"Absinthe - The Green Goddess", fut rédigé par Aleister Crowley en 1918 dans la légendaire "Old Absinthe House" à la Nouvelle-Orléans.
Crowley y vante les vertus de la liqueur verte, légèrement hallucinogène et se prononce contre la prohibition.
"La Légende de l'Absinthe".....
Ah! the Green Goddess! What is the fascination that makes her so adorable and
so terrible? Do you know that French sonnet "La legende de l’absinthe?" He
must have loved it well, that poet. Here are his witnesses.
"Apollon, qui pleurait le trepas d’Hyacinthe,
Ne voulait pas ceder la victoire a la mort.
Il fallait que son ame, adepte de l’essor,
Trouvat pour la beaute une alchemie plus sainte.
Donc de sa main celeste il epuise, il ereinte
Les dons les plus subtils de la divine Flore.
Leurs corps brises souspirent une exhalaison d’or
Dont il nous recueillait la goutte de—l’Absinthe!
Aux cavernes blotties, aux palis petillants,
Par un, par deux, buvez ce breuvage d’aimant!
Car c’est un sortilege, un propos de dictame,
Ce vin d’opale pale avortit la misere,
Ouvre de la beaute l’intime sanctuaire
Ensorcelle mon coeur, extasie mort ame!"
Ah! the Green Goddess! What is the fascination that makes her so adorable and
so terrible? Do you know that French sonnet "La legende de l’absinthe?" He
must have loved it well, that poet. Here are his witnesses.
Apollo, who mourned at Hyacinthe's demise,
Refused to concede this victory to Death.
Much better that the soul, adept in transformation,
Had to find a holy alchemy for beauty.
Thus with his celestial hand he drained and crushed
The subtlest harvest of the garden goddess,
The broken bodies of the herbs yielding a golden essence
From which we measure out our first drop -- of Absinthe!
In lowly hovels and in glittering courts,
Alone, in pairs, drink up this potion of desire!
For it is sorcery -- as one might say --
When the pale opal wine ends all misery,
Opens beauty's most intimate sanctuary --
- Bewitches my heart, and exalts my soul in ecstasy
"The Prohibitionist must always be a person of no moral character; for he cannot even conceive of the possibility of a man capable of resisting temptation. Still more, he is so obsessed, like the savage, by the fear of the unknown, that he regards alcohol as a fetish, necessarily alluring and tyrannical."(Aleister Crowley - The Green Goddess)
