Absinthe (Re-) emerging

Funny thing happened the other day.  As part of her anniversary present, my wife gave me a copy of France magazine, a lovely periodical published both in the UK and the US for English-speaking francophiles.  Every article and every photograph makes you realize just how badly you want to go back.  Later, in bed, I was reading the magazine only to realize that I'd read this issue already.  I looked at the cover date: July 2011.  She'd accidentally given me a magazine we already owned.  We'd re-gifted ourselves!  As I looked further into the issue, however, I came across an article I'd somehow missed the first time round: on France's new producers of absinthe.  (In 1988, the EU declared legal again the production and consumption of absinthe, after an 80 year ban.)  The article explained that today's brands of absinthe, while still around 70 proof, have a much lower wormwood content than the brands produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Wormwood, of course, is the ingredient that it is usually credited for giving absinthe, in its heydey, its famously psychoactive quality.   As I wrote in a post many months ago, there is disagreement over the spirit's true psychoactive strength, with some commentators claiming that absinte was, and is, no more potent than any other spirit.  Then again, the France article quotes from distiller Dominique Rousselet as he remembers his first drink of absinthe--produced by the traditional method during the years the ban was still in effect.  "One 

glass--bof!" Rousselet says.  "I was reeling, but reeling.  [My friend] told me to call home to get someone to collect me, but when I got to the phone I couldn't remember my number.  I was too embarrassed to tell him, so I pretended to have a conversation.  It was all over the place, my mind.  My brain was swimming. . . .  I had to confess to my friend that I'd completely forgotten my number.  He had the bright idea of using the phone book.  I could at least remember my name!"

At the turn of the nineteenth century, "the Green Fairy" was widely seen as a destroyer of men, savager of minds, and killer of families.  It was blamed, often with little evidence, for murder, insanity, and a new society of benumbed drunkenness.   As I mentioned in my earlier post, part of absinthe's problem was that producers began making inferior but cheaper versions, sometimes--for the sake of holding down cost--substituting for traditional ingredients ingredients that were less expensive but actually proved poisonous.  Van Gogh lived in Paris exactly during absinthe's height of popularity, and he befriended exactly the bohemian types of people who adored and popularized the spirit.  His name is frequently associated with absinthe.  Indeed, the France article only follows this trend.  Beneath the article's title runs a subheader: "From Van Gogh to Oscar Wilde, artists and writers have been devotees of absinthe for decades."  But there is little actual evidence from Van Gogh's letters that he was an enthusiastic consumer of the spirit.  However, the common perception, I think it is fair to say, is that Van Gogh was addicted to the stuff.  Problem is, Van Gogh would likely not have been introduced to absinthe until he moved to Paris in the mid-1880s.  And the years he lived in Paris he wrote fewer letters than in any other period of his adult life.  Thus, there is precious little primary material available from which to draw conclusions.  I suspect that the myth--if that's what it is--of Van Gogh's absinthe addiction can be traced to an account, written by Paul Gauguin years after the fact, of their last weeks together in Van Gogh's Yellow House in Arles.   Shortly before Van Gogh's infamous December, 1888 breakdown (when he cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute), Van Gogh and Gauguin took a trip to Montepelier to see the Fabre Museum.  What was supposed to be a trip that would renew their friendship turned sour and even turbulent as the housemates argued vociferously over matters of art.  According to Gauguin, that night, in an Arles cafe, and without provocation, Van Gogh stood up and tossed a full glass of absinthe in his face.  A few days later, the "madman" was cutting his own ear off.  The issue here is Gauguin's credibility.  Almost none of what Gauguin writes in his account can be verified.  It isn't backed up by any other source or any eyewitness account.  And all of it--per Gauguin habit--seems designed to make Gauguin come off as brilliantly as possible, and Vincent as badly as possible.  (We know, for instance, that following Vincent's death Gauguin told lies about the extent of his artistic influence over Van Gogh, even taking credit for advising Van Gogh during the composition of Sunflowers, despie the fact that the Sunflowers series was completed long before Gauguin even arrived in Arles!) 

We'll never know the full truth about Van Gogh and absinthe--or Van Gogh and Gauguin, for that matter--but it's clear that certain myths are bound to remain.  

Indicting the Green Fairy?

If you're a regular reader of this blog you know that I recently attended the 2010 AWP conference in Denver, and at the amazing AWP book fair I purchased a book called Absinthe, Sip of Seduction: A Contemporary Guide. It's really turned out to be a wonderful resource as I try to find out more about this infamously favorite drink (nicknamed "The Green Fairy") of the Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painters living in 19th century Paris. If nothing else, the book has shown me how silly I was to just drink absinthe straight up, as I did the first time. (See my earlier post about that experiment.) Not only is that not the traditional or typical way to imbibe absinthe, but it's strongly cautioned against by the authors of this book. To quote: "drinking absinthe neat can result in gratuitous tears and choking due to the intense and bitter taste." (Yes, indeed.)

