You Think You Know a Thing or Two about Drinking and Intoxication?

Only because you read in Polish, in one of the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe, or until recently ‘lived’ on Włókiennicza Street in Łódź? Well, you only think so. 

In two sentences, as tersely as possible, Roberto Calasso (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, translated by S. Kasprzysiak, {Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia}) recalled what connects the complete clouding of reason with something worth playing for: the annulment of Fate’s sentence.  

‘For love of Admetus, Apollo made the Moirai drunk, and this may have been the wildest celebration of which any mention has reached us, yet about which we can say nothing more than that it took place. The Moirai, the fair-armed maidens who spin the thread of every mortal’s life, appear in Plutarch’s imagination as the “daughters of Ananke”, Necessity. And Necessity, as Euripides reminds us—he who “rose aloft thanks to the Muses” and “found nothing stronger than Ananke”—is the only power that has neither altars nor statues. Ananke is the only deity who does not hear the pleas placed before her together with a sacrifice. Her daughters can be outwitted only through intoxication. And drunkenness very rarely proves stronger than they are. Apollo managed it, but only through his love for Admetus, because he wished to postpone his death.’  

Renouncing Reason is difficult for Mortals. For the gods—as usual—it is far easier. Yet even they must have a mortally painful reason.