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Romantic GastronomiesEconomies of Excess in Brillat-Savarin, Balzac, and BaudelaireJoshua Wilner, City College of New York |
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Notes1 Cf. Barthes's observation that ". . .
gastronomic perversion, as described by B.-S. (and
on the whole it could hardly be described better), always
implies a kind of affable and accommodating acknowledgement
which never departs from the tone of good
breeding" (252). 2 The full title in French is
Physiologie du goût: ou méditations de
gastronomie transcendante. Except where the French is
self-explanatory, I will cite in translation, while
occasionally providing the original text in a foonote or,
for very brief quotations, in parentheses. With the
exception of Howard's translation of Barthes, all
translations are my own. 3 The passage to which Baudelaire refers
actually reads as follow, "Wine, the most lovable of
drinks, whether we owe it to Noah, who planted the vine, or
to Bacchus, who pressed the juice of the grape, dates from
the infancy of the world" (126). The suppressed phrase,
"qui planta la vigne" is biblical, "Et Noé planta la
vigne et connut l'ivresse," Baudelaire's "citation"
accentuates the partriarchal note and flattens out
everything else. 4 Though it is also the case that
Brillat-Savarin's reserve on the subject was in some ways
characteristic of the gastronomic writing of the period. As
Denise Gigante observes in Gusto, "Despite the
emphasis on wine connoisseurship in gourmet circles today,
wine and other psirituous liquors came second to food in
nineteenth-century gastronomy. Intoxication was thought to
dull the sensibility and lessen the capacity to exercise
discernment. . . Modern gastronomy rises or falls by
moderation, and all writers in this tradition insist on
temperance as a key to good taste" (25). As will be seen,
my argument, at least in part, is that the gastronome
indulges in gustatory discernment, making of his
show of temperance a screen. 5 The Dictionnaire de
l'académie française of 1832-35 defines
"gourmand," in the first instance, as an adjective with a
substantive employment signifying "Qui mange avec
avidité et excès") ("[one] who eats
avidly and in exces"). The gastronomic sense is secondary,
"Il se dit queslquefois pour Gastronome." ("Sometimes used
for Gastronome.") "Gourmandise" is defined exclusively as:
"Vice de celui que est gourmand" ("the vice of one who is a
gourmand"), one source no doubt, of Brillat-Savarin's
complaint. 6 "J'ai parcouru les dictionnaires au mot Gourmandise, et je n'ai été point satisfait de ce que j'y ai trouvé. C n'est qu'une confusion perpetuelle de la gourmandise proprement dite avec la gloutonnerie et la voracité: d'où j'ai conclu que les lexicographes, quoique très-estimables d'ailleurs, ne sont pas de ces savants aimables qui embouchent avec grace une aile de perdrix au suprême pour l'arroser, le petit doigt en l'air, d'un verre de vin de Laffitte ou de clos Vougeout. "Ils ont oublié, complètement oublié, la gourmandise sociale, qui réunit l'élégance athénienne, le luxe romaine et la délicatesse française, qui dispose avec sagacité, fait exécuter savamment, savoure avec énergie, et juge avec profondeur[. . .]" (130).close window 7 The proverbial expression "Epicuri de
grege" means "of the herd of Epicurus." The unspoken "sad
spondee" is "porcum." The "hemistich" occurs at the end of
Horace's epistle to Albius Tibullus: me pingeum et nitidum bene curate cute vises, (As for me, when you want a laugh, you will find me in fine fettle, fat and sleek, a hog from Epicurus's herd)close window 8 An earlier working title had been
"Physiologie des excès modernes" (Fortassier
979). 9 Philippe Dubois offers a detailed
discussion of the publication history in his valuable
recent article,
"Savarin/BalZac: Du gout
des excitants sur l'écriture moderne." Dubois' more
general argument is that the connection between the two
texts was important in establishing the literary value of
gastronomic discourse and the scientific value of
novelistic discourse: "The close ties which are going to
unite the "Treatise on Modern Stimulants" and the
Physiology of Taste from this point on will bring
a certain literary legitimation to the emergence of a new
gastronomic discourse, while extending to the novellistic
the scientific covering of a physiology it needs to
establish itself as a genre" (76). 10 Thus, according to Gortassier
(explaining why the treatise was published as an appendix
rather than a preface), "in [Balzac's] mind, the 'Treatise
on Modern Stimulants' is a complement to the Physiology
of Taste, since Balzac addresses there material that
Brillag-Savarin hadn't treated. The text thus quite
logically ought to follow that the Physiology of
Taste" (982). My argument, in part, is that the
subject matter of the "Treatise" upsets the balance of
Brillat-Savarin's project. 11 Though they may serve other purposes.
Thus Balzac devotes the most famous passages of the essay
to instructions for the preparation of coffee, which he
drank on a nightly basis in staggering quantities as an
essential part of his writing regimen. This fact alone
summarizes the exorbitant economy in Balzac which links
together writing and excessive consumption. 12 Le goût, qui a pour excitateurs
l'appétit, le faim, et le soif, est la base de
plusieurs operations dont le résultat est que
l'individu croît, se développe, se conserve et
répare les pertes causées par les
evaporations vitales" (25). 13 In French the last sentence reads,
"Les savants ne mordront point sur cette formule." 14 V. Robb, 238 ff. 15 Balzac's treatise was only published
separately from the Physiology in 1855. While
other editions of the Physiology did exist,
Charpentier's had been reprinted frequently, most recently
in 1847. 16 V. Claude Pichois;' detailed note, OC
1382-3. 17 The Sutter's Creek of antiquity, the
Pactolus was according to myth where King Midas washed away
his golden touch. 18 A commercial success marked in
Hoffman's case by the gifts of wine with which his
publishers accompanied payment (379). |
