians: Kant Fichte, Schelling”, as he did during his university days. The opium dose is 25 drops a day. In 1813 a painful stomach ailment returns from which he suffered in his youth. From now on he takes opium every day and sees himself as a "habitual and regular opium eater". This leads to fluctuating moods, gloom and melancholy, to dream states and sudden moments of happiness. At some point a dubious Malay appears who stays overnight with him, consumes lots of opium and at some point disappears.

For all the well-being that opium gives him, his body eventually reacts to years of abuse. He gets stomach pains, sweats and his intellectual abilities deteriorate. In 1819 he came across a book by the British economist Ricardo , which fascinated him and which he immersed himself in, which eventually led to a gradual abstinence from laudanum.

Illustration from Piranesi: Le Carceri

He gives only vague information about how the withdrawal proceeds in detail. However, he describes in detail the extent and themes of his previous nightmares, from the “architectural” dreams that resemble the visions of a Piranesi , then visions about lakes and bodies of water, oriental dreams and the loss of feelings for space and time. Finally, images and long-forgotten events from his childhood emerge with perfect clarity and intensity from his memories, which make him wake up from his sleep screaming.

The book ends with the wish that the reader of his book, who may be addicted to opium, also succeed in getting rid of the drug. However, he still has restless dreams that "wander through his sleep."

Biographical background

Thomas De Quincey, who had suffered from sporadically recurring stomach pains since his youth, took opium in the form of laudanum for the first time in 1804 on the advice of a fellow student . Laudanum was a widely used pain reliever and sedative in the 18th and early 19th centuries, readily available at low cost pharmacies or from outpatient vendors in the country. After a period of moderate opium consumption with a limit of 25 ounces of laudanum, he continuously increased the dose from 1813 onwards to 320 grains of opium per day. H. to 8,000 drops of laudanum per day. After 15 years of opium consumption, he finally managed to live temporarily drug-free on his own after a painful withdrawal process from 1820 on.

In December 1820, at the suggestion of his friend John Wilson, editor of Blackwood's Magazine , he moved from Grasmere to Edinburgh and began working on an "Opium Article". Due to De Quincey's unreliability, tension arose between the editor and the author, and De Quincey did not have the text published in Blackwood's Magazine, but in the September and October 1821 issues of London Magazine, signed XYZ.

Reception in literature, music and art

The first German translation was published in 1866 by L. Ottmann, Verlag Lutz in Stuttgart.

The first - free - translation into French comes from the then 19-year-old Alfred de Musset and was published for the first time in 1829 by Mame et Delaunay-Devallée in Paris under the title L'anglais mangeur d'opium traduit et augmenté par ADM and once more 1878 in a bibliophile edition of the Paris publisher Le Moniateur du Bibliophile with notes by Arthur Heulhar. Musset's incomplete, partly incorrect translation, supplemented by his own ingredients, in which De Quincey's name is not mentioned, served Hector Berlioz as a template for his Symphonie fantastique (original title: Épisode de la vie d'un artiste, symphonie fantastique en cinq parties , 1830) and was processed by Balzac in the story "Massimilio Doni" (1837/39).

From 1857/58 Baudelaire worked on his translation into French, which was published in Paris by Poulet-Malassis et De Broise in Paris in 1860 under the title Les paradis a rtificiels, opium et haschisch . In the course of time, Baudelaire himself created an independent text through the summary of individual parts and additions. In his version, he does indeed address the fatal consequences of drug consumption for the user, but also the stimulating effect of the drug on artistic creativity and the evocation of forgotten childhood experiences into consciousness.

Conan Doyle mentions de Quincey's book in his short story The Man with the Disfigured Lip , in which one of the characters begins to experiment with laudanum after reading the book.

expenditure

  • Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in both the Revised and the Original Texts, with its Sequels Suspiria de Profundis and The English Mail-Coach . Ed. Malcolm Elwin. London: Macdonald 1956.
  • Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and Other Writings . Ed. with a New Introduction and Notes by Robert Morrison. Oxford, New York, Oxford World's Classics, 2013. ISBN 978-0-19-960061-8

German translations

  • Confessions of an English opium eater. From the English by Hedda u. Arthur Möller-Bruch. Book decorations by Georg Tippel. Berlin: Bard 1902.
  • Confessions of an English opium eater. Edited by Michael Wicht. Leipzig, Weimar: Kiepenheuer and Witsch 1981. Reprinted by Sphinx-Verlag 2008.
  • Confessions of an English opium eater. Translated from English by Walter Schmiele . Frankfurt aM: Insel-Verl. 2009. (Insel-Taschenbuch.) ISBN 978-3-458-35152-8
  • Confessions of an English opium eater. Translated from the English. by Peter Meier. With an essay by Rudolf Kassner . Munich; dtv (dtv Klassik. 2153.) ISBN 978-3-42302153-1
  • Confessions of an English opium eater. From the English by Leopold Heinemann. Cologne: Anaconda 2019. ISBN 978-3-7306-0727-5 (Berarb. Translation based on the Berlin edition: Weltgeistbücher [1928]).

literature

  • Alexander Kupfer: Divine Poisons: A Brief Cultural History of Intoxication since the Garden of Eden . Stuttgart: Metzler 1996. ISBN 978-3-476-03635-3
therein: The English opium eater. Pp. 50-70.
  • Michael Einfalt: On the autonomy of poetry. Literary Debates and Poetic Strategies in the First Half of the Second Empire . Tübingen: Niemeyer 1999. pp. 28-37. (Mimesis. 12.) ISBN 3-484-55012-0 .
  • Julian North: De Quincey Reviewed: Thomas De Quincey's Critical Reception, 1821-1994. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997. ISBN 1-57113-072-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All verbatim quotations from: Thomas De Quincey: Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Cologne: Anaconda 2009, here p. 62
  2. ↑ p. 65
  3. ↑ p. 96.
  4. ↑ Anonymous: Poison trade and poison drinkers in England Die Gartenlaube, H. 47, 1894, p. 752, accessed on April 3, 2010
  5. ↑ p. 63.
  6. ↑ p. 66.
  7. ↑ Damian Walford Davies: Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater , Wiley Online Library, accessed April 3, 2020
  8. ^ Paul Sawyer: Musset's Translation of an English Opium Eater in: The French Review, Vol. 42. No. 3., 1969 p. 76
  9. ↑ See Emily Salines: Alchemy and Amalgam: Translation in the Works of Charles Baudelaire. Amsterdam: Rodopi 2004. p. 76
  10. ↑ Gregory PREDATA: From the piano of an Opium Eater interlude, January 28, 2016 retrieved on June 20, 2020
  11. ↑ Paul Sawyer: Musset's Translation of an English Opium Eater in: The French Review, Vol. 42. No. 3., 1969, p. 76 and footnote 1
  12. ↑ Michael Einfalt: On the autonomy of poetry. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1992. p. 24
  13. ↑ Arthur Conan Doyle: The Man with the Disfigured Lip. in: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. New over. by Gisbert Haefs . eBook No & But