where the writer ends & the drugs begin...

[Glenn Scheper]

Forced to jump to my conclusions without a NYT login:
> ... Hilton attributes to Baudelaire's opium addiction,
> which, he argues, other biographers have underestimated.
> http://nytimes.com/2004/04/04/books/review/04MILLERT.html

        ---

Rather, Baudelaire is one of my fellows. My eight-months
behind surf reading brings me to Burton today, who well
catalogs in the language of his day, many of the things
I have also suffered. You'd think an incubus would be
fun, but it was experienced as just another terror.

http://www.udayton.edu/~hume/Burton/burton.htm
 Excerpts taken from Burton, Robert. Anatomy of Melancholy.

 If the heart, brain, liver,
 spleen, be misaffected, as usually they are, many
 inconveniences proceed from them, many diseases accompany,
 as Incubus,* Apoplexy, Epilepsy, Vertigo, those frequent
 wakings and terrible dreams, intempestive laughing, weeping,
 sighing, sobbing, bashfulness, blushing, trembling,
 sweating, swooning, &c. All their senses are troubled, they
 think they see, hear, smell, and touch, that which they do
 not, as shall be proved in the following discourse.

...

 Such a one was old Sophocles, and Democritus himself had a
 merry kind of madness, much in this vein. Laurentius thinks
 this kind of melancholy, which is a little adust with some
 mixture of blood, to be that which Aristotle meant, when he
 said melancholy men of all others are most witty, which
 causeth many times divine ravishment, and a kind of divine
 inspiration, which stirreth them up to be excellent
 Philosophers, Poets, Prophets, &c. Mercurialis gives
 instance in a young man his patient, sanguine melancholy, of
 a great wit, and excellently learned. 

        ---

Of course, my explanation of its aetiology would
be autofe11atio created him a cherub with gnosis!

Such is to taste Eunoe simultaneous with Lethe:

http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/dante/dante_p_28.htm
 But issues from a fountain safe and certain,
 Which by the will of God as much regains
 As it discharges, open on two sides.
 Upon this side with virtue it descends,
 Which takes away all memory of sin;
 On that, of every good deed done restores it.
 Here Lethe, as upon the other side
 Eunoe, it is called; and worketh not
 If first on either side it be not tasted.
 This every other savour doth transcend;

And become thereby the totem trangressing object:

http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/dante/dante_p_28.htm
 God's lofty fiat would be violated,
 If Lethe should be passed, and if such viands
 Should tasted be, withouten any scot
 Of penitence, that gushes forth in tears."

But, who hath believed our report? Cf. Isaiah:

52:14 As many were astonied at thee;
his visage was so marred more than any man,
and his form more than the sons of men:
52:15 So shall he sprinkle many nations;
the kings shall shut their mouths at him:
for that which had not been told them shall they see;
and that which they had not heard shall they consider.
53:1 Who hath believed our report?
and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
53:2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground:
he hath no form nor comeliness;
and when we shall see him,
there is no beauty that we should desire him.
53:3 He is despised and rejected of men;
a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief:
and we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised,
and we esteemed him not.
53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs,
and carried our sorrows:
yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God,
and afflicted.
53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities:
the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed.

Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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