Hermitage - Picasso, Pablo - Absinthe drinker
Picasso has more than one painting dedicated to absinthe. In June 1901, the genius demonstrated his “Absinthe Drinker” to connoisseurs of beauty. Unlike the canvases of other artists who knew a lot about absinthe, Picasso's lady drinks a wormwood drink with sugar, and not just diluting it with water. In the autumn of 1901, Pablo Picasso continues the absinthe theme and creates another “Absinthe Drinker” (the second name of the painting is “Aperitif”). This painting is kept in the Hermitage.
Description of the painting by Pablo Picasso “Absinthe Drinker”
The stunning painting The Absinthe Drinker was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1901. This alcoholic drink was quite popular in the society of that time, and artists quite often depicted him on their canvases. Picasso liked to draw what excited people: women, wars, or, as it is here, absinthe.
In the center is a woman of middle age, spending the evening in bitter loneliness, drinking alcohol. Picasso liked to immerse his heroes in an imaginary world, as he himself was in it all his conscious life. There is an assumption that the woman depicted in the picture is directly related to art, since this drink was highly popular among creative workers, including.
From the picture breathes sadness and longing. The woman is pensive, her gaze is directed downwards, she is deeply immersed in her thoughts. Only two objects are depicted on the table: a bottle and a glass. There are no serving elements, and there is also no food. The very pose of the woman screams its drama. Her right hand, with which she hugs herself, is unnaturally long in size, as if she wants to hug herself even more and protect herself from all troubles and misfortunes.
The woman's face has an angular shape. She has rather thin eyebrows and lips, behind which, if you look closely, there is a kind of sarcastic smile. Picasso painted a figure completely immobilized, the woman froze in her pensive pose and is clearly already so for a long time. This is evidenced by the glass set aside.
The picture has an interesting color scheme: brown and dark colors predominate. blue colors. Such paints were not chosen by the artist by chance. The author wanted to emphasize the difference between expected and actual, between human life and circumstances.
A little about absinthe.
Absinthe can undoubtedly be called the professional drink of intellectuals, artists and poets. In the 19th century, it was believed that absinthe was a genius for mediocrity, but death for true genius. In the 80s XIX years centuries, one word "absinthe" caused panic in many respectable Europeans, because this drink in their minds was strongly associated with madness. In France, absinthe was called "madness in a bottle", and the phrase "Absinthe drives you crazy" became the most popular slogan of anti-alcohol campaigns.
Pablo Picasso "The Absinthe Drinker" (1901).
Canvas, oil. 73 x 54 cm
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
In french art early 20th century interest in "vicious" characters was great, Picasso has many predecessors, especially the influence of Toulouse-Lautrec should be noted. In many works of painting, the theme of absinthe sounds, a drink that has become a kind of fetish of Paris at the turn of the century. This strong wormwood tincture, the “green fairy”, was attributed special qualities: people who allegedly got hooked on it suffer not from simple alcoholism, but from its special “sublime” form, and plunge into the world of hallucinations and fantasies.
So thematically, Picasso is still moving within the framework of the “mainstream” of the era. However, in the images created by the young artist, there is a heightened drama. So, in this canvas, the hypertrophied brush is especially striking. right hand, which, immersed in her thoughts, a woman seems to be trying to embrace and protect herself.
“The Absinthe Drinker”, kept in the Hermitage, was painted later, in the autumn of 1901. The painting has another name - “Aperitif”. The source of its current name was an entry in the Kahnweiler archive, where the canvas is designated as “Woman with a glass of absinthe” (La femme au verre d`abssinthe). It was from Kanweiler that our compatriot Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin bought this work. He met Picasso back in 1905 or 1906, but did not immediately accept his work. For the first time he bought a painting by the artist in 1909, and by 1914 he had 51 works by the master in his collection. Perhaps no other private collector has managed to collect so many works. After the revolution, S. I. Shchukin emigrated, and his collection, nationalized in 1918, was divided between the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum.
Title, english: The absinthe drinker.
original name
: La buveuse d "absinthe.
Year of ending: 1901.
Dimensions: 73 × 54 cm.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Location: St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum
The picture was painted in 1901, this is the period (1900-1904), when the master travels a lot along the Barcelona-Paris route before finally moving to France. He works hard, attends exhibitions, meets new people, including art dealers.
Yielding to the general mood, the artist, in his works, uses a plot that was popular at that time - a lonely visitor to a cafe, who is also addressed by the Impressionists.
