The Role Of Alcoholism In Charles Baudelaire's Poetry

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Moderate alcohol consumption can provide health benefits as well as a temporary sense of bliss. During Baudelaire’s time, wine was the drink for workers, who would drink collectively; in other words, drinking was a social activity. On the contrary, alcohol consumption to the point of drunkenness is a different story. Alcohol and alcoholism are popular subjects in art and writing, mainly because throughout history and to this day there have been myriad artists, who have used and abused alcohol, claiming that drinking releases their creative spirits, or conjures a muse of some sort. Consequently, while medically worrisome, alcohol is still favorably looked upon in the artistic world. Supporting this conjecture is French poet and essayist Charles Baudelaire, who has an entire section dedicated to wine, or alcohol in general, within his poetry …show more content…

Furthermore, the bliss caused by alcohol would be brief; the moment the drinker wakes up, he has to go back to work and face another laborious day. Similarly, in “The Wine of the Solitary,” a wine bottle is personified as a seductress who promises companionship and pours “hope, and youth, and life” (12) for the lonely drinker. Moreover, the wine declares: “Which makes us triumphant and equal to the gods!” (14), claiming that it has the power to immortalize the drinker. However, like the wine in “The Soul of Wine,” everything the wine in “The Wine of the Solitary” proclaims is false advertisement; at the end of the poem, the drinker remains desolate and alone, and possibly even more mortal than before, considering the health problems caused by drastically consuming

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