Honore de Balzac
(1799 - 1850)
French author, member of the "Hashish Club".
No literary history of Europe is complete without mention of the Bohemian intelectuals that gathered in mid 19th-century France to consume a powerful preparation of hashish. "The Hashish Club," which lasted from about 1844-49, was founded by Theophile Gautier (?), and included such famous literary iluminati as Alexander Dumas, Gerard de Nerval, Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Ferdinand Boissard, Charles Baudelaire, Eugene Delacroix, Roger de Beauvoir (known as "the idol of Paris") and many others.
This group made up some of the most brilliant minds in France and Europe at the time. These "high" initiates would gather at Paris' Gothic Pimodan House, (Hotel Lazun) in Arabian dress, to partake of syrupy hashish blended into strong Arabic coffee. Many of them left detailed writings of their experiences, or incorporated hashish into their fictional tales.
Club members were clearly familiar with their pot-smoking literary antecedents. Club founder Theophile Gautier wrote of "pantagreulion dreams" passing through his consciousness.
Gautier formed the club after meeting Dr J Moreau - an expert on the effects of hashish. Moreau wrote about how cannabis allowed one to enter "an in-between land where the external life ends and the internal life begins." Moreau also described hashish as "an intellectual intoxication," preferrable to the "ignoble heavy drunkenness" of alcohol.
Famed poet and author Gerard De Nerval, life-long friend of Gautier, was amongst the first to join the Hashish Club. De Nerval was steeped in occult lore, and described the effects of cannabis as a "new life... liberated from the conditions of space and time."
Alexander Dumas, author of such classics as The Three Muskateers and The Count of Monte Cristo, was at first shunned by fellow members of the club, as they considered him bourgeois, because he moved in a society of counts and countesses, and was a friend of King Louis Philippe. Although he left us nothing directly about his own visionary experiences under the drug, The Count of Monte Cristo includes an encounter with a hashish ingesting Sinbad the sailor, which shows an obvious knowledge of both the effects of the drug and its history.
Club member Honore de Balzac, who was considered to be one of the most brilliant men in France, at first pooh-poohed his friends' claims about hashish. He considered it a deep shame to renounce one's will over to any substance. Further, he claimed hashish would be unable to effect his powerful brain. Eventually his curiosity got the better of him and he tested some of the hashish, admitting that he heard celestial voices and saw visions of divine paintings before he left the group.
Famed author Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) came to join the club after being introduced to Gautier by painter Fernand Boissard, who himself joined to see music and hear paintings. Baudelaire wrote how after consuming cannabis, "on occasion the personality disappears. That concentration on the external, which is the hallmark of all great poets and master comedians grows and dominates your outlook." Baudelaire rarely partook of the drug himself, preferring to observe its effects on his friends.
Baudelaire eventually penned a book about his experimentation with hashish and opium, called Les Paradis Atificiels, (Artificial Paradises), a name he felt reflected the "heaven" offered by these substances. Having been burdened with a load of Catholic guilt, Baudelaire was a man of great despair. Although admired by his peers, he considered himself a failure, was an alcoholic and an opium addict, and died of the syphilis he had contracted in his youth.
source text: Cannabis Culture
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