It is worth noting that during this period, Picasso does not consider it necessary to portray fun, universal joy, happiness, frivolity. The abandonment of man in this world is the main motive that excites the young Picasso.
"Absinthe drinker" is a lonely visitor to the cafe, drinking drink, which immerses a person in a world of peculiar fantasies and hallucinations, because at the turn of the century absinthe became a kind of fetish in Paris. Even some mystical and magical properties were attributed to him, prompting creativity and a new perception of the world.
The impression that the picture makes on the viewer is incredible in its emotional load. There is no narration as such, there is only a peculiar plot - a naked psychological image, and outwardly - this is an angular, tired face, a gloomy, devastated look, nervous hands with which the heroine tries to protect herself from surrounding reality. Her face is concentrated, her gaze seems to be exploring something inside herself. But if you look at the picture for a long time, it seems that the woman is looking into the soul of the viewer, carefully studying and thinking about something.
On the lips - a semblance of a smile, a strange sarcasm, expressing doom and fatigue. The thoughts of a woman are far from this table, from this cafe - a haven for homeless people like her. Yes, no one needs them in this world. She closed herself in, retired with herself, and only absinthe shares her existence.
The coloring of the canvas is impressive. The contrast of colors is like a contrast life situations. The combination of rich blue and deep burgundy colors give the canvas an atmosphere of calm, but at the same time, internal struggle. A black stripe separates the corner of the cafe where the heroine ended up, or maybe this is a dead end corner?
The picture is characterized by heightened drama, which is expressed in the image of the hypertrophied right hand. The woman seems to be trying to protect herself from everything in this uncomfortable world. Picasso deliberately distorts the arms and fingers, making them excessively long, shoulders more rounded. It's not external, but rather internal. psychological characteristics an image that expresses the amazingly powerful drama of loneliness. The plasticity of the body is constrained, frozen, as if petrified.
The color of the canvas is a combination of green, brown-red, blue tones, the approach of the plane of the table and the wall to the viewer, resembles the manner of Gauguin, the intensity of the canvas is similar to the work of Van Gogh.
"Absinthe drinkers" refers to the "blue period" of Picasso's work. His paintings are made in cold colors, dominated by bluish-gray, blue hues. The main plots are the theme of loneliness, poverty, old age, death, decadent moods.
Picasso painted more than one painting on the theme of absinthe. In June 1901, the world saw the Absinthe Drinker with a sugar cube in her hands. In the autumn of the same year, a canvas was created called "Aperitif", or (according to the Kahnweiler archive), "Woman with a glass of absinthe". It was this work that Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin bought, and later collected 51 works in his collection worldwide. famous master. After the revolution, his collection was nationalized and dispersed among the funds of the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum.
You are poison, mixed with ambrosia
Your delicate aroma intoxicates me!
You are a poet, I listened in amazement
You are crucified on the cross by your dream!
With you again I'm drowning in the hazy fog
Vulnerable with repentance, consumed by emptiness
Love I pray - light up a radiant star
In the gloomy abyss, above the leaden darkness!
Charles Baudelaire
Absinthe can hardly be called just an alcoholic drink. Even though he does not have
such centuries of history, as, for example, wine, absinthe has earned the right to be called
separate unique phenomenon in world culture.
Portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris (1912)
At times belle epoch The Green Fairy is a nickname given for its characteristic color.
- was a favorite drink of bohemia in Paris. Drinking absinthe was peculiar
ritual, symbolizing the transition into the evening.
Glass of absinthe 1910
The effect of drinking absinthe can be the most diverse: calm relaxation,
unusual vivacity, euphoria, sudden laughter, aggression, hallucinations, impaired
vision, changing colors.
Pablo Picasso The Absinthe Drinker 1901
The "Green Fairy" (or, according to Paul Verlaine, the "Green Witch") was sung among others
Arthur Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway, immortalized on their canvases Edgar
Degas, Edouard Manet, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh and others
Edgar Degas Absinthe (In a cafe) 1873
Édouard Manet The Absinthe Drinker 1859
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Drinking Absinthe at Grenelle 1886
Vincent van Gogh Still Life with Absinthe 1887
Jean-Francois Raffaelli Drinking Absinthe 1881
But still, when it comes to the relationship of this drink to painting, one hardly comes to mind.
Not the first to come is Pablo Picasso's Absinthe Drinker.
The young Spaniard was fortunate enough to live in Paris at a time when it was possible to
fully enjoy all the delights of bohemian life, including trips to brothels in the company
the same semi-poor artists and the unhindered use of absinthe.
But Picasso will move to the French capital only in 1904, but for now he constantly
runs between Paris and Barcelona, working like hell and suffering from lack of money
and disorder. "Absinthe drinker" is born precisely in this period,
which, for all intents and purposes, cannot be called happy. In 1903, Picasso will write
"Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto", whose hero is depicted at a table in front of
a glass of absinthe.
Pablo Picasso Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto 1903
In 1912, the artist will again perpetuate his favorite drink in
cubist work "Perno bottle and glass".
Pablo Picasso Cafe Table
And finally, in 1914, a year before the "green fairy" was banned in France,
Picasso creates the glass of absinthe sculpture.
Pablo Picasso Glass of absinthe 1914 Bronze, Clay
Before the legalization of the drink in European countries the artist did not survive.
"Absinthe Drinker" does not differ in the original plot. Lonely people at the table
cafes before and after Picasso were depicted by many painters. However, in the execution
Spanish artist this trivial scene takes on an imprint deep drama.
In the pictures " blue period"(" Blue period "is considered the first in the work
Picasso. The young artist came to conquer Paris in 1901 and in the same year lost
his close friend Carlos Casamegas, who committed suicide.
Gloomy painting with tragic characters.) Picasso will repeatedly portray
people similar to the heroine of this canvas
Pablo Picasso Harlequin and his Girlfriend (Itinerant Gymnasts) 1901
Pablo Picasso Absinthe
on the other hand, it gives the impression of a compressed spring. The surrounding space is
would squeeze her from all sides, and she wraps herself around herself with unnaturally long
fingers, as if he wants to take up as little space as possible. This effect of "invisibility"
only reinforces the feeling of rejection, loneliness among the crowd, which at least once
experienced by most people in their lives.
In the left corner of Pablo Picasso's Absinthe Drinker, the frame of the mirror and the semi-abstract reflections in it are very important detail, reminiscent of the presence of some other inhabitants of the institution, scurrying about before the eyes of the heroine, while she herself froze in immobility and does not notice anyone.
Single woman
In early 1901, Pablo Picasso turns to the image of a woman drinking a glass of absinthe, which leads him to create a whole series of three works. The first was "Absinthe" (private collection), where a woman of the southern type, most likely not a Parisian, who entered a cafe from a winter street, Picasso gives a somewhat predatory and wary look.
Pablo Picasso
Absinthe
1901
Cardboard, oil. 67.3x52
Private collection
Bridgeman/Fotodom
The left hand is put to her ear (she listens to something), the right hand puts a piece of sugar in a glass of absinthe. The style is tense, betraying an acquaintance with the art of Vincent van Gogh. In the same year, Picasso again turns to this image, choosing a completely different type of heroine. A woman, this time from a northern warehouse (everyone is drawn to Paris), is shown against a yellow, as if electrified background, where the contours of dancing, closely interwoven figures are visible.
Pablo Picasso
Absinthe
1901
Paper, gouache, pastel
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
This scene of the second plan, apparently, does not take place in a real cafe, but in the inflamed mind of a woman (an absinthe-induced hallucination). Thus, a glass of absinthe in the foreground becomes the key to understanding the plot. However, this composition did not fully satisfy the artist. He had to take one more step to achieve incredible conciseness and unexpected pictorial expressiveness. The new composition was undoubtedly associated with The Cafe at Arles by Paul Gauguin, then in the gallery of Ambroise Vollard.
Acquaintance with this work reveals several details at once - a blue siphon in the foreground and a brownish-red background of the wall, a dark-haired woman's hairstyle, one-color dark clothes. The picture is unusual in gesticulation. One hand of the "Absinthe Drinker" supports her chin - this detail is transferred from the previous pastel, and the other frantically grabs her shoulder, so that the whole figure seems to have shrunk into a ball. The woman is cornered literally and metaphorically. Physiognomically, she does not resemble the two former "amateurs". Her face shows hardness and stubbornness. The gesture of the right hand clasping the shoulder, Picasso, in all likelihood, borrowed from his Spanish contemporary Santiago Rusinol, who reproduced a similar gesture in The Morphine Drinker (1894, Cau Ferrat Museum, Sitges), showing the suffering of a woman going crazy.
Many myths go around this alcoholic drink. He is credited with mystical properties, people use it with pleasure creative professions and draw their inspiration from it. Among the lovers of absinthe were such famous people how Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Guy de Maupassant, Vincent van Gogh and others .Why is this strong alcoholic drink with the aroma of wormwood so attractive?
