“At first, smoking tobacco causes bouts of vertigo; for the majority of neophytes it causes excess salivation, and often nausea that leads to vomiting. Despite the presence of an irritated essential nature, the tobaccophile persists, he becomes used to it. This apprenticeship sometimes lasts several months. The smoker eventually triumphs like Mithridates, and he enters into paradise. How else can we describe the effects of smoking tobacco? If given a choice between brad and tobacco, the poor will never hesitate; the penniless young man who wears out his boots on the asphalt of the boulevards while his mistress works day and night will imitate the pauper; the Corsican bandit, hiding between inaccessible rocks, or on a beach where he can keep an eye out, will offer to kill your enemy for a pound of tobacco. Men of importance vow that cigars comfort them during their greatest adversities. Given a choice between he beloved and a cigar, a dandy would not hesitate to leave his woman, just as a convict would stay in jail if he could have unlimited quantities of tobacco at his discretion! What power does this pleasure have if the King of Kings would have paid half his empire for it, and if it is above all the vice of the unhappy? This pleasure, which I initially denied, gave me this axiom: VI — To smoke a cigar is to smoke fire.“
Honoré de Balzac, Traité des excitants modernes, 1838 (Translation Kassy Hayden)
Cigars and pipes were long familiar, and it was around 1830 that were sold the first ‘cigarets’, tobacco rolled in a piece of paper. A few writers pointed out deleterious effect of tobacco on the creative imagination, however, tobacco’s health risks were not yet clearly identified. In his Treatise on Modern Stimulants, Balzac condemns tobacco alongside coffee, alcohol and sugar, considering it the most dangerous of ‘stimulants’. He gives a lucid analysis of both its gradually addictive quality and also its damaging effects, especially to mucous membranes. According to the author, tobacco can induce apathy, affect fertility and provoke premature ageing. Thanks to George Sand, however, the author also discovered the Indian hookah and Persian narghile, whose perfumed exhalations and elegant forms he praises.
It is even possible that Balzac tried the experience of taking hashish, in the form of a ‘green jam’ at one of the ‘fantasias’ organised at the hôtel Pimodon on the Île Saint-Louis.
Much of the literary and artistic elite participated in these gatherings, where hashish was consumed under medical supervision. In 1845, Balzac was invited by his friend, Théophile Gautier. Afterwards, he wrote about his experience to madame Hanska, saying:
‘I resisted the influence of hashish, and did not experience its full effects; my brain is so powerful that it would have required a larger dose than the one I ingested.’
Charles Baudelaire, who also attended the party, recounts a different version in his Paradis artificiels:
He [Balzac] was offered some dawamesk; he examined it, sniffed it and handed it back without touching any. The struggle between his almost childish curiosity and his distaste for self-surrender could be read clearly on his face. The love of dignity won the day.’
(Translation Patricia Roseberry)