Le Club des Hashischins

This long-form narrative poem is the first published work of Australian poet Thucydides Hilocometoot Chalm."Le Club des Hashischins" originally was the title of an article written by Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic who lived from 1811 to 1872. Gautier's article presents a first-person narrative account of the supposed experiences of the author (as protagonist) at of one of the meetings of Le Club des...
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This long-form narrative poem is the first published work of Australian poet Thucydides Hilocometoot Chalm."Le Club des Hashischins" originally was the title of an article written by Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic who lived from 1811 to 1872. Gautier's article presents a first-person narrative account of the supposed experiences of the author (as protagonist) at of one of the meetings of Le Club des Hashischins, a club that met regularly in Paris during the 1840s. The club's name references its central purpose: the creative exploration of shared, hashish-induced experiences in a moderated group setting.Chalm intended his Expressive Transliteration first to be as faithful as possible to Gautier's narrative to ensure the poem told the same story that Gautier did. Chalm's second goal was to create a poem written in a meter that has a specific place in English literature, and through that vehicle, give a new voice to the English-language translations of Gautier's article Chalm relied on in writing this work.