What is absinthe?
First, let's find out what absinthe is. A translation of a word absinthe With French- "wormwood". This drink incorporates a variety of herbs, including bitter wormwood, fennel, calamus, lemon balm, mint, etc. AT total Absinthe contains about 30 different herbs.
The strength of absinthe varies in the region of 55-85 degrees. Usually it is 70 degrees. But when consumed internally, it is usually bred to the optimum strength. Essential oils wormwood is rich in substance thujone , which determines the main properties of absinthe. In very large doses, thujone has the properties of the strongest poison, and in small doses it causes a laughing effect, in some cases even hallucinations. The color of the drink varies from clear or yellow to blood red and emerald green.
How and where did absinthe originate?
This drink is crazy famous artists and writers, was born in western Switzerland. Madame Enrio came up with medicinal tincture from wormwood, which aroused the interest of the French doctor Pierre Ordiner. He was just studying useful properties wild wormwood. Having added some herbs to the tincture, the doctor began to give the drink to his patients. When Madame Enrio passed away, her daughters sold the tincture recipe to a French major. Dubier , who first organized an industrial enterprise for the production and distribution of absinthe.
Modern absinthe differs significantly from the drink that drove the Parisian intelligentsia of the 18th century into a state of ecstasy. If that absinthe called "Green fairy" , could give inspiration and heal from diseases, then his modern analogue hardly capable of it. Although some bona fide manufacturers do not contribute big adjustments into the recipe of the drink, and it can be assumed that this is about the same drink that inspired Van Gogh and Picasso to create their masterpieces.
Absinthe in the works of famous artists
Perhaps the most ardent admirer of absinthe among was Vincent Van Gogh. No one knows for sure how long he drank this drink. But it is known that this happened regularly. Scientists have proven that thujone contained in absinthe, has a positive effect on human performance. However, its overdose can lead to changes in perception. The world seen in yellow colors. And one of the features of Van Gogh's creativity is just abundance. yellow paints in canvases.
In addition to Van Gogh, many other artists are also referred to as absinthe lovers. For example, Edouard Manet in 1859 he created his masterpiece painting "The Absinthe Lover". a similar picture in 1856 the Belgian also wrote Felicien Rops . Famous Degas revealed the theme of the mysterious drink in the painting "Absinthe" in 1876. Great Pablo Picasso even created a whimsical and beautiful sculpture in the form of a glass of absinthe. In 1901 he wrote his famous painting"Absinthe Drinker", which is exhibited in the Hermitage.
Absinthe can undoubtedly be called the professional drink of intellectuals, artists and poets. In the 19th century, it was believed that absinthe was a genius for mediocrity, but death for a true genius. In the 80s of the XIX century, one word "absinthe" caused panic in many respectable Europeans, because this drink in their minds was strongly associated with madness. In France, absinthe was called "madness in a bottle", and the phrase "Absinthe drives you crazy" became the most popular slogan of anti-alcohol campaigns. When and where did absinthe originate? Why was this drink banned in France and Switzerland? "Green Fairy" or "Green Witch"?
Absinthe is believed to have originated in late XVIII century, and was invented by Dr. Pierre Ordiner, who lived in the Swiss village of Couvet. According to legend, here he found wild wormwood and created his own special drink, which quickly gained popularity in the area. Dr. Ordiner died in 1821 - by this time, the name "Green Fairy" and the glory of a tonic drink had already firmly entrenched in absinthe. Other sources believe that the Enrio sisters, who lived in the same Swiss village, were already making absinthe before the arrival of Dr. Ordiner, and that it was they who sold the recipe for this drink to a certain Major Dubier.
Be that as it may, when Major Dubier tried absinthe, he found that this drink cures indigestion, improves appetite, helps with fever and chills. Dubier was so impressed that he bought the recipe and started making absinthe too. In 1797, the major's daughter married Henri-Louis Perno, and then the Perno dynasty began, which gave its name to the brand of absinthe of the same name.
The Perno factory was a true example of efficiency and hygiene. By 1896, she was already producing 125,000 liters of absinthe a day! Everything went like clockwork, until August 11, 1901, lightning struck the factory. There was so much alcohol on the property that it took several days to put out the fire. Perhaps the fire would have been worse if one of the workers had not guessed to release huge tanks of absinthe into a nearby river. After that, its waters acquired a yellow-green color, and the smell of alcoholic vapors emanating from it resembled the breath of a drunkard and was heard for miles.
