Laurent Tailhade was a French satirical poet, anarchist polemicist, essayist, and translator, active in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in the 1890s and early 1900s. His most well-known poetry collections, Au Pays du mufle (1891) and Imbéciles et gredins (1900) have retained their insulting wit and verve, which blends the street slang of the outer faubourg

Faubourg

Faubourg is an ancient French term approximating "suburb" . The earliest form is Forsbourg, derived from Latin foris, 'out of', and Vulgar Latin burgum, 'town' or 'fortress'...

s (suburbs) of Paris with the rich language of a broad-ranging culture.

Career

Tailhade's family, which included a number of magistrates and government officers, tried to push him into a bourgeois marriage, in the hopes that the genteel boredom of family life in the provinces would prevent him from taking up a bohemian

Bohemian

A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...

 artists' lifestyle. Upon the death of his wife, Tailhade moved away from the hinterlands and took up residence in Paris, where he began the bohemian city lifestyle he had always hoped for, consuming opium

Opium

Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...

 and befriending the poets Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine

Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...

, Jean Moréas

Jean Moréas

Jean Moréas , was a Greek poet, essayist, and art critic, who wrote mostly in the French language but also in Greek during his youth.-Background:...

 and Albert Samain

Albert Samain

Albert Victor Samain was a French poet and writer of the Symbolist school.Born in Lille, his family were Flemish and had long lived in the town or its suburbs. At the time of the poet's birth, his father, Jean-Baptiste Samain, and his mother, Elisa-Henriette Mouquet, conducted a business in "wines...

.

Tailhade soon developed an anarchist and anticlerical attitude in his poems and polemic essays. His polemical writings led him to be lambasted by the press and resulted in him being jailed for a year on the charge of "provoking murder". After December 1893, Tailhade became well-known (albeit notoriously so) after he proclaimed his admiration for a terrorist attack by an anarchist

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

 named Vaillant. After Vaillant attacked the Chamber of Deputies

Chamber of Deputies of France

Chamber of Deputies was the name given to several parliamentary bodies in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:* 1814–1848 during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, the Chamber of Deputies was the Lower chamber of the French Parliament, elected by census suffrage.*...

, Tailhade scandalized the Parisian bourgeoisie with his statement, "Qu'importe la victime si le geste est beau," which translates as "Who cares about the victim if the gesture [of the violent act] is beautiful."

In an ironic twist, Tailhade was himself the victim of an unrelated terrorist attack several months later, when a bomb was exploded at a restaurant Tailhade was in. Although the explosion destroyed one of Tailhade's eyes, he did not recant his support for the anarchists; indeed, he continued to state his support for anarchism with renewed vigour.

Later in life he met the young English poet Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...

, who was working for nearly two years from 1913 at Bordeaux as an English language tutor. The two men later corresponded in French, before Owen was killed on military service in 1918.

Opium addiction

While living in Paris, Tailhade became addicted to opium. His article on morphine

Morphine

Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...

 addiction, La Noir Idole (The Dark Idol), draws its title from Thomas de Quincey

Thomas de Quincey

Thomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...

 who called the laudanum

Laudanum

Laudanum , also known as Tincture of Opium, is an alcoholic herbal preparation containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight ....

 opium

Opium

Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...

 preparation he was addicted to "La Noire Idole". Tailhade's article, which describes the effects of opium consumption and addiction, acknowledged that more Parisian poets used alcohol

Alcohol

In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

 or absinthe

Absinthe

Absinthe is historically described as a distilled, highly alcoholic beverage. It is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from herbs, including the flowers and leaves of the herb Artemisia absinthium, commonly referred to as "grande wormwood", together with green anise and sweet fennel...

 (la muse verte - the green muse) than morphine, such as Édouard Dubus and Stanislas de Guaita (lovers of alcohol), and Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine

Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...

 and Musset (adepts of the 'green muse' - absinthe).

Nevertheless, Tailhade stated that some French poets did use morphine and opium. In addition to Tailhade, the poet Baudelaire used substantial amounts of opium. The French poet Stanislas de Guaita

Stanislas de Guaita

Stanislas de Guaita was a French poet based in Paris, an expert on esotericism and European mysticism, and an active member of the Rosicrucian Order. He was very celebrated and successful in his time. He was an expert on magic and occultism. He had many disputes with other people who were involved...

, an expert on esotericism

Esotericism

Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...

 and European mysticism, published a collection of poems in 1883 entitled The Dark Muse, and penned a poem in honour of the opium poppy

Opium poppy

Opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is the species of plant from which opium and poppy seeds are extracted. Opium is the source of many opiates, including morphine , thebaine, codeine, papaverine, and noscapine...

:

Salut, flore équivoque !

Dompteuses des douleurs,

Salut, à fleurs !

Soyez bénis, en somme,

Sucs, qui versez à l'homme

Au visage pâli

Le calme oubli.

(Greetings, two-faced flower!

Tamer of our pains

Greetings, to flowers!

Be blessed, with rest,

Nectar, which gives to men

With withered faces

A peaceful calm)

Tailhade’s article discusses many different detoxification methods used by physicians and sanatora, and it explains how the different methods try to help the addict deal with the pain, cold sweats and anxiety of morphine withdrawal. Tailhade pointed out that it was not only bohemian artists and poets that were under the thrall of the 'dark muse'; he lists several prominent politicians from the 1880s who used morphine, such as General Boulanger and the Prince of Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...

.

Tailhade’s article describes the experience of opium using rich, expressive language. He states that on taking opium, users feel a warm sensation of intoxication that envelops them in an océan de délices (an ocean of intense pleasures), a lune de miel (honeymoon) of recueillement voluptueux (voluptuous meditation) in which they float above their everyday lives and forget their anxieties. Tailhade claims that morphine does not cause dreams, visions or an intellectual enhancement to the user; instead, morphine shows the user less-known parts of the user’s own imagination, memories and personality.

Books about Tailhade

• Laurent Tailhade ou De la provocation considérée comme un art de vivre. Gilles Picq, 2001, Maisonneuve & Larose, 828 p
• . Mercure de France, 1924.
• Laurent Tailhade Au Pays Du Mufle. Quignon, 1927. Memoirs written by his wife.
• Les plus belles pages de Laurent Tailhade. Quignon, 1928.

See also

• Anarchism
  Anarchism
  Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
  
  
• Aestheticization of violence
  Aestheticization of violence
  The aestheticization of violence in high culture art or mass media is the depiction of or references to violence in what Indiana University film studies professor Margaret Bruder calls a "stylistically excessive," "significant and sustained way." When violence is depicted in this fashion in films,...