Christa Giles

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eager to explore. Drugs had the advantage of being
artificial, inducing sensations and experiences by unnatural
means, and after De Quincey such experiences were often
linked with the orient and exoticism. Wilde had also read
De Quincey, and describes in The Picture of Dorian Gray the
opium dens which provided Dorian with both a means of
escape and new stimuli.
As Dorian climbed up its three rickety steps,
the heavy odour of opium met him. He
heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils
quivered with pleasure…Dorian winced, and
looked round at the grotesque things that lay
in such fantastic postures on the ragged
mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping
mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated
him. He knew in what strange heavens they
were suffering, and what dull hells were
teaching them the secret of some new joy. 426
This yearning for escape, for complete artificiality, was
exemplified by Des Esseintes, who had ˝at one
time…resorted to opium and hashish in the hope of seeing
visions,˝ 427 but because he became ill ˝had been obliged to
stop using them…to ask his brain, alone and unaided, to
carry him far beyond everyday life into the land of
dreams.˝ For it was not merely a desire for escape or a
search for novel sensations, but centrally a concern with the