Opium and the Romantic Imagination

by Alethea Hayter

Does the habit of taking drugs make authors write better, or worse, or differently? Does it alter the quality of their consciousness, shape their imagery, influence their technique? For the Romantic writers of the nineteenth century, many of whom experimented with opium and some of whom were addicted to it, this was an important question, but it has never been fully answered. In this study Alethea Hayter examines the work of five writers - Crabbe, Coleridge, De Quincey, Wilkie Collins and Francis Thompson - who were opium addicts for many years, and of several other writers - notably Keats, Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire, but also Walter Scott, Dickens, Mrs Browning, James Thomson and others - who are known to have taken opium at times. The work of these writers is discussed in the context of nineteenth-century opinion about the uses and dangers of opium, and of Romantic ideas on the creative imagination, on dreams and hypnagogic visions, and on imagery, so that the idiosyncrasies of opium-influenced writing can be isolated from their general literary background. The examination reveals a strange and miserable region of the mind in which some of the greatest poetic imaginations of the nineteenth century were imprisoned.

Genres: History, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Psychology, Romanticism, Science

388 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 1989

About the author

Hayter was the daughter of Sir William Goodenough Hayter, a legal adviser to the Egyptian government, and his wife, Alethea Slessor, daughter of a Hampshire rector. Her brother, another Sir William Goodenough Hayter, went on to become British ambassador to the Soviet Union and Warden of New College, Oxford, while her sister Priscilla Napier was a biographer.

Hayter spent her early years in Cairo, Egypt, in the years before the First World War, where the three Hayter children were well taught by a governess. The children’s lives changed dramatically when their father died, still in his fifties, and they returned to England in reduced circumstances. Alethea Hayter was only twelve years old. Her sister Priscilla later described their happy childhood in Cairo in her memoir A Late Beginner (1966). The three all won scholarships for their higher education. Hayter was educated at Downe House School, in Berkshire, then under the headship of its founder Olive Willis, and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she arrived in 1929 and went on to graduate BA in modern history. Of her time at Oxford, Hayter later wrote "We were conventional and innocent, though we considered ourselves pioneering and revolutionary — not in politics, we were not much interested in them, but in our preferences in literature, the arts, social values... In our Oxford days, none of us could have boiled a potato, let alone made a soufflé, or would have known an azalea from a stinging nettle."

She never married.

Following her years at Oxford, Hayter was on the editorial staff of Country Life until 1938. During the Second World War she worked in postal censorship in London, Gibraltar, Bermuda, and Trinidad.

In 1945, she joined the British Council, and in 1952 was posted to Greece as an assistant Representative. In 1960, she went to Paris as Deputy Representative and assistant cultural attaché, and her apartment on the Île Saint-Louis became a meeting place for writers and artists. Her last British Council posting was as Representative to Belgium, and she retired in 1971.

She was a member of the governing bodies of the Old Vic and the Sadler's Wells Theatre and of the management committee of the Society of Authors.

Reviews

[Branden William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Opium and the Romantic Imagination is an interesting and brief look at the affect of opium on the creative processes of those who use it. The eight writers whose works were surveyed in this book is extremely varied. They had nothing in common except that they lived in the same century, were imaginative writers, and took opium. In every other way-- literary aims and techniques, degree of genius or talent, beliefs, tastes-- were as different as possible. The main conclusion resulting from these studies, however is the belief that opium works on what is already there in a man's mind and memory. It is a commonly known fact that most nineteenth-century writers have tasted opium, as nearly all children were given it. But opium did not arouse interest until the publishing of Thomas De Quincy's 'The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater', and it was then that opium began to be considered as a separate medical and psychological phenomenon which ought to be studied. De Quincy called himself the Pope of the true church of opium. Till then, even medical writers who had devoted studies to opium had spent little observation on the different effects of addiction and withdrawal from addiction, and on the different symptoms of usage. De Quincy is often blamed, for the terrible fascination of his masterpiece in drawing others to follow his example, however he is not given credit for his advice given which gave to scientific investigations which have helped save other addicts. However you view it, De Quincy became the prophet of opium.

"If a man has a poetic gift, opium almost irresistibly stirs it into utterance." Opium, in fact, had a language and symbolism of its own to the opium-eating writers to whom this book is devoted. All the Romantic writers thought that there was a strong link between dreams and the processes of literary creation, and at about the same time, opium was gaining popularity as a stimulant to increase one's ability to garner these dreams. Cocteau wrote, 'dreams can be a kind of education,' and nearly all poets of the Romantic period made a point of recording their dreams. The whole Gothic revival in literature in fact, was launched by a dream. The book then proceeds to go on explaining the differences between the dream of natural sleep and the opium dream, comparing the two with writing samples of the period.

Aside from a detailed study of the influence of opium in De Quincy's Confessions, Edgar Allen Poe is also examined as a user of laudanum-- and although Poe being also a user of opium is continually questioned to this day-- it is without doubt that he saw hypnagogic visions. Baudelaire's personal experience with opium and hashish is examined, with 'Paradis Artificiels' being the twin peak, along with Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, of the literature of drug addiction. Baudelaire undoubtedly felt that he could learn from Poe the technique of using opium as a literary device. And to magnify the overall theme of the book, Baudelaire, like De Quincy, insisted that drugs only produce interesting states of minds that are already interesting. Goerge Crabbe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wilkie Collins, Keats, and Francis Thompson and their association with opium being used as a tool for their literary pursuits are further analyzed, but not much is made from this dubious evaluation.

Some nineteenth-century writers seem to have felt that other writers who took opium as a stimulus to literary exertion were in some way cheating, like trainers who dope horses to win a race. In the end however, it is concluded that drugs do, to some extent and in some ways, affect the literary imagination; but they give only to those who already have much, they give less than they seem to do, and they take away the power to make use of what they give. In the end, no clear pattern of opium's influence on creative writing-- complete in the work of writers who took opium-- has emerged from this survey of opium and the romantic imagination. Hayter writes what can be written, which is very little, as the personal lives of nineteenth-century writers, like Poe, remain a mystery left open for varied interpretations from modern critics who know next to nothing about opium and its ritualistic operation. Pronounced poets like Baudelaire and Poe paint wild metaphors, basking in the glory of opiate addiction and inspiration, however they never had a reality check themselves. De Quincy is the only artist of the bunch that strikes me as having known the trials and tribulations of opiate addiction. The rest of them simply stand out as having conducted an illusionary dream world...

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming back to this after an interval of forty years I am impressed by how objective Alethea Hayter was able to be when addressing this thorny subject. Focussing on the work of eight writers from the 19th century Hayter attempts to isolate the influence of their opium use in their imagery and subject matter, largely inconclusively I have to say. Her comment in he conclusion is rather telling.

"Their paradises may have been wholly or partly artificial; their hells were real".

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Hayter has written an insightful and rather eerie study about the influence that opium had upon the literary production of several poets who were addicts. These include Thomas de Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Francis Thompson, and Wilkie Collins. Strangely, according to Dr. Hayter, the best evidence we have suggests that Edgar Allan Poe was not an addict, although he probably took the drug at odd intervals. Along the way, the reader is made aware of how pervasive---and horrendous---opium and its usual medium, laudanum, were in England and France during the Romantic period.

[Garry · Rating 2 out of 5]

DROOD, "narrated" by a opium-addicted Wilkie Collins, got me curious....