Get drunk yourself [1]

Charles Baudelaire [2]

Translated by xia23

One must always get drunk. That is it: that is the unique question. So not to feel the horrible burden of time which breaks down your shoulders down and bends you to the ground, you must get drunk unceasingly.

But with what?  With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, just you like, but get drunk yourself.

And if sometimes, on the steps from a palace, on green grass of a ditch, in gloomy solitude of your home, you wake up, the intoxication already diminished or disappeared, ask for the wind, the wave, the star,  the bird, the clock, everything that flees, everything that moans, everything that rolls, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will answer: “it is the time to get drunk! Not to be the martyred slaves of time, get drunk, get drunk without stop! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, just as you like”

[1]. p. 71. Enivrez-vous. Better Reading French. Annie Heminway. McGraw Hill. New York … Toronto. 2003.

[2]. Charles Baudelaire. 4/9/1821 – 8/31/1867. French poet and critic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire's Enivrez-vous, read by Isabelle Orliac on youtube: