#33: Be Drunk, by Charles Baudelaire

There are two types of drunkenness. The one wer get for overdrinking on any given weekend and the one that, for Baudelaire, embodies a much more meaningful reason, to create, to do art.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to freetalk Podcast the show where we have one objective, to take your English to the next level, the fun, and simple way. My name is Alan, I’m your host and I am so very happy to be back. We hadn’t recorded a new episode for the last 3 weeks. The reason? I moved out, that is, I changed apartments. I live now in a new house. The change has been for the good. I am closer to everywhere, now. I can have more classes every day and use my time more efficiently. But, of course, the process of moving out is always complicated. Packing everything, then unpacking, ordering things and so on. And not only that; in all this process I remained disconnected. I didn’t have an internet service and that, combined with all the craziness, was the reason why we were uploading old episodes. But no more. Today, May 26th, 2016, we have a completely new episode for you. And what are we doing today? you ask. Well, today we will talk about poetry, I will read to you a short and powerful poem by Charles Baudelaire, the poète maudit, the cursed poet, then we will talk a little about him and then, as usual, we will analyze the poem to try to understand what he was saying. As with all poems, the final interpretation will be different for every reader (or, in this case, for every listener), but we will take a look at the language, the words.

All right, without further ado, let’s begin. The poem is entitled “Be Drunk”, and it goes something like this:

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris, France on 1821.He was a poet, art critic and french translator.His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of the earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connects it more closely to the work of the contemporary “Parnassians"
Beyond his innovations in versification and the theories of symbolism and "correspondences", an awareness of which is essential to any appreciation of the literary value of his work, aspects of his work that regularly receive (or have received) much critical discussion include the role of women, the theological direction of his work and his alleged advocacy of "satanism", his experience of drug-induced states of mind, the figure of the dandy, his stance regarding democracy and its implications for the individual, his response to the spiritual uncertainties of the time, his criticisms of the bourgeois, and his advocacy of modern music and painting (e.g., Wagner, Delacroix).

His poetry was characterized for his allusions to the things he believed in and his life in general. This poem, although not one of his major works reflects, at least in my opinion, some of the features that made him the great poet, the eccentric person he was.

Let’s break that poem down. Firstly, he says, “You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.”

A burden is that which is carried; load: that which is borne with difficulty; obligation. When we talk about a burden it could be either a physical or a non-physical one. If you were to carry an 80-pound pack on your back, which is heavy, you would be carrying a heavy, physical burden, It’s heavy, it’s difficult, you will get tired. If, on the other hand, you had a lot of pressure or problems, let’s say that you have the responsibility of leading an entire company, or be the father to 10 children, that’s a burden. It’s not physical, but the obligation would have an impact on you. He says, “so as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth. When you bend, B-E-N-D, you are forced from a straight form into a curved or angular one. Like, you are straight up, standing, but then you bend, so your body is going down. When do you bedn? When the burden is too much. Again, physically or not. When you are so tired that you can’t stand on your feet, you bend.

Then the poem goes to say, “But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.”
Whatever you want to be drunk on. Drunk on alcohol, -which is usually what we think when the word drunk comes up-. But you can be drunk on so many other things. Because being drunk is to be dominated by a strong feeling or emotion. You can be drunk with power, drunk with joy, drunk with love. And he is advising us to be drunk on whatever we want: wine, poetry, virtue or whatever you want,
Then he says, “And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone…”

In the mournful solitude of your room. Mournful is feeling or expressing sorrow or grief; sadness. Lament. The best way to understand mourn is with death. When a person dies, the people who survive this person, the friends, family or loved ones, usually mourn, they feel the sadness of the loss. So, he says, in the mournful solitude of your room, when drunkenness (the state of being drunk) is already diminishing, that is, becoming weaker every time, you stop being drunk, what to do?

ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. Ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

He is telling us to ask all things that are moving, all the things that surround us, the wind, the bird, the clock, everything, ask them what time it is, and they will respond, it’s time to be drunk. Because, according to Baudelaire, you should always be drunk, Drunk on something.

If we were to stick to the, apparently direct implication of this poem, it would be terrible advice, right? To be always drunk seems like a highly irresponsible thing to do, but because the implication is broader, the meaning is different and much more different. You should always be drunk translates as “Whatever it is that you want to do, you should always do it with passion.”

If you are a painter, you should paint with your soul, you should be drunk with colors and images, with art. If you are a writer you should be drunk with words and stories, with faces and situations, let yourself be carried away, trap yourself in whatever story you’re working on. Talking about this comes to my mind a quote by Ernest Hemingway that goes, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Nice, isn’t it?

When I decided to talk about this poem for this episode, I looked at other people’s opinions about it. They were mostly positive; some people would say “This is just the motivation that I needed; Lovely words”,  and that sort of things. But of course, there were folks who didn’t like what they interpreted of the poem, Particularly there was a comment saying, “Horrible advice There is no need to escape reality by being drunk all the time. Life is beautiful. Learn to appreciate the beauties of this life.” And while I respect that view, I personally think that being drunk is, in itself, a beauty of life. We are, perhaps, the only species with the ability to find something we love, be it poetry, music, art or what have you, and intentionally decide to fully immerse on that. Passion is what drives most of the great things in life. If Albert Einstein hadn’t been so drunk with numbers and physics, many of the mysteries of the universe he helped to clarify would remain mysteries. If James Joyce hadn’t been so drunk with his novel the world would have never known his masterpiece, Ulysses. If Charles Baudelaire hadn’t been so very drunk with poetry, we wouldn’t be talking about this right now.

So, what do you think? Is drunkenness (on anything) something you consider necessary? For the creative process, or even only to face the sometimes difficult situations in life? I would love to hear your opinion, your take on this subject. You can let me know leaving me a comment here, in the Review section on iTunes or on Stitcher, or visiting the comments section for this episode on www.freetalkingles.com/podcast/bedrunk

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Thank you so much for listening, thank you so much for your patience during this period of absence, and I will see you next Wednesday for a new episode of freetalk Podcast, and please, please, please, don’t forget, to keep it simple.