Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is a memoir by Thomas De Quincey that recounts the circumstances of his addiction to laudanum, his experience of the drug, and its effect on his life. De Quincey was born in 1785. The chronology of his narrative begins with the death of his father in 1793, continues through his opium years beginning in 1804, and concludes after his marriage (in 1817) to a farmer's daughter named Margaret Simpson.
De Quincey completed the first edition of Confessions in 1821, at which point he published them anonymously in The London Magazine, where they appeared in two parts (in the September and October issues, respectively).London Magazine, Vol. IV, No. xxi, pp. 293–312, and No. xxii, pp. 353–379. A book edition with a new appendix followed in 1822, and a greatly expanded and revised edition in 1856.
When De Quincey first revealed himself to be the author of the confessions, the disclosure brought him immediate fame. Although De Quincey was a prolific essayist as well as translator, Confessions is the work for which he is renowned.
Synopsis As originally published,Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, edited by Alethea Hayter, New York, Penguin Books, 1971, provides the original magazine text. De Quincey's account was organised into two parts:About the structure of the novel based on paradigms, see (in French) Yann Tholoniat, « Thomas de Quincey et le paradigme perdu ». In Lectures d'une œuvre: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater – Thomas de Quincey. Paris, Éditions du Temps, 2003 : 93–106. Part I begins with a notice "To the Reader", in order to establish the narrative frame: "I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life ...". It is followed by the substance of Part I, Preliminary Confessions, devoted to the author's childhood and youth, and concentrated upon the emotional and psychological factors that underlay the later opium experiences—especially the period in his late teens that De Quincey spent as a homeless runaway in Oxford Street in London in 1802 and 1803. Part II is split into several sections: A relatively brief introduction and connecting passage, followed by The Pleasures of Opium, which discusses the early and largely positive phase of the author's experience with the drug, from 1804 until 1812; Introduction to the Pains of Opium, which delivers a second installment of autobiography, taking De Quincey from youth to maturity; and The Pains of Opium, which recounts the extreme of the author's opium experience (up to that time), with insomnia, nightmares, frightening visions, and difficult physical symptoms. Another "Notice to the Reader" attempts to clarify the chronology of the whole.
Though De Quincey was later criticised for giving too much attention to the pleasure of opium and not enough to the harsh negatives of addiction, The Pains of Opium is—in fact—significantly longer than The Pleasures. However, even when trying to convey darker truths, De Quincey's language can seem seduced by the compelling nature of the opium experience:
Style
From its first appearance, the literary style of the Confessions attracted attention and comment. De Quincey was well read in the English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and assimilated influences and models from Sir Thomas Browne and other writers. Arguably the most famous, and often-quoted, passage in the Confessions is the apostrophe to opium in the final paragraph of The Pleasures:
De Quincey modelled this passage on the apostrophe "O eloquent, just and mightie Death!" in Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World.Hayter's edition, pp. 83, 220.
Earlier, in The Pleasures of Opium, De Quincey describes the long walks he took through the London streets under the influence of the drug:
The Confessions represents De Quincey's initial effort to write what he called "impassioned prose", an effort that he would later resume in Suspiria de Profundis (1845) and The English Mail-Coach (1849).
1856 revision In the early 1850s, De Quincey prepared the first collected edition of his works for publisher James Hogg. For that edition, he undertook a large-scale revision of the Confessions, more than doubling the work's length. Most notably, he expanded the opening section on his personal background, until it consumed more than two-thirds of the whole. Yet he gave the book "a much weaker beginning" and detracted from the impact of the original with digressions and inconsistencies; "the verdict of most critics is that the earlier version is artistically superior".Lyon, p. 94.
"De Quincey undoubtedly spoiled his masterpiece by revising it ... anyone who compares the two will prefer the unflagging vigour and tension of the original version to the tired prosiness of much of the revised one".Alethea Hayter's Introduction to the Penguin edition, p. 22.
Influence
The Confessions maintained a place of primacy in De Quincey's literary output, and his literary reputation, from its first publication; "it went through countless editions, with only occasional intervals of a few years, and was often translated. Since there was little systematic study of narcotics until long after his death, De Quincey's account assumed an authoritative status and actually dominated the scientific and public views of the effects of opium for several generations."Lyon, p. 178.
Yet from the time of its publication, De Quincey's Confessions was criticized for presenting a picture of the opium experience that was too positive and too enticing to readers. As early as 1823, an anonymous response, Advice to Opium Eaters, was published "to warn others from copying De Quincey."Virginia Berridge and Griffith Edwards, Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1987; p. 53. The fear of reckless imitation was not groundless: several English writers—Francis Thompson, James Thomson, William Blair, and perhaps Branwell Brontë—were led to opium use and addiction by De Quincey's literary example.Berridge and Edwards, p. 53; Lyon, p. 178.
Charles Baudelaire's 1860 translation and adaptation, Les paradis artificiels, spread the work's influence further. One of the characters of the Sherlock Holmes story The Man with the Twisted Lip (1891) is an opium addict who began experimenting with the drug as a student after reading the Confessions. De Quincey attempted to address this type of criticism. When the 1821 original was printed in book form the following year, he added an appendix on the withdrawal process; and he inserted significant material on the medical aspects of opium into his 1856 revision.Lyon, pp. 93–95.
More generally, De Quincey's Confessions influenced psychology and abnormal psychology, and attitudes towards dreams and imaginative literature.Alethea Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination: Addiction and Creativity in de Quincey, Coleridge, Baudelaire and Others, revised edition, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, Crucible, 1988; pp. 101–131 and ff. Edgar Allan Poe praised Confessions for its "glorious imagination—deep philosophy—acute speculation".E. A. Poe, "How to Write a Blackwood Article", orig. publ. in American Museum, Nov. 1838
The play The Opium Eater by Andrew Dallmeyer was based on Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and has been published by Capercaillie Books. In 1962, Vincent Price starred in the full-length film Confessions of an Opium Eater, which was a reimagining of De Quincey's Confessions by Hollywood producer Albert Zugsmith.
In the 1999 documentary Tripping, recounting Ken Kesey's Furthur bus and its influence, Malcolm McLaren refers to De Quincey's book as the influence for the Beat Generation before Jack Kerouac's popular On the Road was written.Tripping, 1999
De Quincey's book is parodied in the 2002 video game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, which features an in-game book titled Confessions of a Dunmer Skooma-Eater about the fictional drug skooma.The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, 2002
References
External links
(plain text and HTML) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, London Magazine, Vol. IV, (September 1821) No. xxi, pp. 293–312, and (October 1821) No. xxii, pp. 353–379. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions)