Misleading Mirrors: The Imaginary of Opiates in Translations of Baudelaire’s "Le Poison" and "Rêve parisien"

Andrada Fatu-Tutoveanu

Due to the attraction opium and its derivates exercised over the 19th century cultural representations, its social as well as its literary imaginary represented the space of confronting the self at the profound level of joining fascination with anxiety. The opiate substances have transgressed during this period different representations, some of them troubled and contradictory, because they were perceived gradually as remedies (pharmakon), drugs (also dual in its inspiring and destructive effects) and poisons (toxikon). During the 19th century, duality had characterized one of the main aspects of opium use, as it led to a dilemmatic perception at all levels: aesthetical, moral, scientific or medical.

The “Infernal Chemistry” of the 19th Century

Andrada Fatu-Tutoveanu


The tradition of a social imaginary on a certain “dangerous/ infernal chemistry” was for centuries related to the mysterious techniques of witchcraft, while, by contrast, the 20th century places addiction in a medical paradigm, associated with legal prohibition. The switch from a mainly religious perspective to a scientific one, which has taken place during the 19th century, signified that the ethical (or theological) and magical imagery and vocabulary were replaced by biological and psychiatric metaphors, such as the notion of temptation, replaced by impulses or drives