Effects Of Opium Using On The Victorian Literature - Research Paper Example

Effects Of Opium Using On The Victorian Literature The Romantic period in European art, music and literature emerged in the late eighteenth century from about 1775 until about 1835 as a reaction to the more rigid classical period which went before it. There was a focus on feelings and the imagination, and a search for more freedom in artistic forms. The French Revolution in 1789 marked a turning point in terms of the way Europeans viewed society, bringing a desire for radical changes in some quarters and fear of those changes in others. For most people life was hard, since the industrial revolution was getting underway, and working conditions were relentless. Poverty was rife, and there was a very poor understanding of hygiene and medicine coupled with rising numbers of inner city slums. Against this grim background of suffering, people turned to their local pharmacy where they could buy for as little as one penny a dose of laudanum, or some similar concoction, and with this drug soothe the physical aches and pains which plagued their lives. Rich and poor alike used these drugs and it soon became evident that those who indulged too often became enslaved to them, not only because of the pain relief that the drugs undoubtedly brought, but also because they induced fantastic dreams and visions and a feeling of wonderful wellbeing. This quality of opium and its derivatives was highly prized by many creative writers, and led to a fascination which has influenced literature ever since. (Murray: 2004, pp. 296-297). After a brief review of the origins of opium and its use in Western Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, this paper will look at the Romantic poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), and the prose essayist Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), comparing and contrasting their views on the subject of opium. In conclusion, the effects of the drug on their work will be traced, along with wider influences in English Romantic Literature and beyond. Opium is derived from the poppy plant with the Latin name papaver somniferum through a process of cutting the seedpod so that the juice oozes out and then drying it and combining it with other substances (Booth, 1998, pp. 1-4). It has a soporific effect, and is a relaxant and an efficient pain killer. Side effects include appetite suppression and vivid dreams, along with addiction over time, and depression/anxiety during withdrawal periods. The drug appears to have been known as far back as Neolithic times, and historical evidence proves it was used by the ancient Egyptians, and the also the Romans who linked it to Morpheus, the god of sleep and dreams. (Plant, 1999, p. 4-5). The opiate drug morphine is named after this. The poppies grow in Europe and across Asia, and during the middle ages the drug was traded all around the Mediterranean and brought increasingly to Western Europe for medical purposes. The Victorians made it into pills or combined it with alcohol to make a preparation called laudanum which was taken by the drop from a bottle. In those days this was seen as an entirely normal and logical thing to do, and the drug was used even for very young babies, ensuring that they would sleep for long periods and not cause their mothers or carers too much trouble. (Booth, 1998, p.63). One of the first British authors to publicly link his use of laudanum with the act of writing poetry was Coleridge. He was the son of a vicar, born in a large but respectable family in Devon, and a great lover of books and poetry. He claimed that he wrote his mysterious poem Kubla Khan in 1797 (Coleridge, 1985, p. 104-5) immediately after waking up from an opium-induced deep sleep. He writes about himself saying that he felt able to write some two or three hundred lines “without any sensation or consciousness of effort”. (Coleridge, 1985, p. 102) but then a messenger interrupted him in the middle of writing it down and the resulting fragment is “some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision”, implying that Coleridge would have been able to fully record the magnificence of the vision, if he had only been allowed sufficient uninterrupted time to capture it all in writing. Coleridge attributes this loss to external factors, and not to the inherent effects of the drug, and this is an error which characterises his future writing career. He stresses the pitiful, inadequate nature of the resulting poem when he introduces it with the words “As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease”. (Coleridge, p. 103) The poem certainly contains memorable imagery of the mystical place Xanadu with its “pleasure-dome” (line 2) full of gardens, incense and a singing “Abyssinian maid” (line 39). Coleridge imbues the location with religious significance, suggesting that he, the dreamer, should be viewed with “holy dread” (line 52) because he has fed on “honey dew” (line 53) and “the milk of Paradise” (line 54). The pleasurable element of the dream is abundantly clear. There are hints of the pain that Coleridge mentions in the words “Ancestral voices prophesying war” (line 30) and “Beware! Beware” (line 49) but these are so slight that they hardly affect the overwhelming message of pleasure that runs through the poem. He certainly does not present pain and pleasure “with equal fidelity” in this poem. In the same year Coleridge wrote another major poem called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge, pp. 48-68) which takes just the opposite approach, and tells the tragic story of a sailor who kills an albatross and causes all on board his ship to be killed because of this random act. Here the imagery is bleak and the isolation of the sailor either trapped in calm water, or tossed around on a wild and dangerous sea, is no doubt another reference to the terrible feelings experienced by someone who feels he is not in control of his own life. Coleridge