The Romans of the Decadence (detail), by Thomas Couture, 1847. Musée d'Orsay.

The Romans of the Decadence (detail), by Thomas Couture, 1847. Musée d’Orsay.

Intoxication

Volume VI, Number 1 | winter 2012

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Drunken Silenus supported by Satyrs by Anthony van Dyck.

Preamble

Alms for Oblivion

By Lewis H. Lapham

“One should always be drunk,” proclaimed poet Charles Baudelaire. But the question remains, drunk with what?

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Dionysos and his Thiasus, from the circle of the Antimenes Painter.

Fabled Powers

By Sven Birkerts

For an artist, a day of successful inspiration is also a day a systematic intoxication.

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Map

Indigenous Intoxicants

Getting high, around the world.

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Miscellany

Overworked and suffering from chest and stomach conditions, Emperor Marcus Aurelius took a prescription from his physician, Galen, for opium. According to Galen, the emperor did not like that the drug made him drowsy, so he stopped taking it. Then he found himself unable to sleep, so he started taking it again.

1816 | Highgate

The Damsel with a Dulcimer

Samuel Taylor Coleridge takes a trip to Xanadu.More

1674 | London

Nauseous Puddle Water

Englishwomen are through with their coffee-drinking husbands.More

1819 | London

Flight Plan

“Was it a vision, or a waking dream?”More

Charts & Graphs

Music and lyrics featuring drugs and alcohol.

Playlist

Music and lyrics featuring drugs and alcohol.

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Dorothy Parker working at her typewriter.

Black and white photograph of American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath.

Portrait of Scottish biographer and diarist James Boswell.

Photograph of American novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler.

Photograph of American writer William S. Burroughs.

Portrait of English poet John Keats.

German socialist philosopher Friedrich Engels.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

—Ian Dury, 1977

Missing contributor image silhouette

Photograph of American novelist Jack London.

Theognis & Jack London

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

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