by Baker, Phil
CHAPTER FIVE: GENIUS UNREWARDED
Hebrew and Sanskrit: Richardson, Verlaine p.18.
Telegraph, photography and communication with planets – ibid.
“… engine run on empty” André Breton Anthology of Black Humour p.120
artificial rubies – ibid.
“… strangest book that he had ever read” The Picture of Dorian Gray p.125. There are other sources suggested for this Yellow Book.
“… icily comic observations” J.K.Huysmans, Against Nature p.194
“… suffering, poverty, and neglect” Wormwood Vol.1 p.105
‘Lendemain’ and “making some dramas” Wormwood Vol.2 p.7
“I wonder if we shouldn’t go out and be bohemian …” cited Michael Meyer Strindberg: A Biography p.451
“Concerning absinthe …” ibid. p.372
“… London Bridge, where the throng bears a truly occult appearance” ibid. p.373
“air electricity … silkworms” ibid.331
“… and the imp crouching on the floor” ibid. 330
“For instance, Rontgen rays …” ibid.
“… and a murderous homosexual.” Goncourts p.399
“… descended from the Templars by way of the Funambules” ibid. pp.100–101
“… to a padded cell” Richardson Verlaine p.245
“sacred book” cited in Edmund Wilson, Axel’s Castle p.258
“… Orient which you carry within yourself” cited Axel’s Castle p.263
“JARRY in absinthe” ‘First Surrealist Manifesto’, cited This Quarter Surrealist Number (Sept.1932) p.18
“… his own revolver, which sobered him up instantly.” Keith Beaumont Alfred Jarry pp.125–6
“… makes it muddy.” Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years p.157
“most horrible of faces” Beaumont Jarry p.157
“… like a very nice renter” Wilde Letters p.1075
“… frightful attacks of delirium tremens” Shattuck p.164
“… no human characteristic” ibid.
“… and the Green Fairy would claim them both.” David Sweetman, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Fin-de-Siecle p.433
“… and just downright crude” ibid. p.425
“… the Fascist and the Stalinist” Breton Black Humour p.213
“After us, the Savage God” Yeats Autobiographies p.349
“… annihilated as a principle” cited Shattuck p.168
“… to fly a black flag over the roof.” Breton, Anthology of Black Humour p.212
“direct his dream”, Shattuck p.157
“… of super-reality” Breton, 1924 Manifesto, cited Beaumont Alfred Jarry p.161
“precocious imbecility” Shattuck p.154
“… life is continuous” Jarry Days and Nights p.103
the Leao people and their ‘flying heads’ – see Beaumont Alfred Jarry pp.162–3
“… probable obedience of the world at large.” Jarry, Days and Nights p.102
“… was flounder” Shattuck p.166
“… on an empty stomach does more good” Beaumont Alfred Jarry p.270
“… and that was my only illness” ibid.269
“… not having always had enough to eat.” Shattuck 170
Alphone Allais ‘Absinthe’ in The World of Alphonse Allais ed. Miles Kington pp.106–8
CHAPTER SIX: FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE GREEN HOUR
Ebers … Paracelsus: all widely repeated in previous works on absinthe, e.g. Lanier Ch.1
Culpeper, “Wormwood is an herb of Mars …” cited Lanier p.6
“Take the Iuce of wormewode …” cited in O.E.D.
Tusser’s Husbandrie “It is a comfort for the hart and braine …” cited Lanier p.4
“… produce a dream of the person he loves.” Lady Wilkinson, Weeds and Wild Flowers (1858) p.353 cited in O.E.D.
“grew up in the winding track of the serpent …” cited Lanier 3
“and the name of the star is called Wormwood …” King James Bible, Revelations 8:10
further Jacobean references: O.E.D.
The Dr.Ordinaire story is widely repeated in previous works, e.g. Zolotow (1971) and Conrad Ch.7.
16 – 400 – 20,000 litres: Conrad 90–91.
125,000 litres a day: ibid. p.93.