was notoriously unreliable in his family relationships, and he drifted from place to place throughout his life, looking for shelter from his responsibilities and respite from the ravages of his growing addiction to laudanum. This poem was therefore somewhat prophetic, because it was written while Coleridge was young man, still to face the worst of these forces in later years. There is reference in the poem to “the dear God who loveth us” (line 616) at the end of the poem, which underlines Coleridge’s religious faith, but this does little to relieve the horror of what has gone before. At the time when Coleridge was writing these poems he was making friends with the great poet William Wordsworth, and the two began to collaborate on a joint book called Lyrical Ballads. The two poets were both successful in their own right, but their work is very different in character and style. The bookish, intellectual poems of Coleridge are full of Biblical allusions and tales of mystical foreign lands. The simple, nature loving poems of Wordsworth reveal a man who loved nothing more than to wander the English country side and admire the scenery or reflect on the lives of ordinary working class individuals like children, beggars or old people. Their joint work Lyrical Ballads was published in 1801, and it cemented both the friendship of the two men and their fame as poets of the Romantic sensibility. The men moved with their families to the north of England and spent time together until eventually their differences became too great and they fell out of speaking terms with each other. The legacy of these two poets cannot be overestimated, and while Wordsworth continued to inspire the nature-focused lyrical poets, Coleridge appealed to a darker sensibility and influenced poets and novelists as well, including the Gothic horror writers such as Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe. A young essayist and philosopher, Thomas de Quincey from Manchester travelled to meet both Wordsworth and Coleridge who were his literary heroes. He saw at first hand Coleridge’s declining health, and the consequences of his addiction to laudanum, and experienced too, Wordsworth’s disapproval of this wanton lifestyle. His autobiographical work Confessions of An Opium Eater was published in 1821. He is well aware that he is often blamed for using opium “purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement” but maintains, echoing the explanations of Coleridge, that “ it was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree”. (De Quincey p. 6) In a section of his work entitled “The pleasures of opium” (p.38) he relates how he took the drug for toothache and found it immediately to be “a panacea… the secret of happiness…” (De Quincey, p. 39). The interesting thing about his description is that he precisely does not focus on the drug’s function to remove pain, but in fact on its mind-altering ability: “happiness might now be bought for a penny… portable ecstasies might be had … peace of mind could be sent down…” (De Quincey, p. 39). It appears, then, that there is a certain amount of self-deception going on in the minds of both Coleridge and De Quincey when they describe their own relationship with this mind-altering drug. In his book Confessions of an Opium Eater, De Quincey relates how he battled to reduce his dependence on the drug, reducing the dosage gradually until, he claimed, his experience is proof that after seventeen years using the drug, eight of them very seriously over-using it, it is possible to renounce it altogether (De Quincey, p79). He notes just one symptom, however, which refuses to go away: “my dreams are not yet perfectly calm: the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided” (De Quincey, p.80) suggesting that the after-effects remain, like the troubles of the seasick ancient mariner, to haunt him for the rest of his life. The public reception of the Confessions of an Opium Eater was very positive, both at the time and in later years. The book became a classic and it made sure that there was an indelible link made between literary production and the consumption of opiate drugs. One passage in particular relates, like Coleridge’s little story about the genesis of the Kubla Khan poem, a wonderful dream narrative, which he introduces in quasi-scientific language as a “specimen” (De Quincey, p. 77) for the reader. In this example there is both visual and auditory stimulation, and everything is, in true opium-induced fashion, vastly exaggerated and beyond any normal human scale : “the feeling of a vast march … infinite cavalcades … innumerable armies …” (De Quincey, p. 77). The images are overwhelming and the dreamer is not able to work out what the significance of it all is, nor even what exactly is happening, to whom, or where, or why. The dreamer feels the passion, the trepidation, the great power of his own will but paradoxically is not able to exert his will “for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me” (De Quincey, p. 77). The waking from this dream is likened to a series of farewells to beloved female forms, as if coming back to everyday consciousness means unspeakable loss of the wonders contained in the mysterious world of dreams. De Quincey decodes the symbolism making it quite clear what the dream is all about: “not the opium-eater but the opium, is the true hero of the tale”. In contrast to Coleridge, De Quincey does have a considerable amount of insight into the distorting qualities of the drug and its ability to take over the mind of the addict. Unfortunately, however, he couches the message in such arresting prose that he manages still to make it sound like something wonderful and extremely attractive with an edge of danger to give it extra spice. If he intended his work to be a warning against the dangers of opium, then it seems that he failed quite spectacularly in that objective. The editor of the Oxford collection of De Quincey’s works comments that De Quincey lends special extra meanings to the word “dream”, saying that he uses it “as a synonym for imagination and even at times for literature itself” (Lindop, in De Quincey, p. xv). In this there is a clue to the enduring popularity of De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater. It echoes very beautifully the Romantic poets’ obsession with the depths and heights of human emotion. If anything it glamorizes the experience of taking opiates, and suggests that it can open up new vistas of creativity for writers, musicians, and any sensitive human being who wants to push back the boundaries of a dreary day to day existence and experience something profoundly moving. De Quincey is careful to point out that opium will not create this effect in every individual, but only those who have the refinement and sensibility to store this potential within themselves. His famous quip about men who are “too dull to dream at all” (De Quincey, p.5) or who only think about oxen and therefore only dream about oxen, flatters the reader with the suggestion that opium will enable the educated reader to join the ranks of special initiates. What De Quincey does, despite his protestations to the contrary, is create a rationale, a role model, and a thriving market for recreational drug use, linked to enjoyment of romantic literature. It is hardly surprising that the highly prolific and disciplined Wordsworth would be horrified by the way Coleridge and De Quincey were, in his view, debasing literary activity with their periods of incapacity due to over-indulgence in drugs and their promotion of such harmful practices in their writings. Later in life De Quincey revised the text and inserted a significant amount of new material at the beginning of the work, describing his childhood as the son of a textile merchant and attempting to explain more fully the hardships he experienced as a youth. It is as if he wants to draw attention away from the culpable weakness of addiction and focus instead on the causes of pain and sadness that drove him to seek solace in the drug. It seems he is looking for an excuse, and something to defend his long addiction. He wrote also a second work called the Suspira de Profundis, which in Latin means “Sighs from the Depths”. It has an ambitious structure, according to the author’s elaborate early planning statements, but it does not live up to its own expectations. Lindop (p. vii) describes De Quincey’s works as “Gothic both in their weird emotional intensity and in their digressive complexity of structure…” Imagery of mazes, stairways, chasms, and corridors abound in the Suspira de Profundis and it is unusual, for a non-fiction work at least, in its startling ability to create dark moods and a feeling of creepy abandonment. The experiences of Coleridge, Wordsworth and de Quincey appear to be a map of the way that opium was viewed in literary circles in the early Victorian period. At first there is euphoria in finding a substance that cures all ills and frees the intellectual person from the awful enslavement of constant physical pain. This freedom allows romantic fancy to roam free and explore the world of feelings, noting down in poetic descriptions those flights of fancy. The negative side of the drug is at first not very evident and it is only after some years of increasing use that users become aware that there is a cost to this new freedom. Coleridge and de Quincey both became aware of this cost and continued its use, becoming more dependent on the mind-altering properties that it had. Wordsworth, who was much more concerned with his public persona, and the continuing of his successful career as a poet of the natural world, could see the damage that the drug was doing to Coleridge’s health, and also to his literary output. It is no coincidence that Wordsworth published far more work and maintained a far higher public profile than Coleridge. In fact it is likely that Coleridge’s addiction was the major reason why the two men parted company. The one was an opium addict, and the other rejected substance abuse altogether, preferring an entirely natural communion with nature, without using any artificial aids. De Quincey, however, had a more complex relationship with the drug than either of these two. His writings suggest that he sides with Wordsworth, and it is clear that he also has major concerns about Coleridge’s fate, and about the damaging effects of opium. The moralizing sections and detailed descriptions of the measures he took to reduce dosages and drag himself free of the drug’s power give the impression that he has seen the error of his ways and has turned against opium use. It is very likely, however, that his criticisms and protests are just a cover for his ongoing secret dependence. Especially in his later works, the nature of his writing reveals that he is not so free from its effect as he would like the reader to think. The truth is that opium does indeed enhance the emotional sensibilities of the user, and for a time at least, it does have a positive effect on literary appreciation and literary output. It gives a feeling of invincibility, and an impression of power over everything, and this is exactly the persona that peeps through the Confessions of an Opium Eater. De Quincey, having perhaps a stronger physical constitution than Coleridge, manages to balance his drug use with spells of productivity. For many years he walks this difficult line, and it is only in the fragmentary arguments and overcomplex structure of De Profundis that his control begins to unravel. The constant revisions and restructurings that De Quincey indulged in during the later years of his life are also a suggestion that he had a pressing need to be active and communicate the great thoughts he was having while under the influence of opium, but at the same time he appears to have less and less ability to focus on any clear message or new ideas. This, sadly, is the other side of the drug’s power, taking away the abilities which in the