Spleen and Ideal – Ideal and Spleen

In The Artificial Paradises, Baudelaire analyzes both the exalting and destructive effects caused by wine, hashish, and opium. A user can gradually become dependent, and definitively lose his soul. Nevertheless, through an effort of will, an artist like Thomas de Quincey is capable of extracting poetic material from these dangerous experiments. He must then elaborate it in his work, to avoid being swept away by the tumultuous currents of the unconscious.