Padd Solutions

...but I've forgotten it. So instead, I'll post this poem by Charles Baudelaire that my first college professor gave us at 9am on our first day of college, in my freshman seminar. It's called "Get Drunk."

***

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters;
that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's
horrible burden one which breaks your shoulders and bows

you down, you must get drunk without cease.

But with what?
With wine, poetry, or virtue
as you choose.
But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on steps of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the bleak solitude of your room,
you are waking and the drunkenness has already abated,
ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the clock,
all that which flees,
all that which groans,
all that which rolls,
all that which sings,
all that which speaks,
ask them, what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,
they will all reply:

"It is time to get drunk!

So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,
get drunk, get drunk,
and never pause for rest!
With wine, poetry, or virtue,
as you choose!"

***

Wouldn't "The Martyred Slaves of Time" be a good name for an emo or speed metal band, if one were into those types of music?

As for the poem: I've had a love-hate relationship with it since that cold September day in Vermont, and I think that's what the professor intended. At first I thought, Awesome! A respected French poet I know nothing about is exhorting a bunch of college kids to drink, and the professor is tacitly agreeing with him simply by giving it to us!

But later, in moments "in the darkness of my room" when the drunkenness was abating and I felt myself waking up, I turned on it, often severely depressed. This can't be right; this fucker's betrayed me! This isn't a way to live. It's a way to become a morose Frenchman!

t Still later, and now as well, I came to a different, more mature conclusion: I didn't know how to read poetry. I still don't, but I think I can do so better now. The key to this poem is to unpack the meaning of drunkenness: it isn't Busch Light-induced mayhem, running through cow pastures naked and tipping over milk cows only to wake the next day, massively guilty. Conversely, it isn't the melancholy of an artiste, either. What I think Charles was getting at is the wonder you seem to regain when you're drunk; it's child-like in the best way. All is interesting, all draws you in seemingly effortlessly, and you're not embarrassed about it for fear of not looking like an adult.

Think about it: when you're really fascinated by something, do you stop and ponder how much time you're wasting, "Time's horrible burden"? No! You don't give a shit!

Baudelaire wants us to feel that wonder, and feel it all the time.