Audiobook: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater cover

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

1 - 01 – To the Reader

00:00
00:00
SPONSORED AD

Audiobooks Genres

Author

Description

“Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty Opium!”

Though apparently presenting the reader with a collage of poignant memories, temporal digressions and random anecdotes, the Confessions is a work of immense sophistication and certainly one of the most impressive and influential of all autobiographies. The work is of great appeal to the contemporary reader, displaying a nervous (postmodern?) self-awareness, a spiralling obsession with the enigmas of its own composition and significance. De Quincey may be said to scrutinise his life, somewhat feverishly, in an effort to fix his own identity.

The title seems to promise a graphic exposure of horrors; these passages do not make up a large part of the whole. The circumstances of its hasty composition sets up the work as a lucrative piece of sensational journalism, albeit published in a more intellectually respectable organ – the London Magazine – than are today’s tawdry exercises in tabloid self-exposure. What makes the book technically remarkable is its use of a majestic neoclassical style applied to a very romantic species of confessional writing – self-reflexive but always reaching out to the Reader.

You are listening Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Thomas de Quincey.
Liked what you heard? Share it with your friends and family!.
To report a problem or copyright issue, send the page link to the email address listed on our Contact page

Comment

The Share button is completely free of charge

SPONSORED AD