The use of opium has occurred for thousands of years throughout the world. The images and dreams induced by the opium poppy have inspired artists and been the subject of their works for centuries. In British culture writers were influenced by the effects of opium and its more socially-acceptable medicinal form, laudanum. Made infamous by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s preface to “Kubla Khan,” the utilization of opium was included in many other British writings, most substantially influencing Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.” Opium culture and fascination with the exotic also appeared in the works of such renowned authors as Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle, showing how deeply the poppy penetrated British society.
Although writing was a form of poetic capture, and the intoxication of drugs may seem to undermine such a capture with the fleeting feelings and blurry thinking, many writers had used a variety of drugs as a source for inspiration. Drugs became an aid for attempting to glimpse the muse: “[Opium users] began seeing the resplendent visions produced by [the drug] as a trigger for poetic inspiration, indeed even perhaps as a superior replacements for it (Walton 330).” Opium dreams catalyzed the creative process, which contradicted the common perception that the majority of opium users are lazy, lethargic, and unmotivated. Laudanum itself became a common household product due to the public opinion of the drug to be a cure-all. People in Britain and elsewhere would legitimately take laudanum for a variety of aches, pains, and sickness; it was even used to calm sleepless, crying babies. It was not out of the ordinary to use laudanum in a non-medical fashion. Drugs such as laudanum and opium were “widely acknowledged to be one of the world’s oldest, most powerful, and most effective medicines, and while the earliest uses of opium may have been purely medicinal, plenty of circumstantial evidence suggests that its use as an intoxicant is as old as the hills in which it grows (Sadie 4).” For some gifted individuals, both laudanum and opium transformed beyond the function of a medicinal remedy only to become the necessary intoxicant to spark the creative process.
Many Romantic poets, including Percy Bysshe Shelly, Lord Byron, and John Keats, indulged on occasion in the visionary powers of opium, but no poet’s usage of the drug was more famed than that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the preface to the poem “Kubla Khan,” debatably written in 1797 but first-published in 1816, the reader was told the now-familiar story of Coleridge’s use of “two grains of opium” prior to falling into a deep slumber. The preface detailed the infinite paradise shown to Coleridge through his drug-induced deep sleep. As was common with drug use, the moment was fleeting, and the end of the poem slipped from his grasp when his dreaming was interrupted by a knock upon the door. This abruption was reflected in the poem’s detached style, symbolic of opium’s ability to remove one from the present reality only to enter a new world of fantasy. One must keep in mind that the dreams produced by opium were not dreams in the ordinary sense: “[The vision in “Kubla Khan”] arises out of a mental state far rarer than the vivid landscape dreams which many of us enjoy; a state in which it is the essence of the forest and river, cave and fountain, that is perceived, not individual trees and stretches of water and cave openings (Hayter 222).” The opium dream was a visionary experience. Without the aid of opium, Coleridge’s dream would have appeared under a very different state of mind, and the poem would have never manifested itself under the same light. The circumstances that inspired “Kubla Khan” offered the reader landscapes that otherwise would be left unseen. The opium clearly provided Coleridge with an original creative consciousness.
Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater” (1821) was another example of British literature influenced by the author’s own state of opium intoxication. The essay described the dual nature of opium and the ways in which it caused both pain and pleasure. In the introduction to one particular collection of De Quincey essays, the author Grevel Lindop stated that “the work traces the development of its author’s human sensibilities through a series of formative experiences, moments which unfold [De Quincey’s] capacities to love and suffer in visionary as well as mundane realms (De Quincey ix).” Opium played a significant role in De Quincey’s life, influencing not just his writings but also his day-to-day existence. In retrospect many scholars considered De Quincey to be an addict, but the concept of addiction as a mental disorder would not exist for several more decades. Consequently, De Quincey abused the chemical with the hopes that it would prove more beneficial than harmful. By claiming that opium enhanced the creative process, De Quincey justified his addiction. He also established the image of the self-destructive genius, one whose work thrives on the deterioration of the unstable life that surrounds him. In addition De Quincey, contrary to Coleridge, blatantly admits to intentionally utilizing opium as a fuel to spark the creative imagination:
“It was [De Quincey’s] belief that opium dreams and reveries could be in themselves a creative process both analogous to, and leading to, literary creation. He used dreams in his writing not as decoration, not as allegory, not as a device to create atmosphere or to forestall and help the plot (although he believed that they were that) but as a form of art in themselves (Walton 332).”
For De Quincey the act of taking opium to induce dreams and visions both inspired and catalyzed the creative process, and, thus, the drug experience became a part of the artwork itself. As for “Confessions,” the novel spawned a new literary genre of non-fiction, confessional addiction tales in addition to establishing the role of the self-destructive genius and the role of opium to stimulate the creativity imagination.
Although the personal use of opium amongst some authors has been widely debated, opium culture penetrated British literature regardless of the author’s own stance on taking the drug. Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (1869) opened with an oriental dream of opium visions. Dickens established the genre of opium den narratives as well as the two recurrent themes that go hand-in-hand with such narratives: “(1) an almost superstitious dread of Orientals and a tendency to portray them as animals and/or vampirelike living dead parasites and (2) a preoccupation with the role of Englishwomen in the opium den accompanied by the suggestions that they are being Orientalized and assimulated (Milligan 87).” Dickens’ incomplete novel demonstrated how opium use became present in the homes of the average British citizen, despite the fears and anxieties associated with the foreign drug. Normally thought of as exotic, opium soon became commonplace. Authors such as Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle helped to normalize the use of opium and the formation of opium dens in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1890) and “The Man with the Twisted Lip” (1891), respectively. Such novels illustrated how Oriental culture merged with British culture to create a new British identity shaped by opium culture.
Through its medical acceptability, the use of laudanum infused British society. People took the drug for many medical ailments, but it was not long before people started to use the drug for recreational purposes. The social acceptability of laudanum, in turn, produced a sense of safety to indulge in opium. Certain writers used either laudanum, opium, or some combination of the two to enhance their already gifted minds. Following the belief that opium dreams affected the creative imagination, writers took opium recreationally as a form of stimulation. If these people did not already possess some hint of genius, however, the use of opium would not have been significant, for the drug fueled the already-present creative drive. For many opium also represented the exotic other, a concept which has forever fascinated writers. British culture began to merge with the exotic other as the general public began to read more novels describing Oriental opium culture. This, in turn, led to the development of a new form of opium culture, lived out and documented by British writers whom without the drug may never have created some of the greatest literature of the nineteenth century.
Works Cited
De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Hayter, Alethea. Opium and the Romantic Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.
Milligan, Barry. Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-CenturyBritish Culture. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Plant, Sadie. Writing on Drugs. New York: Picador USA, 1999.
Walton, Stuart. Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002.
