And they did: a carpet dealer he met early on recommended he read Hafez, the 14th-century poet who in many ways embodies the Persian soul (to the confusion of some strict Muslims, as Mr. Murphy points out, given his frequent references to wine and intoxication).
And with glorious triumph they Rode through England proud and gay, Drunk as with intoxication Of the wine of desolation.
Almonds, long promoted in culinary lore as a hedge against intoxication if eaten with wine, have also benefited from a recent wave of nutritional and dietary revisionism.
The mystical allusions to wine pertain to a type of intoxication which stands opposed to discursive thought.
But the song longs for the old intoxication; he misses "drinking that sweet wine," and the song had a gospelly buildup as he sang about getting "so high in the days gone by".
The allure of ladies present was only surpassed in beauty by bouquets of yellow tulips, and in intoxication, by a formidable selection of wine.
She was enthralled with the Nazi movement: "I felt like a child, ebullient and careless, the intoxication of the new regime working like wine in me," she wrote in her memoir.
At the peak of their popularity, Dionysian dances were orgiastic and accompanied the art of intoxication in worshipful devotion to Dionysius the god of wine, dreams and wanton sexuality.
Of a Mrs. H_tt_n, "Courtesans" says, "She is expensive in dress, extravagant in the indulgence of her palate, violently addicted to wine and strong liquors which she often drinks to excess, not infrequently to intoxication".
This is less enjoyable, though one may still sift bracing minerals of good sense from the slightly dry lecturing: he is good on wine as the expression of a place and community, on the nuances of intoxication and on the social beneficence of buying rounds.