Drinking absinthe was one of the characteristic features Parisian life during the reign of Napoleon III (1852-1870) it was a respectable bourgeois custom. The time between five and seven o'clock in the evening was called "green hour", and the smell of absinthe hung in the air over the Parisian boulevards. Absinthe was believed to improve appetite before dinner, and the strict time allowed for drinking it, to some extent, protected people from abuse.
Given the strength of absinthe (the most respected brand, Perno, contained 60% alcohol), it was customary to drink no more than one serving. It was possible to drink absinthe before dinner or even before dinner, but if someone dared to drink it all night, this caused a contemptuous reaction from the waiters. The risk of absinthe abuse increased as people began to acquire a taste for the drink. More respectable absinthe drinkers, who were ashamed to drink a lot in public, soon learned to move from one cafe to another.
Alcoholics quickly appreciated absinthe, and soon the drink began to attract more wide circle consumers: bohemians, women and the working class. In Émile Zola's novel The Trap, we find a mention of a carpenter who "stripped naked in the Rue Saint-Martin and died dancing the polka. He drank absinthe."
Customs changed, and now women could drink absinthe in cafes, and many of the absinthe drinkers did not dilute the drink with water, which was explained by the reluctance to drink too much liquid, because they wear a corset. Everything appears more posters where emancipated women drink absinthe and even smoke.
Paintings of the same period more often tell a completely different story - the story of emaciated women, staring blankly into the void over a glass. Illustration: "Absinthe", Felicien Rops.
A very strong attraction almost immediately arose between absinthe, as the most powerful intellectual drink, and the Parisian bohemia. Absinthe occupies a special place in history. french painting. Illustration: Édouard Manet, The Bar at the Folies Bergère.
It is sometimes said about the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec that his paintings are entirely painted with absinthe. Much is known about Toulouse-Lautrec's bitter drinking: his favorite cocktail was a mixture called the Earthquake, a deadly combination of brandy and absinthe. “You need to drink little, but often,” the artist said, and to maintain such a regime, he always took a cane with him, in which he kept a half-liter supply of absinthe and a small glass. Illustration: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, "In the Café La Mie".
“I assure you, madam, I can drink without risk. I’m almost on the floor anyway,” Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec once said, hinting at his too short stature(slightly over 150 cm). Unfortunately, unrestrained drunkenness and starving life caused the artist a lot of harm, he began to get drunk from a very small dose, as is usually the case in the last stage of alcoholism. In addition to everything, Toulouse-Lautrec began to become paranoid.
Toulouse-Lautrec saw scary monsters, it even seemed to him that the elephant located in the courtyard of the Moulin Rouge began to follow him on his heels. And on March 1, 1899, one of the artist’s friends received a letter with sad Parisian news: “You will be sad to know that Toulouse-Lautrec was imprisoned yesterday in crazy house". In the photo: an elephant located in the courtyard of the famous Parisian cabaret "Moulin Rouge" until 1906.
What happened to Toulouse-Lautrec was told in different ways. Someone claimed that the artist had a persecution mania on the street, someone that he was caught by orderlies and placed in a psychiatric hospital at the request of his mother. Be that as it may, after being discharged from the hospital, Toulouse-Lautrec began to drink again, at first with restraint, again resorting to the "absinthe cane", and then more and more. Illustration: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge.
And in 1887, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted a portrait of Vincent van Gogh with a glass of absinthe on the table. It is said that it was Toulouse-Lautrec who addicted Van Gogh to this drink.
Also in 1887, Vincent van Gogh created a still life depicting a glass of absinthe and a decanter of water. The psychiatric experience that the artist had to go through repeatedly forced the researchers of Van Gogh's work to enter a purely clinical sphere. Some commentators directly connected all the artist's illnesses with the fact that he abused absinthe.
In 1859, Edouard Manet painted his first large canvas, which he called "The Absinthe Drinker". With this work, his career as an artist began rather awkwardly. The sitter was his acquaintance junk dealer and alcoholic, who could often be found in the Louvre area. The artist saw in this man some strange dignity, even aristocracy. Having finished work on the picture, Manet showed it to his teacher, who reacted sharply negatively: “Absinthe lover! Why draw such abominations? My poor friend, you are the absinthe drinker. You have lost your morals." AT further picture continued to make an unpleasant impression on almost everyone who saw her.
