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Drinking With The Devil
The Absinthe Drinker by Viktor Oliva now hangs in Café
Slavia, once a meeting place of artists and intellectuals
alcohol, Verlaine’s health failed and he spent his
finalyearsindestitution,hisonlycomfortcoming
whenheenjoyedthegreenhourwithwhatlittle
coin he could beg.
Verlaine’sformerlover,ArthurRimbaud,is
perhaps the most iconic of the bohemian absinthe
drinkers.Ananarchicartistwithaneedtoshock,
Rimbaud drank absinthe to open his mind,
creatingsomeofhismostcelebratedworksunder
its influence. When Rimbaud and Verlaine’s affair
ended,Verlaineshothislover,leavinghimwith
afleshwound.Later,Verlainewasruefulwhen
he recalled that the couple had sold some of
Rimbaud’spoetrytopayfortheirabsinthebinges.
Theyhadnottakencopiesofthepieces,meaning
thatthesegreatworksoftheoriginalwildchild
l t f ver.
e,ofcourse,isnotoriousfor
wood-fuelled psychoactive
which were mostly
d if not outright fabricated.
life of the Green Fairy
“Those who enjoyed it weren’t role
models, but slothful wastrels, drinking
away their lives and their livelihoods”
Falserumoursofpsychoticsideeffectsand
hallucinations were played up enormously once
the Green Fairy began to transform into the Green
Curse. Works like those of Manet and Degas didn’t
show absinthe drinkers as glamorous bohemians,
but as figures so jaded by the drink they were
barely functioning at all. Hollow-eyed, dressed in
drab clothes and alone with their drinks, on their
initial exhibition such apparently moralistic works
were unpopular. Eventually, however, the tide
turned as the vineyards grew bountiful once more
and the French wine industry began to recover.
Thetemperancemovementandthewinetrade
might seem like odd bedfellows, but when they
joined forces in the late-1800s to rid France of
the supposed scourge of absinthe, they proved
a powerful lobbying group. If drinking wine
was civilised, classy and traditional, then taking
absinthe was quite the opposite. Those who
enjoyed it weren’t role models, said the temperance
movement, but slothful wastrels, drinking away
their lives and their livelihoods, sacrificing their
moral fibre for a thrill. With opinion shifting, the
bourgeoisie turned their backs on the Green Fairy
C.400 BCE 1792 1795 1870
Hippocrates
recommends wormwood
for the treatment of
numerous physical
ailments.
Pierre Ordinaire, a Frenchman
living in Switzerland, creates the
first known documented bottle
of absinthe and markets it for its
health benefits.
Henri-Louis Pernod
opens his Swiss absinthe
distillery, following it
a decade later with a
French distillery.
During the late 1860s, European
vineyards had been partially
destroyed by aphid infestation, and
by 1870, absinthe has replaced wine
as France’s favourite drink.