NOTES SUR DE QUINCEY

Il avoue s’être inoculé le poison du bonheur « for the general benefit of the
world » ; il n’y a pas crime, mais tout au plus faiblesse.

« Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge » : il récuse le regard censeur

d’autrui, pour lui préférer le sien.

Le lecteur est d’emblé flatté : « courteous ».

Les digressions : en attendant d’en venir à l’essentiel (les souffrances de l’opium)

dont il ne cesse de clamer l’imminence, il s’attarde sur tous les plaisirs qu’il ne
peut se résoudre à quitter. => manœuvres dilatatoires pour accroître l’impatience
du lecteur.

Les événements d’ordre privé sont à peine évoqués ; raisons matérielles

invoquées : manque de place, contraintes éditoriales… => excuses commodes,
paravents !
 caractère arbitraire de la sélection
 ex : la mort de la fille de wordsworth (« melancholy event »)
la mort de sa sœur (« slight incident »)
les douleurs de manque d’opium
la tentation du suicide
son état de confusion physiologique mentale et morale
 understatement car trop intime, ; facteurs de déstabilisation !
 pas de dénouement

+ : literatureof power : to move ; it speaks to the higher understanding of

reason through affections of pleasure and sympathy.
- : literature of knowledge : to teach.

Le present de narration : son 36ème anniversaire (Août 1821), et il remonte 18 /

19 ans en arrière.
 Automne 1804, 28 ans : découverte de l’opium
 8 ans de bonheur
 4 ans de « Circean spell »
 3 ans ½ de souffrances
 puis abandon de la chronologie.
Sa vraie naissance : sa fuite de l’ école « which was to launch me into the
world ».
Ses fuites répétées par peur d’être retrouvé => parcours zigzagant, en quête de
cohérence (to run away from tormenters ?)
Cf opium = to run away from torments.

Opium was mainly used as an analgesic to suppress the painful symptoms of the
myriads of diseases that doctors could not cure in those days.

Ann : contrecarrant la disparition physique, l’écriture va s’employer à faire

retentir cette syllable unique dans toute la trame du texte.

Opium : le médiateur entre le réel et l’imaginaire

Il ouvre les « doors of perception » (Blake)
 augmentation régulière des doses, jusqu’à 8000 gouttes / jour

« gift » : en anglais, il donne

en allemand : il empoisonne

« insufferable splendour » : oxymoron !

« fearful symmetry » : les plaisirs basculent en leur contraire

 privation de la parole
 l’écrivain perd l’inspiration

Allure de descente aux enfers : « into chasms and sunless abysses, depths
below depths. »

Compulsive urge to write his autobiography again and again, all his life, reliving
misery as well as happiness.

Evidence of fear, fragmentation and frozen will :

 “an apocalypse of divine enjoyment”
 “a dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain”

The past can never be buried but reaches out to determine our present,
reverberating with endless consequences. We are never free, and the very
memory of the past elicits suffering.
In resurrecting the past, one discovers with dismay either that its joys are lost
forever or that his present life amplifies and intensifies all the past misery still
held in the mind.

DQ sees a man’s life as a network of intricate relations, connections, and

vibrations ; each move has tremendous effects and counter-effects.
DQ attempts to gain perspective and make revealing connections between
experiences.
 interpreting and finding the “nexus” of relations.

His flights (when looking back) are not mere escapes from overbearing authority
but struggles with a world of conflict.

He will go forth from the darkness of his own room only to be led into a greater
darkness within the self.
His autobiographical writing is built in large measure around flights from
elements which master him : schools, tutors, creditors, and even opium itself.

Sense of claustrophobia and cloistered immobility.

DQ is a victim, not so much of real events that threaten his peace, but of the
imagination which creates this menacing world.
The “oracle of woe” whish speaks in the Whispering Gallery is really within DQ
himself, especially in his tendency to see any single experience as mirror and
reduplication of previously traumatic experiences.

London “sole, dark, infinite” is the very reflection of his consciousness.

 the labyrinth of further sorrow.

The drug’s blessed effect : a sense of harmony between all that is within and
outside the self.
Opium provides DQ with the illusion of peace and innocence.

Autobiography is the writer’s attempt to elucidate his present his present

rather than his past.
 language is given the power of self-revision.

“The child is father of the man” (Wordsworth)

 To explore the moments of greatest emotional intensity in a life, which
had shaped the character of the writer.
“English opium-eater” : elements of the exotic and the problematic ;
 and effect of ambiguity and paradox intended by DQ.

DQ explores the psychological and physiological roots of his drug-dependence :

- social alienation
- loneliness
- lost love
- stomach damage caused by hunger
- physical pain : it caused him to take his first dose (tooth ache
and rheumatic pain)

His 4 guardians refused to allow him to leave school to go to university

(Manchester Grammar School).

The text is filled with religious terminology : “abyss of divine enjoyment”, the
only member of “the true church… of opium”.

Wordsworth : a pervasive presence :

- his poems are quoted at least 7 times without direct attribution
- “favourite English poet”
- DQ takes his works and Euripides when running away
- He reads Wordsworth’s poems aloud to his wife during the “Pains of
Opium”.

“The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind” (Wordsworth)

It gave a particular emphasis to moments of disturbingly intense perception,
referred to as “spots of time”. Often such moments encompassed experiences
which took place in loneliness and at moments of transgression or danger.

