A Little Night Music

....
He quotes, using his fine voice.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

EDMUND
Ironically
Fine!  That's beautiful.  But I wasn't trying to say that.  We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let's drink up and forget it.  That's more my idea.

TYRONE
Disgustedly.
Ach! Keep such sentiments to yourself.  I shouldn't have given you that drink.

EDMUND
It did pack a wallop, all right.  On you, too.
He grins with affectionate teasing.
Even if you've never missed a performance.
Aggressively.
Well, what's wrong with being drunk?  It's what we're after, isn't it?  Let's not kid each other, Papa.  Not tonight.  We know what we're trying to forget.
Hurriedly.
But let's not talk about it.  It's no use now.

TYRONE
Dully.
No.  All we can do is try to be resigned--again.

EDMUND
Or be so drunk you can forget.
He recites, and recites well, with bitter, ironical passion, the Symons' translation of Baudelaire's prose poem.
"Be always drunken.  Nothing else matters: that is the only question.
If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.
Drunken with what?  With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.  But be drunken.
And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, or of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: 'It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.' "
He grins at his father provocatively. 


....

--Long Day's Journey Into Night: Eugene O'Neill



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Enivrez-Vous - Charles Baudelaire Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve. Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous. Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d'un palais, sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous réveillez, l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l'étoile, à l'oiseau, à l'horloge, à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est; et le vent, la vague, l'étoile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, vous répondront: "Il est l'heure de s'enivrer! Pour n'être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps, enivrez-vous; enivrez-vous sans cesse! De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise."