Advice for those who might be overthinking lockdown: Get Drunk by Charles Baudelaire, as read by Dustin Hoffman, Serge Reggiani and Isabelle Orliac, and as translated by Gary Lee Kraut. (Photo above by GLKraut.)
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I got to rereading Charles Baudelaire’s poem Enivrez-vous (Get Drunk) recently while preparing a forthcoming text for France Revisited about lockdown and wine. Others have also rediscovered Enivrez-vous during lockdown.
While confined to Château Labastide Orliac, the vineyard that sisters Isabelle and Catherine Orliac own in southwest France, Isabelle was also drawn to the poem. The sisters’ May 2020 newsletter includes the video below (video 1) of Isabelle reciting Enivrez-vous while standing with a glass of red wine among the oak barrels in the château’s cellar. (I interviewed Isabelle Orliac for an article in 2011.)
There are many ways to read the poem. Among them, the jazz-piano-accompanied version (video 2) by Serge Reggiani and a Hollywood reading in English by Dustin Hoffman (video 3).
Each of these is recited in a different context and to a different rhythm.
Further below, you’ll find the text in English (my translation) and in French so that you can read the poem aloud in your own context and to your own rhythm.
Enivrez-vous was first published in book form in a posthumous collection of 1869 entitled Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen) or Petits poèmes en prose (Little Prose Poems). Charles Baudelaire died in 1867.
Legal notice: Drink with moderation. Listen and read to the fullest.
Recitation by Isabelle Orliace in the cellar at Château Labastide Orliac, 2020.
Polydor record version by Serge Reggiani, 1980
Hollywood reading by Dustin Hoffman of a version entitled Be Drunken, addressed to Jack Nicholson, 1994.
Get Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire (translation by GLKraut)
Always be drunk. That’s it: it’s the only point. So as not to feel the horrible burden of Time that breaks your shoulders and bends you to the earth, get unabatedly drunk.
But with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But get drunk.
And if at times, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your bedroom, you awaken, drunkenness already diminished or vanished, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of everything that slips away, of everything that groans, of everything that rolls on, of everything that sings, of everything that speaks, ask what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer you: “It is time to get drunk! So as not to be a martyred slave to Time, get incessantly drunk! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please.”
Enivrez-vous
by Charles Baudelaire
Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c’est l’unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l’horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous.
Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d’un palais, sur l’herbe verte d’un fossé, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous réveillez, l’ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l’étoile, à l’oiseau, à l’horloge, à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est; et le vent, la vague, l’étoile, l’oiseau, l’horloge, vous répondront: “Il est l’heure de s’enivrer ! Pour n’être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps, enivrez-vous sans cesse ! De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise.”