Jan 06 2009
A year of temperance
So the readings went. The suggestion was to be “temperate”, like Shakespeare’s summer’s day, or like a good old Christian interpreting the Bible that nobody wrote. Temperance, that was what 2008 was about.
Edgar Allan Poe became a member of the Sons of Temperance societies in August 1849. Based on the graph above, the meaning of temperance in this case would be sobriety. How else could it be, considering that Poe was an alcoholic? Strangely enough, when the word temperance comes to mind, that meaning in English is almost lost to me. Yes, the word “sober” can also be used as “proper” or “controlled” to some extent. But is a non-alcoholic somebody “controlled” or “proper”, or is (s)he simply a dry drunk?
This brings me back to the question of temperance, and the “no-no” state in the world of alcoholics…what nobody likes to be called: dry drunk. From what I understood, a dry drunk is the person who stops drinking alcohol but remains an alcoholic in behavior and lifestyle. Technically, then, you would stop being an alcoholic when you no longer consume alcohol but…is alcohol the worst of your issues, or only a good cover-up for what you do not want to deal with? If that is the case, we are all technically alcoholics, no matter whether we drink only water, as we all have issues we do not want to face. Now, are we all dry drunks? I guess most of us are, partially, in one way or another.
With the last day of December gone only a week ago, I would officially declare my year of temperance gone. I have now become acquainted with wet and dry drunkenness, and this has opened a new question for 2009. In what way am I a dry drunk?
Good old Poe probably had a poem (nothing better than having your name embedded in the noun denoting your profession to be a master) for this, or more. I dare myself to open that technical recueil on the man that I once rescued from a dusty shelf down near Port Royal RER B station as I fight off sleep and the melancholy of my good ol’ C having flown herself off to Brisbane (even when it would have never worked between us…but what the hell?)
And he has, as poetry always does, an answer:
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow –
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
Woolfian: Será que “dry drunk”, es una categoría, un puente que inventaron para la aceptación aquellos seres tan dignos de la desconfianza del mundo, que son los abstemios……no lo sé, pero es probable.
Como a mi todo esto de la templanza más que a POE me resuena a Platón, no me animo a seguir pensando o interpretando las respuestas de poeta, o las preguntas (da lo mismo), porque no hay nada más peligroso que buscar pensando.
De cualquier modo siempre es refrescante encontrarse a Poe y sus fantasmas en una mañana que anuncia un infierno, digamos que es todo un detalle.
La saludo con el 2009 aun naciendo
Emi,
I think the “dry drunk” is the norm, but some of us have a potential agreement with addictions to liquid or solid substances, and we only let them go as far as we consider necessary. After all, the famous saying claims wet drunks are those who tell the truth, not dry ones. Being dry only puts aggression and awareness on a different level, I believe, in some cases channeling it into something positive and, in many others, transforming it into its contained self (therefore, much worse because it is delusional).
I don’t know if Poe had an answer to life’s woes, I think he was honest and simply capitulated — bottle or no bottle. Therefore, I would say he had more questions than anything else. That is why I agree with that dream within a dream vision of his in the quote. We are what we dream we are. How far away from ourselves our illusion is…well, that’s another question, but you already know, don’t you?
Thanks for stopping by, as usual. I hope your hell has had some air conditioning…
A kiss to you,
W.
The well tempered hapsichord???? One of the great masterpieces. And my favorite, as a matter of fact.
Peace, order, creativity. That’s all what we should know about the (new) cardinal vitues.
Regards
Miss Fiamma, I knew you had great taste in music, so the well-tempered Bach is only a natural choice for you (you are only missing Zelenka, if you haven’t approached the man yet…fascinating). And yes, you are right, Bach left a highly creative form of temperance as a legacy.
I completely agree with the new cardinal virtues. However, I guess peace and order worked differently for Poe than they did for Jane Austen….and yet I like them both, each in his and her own way.
May variety have us all grow up to be enlightened beings!
Regards,
W.