Absinthe-minded Charlatan
“The most curious thing about the transformation of the
sensorial apparatus—the phenomenon, at least, that struck
me most forcibly in the experiments I conducted on myself—
is that all sensations are perceived by all senses at once. My
own impression is that I am breathing sounds and hearing
colours, that scents produce a sensation of lightness or of
weight, roughness or smoothness, as if I were touching them
with my fingers.”
~ a French doctor writing about absinthe in the year that
Verlaine and Rimbaud moved to London
“the honey-voiced sirens” ~ Homer, The Odyssey
How boring that these poets after all
Weren’t geniuses, but only addicts knocked
About inside their skulls. Rimbaud and Paul
Found out, brainlessly, that they could concoct
With chemicals odd words and phrases that
Were unexpected. Now synaesthesia
Had been around since the Iliad at
Least. (Paul’s wormwood slopped to anaesthesia
In later decades.) The arrogant boy
Thought he’d created something wholly new,
Ignoring the fact that his druggy ploy
Turned poetry to troubled prosy spew.
..Paul embraced the boy’s grandiloquent fiction.
….Poetry suffers still from the affliction.
In his poem “Comédie de la Soif” (“Comedy of Thirst”), Rimbaud says: “Wise pilgrims, let us reach / The Absinthe with its green pillars.”