RIP Brillat Savarin
As I said, I was half hoping that someone would come up with a stout defense of Brillat Savarin. He must have had some redeeming features. I say this because he was a good friend of Jean-Etienne Montucla according to B-S’s biographer Giles MacDonough.
Now the odds are you have never heard of Montucla. And that’s quite OK because neither has 99.99999999 % of the human race. But because I was lunatic enough in an earlier life to draft a book on ideas about scientific progress (still hope it will see the light one day), I’m about the first person since d’Alembert to have pored over Montucla’s history of mathematics.
It’s one of the most brilliant books I have ever read: a history of science in general, meticulous scholarship, suggestive account of human intellectual progress, a masterpiece. And Montucla put up with Brillat-Savarin. He must have had something, somewhere.
Anyway, now that he’s been thoroughly galloped over by my knowledgeable and insightful commentators, Karen, Ji-Young, Michael, and even Kyri, it’s time to turn to Kyri’s question.
Why is he so revered? Kyri thought my title, “honestly now” a bit odd and so it is but I added those two words because I thought it might be foolhardy to raise any question about his stature.
Anyway MacDonough cites an article in the Revue de deux mondes–one of the long-standing French intellectual periodical of the turn of the twentieth century–by French journalist, royalist, and pro-Grimod author Pierre Varillon–that begins “Today La Physiologie du goût is practically unreadable” and continues in that vein.
MacDonough also asserts “Brillat emerged as something of a cult figure in the years immediately following the First World War, thanks to the similarly Ptolomy-Physcon-like [sic] figure of ‘Curnonsky.'”
And Curnonsky really, really pushed the superiority of French Cuisine and laid out an account of the cuisine of the provinces. So the fact that he received a second push in France in the 1920s and then was introduced to Americans by M.F.K. Fisher probably has a lot to do with his standing.
_________________
(Oh and Karen, Brillat did self-publish his book as commercial publishers thought it wasn’t viable.)
I still like the book!
Stick to your guns! I don’t but disagreement is sadly lacking in the culinary world.
I know the name well but have not actually READ B-S. But, in reading the posts and all the replies, a thought occurs. Of course it helps that there were a couple of serious promoters after his death. But? could it be? that he is revered neither for the subsequent accuracy of his pronouncements nor for the erudition of his presentation, but for the fact that he got there early?
Early never hurts!
If you are bored with Brillat-Savarin, you are bored with life, and I am sorry for you. Do not read the short version of his book from 1975, but the old one, in two volumes with a preface of Honore de Balzac (mine is a dansih translation from 1947) and illustrations by Bertall.
You will meet an amusing and charming man, intelligent, trying to solve the riddles of taste and the enjoyment of all the pleasures of the table. You will find history, culture (food, meals, living), politics, early food science; how he goes about with his experiments wanting to learn more about taste and the other senses. You will learn so much about France, Paris, the life of judge who managed to survive in the most turbulant times in the history of France. He must have been a most interesting person to talk to, as your friend Montucla obviously enjoyd to do.
Think we just have to agree to disagree about this.
PS. On the 4th page of Brillat-Savarin’s “Conversation with a Friend” in “the book” you can read a foot note about Montucla and his dictionary on geography and gastronomi.
Have to look that up next time I am in a place where I can find the full edition of B-S. Thanks so much for the reference.