matt@absolut.UUCP (10/11/85)
I recently bought a copy of _Confessions_of_an_English_Opium_Eater
_and_Other_Writings, a collection of the essays of Thomas DeQuincey.
I have been looking for one for several years, ever since reading
excerpts from _Suspiria_De_Profundis_, the second half of the book.
_Confessions_ is a kind of desultory chronical of DeQuincey's
battle with opium and mental illness. It is remarkable, first on
account of its subject matter, and second because of its prose style.
Dequincey was a curious man; he was a scholar and an
intellectual, he was a street person and a sensualist; he was an
aspiring economist, he was a confirmed mystic; he was profoundly
ambitious and yet ineffectual; he was touchingly gentle and loving
with his family but had a passionate affair with opium.
Of course he tells the story much better.
The other thing that makes this book worthwhile is the
prose style. I have a theory that modern prose style came from the
journalistic practice of sending condensed, and therefore cheaper,
reports over the telegraph, which were then then reconstituted in the
office, devoid of meandering subordinate clauses and supernumerary
vocabulary. Dequicey's writing abounds in both, yet on the whole is
elegant and learned, if in places it is (rightfully) charged with
being turgid and pedantic.
The book abounds in, what can I call it... lore. Much is
peculiar to Dequicey's hallucinations and classical imagination,
while else is obscure facts and myths, reworked into an allegorical
arras of Dequincey's life.
Don't, by the way, read the introduction. It will spoil the
book for you. Also, do not pay too much attention to the copious
footnoting provided by the author, in which much of his pedanticism
comes to the fore. They often lack cohesion with the text, and
detract from the dreamlike rhythm. If your conscience will not allow
you to leave any word unread, they generally stand as well when
read separately, after finishing the book.