DQ presents himself as a philosopher : analytic functions + moral faculties.

The Malay : a sort of demon (colonial perspective)

 sickly and bilious (compared to the English girl : “exquisite”)
 the visitor is perceived as diseased and dangerous)
 but he is a fellow-addict (he survived the large dose of opium)
 the sickness, slavishness and perhaps morally dangerous nature are
DQ’s own : the Malay may symbolize something about him ; as an
addicted opium-eater, DQ is no longer truly “English”.

DQ’s paranoid world is constructed from oriental fragments at the center of

which struggles the defenseless dreamer.
Giving access to memory, imagination and even spiritual vision, opium became for
him a metaphor for the inner life and thus for literary creativity. Opening both
“paradise” and “Hell”, for DQ opium enriches and yet damages the self.
 the memoirist as damaged yet insightful victim of intoxication ; the
writer as self-confessed addict.

The narrative is to be read like a journey.

The Confessions end with the closing line of Paradise Lost, which communicates
the Miltonic idea of fall and recovery.

The magical elements of opium : “O what a revelation of the world within !”

An opium-eater : unique
Mais représentant de toute une classe

Ses rêveries : « rambling thoughts », qui échappent à son contrôle.

Great Tichfield-Street : son lieu de RV avec Ann.

Il la retrouve en rêve 17 ans plus tard.

Nécessité de toujours revenir à T-1

 il cite souvent en latin et en grec.

Ses hallucinations visuelles déforment les façades de Londres accentuent les

ombres. La capitale prend l’apparence d’un labyrinthe géant.
- « enigmatical entries »
- « riddles of streets »
A l’origine, “Carceri d’Invenzione” de Piranesi. (=> représentation d’un imaginaire
tourmenté qui se transforme en labyrinthe-prison intérieur.)

Errance : état douloureux de l’homme chassé du paradis. (cf la mort de sa sœur

Elizabeth).

DQ’s own youthful wanderings in Wales are the objective expression of his own
spiritual exile.
Ahasuerus : the wandering jew.

DQ’s spiritual growth is marked by moments of emotional intensity :

- the flight from the Manchester Grammar School
- the first purchase of opium
- the visit of the Malay
His own social alienation and vulnerability are reflected by solitary figures :
- the small girl in the London attorney’s house
- Ann of Oxford Street
- the Malay

Part I deals with DQ’s childhood and youth.

The innocent hero is driven to set out alone in the world (by the mismanagement
of his elders), first to an idyllic countryside ; then to the legal, financial, and
architectural labyrinths of the capital City.
Yet even in these threatening circumstances his innocence is preserved :
- When he leaves the Welsh town of Bangor, he soon meets a
family of young Welsh cottagers (treating him as a family
member).
- When he travels to London : tolerance and kindness from the
attorney
- The tender-hearted prostitute : Ann
- When he travels to Eton : he is cared for by a fellow passenger.
His innocence seems to be his protection. In London he is not physically
unscathed (he is rendered weak and ill with cold and hunger) but unblemished in
heart and confident he will be befriended and protected by strangers.

His innocence will also accentuate by contrast the nightmarish world of moral
ambivalence and paranoia into which his opium addiction will cast him in Part II.

In Part II opium becomes “the true hero of the tale”.

PART I
Leisurely, reflective tone
Traces a steadily unfolding narrative
of youthful exploration
PART II
A more fragmented approach
The timescale of events becomes
confused
Presents a confused kaleidoscope of
colourful fragments where philosophical
reflection, dream, nightmare and recalled
experience all impinge on one another.

“The pains of opium” shows a further dramatization of psychological

disintegration.

A strangely multiplied vision :

The immortal druggist is both a “dull and stupid…mortal druggist”, and an
“unconscious minister of celestial pleasures”.
These diverse images of the druggist remain unresolved : when he next visited
the street, the shop was no longer to be found.

DREAMS :
1) He imagines himself against a parade of Oriental animals ; “I was the idol ; I
was the priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed.” => chaos of oriental
images, reflecting DQ’s xenophobic fear of the Orient + sense of loss.

2) The reunion with Ann of Oxford Street

It takes place on Easter Sunday => connected to the theme of resurrection
Sense of loss

3) dream of music

For DQ the dreams were personal, all characterized by images of persecution ,

flight and pursuit. Underlying them all is a sense of loss that haunted him in
sleep.

4 lignes sont consacrées aux 9 mois passés à l’université.

The pleasures of opium : 1804
The pains of opium : 1812
1817 : apparition des phénomènes hallucinatoires.

Altrincham market place (when he was 3).

London is seen in a state of altered consciousness.

Ann = an
He never asks her name ; she is lost but she never had any real identity to begin
with !
Ann, la petite fille, et DQ ont tous perdu leur identité (son identité est remise
en cause par l’évêque de Bangor et par un usurier).
Ann : son double ? Ils ont presque le même âge !
Une innocente victime et une pécheresse ; pas vraiment responsable de sa chute,
elle conserve son innocence.

Lady Susan Carbery sends him 10 guineas, allowing his flight from Manchester.

Elizabeth dies when he is 6.

His father dies when he is 7.
Les citations sont des signes d’appartenance, des revendications fortes. Refus
de l’opiomane d’être rejeté vers les marges de la société.

Unable to control his drug-addiction = guilt.