"What is a paradise that is bought at the price of its eternal salvation?"
In The Artificial Paradises (1860), which consists of two parts, The Poem of Hashish and A Digger of Opium, Baudelaire philosopher on the effects of hashish and translates, with a tragic glow, the Confessions of an English digger by Thomas De Quincey, published forty years earlier. As in his poetic work, the author of the Flowers of Evil explores the "flavour of infinity" that constantly pushes man in search of the ideal. Hybrid object, which is based on both translation, essay, storytelling and poem, Artificial Paradises are a meditation on the will and imagination, on the dark temptations that tear the human soul apart, and above all on the redemptive power of art.