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"I imagine a man (shall I say a Brahmin, a poet, or a Christian

philosopher?) seated upon the steep Olympus of spirituality; around him the Muses of Raphael or of

Mategna, to console him for his long fasts and his assiduous prayers, weave the noblest dances, gaze on him

with their softest glances and their most dazzling smiles; the divine Apollo, master of all knowledge (that of

Francavilla, of Albert Dürer, of Goltzius, or another what does it matter? Is there not an Apollo for every

man who deserves one?), caresses with his bow his most sensitive strings; below him, at the foot of the

mountain, in the brambles and the mud, the human fracas; the Helot band imitates the grimaces of enjoyment

and utters howls which the sting of the poison tears from its breast; and the poet, saddened, says to himself:

"These unfortunate ones, who have neither fasted nor prayed, who have refused redemption by the means of

toil, have asked of black magic the means to raise themselves at a single blow to transcendental life. Their

magic dupes them, kindles for them a false happiness, a false light; while as for us poets and philosophers, we

have begotten again our soul upon ourselves by continuous toil and contemplation; by the unwearied exercise

of will and the unfaltering nobility of aspiration we have created for ourselves a garden of Truth, which is

Beauty; of Beauty which is Truth. Confident in the word which says that faith removeth mountains, we have

accomplished the only miracle which God has licensed us to perform."





Baudelaire - The poem of Hashish