The book has also provided much useful information about the supposed connection between absinthe and madness, a connection made all the more popular given the particular form of "madness" that infected Van Gogh starting in December, 1888. Some commentators have tried to claim that it was absinthe that undid Van Gogh, but--as Sip of Seduction points out--this is a difficult case to make, because we can't be sure whether or not Van Gogh drank much absinthe at all. It certainly was the favorite drink among many artists and writers living in Paris in the late 1800s, and it was certainly a favorite of Paul Gauguin, who eventually became one of the most important people in Van Gogh's life. But no one knows how much of the stuff Van Gogh actually drank. It comes up hardly at all in his letters, but then again Van Gogh wrote comparatively few letters during his time in Paris (because the man he wrote most of his letters to was now his housemate). When he left Paris, he did claim that his health was poor and that if he had stayed he might have become an alcoholic. But he did not attest to any special attraction to absinthe. Most people who have looked into Van Gogh's condition (apparently a rare form of epilepsy) claim multiple contributing factors: poor eating habits, years of working himself to the point of exhaustion, a series of emotional crises, a diet consisting mainly of coffee and pipe tobacco, the unavoidable inhalation of fumes from paints and thinners, and--most particularly--a family history of mental illness.

That said, some very interesting facts appear in Sip of Seduction. Apparently, the psychoactive power of wormwood (absinthe's key ingredient) has been greatly exaggerated to the point of mythology, but during the heyday of absinthe's popularity, some manufacturers of inferior quality product added poisonous colorants to artificially bring about the famous glowing green shade of the real thing. According to the book: "commonly used harmful adulterants included copper salts, aniline dye, and turmeric . . . These cheap, toxic absinthes were common fare among those of lower socioeconomic status in urban areas." I think it's safe to say that struggling painters can be counted among the lower socioeconomic classes. Also intriguing is that, even before Van Gogh had a reputation of any kind at all, it was noticed that certain drinkers of absinthe demonstrated odd behaviors: "erratic mood shifts, disconcerting tic disorders, and in some cases blindness." As public opinion turned against the spirit, it began to be blamed for a whole range of symptoms: "convulsions . . . sleeplessness, tremors, and hallucinations." Even epilepsy! Whether absinthe abuse (as opposed to alcohol addiction generally) was uniquely responsible for such behaviors and conditions, it's certainly is true that hallucinations, erratic mood shifts, tremors, and convulsions were demonstrated by Van Gogh during his attacks.

So am I saying absinthe really was the culprit in Van Gogh's case? No, not at all. He had so much stacked against him to begin with--something I try to emphasize in my novel--that he did not need an alcoholic spirit to push him over the edge. He went there, I'm pretty well sure, all on his own.

Absinthe update

Following my entry last week about absinthe my friend and UCA Writing colleague Robin Becker reminded me that I should have included a sugar cube in my absinthe preparations. The traditional method of preparation includes placing a slotted spoon over a glass containing a shot of absinthe. On the spoon is a sugar cube. One then pours water over the sugar cube and the water runs through the slots into the glass. Components in the absinthe are in this way released, enhancing both the flavor and the aroma. Apparently, too, the licorice taste is not quite so overpowering. Thanks, Robin. I guess I'll have to give absinthe another shot. Literally! (It can only get better.) There's no denying the popularity of this spirit, especially in 19th century Europe. On the other hand, about the word abstinthe one article states: "Some claim that the word means 'undrinkable' in Greek." True or not, I can sympathize. Even so, before I'm done revising my Van Gogh novel, I'll need to give this spirit another try.

Absinthe experiment

The duties that fall to fiction writers. Especially historical fiction writers. First, let me clarify that when it comes to alcoholic drinks I'm pretty much all wine and beer these days. Sure, I drank rum and cokes at college football games, whiskey sours at southern Maryland weddings, pina colodas at the beach, hurricanes in New Orleans, martinis in Long Island. I eagerly tested varieties of Scotch when I visited a distillery on my honeymoon. And I won't turn down a good margarita anywhere. But I'm basically all wine and beer. So it was curiosity when this weekend, for the sake of my Van Gogh novel, I took my first taste of absinthe. I've known for a while that I needed to get around to doing this. Absinthe was famously, or maybe infamously, the drink of choice for Van Gogh and a number of the painters he ran with. (In fact, it may have been Gauguin who, in Paris, got him started on it.) I think Van Gogh's reputation as borderline alcoholic has been vastly overstated to the point of mythology--and when it came to alcohol he certainly did not only drink absinthe--but I do show him sipping the stuff in a few scenes in my book. I even describe its taste, its sensation, its effects on mouth and mind. This without ever having tried the stuff! I knew that somewhere in the drafting process that tomfoolery had to stop. So recently I plopped down 30+ (!) dollars for a small, slim bottle of the stuff, assured by the clerk at the liquor store that this was a particularly smooth brand. (Or maybe that was my interpretation of what he said.)

Absinthe has, or least once had, a reputation as a dangerously psychoactive drug. In fact, for a time it was banned in the United States. This reputation explains in part why people associate it so readily with Van Gogh. (One brand is actually named after him.) Its psychoactive reputation, it turns out, is vastly exaggerated--it's no more psychoactive than any stiff spirit--but the reputation persists. I had a student freak out one time during a discussion of Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" when he realized the man and woman were drinking absinthe. "Isn't that like a mind altering drink?" he kept saying. "Doesn't it make you see things?" For him, the presence of absinthe in the story lead to a very different reading. What is true is that absinthe is bottled at a high proof and traditionally served with water, with which the consumer can dilute it. With some trepidation--a friend who likes absinthe describes its effect as opening a direct corridor between mouth and brain--I went ahead and just sipped the stuff straight. Yeow! This "smooth" brand tasted like a glass of kerosene set on fire and served with licorice as a swizzle stick. (That's the anise in it.) I could only make it through about half a shot's worth, and that was enough. I threw the rest down the drain. Next time, I guess I'll add water. I can't say for sure whether Vincent did or didn't drink it straight, but I can tell you, with memory of my tonsils burning, I'm really ready now to bolster my description.