Towards the end of the XIX century "the green glass of Absinth on the coffee table symbolized anarchy or deliberate rejection to the norms and obligations of the life". The drink was considered by the crazy Bohemia not only like an aphrodisiac, but like a source of artistic inspiration. The list of famous drinkers of Absinth included Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, the dramatist August Strindberg and Oscar Wilde, for whom a wormwood glass was "as poetic as a sun putting".
Chemistry, musician, inventor, poet and painter, Charles Cros got to drink twenty glasses of wormwood daily. This did not prevent him to develop the automatic telegraph, the first phonograph (Pareophon call) nor a species of early process of color photograph. Alfred Jarry, author of Ubú King, always consumed pure Absinth and often it left to bike with the face or the body painted of green, in tribute to the fée. "The whiskey and the beer are for the idiots; the Absinth has the power of the magicians ", affirmed the English poet Ernest Dowson, author of oda alcoholic" Absintea Taetra ", written during its stay in Paris in which he frequented to Baudelaire and Mallarmé.
The poet Paul Verlaine consumed abundant doses in company of his friend Arthur Rimbaud. A photo shows it in the legendary Procope coffee, seated after a glass with the always present spoon. One of its verses says that "my glory is a humble and ephemeral Absinth".
Vicent Van Gogh, was initiated in the matter by its friend and colleague Paul Gauguin and the Absinth became a powerful element for the inspiration and creativity of the artists of the time, "Drinker of absinth", picture of Edouart Manet, dates from 1859; "L´absinthe" of Degas, is of 1876; the "Drinker of Absinthe" of Picasso was completed in 1901, to mention some of the paintings of the excellent artists of the time, in which the Absinth is the main subject of its work.
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