Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Interlude: Intoxication.

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." - Charles Baudelaire, Be Drunk


Five years have officially come and gone. Today's the first day of my sixth blogging year, and yes, I'll keep on drinking.

5 comments:

Chachic said...

Cheers, fellow lasengga! :P Happy Blogiversary, Ficsation.

Monique said...

Happy Anniversary!!! Six years, wow.

Cheers to more blogging years!

Frida Fantastic said...

Happy anniversary! Oh, I love this poem, although I learned it first from a song from Stereolab http://youtu.be/9rQ94tLkEX8 I liked the song so much that I looked for the translation, and found out that it was from Baudelaire! I probably would have caught on sooner if I understood French like a proper Canadian...

Frida Fantastic said...

And being drunk on fiction is awesome. It leaves the best kind of hangover. I seem to anchor moments of my life by which book I was reading at the time. "Oh yeah, that was when I was reading The General in his Labyrinth..."

dementedchris said...

Thank you, Chachic, Monique and Frida! :D

Frida -- thanks for the song. That was awesome!I haven't heard it before. :D I get so hung-over on some books that I make iTunes playlists for them!