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L’opium, l’air de la guerre
Le mot « opium » évoque à lui seul un univers mystérieux, une aventure ténébreuse dans un monde parallèle. Utilisé pour ses vertus médicinales ou bien à des fins rituelles, mais aussi bien pire des poisons, l’opium a le privilège de devenir bientôt nécessaire à qui s’y essaie. Rapidement source de commerce entre l’Angleterre et la Chine impériale, l’opium provoqua un conflit international (plus communément appelé « Guerres d’opium ») qui entraîna l’ouverture de la Chine mais aussi son effondrement. En Indochine Française, les Français comprirent le parti financier que l’on pouvait tirer de l’opium qui se vendait à guichet ouvert et créèrent un monopole de l’opium appelé « ferme…
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The Brown Fairy
Nicknamed ‘la fée brune’ (the brown fairy), opium may be less colourful than its friend absinthe, ‘the green fairy’, but it is no less intriguing. Imported from China by sailors in the 19th century, it became widely used in brothels in the port cities of France. But it wasn’t long before this ‘midnight oil’ became the fashionable drug of choice in the French capital. In the glorious years of the Parisian belle époque and then afterwards in the Golden Twenties (or as the French called them, les années folles, the ‘mad years’) opium use seized the artistic circles of society. Infamous opium users include Charles Baudelaire and André Malraux, who…
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Erase the line between Genius and Insanity!
Being labelled a genius puts one precariously close to being pigeonholed as insane. Where insanity is recognised as the repetition of the same action over and over, is genius not finally achieving some far-fetched goal, whether it is in science, maths, or art? History is littered with larger than life talents that we still learn about in our studies and discuss with our peers: Einstein, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, etc. Artists made sketches and drafts of the way the human body works, whether in physical labour or dancing, to better portray the human condition in their paintings. Michelangelo and Degas are not only famous for the Sistine Chapel and Impressionism respectively,…
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