Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet and essayist, and one of the major innovators in French Literature.
His most famous publication is Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) published in 1857.
In the industrializing Paris of the 19th century, Baudelaire was renowned for writing poem dealing with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. He is also remembered for an excessive use of drugs, most notably wine.
In a publication called Les Petits Poèmes en Prose published by Michel Lévy frères in 1869, he wrote the short poem Enivrez-vous (Get Drunk) as translated below:
Get Drunk
You have to be always drunk; that’s the only matter.
In order not to feel the horrible fardel that weights on your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you have to get drunk, relentlessly.
But what with? With Wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose… But get drunk.
If sometimes, on the steps of palace, or the green grass of a ditch you wake up and dunrkness has disminished or deisapeared. Ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask everything that flees, or rolls, or sings, or talks what time it is.
The wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer: it’s time to get drunk; in order not to become the tormented slave of time, get drunk, relentlessly get drunk with wine, poetry, virtue, you choose.
Simply translated from French by Julien Miquel from original text below:
Enivrez-Vous
Il faut être toujours ivre, tout est là ; c’est l’unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l’horrible fardeau du temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu à votre guise, mais enivrez-vous!
Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d’un palais, sur l’herbe verte d’un fossé, vous vous réveillez, l’ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l’étoile, à l’oiseau, à l’horloge; à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est. Et le vent, la vague, l’étoile, l’oiseau, l’horloge, vous répondront, il est l’heure de s’enivrer ; pour ne pas être les esclaves martyrisés du temps, enivrez-vous, enivrez-vous sans cesse de vin, de poésie, de vertu, à votre guise.
Find more information about Charles Baudelaire on Wikipedia.
We obvious remind you that alcohol is best enjoyed with moderation.
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