“like a drunkard’ s breath” ibid. p.94
Ricard’s camel: Ricard obituary, Telegraph 15th November 1997
“Before those wars …” cited Richardson Verlaine p.245
“He takes his first drink at one café … Absinthe gets its work done more speedily.” ibid. p.245
“As the night closes in you watch with fascination …” Ian Littlewood, Paris: a Literary Companion p.194
“… asylum, charity ward, or morgue.” Marie-Claude Delahaye, L’Absinthe: muse des poètes p.42
“It strikes me as the death of Bohemia …” Goncourts p.57
“Being a dramatist isn’t an art …” ibid. p.44
“… destruction of the French army.” Flaubert Dictionary of Received Ideas p.1
genius of … death of any real genius: axiom of Dr. G.J.Witkowski, c.1878, cited Delahaye muse des poètes p.11
“I’ve drunk four absinthes …” cartoon, ibid. p.87
Niagara Falls: cartoon, ibid. p.181
‘The Decadent’ cartoon, ibid. p.149
… after the eighth that genius arrives: cartoon, ibid. p.286
CHAPTER SEVEN: BEFORE THE BAN
“talking about Chien Vert …” Goncourts pp.253–4
“… that dreadful absinthe tinted with sulphate of zinc” ibid. p.362
“… as a corpse possessed by a dream” ibid. p.42
“… absinthe for women” Conrad p.52
Lanier cites an advertisement: Lanier p.28
“Woman has a particular taste for absinthe …” Conrad p.79
“Absinthe has always accentuated certain traits …” ibid. p.131
“What doctors fear the most …” Lanier p.28
“… the beastliness of men.” Zola, Nana p.254
“An absinthe drinker! …” cited in Manet and his Critics George Heard Hamilton. Proust recalled it slightly differently: “My friend, there is only one drinker of absinthe round here, and it’s the painter who produced this insanity.” See Anne Coffin Hanson, Manet and the Modern Tradition p.157
“… the best tits in Europe.” Daniel Farson, Soho in the Fifties (Michael Joseph, 1987) p.54
“… sat and aestheticized till two o’clock in the morning.” Littlewood, Paris: A Literary Companion p.195
“The perfection of ugliness …” cited in Ronald Pickvance, ‘L’Absinthe in England’ Apollo May 15th 1963, p.396. All further details of this picture’s reception from Pickvance.
“… didn’t he slaughter me!” cited in Conrad p.53
“… he was an absinthe drinker.” Zola, L’Assomoir p.411
“I am an old Parisian …” cited Delahaye Art et Histoire p.104
“Our fathers still knew the time..” ibid. p.105
“… more time and money to waste in drink.” Lanier p.44
“… absinthe kills you but it makes you live.” Cartoon in Delahaye muse des poètes p.264
“… It’s my absinthe.” Goncourts p.132
“… feeling her blood freeze.” Zola, Nana p.343
“… the man of the people, the workman” Conrad 22
“… something different … from chronic alcoholism.” The Lancet March 6th 1869 p.334
“… from 39 centigrade to 42” The Lancet Sept.7th 1872 p.341
“… 246 times more likely to become insane …” Lanier p.35
“… truly ‘madness in a bottle’” ibid.
“… nine out of ten are due to absinthe poisoning” ibid. p.38
Lawrence Alloway conjures up the “Bohemian monster” in his ‘Discussion’ printed after W.R.Bett, ‘Vincent Van Gogh (1853–90) Artist and Addict’ The British Journal of Addiction Vol.51, Nos. 1 and 2, 1954, p.13
“… entirely p
ainted in absinthe” Sweetman p.421
“… like the temptation of the devil.” Julia Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life p.145
“… you will be sorry to hear was taken to a lunatic asylum yesterday” Dowson Letters p.406
“Old fool” Sweetman p.500
Matisses’s painting drives you mad: Delahaye, Muse des Peintres p.141
“I was sitting said Alfie at a cafe …” cited Brooks Adams, ‘Picasso’s Absinthe Glasses: Six Drinks to the End of an Era’ Artforum April 1980
“… end of an era.” ibid.
“… memento mori” ibid.
“recalls the Satanic lull …” ibid.
three orders of representation: see Werner Spies, Picasso Sculpture: With a Complete Catalogue p.50
CHAPTER EIGHT: AFTER THE BAN
“The spirit of the boulevard is dead …” Conrad p.135
“green fairy’s fang” James Joyce, Ulysses p.53
“froggreen wormwood” ibid. p.52
“Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum …” ibid. p.559
“greeneyed monster” ibid. p.690
“… absintheminded …” Finnegans Wake 464.17
“… python enfolding and crushing its victim.” Lanier p.154
“… You imbibe your absinthe frappé” Lanier p123
“almost as fatal as cocaine …” ibid.
