Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written. The ecstasies and
horrors of De Quincey and the paradis artificiels of Baudelaire are preserved
and interpreted with an art which makes them immortal, and the world knows well
the beauty, the terror and the mystery of those obscure realms into which the
inspired dreamer is transported. But much as has been told, no man has yet dared
intimate the nature of the phantasms thus unfolded to the mind, or hint at the
direction of the unheard-of roads along whose ornate and exotic course the
partaker of the drug is so irresistibly borne. De Quincey was drawn back into
Asia, that teeming land of nebulous shadows whose hideous antiquity is so
impressive that "the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth
in the individual," but farther than that he dared not go. Those who have gone
farther seldom returned, and even when they have, they have been either silent
or quite mad. I took opium but once -- in the year of the plague, when doctors
sought to deaden the agonies they could not cure. There was an overdose -- my
physician was worn out with horror and exertion -- and I travelled very far
indeed. In the end I returned and lived, but my nights are filled with strange
memories, nor have I ever permitted a doctor to give me opium again.
The pain and pounding in my head had been quite unendurable when the drug was
administered, Of the future I had no heed; to escape, whether by cure,
unconsciousness, or death, was all that concerned me. I was partly delirious, so
that it is hard to place the exact moment of transition, but I think the effect
must have begun shortly before the pounding ceased to be painful. As I have
said, there was an overdose; so my reactions were probably far from normal. The
sensation of falling, curiously dissociated from the idea of gravity or
direction, was paramount; though there was subsidiary impression of unseen
throngs in incalculable profusion, throngs of infinitely di-verse nature, but
all more or less related to me. Sometimes it seemed less as though I were
falling, than as though the universe or the ages were falling past me. Suddenly
my pain ceased, and I began to associate the pounding with an external rather
than internal force. The falling had ceased also, giving place to a sensation of
uneasy, temporary rest; and when I listened closely, I fancied the pounding was
that of the vast, inscrutable sea as its sinister, colossal breakers lacerated
some desolate shore after a storm of titanic magnitude. Then I opened my eyes.
For a moment my surroundings seemed confused, like a projected image hopelessly
out of focus, but gradually I realised my solitary presence in a strange and
beautiful room lighted by many windows. Of the exact nature of the apartment I
could form no idea, for my thoughts were still far from settled, but I noticed
van-coloured rugs and draperies, elaborately fashioned tables, chairs, ottomans,
and divans, and delicate vases and ornaments which conveyed a suggestion of the
exotic without being actually alien. These things I noticed, yet they were not
long uppermost in my mind. Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness
and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown; a
fear all the greater because I could not analyse it, and seeming to concern a
stealthily approaching menace; not death, but some nameless, unheard-of thing
inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.
