Pubdate: Tue, 13 Nov 2001
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education, The (US)
Copyright: 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Contact:  http://chronicle.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/84
Section: Magazines & Journals

A GLANCE AT THE FALL ISSUE OF "SOCIAL RESEARCH": DRUGS AND ART

In an issue on "Altered States of Consciousness," Al Alvarez, a writer and 
literary critic, compares the Romantic opium aficionados of the 18th 
century to the drug-addled beatniks of the '50s and finds the latter sorely 
wanting.

Up to and after the Romantic era, opium was a common household sedative 
used to treat everything from crying babies to toothaches. Mr. Alvarez 
takes pains to point out that this ubiquity robbed opium of any moral 
significance; it was considered a vice only when taken to excess, and even 
then it earned only the same mild censure as excessive drinking. So there 
was little to stop the Romantic poets like Keats and Coleridge from using 
their opiated states to inspire their work. For all their fondness for the 
drug, they thought of it as a key to inspiration.

The beatniks, on the other hand, were well aware of the political 
significance of taking "controlled substances," especially in the 
strait-laced 1950s, and drug experimentation quickly became the center of, 
not incidental to, much of their work. However, with the importance placed 
on "political" drug-taking, art was beside the point, writes Mr. Alvarez. 
As a result, "the lost children of Haight-Ashbury hankered after spiritual 
drama and significance, but lacked the talent, patience, and application 
art requires, and so had to make do with fancy dress and a pose."
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