The famous painting by Edgar Degas "Absinthe", first called "In a Cafe" (1876), was accepted by the public even worse than the painting by Manet. “A person who values dignity and beauty will never call Absinthe a work of art,” the critic wrote. Someone even suggested that this painting depicts the poet Paul Verlaine, who was famous for leading awful life drenched in absinthe.
Paul Verlaine became addicted to drinking very early, and the successive deaths of his father, beloved aunt and cousin only increased his drinking: "I attacked absinthe," he wrote. After some time, Verlaine married and seemed to come to his senses, but family happiness was soon destroyed by a catastrophe: Verlaine met the young poet Arthur Rimbaud and was captivated by him to the point of obsession, and when Rimbaud broke up with Verlaine, he shot him three times, injuring former lover in the wrist. In the photo: Verlaine on the left, Rimbaud on the right.
Since then, Paul Verlaine has abandoned all hope of a decent life. He was even jailed for a month for threatening his mother with a knife, even though his mother demanded that he be acquitted. After this incident, Verlaine finally plunged into the life of a cafe, turning into main celebrity Latin Quarter, but his poetic reputation was so strong that even the police were ordered not to disturb Verlaine, no matter what he did.
In Confession, written in 1895, Verlaine repents of his addiction to absinthe: “Absinthe! How terrible it is to think about those days and more recent times ... One sip of a disgusting witch (what a fool called her a fairy or a green muse!), One sip captivated me, but then my drunkenness led to more serious consequences. In the photo: Paul Verdun in the interior of a Parisian cafe.
In August 1905 Swiss newspapers wrote about terrible tragedy: thirty-year-old peasant Jean Lanfre, after drinking two glasses of absinthe, shot his pregnant wife in the head, and then killed his daughters (four-year-old Rose and two-year-old Blanche). Lanfre also tried to shoot himself, but survived. Staggering, he went out into the yard, where he fell asleep, clutching dead body youngest daughter. The public reaction to this tragedy was unusually violent, and it was not at all that Lanfre was an impenetrable drunkard who drank up to five liters of wine every day. People were sure that absinthe was to blame for what had happened. Illustration: "Absinthe is death."
A few weeks after the tragedy, residents of the surrounding towns and villages filed a petition in which 82,450 people demanded that absinthe be banned in Switzerland, which was already done in 1906. In France, absinthe was banned in 1915, when they thought about national issues alcoholism and the unpreparedness of the army for the First World War. By the way, the last significant appearance of absinthe in art, just before its ban, was the cubist sculpture of Pablo Picasso "A Glass of Absinthe" (1914).
After the ban, absinthe remained for some time in Spain, Eastern Europe and in Cuba. With the greatest nostalgia about the merits of this drink, Ernest Hemingway wrote, who at that time lived in Florida and continued to drink absinthe after the French ban, getting it from Cuba. In Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, one of the few consolations of its protagonist is absinthe, which brings back memories of the beautiful and carefree Parisian life that this American partisan was deprived of.
“One such mug replaced all the evening newspapers, all the evenings in Parisian cafes, all the chestnut trees, which, probably, are already in bloom ... in a word, everything that returned to him when he sipped this cloudy, bitter, chilling tongue, warming the brain and stomach life-changing potion." And one more thing: “There is nothing better than absinthe,” writes Ernest Hemingway in the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Illustration: Jean Bero, "In a cafe".
Absinthe revived relatively recently - in 1990, when its production was resumed in the Czech Republic and the drink was again launched on international markets under the Hill's brand.
The French and Swiss did not like the fact that at least some absinthe was revived somewhere: “It's disgusting foreign rubbish. If Baudelaire and Rimbaud had been offered this Czech drink, they would have turned over in their graves.”
One of the most vocal opponents of Czech absinthe in France was Marie-Claude Delae, the chief French absinthe expert, who in 1994 opened a museum of this drink in Auvers-sur-Oise, the place where Vincent van Gogh is buried. In 2000, with the assistance of Marie-Claude Delae, a new brand of French-style absinthe, La Fée ("Fairy"), was launched.
Inspired by the stories of famous absinthe drinkers, contemporary artists and to this day they create works dedicated to absinthe. Illustration: Elena Khotuleva, "Absinthe".
The resurrected "Green Fairy" once again evokes thirst and stirs the imagination, as if awakening the cultural memory of the mysterious, painful and so important drink of the decadent fin-de-siècle ( late XIX- early 20th century).