“… collapsed and was put to bed” Tom Dardis, The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer p.215
“… FOR BEING DEAD” ibid. p.253
“… for all our parties” ibid. p.42
“… consumed in quantities” Lanier p.139
“… not as benign as it might appear” Dardis p.164
“… drinking before virtually all of them.” ibid.
woodworms and wormwood – Conrad p.137
“… distorted my reflexes” Hemingway, cited Conrad 131
“… one cup of it took the place of the evening papers …” Ernest Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls p.51
“… a few drops at a time.” ibid.
“… There is nothing like absinthe” ibid.197
“delicate anaesthesia” ibid. 51
“… become very cultured and improve ourselves.” Victor Arwas, Alastair: Illustrator of Decadence p.17
“… perfume, pagan, phantom …” Cited in Geoffrey Wolff Black Sun p.138
“… like a pearl in a cup of dead green absinthe” ibid. p.140
“preposterous, outré, umotivated gloom” ibid. p.139
“… Flowers of Dissolution, Fleurs du Mal” ibid p.139
“shadows hot from hell” Arwas, Alastair p.18
“… and two bottles of absinthe” Conrad p.141
“… into which I decanted the absinthe …” ibid.
“… a Verlaine jag with absinthe …” Wolff p.163
“… die with one’s beloved.” Conrad p.143
“… vote of confidence …” ibid.
“… hand fluttered, lifted, and fell back.” Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire p.150
“… drugs their forefathers made famous” cited in The Times 24 August 1994 p.10
“Victo-grunge” ibid.
“To the treasures and pleasures of the grave …” Poppy Z.Brite His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood p.1
“… ’with or without?’ – i.e. with or without absinthe.” C.W.J.Brasher, ‘Absinthe and Absinthe Drinking in England’ The Lancet April 26 1930, p.944
“… . But I daresay I should like it now.” Alec Waugh, In Praise of Wine p.180
“… curious property of doubling the effect of every drink that is taken after it …” H Warner Allen, cited in Zolotow p.172
“gazing into the opalescent depths …” Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall p.133
“… his glass of crimson syrup.” Evelyn Waugh, Scoop p.129
“… and ordered some more absinthe.” ibid.
“delowryum tremens” and other Lowry material from Gordon Bowker, Pursued by Furies, (Harper Collins, 1993) cited in P.Baker ‘Delowryum Tremens’ Times Literary Supplement Dec.31st 1993
“… a florid demon brandished a pitchfork at him” Malcolm Lowry, Under The Volcano p.10
“… hidden in drawers at Consulates …” ibid. p.307
“Money came from the blue eyes of home …” Samuel Beckett A Dream of Fair to Middling Women p.37
“… the stout that helped to bloat the sadness of sad evenings.” ibid. p.143
“… the old Bohemian hardened by many years of drinking absinthe and cafés of Montmartre” Harriet Vyner Groovy Bob p.13
CHAPTER NINE: THE ABSINTHE REVIVAL
“One winter, as I stood in a Prague bar …” John Moore, ‘The Return of Absinthe’ The Idler Winter 1997 p.39
“… to a not completely dissimilar end” ibid.
“… surreal and obscene” ibid.
“… if you are interested in importing it.” ibid. p.41
“… horror of alcohol awareness campaigners” Stuart Miller ‘Green Fairy Fires Spirits After Long Absinthe’ Guardian Dec.1st 1998
“… that kind of publicity.” Tom Hodgkinson ;’Absinthe – that’s the spirit’ Telegraph 3 Dec 1988
“… decadent fin-de-siècle drink.” Joanna Simon ‘Absinthe Minded’ Sunday Times 17 Jan 1999
“horrible …” ibid
“aquavit on steroids …” Ben Macintyre ‘One green bottle makes fools of us all’ Times 5 Dec 98
“… Vosene shampoo …” Richard Neill, ‘Absinthe makes the head pound harder’ Telegraph 8 Feb 1997
“… a long lasting drink” ibid.
“It works!” cited T.Hodgkinson, ‘Wild Green Fairy Liquid’ Loaded Feb 1999
“… disgusting, alien rubbish” cited Tony Allen-Mills ‘French start bar brawl for ‘real’ absinthe’ Sun Times 18 April 1999
“… turning in their graves” ibid.