beginning it had enhanced. Later in the nineteenth century the severe social consequences of widespread opium addiction became more apparent in British society. Added to this was the increasing dependence of medical professionals on a growing variety of tinctures and derivatives which exploited one of more of the drug’s qualities for targeted medical applications. Supplies of the drug became scarce, and the British Empire went to war with China on two occasions, in 1839-42 and again in 1856-60 in attempts to secure adequate supplies for use at home. Even the revered Queen Victoria was said to be a moderate consumer of the drug. In the 1850s the hypodermic syringe was invented, and then in 1874 diacetylmorphine was derived from opium, a substance later to become known as heroin. (Plant, 1999, p. 6). In literature, the Romantic writers began to write works of pure horror, and the image of opium dens and opium consumers took a darker turn. This was partly because the war with China demonised the orient, in contrast to the idyllic imagery of Abyssinian maids and the like which had characterised earlier Romantic poetry, but partly also because the harsh realities of Victorian industrial society had produced large numbers of heavy opium users, and also significant numbers of social reformers who saw it as their duty to eradicate the drug, seeing it as the source of many evils. Henderson notes that views in the general public began to shift, and instead of seeing opium as something for poor people to use, just to dull the pain and drudgery of everyday Victorian living, or for wealthy people to use as a recreational aid to heighten their literary creative and appreciative skills, “users across the classes came to be viewed as criminal and deviant, images that later gave way to the modern dope fiend” (2009, p.4). The advance of science, particularly chemistry, meant that in time it became possible to produce highly effective painkilling and also hallucinogenic drugs without dependence on the scarce commodity of opium. The link with creativity and literary creation which was forged by Coleridge and De Quincey has, however, remained to this day. A very interesting study by Althea Hayter (1968) draws parallels and also contrasts between the view of the Romantic poets on the subject of opiates and the views of the flower power generation of the 1960s. Where nineteenth century intellectual and middle class users used the drug to enhance their appreciation for fine literature and all the intellectual offerings of the literary establishment, the twentieth century saw the establishment turn very firmly against drug use, legislating against free availability and the self administering of even mild preparations. Modern medicine relies on opium now more than at any time in human history, but the process is codified and regulated to the minutest degree. Some derivatives are used in mental health programmes, to combat depression or to influence some abnormal psychiatric states. Others are turned into sleeping medicines or strong painkilling preparations. Millions of people suffering painful illnesses or terminal diseases have had their suffering mercifully relieved by judicious use of morphine and similar products. Recreational usage of the many mind altering substances available in the mid twentieth century became a symbol of protest, and a deliberate flaunting of anti-establishment attitudes across all classes. The symptoms of modern drugs are similar to the nineteenth century where the experience magnifies feelings of euphoria and superhuman ability, but simultaneously saps a person’s ability to channel these feelings into any sort of organised output. The dangers of overdose and addiction are also still present but at least in the modern world there is a far greater understanding of these dangers and there are mechanisms in place to help people who succumb to addiction. Large sections of people in all social classes use drugs like cocaine and ecstasy on a regular basis with little or no negative effects, and no reliance on criminal activity to fund this habit, despite the fact that they are illegal in most Western countries. What remains to be seen in the twenty first century is whether or not Western societies will choose to retain this absolute separation between “good” drugs, which the establishment are used to heal people, and “bad” drugs which are the same substances obtained and used in a free and recreational way. Some advocate a rapprochement of the two sides, and a measured, sensible regulation of the recreational products so that the dream world of the romantics can be explored again in the pursuit of literary sensibility. So long as Western Societies tread this ambivalent line between demonizing and idolizing opium and similar mind altering drugs, people will continue to tread the dangerous line between enjoyment and addiction that was so powerfully depicted by Coleridge and De Quincey in early Victorian England. Works Cited. Booth, Martin. Opium: A History. New York: St. Martins, 1998. Print. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Major Works. Edited by H.J. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print. De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an Opium Eater and Other Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, revised 1997. Print. Hayter, Althea. Opium and the Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Print. Henderson, Jessica Rae. Opium Use in Victorian England: the Works of Gaskell, Eliot and Dickens. Unpublished MA dissertation of Boise State University. 2009. Web. Available at: http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=td Jay, Mike. Emperors of Dream: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Dedalus, 2000. Print. Murray, Christopher John (ed.). Encylopedia of the Romantic Era 1760-1850. New York and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004. Print. Plant, Sadie. Writing on Drugs. New York: Picador, 1999. Print. Read More