“… farniente, de douceur de vivre” Delahaye, Histoire de la Fée Verte p.94
“… stronger and not yellow” Dick Bradsell in Class: the magazine of bar culture reproduced at eabsinthe.com
Damien Hirst reported to be considering absinthe-inspired works ‘Peterborough’ Telegraph 8 Dec 1998
“… poison … illegal … doolally” cited Adam Helliker ‘Lethal Tipple’ Sun.Telegraph 2 May 1999
“… clearly has mind altering properties” cited in ‘Baron’s son fights drinking ban after ‘poison’ absinthe’ Evening Standard 16 June 1999
“… any other substance that can be misused.” Cited in The Publican ‘Sales of absinthe are set to rise … ’ 11 Feb 1999 reproduced on eabsinthe.com
“We shall be keeping a very close eye …” cited Tom Baldwin, ‘Labour poised to ban absinthe’ Sunday Telegraph 27 Dec 1998
“… he will ban it” Michael Bywater ‘Why Government is bad for you’ Telegraph 25 Feb 1999
CHAPTER TEN: THE RITUALS OF ABSINTHE
The first three quotations on the enduring appeal of the ritual are from the Net: the first from a marketing site, the second from ‘Princess Xanax’ at Erowid, and the third from Kallisti at Sepulchritude.
“… similar to using intravenous drugs” John Moore, ‘The Return of Absinthe’ p.39
“… ceremonial and etiquette …” Saintsbury p.144
The late 19thc cartoon with the old French colonial and the boy in the tree is by Testevuide, reproduced in Delahaye Art et Histoire p.49
“… a purée parfaite!” cited in Delahaye Muse des Poètes p.20
“… a single drop more might have instantly degraded the sacred potion.” Marcel Pagnol, The Time of Secrets pp.85–6
“30ml” in Strang J, Arnold WN, Peters T. ‘Absinthe: what’s your poison?’ British Medical Journal [online version] 18th Dec.1999; 319; pp.1590–92
“… Satie or Ravel, to get in the mood” Barnaby Conrad in USA Today 18 August 1997
“The professors of absinthe were already at their station …” Conrad Absinthe p.22
“It is a solemn trial for
the amateur … .” Lanier p.16
“What a moment for the beginner! …” Lanier p.17
“In every circle of young men one finds a veteran …” Marie- Claude Delahaye, L’Absinthe: Histoire de la Fée Verte pp.89–90
Both the vidangeur and minuit are attributed to Toulouse-Lautrec. The various names and variations are from the ‘Dictionnaire’ of Delahaye’s L’Absinthe: Art et Histoire pp. 36–43.
“… Purple Haze …” Stuart Mangrum, ‘‘Absinthe, the Potent Green Fairy’ in Proust Said That issue no.7
“… the whole lot out of the window.” Valentin, variant comic strips reproduced in Delahaye Muse des Poètes p.22 and Delahaye Muse des Peintres p.21
CHAPTER ELEVEN: WHAT DOES ABSINTHE DO?
“new views … and unique feelings” W.N.Arnold ‘Absinthe’ Scientific American June 1989 p.86
“euphoria without drunkenness” Lanier p.23
“… you stare beyond the walls” Kallisti at sepulchritude.com
“… a clarity that you don’t have with those two.” Lilith, cited in ‘Absinthe Devotees: The Green Fog’ wired.com August 2000
“It brings one to a more clear concise focal point …” ‘Princess Xanax’ at erowid.com
“Users noted the ‘double whammy’ …” ‘Absinthe’ Clinical Toxicology Review Vol.18 No.4 Jan 1996
“… I want to die!” T.Hodgkinson ‘Wild Green Fairy Liquid’ Loaded Feb 1999
“… a lower class of rubbish to be spouted.” ibid.
“… a generalised feeling of being insulted and persecuted.” Lancereaux cited Meyer Strindberg p.356
“… on account of the essential oils it contains” Lancereaux cited in Brasher 1930 p.945
“Many of these perfume drinkers are women …” ibid.
“great injury to the nervous system” cited Arnold, ‘Absinthe’, Scientific American June 1989 p.90
“… like a devil’s furnace, of pale sulphur.”cited Lanier p.85
“the satyric figure of a dwarf …” W.R.Bett ‘Vincent Van Gogh: Artist and Addict’ British Journal of Addiction Vol.51 Nos.1–2 p.7
“… occipital lobe, which controls vision.” D.Wilkins and B.Schultz, Art Past, Art Present (New York, Abrams, 1990) cited Lanier p.86
“… without a care in the world.” cited Lanier 88