What do you think of Brillat-Savarin? Honestly now
This is a serious question.
Brillat-Savarin, just to remind you, published in 1825 a work on gastronomy called Physiologie du Goût (in English The Physiology of Taste) self-described as “a lasting foundation for the science of gastronomy.” It’s been in print ever since, was translated into English by the renowned author M.K. Fisher, and as the blurb to that translation says “remains among the most comprehensive, stimulating, and plain enjoyable works ever published on the subject of the palate and its pleasures.”
Well, I just don’t get it. Perhaps it’s that M.K. Fisher was not the ideal person to translate this. She knew food and she knew French but she did not know the subtleties of the political and scientific words about food following the Revolution.
But I’m not sure that’s it. Way back in my historian of science days, I spent hours and hours working through books by French intellectuals in this period–Cuvier, Lamarck, Fourier, Comte, Chateaubriand, Guizeau, among others–and found them in French or in English quite brilliant, provoking me to rage or enthusiastic agreement, but in either case pointing to questions and propounding theories that demanded attention. Not surprising given that politically and scientifically France had transformed the world for better or worse and that this had to be confronted.
And then there’s dear old B-S. Just such a let down. Arch, anecdotal, derivative, and just plain boring. And this at a time when every truism about food–truisms that were centuries or millennia old– were up for grabs.
What am I missing?
Apart from La Physiologie Du Gout, Jean-Anthelme also wrote a monograph on duelling that’s more interesting than his better known book. His fame hinges on a few sententious snippets and the fact that nobody had written about food in a kind of enthusiastic post-prandial half-cut way before. He’s the perfect Bluffer’s ‘name drop’, used as much by those who have read him as those who pretend to have done so. You don’t “get” him, just dip into him for the odd quote from time to time.
What a funny headline. Honestly now, and this may be heresy given what I do, but I’ve never been a fan of B-S and the Physiology. I much prefer his cousin, Charles Fourier. Priscilla Ferguson, who is more of a fan of B-S than most, writes about him in her book Accounting for Taste. (Then there’s the Giles MacDonogh book, which I haven’t read in more than 10 years, so no opinion now.) I think people have found this book avuncular and charming; it does rather fit in the the physiology of everything moment in the 19th century. I would say it’s all about context, but as you point out, it is always in print. Didn’t Roland Barthes write on B-S? Yes, I think so; he must have said something enlightening. I don’t think the Physiology is very complex, unlike Grimod whose writing I like much, much more.
Brillat-Savarin is a pompous ass.
Sometimes pompous asses are admired.
Maybe MFKF thought it would be a good move business-wise, to translate him.
It did prove to be. :)
twaddle
You all, to use the very useful American second person plural, are making me feel almost warm and sympathetic towards Brillat- Savarin. I’ll leave it a little longer to see if anyone wants to come to his rescue.
I’ve been thinking this over since you put up this post and I’m beginning to think along the lines of myth. No one (so it would appear) really likes or reads B-S anymore, but he is a mythical figure and his Physiologie represents a (gastronomical) moment that the French and perhaps Francophiles as well do not want to let go.
It’s like the Camembert myth. I mean, this is cheese for people who hate cheese; it has no flavor. The myth is the best explanation for its popularity (the myth and the cheap price).
“the Camembert myth. I mean, this is cheese for people who hate cheese; it has no flavor.” Off the B-S topic I kn ow but Kyri has never tasted a camembert fermier, made a la louche with raw milk, and matured by a maitre fromager or she wouldn’t have made the comment. Factory camembert is pretty well as she describes it.
One of B-S’s most famous lines:
“A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.”
Oh please. What would you think if I wrote “A dessert without cheese is like a handsome man with only one testicle.”
(?)
Karen, I laughed out loud at “man with only one testicle”. But it seems to me the male equivalent of a woman’s eye, would be, well, a man’s eye. ;-)
World War II song (based on fact?), to the tune of Colonel Bogie -think, Bridge on the River Kwai.
Hitler has only got one ball
Rommel has two but very small
Himmler is very similar
But poor old Goebals
Has no balls at all
I can see that you understand my point, Michael! Ji-Young, you are being kind. :)
One has to wonder about old B-S, doesn’t one.
But on the good side, he did write compellingly and with due respect of the chickens of his boyhood home – the Bresse. Delightful chickens. Makes one almost want to put up with the onus of working on Wall Street, to be able to put them lovingly roast on the table every night!
“..The pleasure of eating requires, if not hunger, at least appetite; the pleasures of the table, more often than not, are independent of the one and the other.” B-S.
As a a sharp observation of bourgeois manners c. 1800 this ain’t so bad, but as a comment on the way humans enjoy food, it’s awful . It begs so many questions. If the food doesn’t matter and appetite doesn’t matter, the “Pleasures of the table” are no different from those of any other social gathering. In the same snippet, B-S describes an ideal meal where the diners snaffle up the first course in silence [eating to assuage animal instincts] and then chatter intelligently for the rest of the meal while they pick at whatever delicacies are put before them. In a way this reminds me of an unstageable satirical play that Dean Swift (he of Gulliver’s Travels) wrote called Polite Conversation, where a group of the most boring English gentry exchange platitudes around platters of roast meats for an hour and a half. Dinner parties and restaurant meals can be just as deadly in the 21st century. Pleasures of the Table Phooey!
What category of literature did B-S (love that nickname) fall into at the time? ‘Belles-Lettres’?
I’m wondering if his book might have been considered a ‘vanity imprint’ at the time . . .
Can the category of ‘Belles-Lettres’ include ‘Vanity Imprints’?
My daughter was taught that Hitler’s Balls song today in school. Her (tenth grade) history teacher sang it for the class.
He is Scottish – a stocky man who demonstrates war facts by crouching on the floor while pretending he is shooting. A staunch Protestant who seems to be fighting a war against the Catholics through ongoing diatribes, he also is anti-Darwin and just manages to follow the curriculum (if indeed he does) by including one positive fact about Darwinism among the twenty negative facts he lists on his handouts.
But she said his singing this song to the class was the scariest moment in class yet.
Oh dear, the dark side surfaces again. Sorry that your daughter, who seems to have inherited her mother’s spunk and smarts, has such a teacher.
Not so dark (unless the kids take him really seriously and most of them are texting in class and not listening all that well so there’s not a whole lot of chance for that) (of course his anti-Catholic rants leave the two kids of that religion in a bit of a weird space from what I hear their reactions have been) but simply another little moment of the slightly bizarre appearing in life.
I actually appreciate it. You have to look closely to catch it, the slightly bizarre. But what a story it makes.
And Kristen’s favorite authors are Roald Dahl and Nabokov. So I guess she is having enjoyment of the scenes also. :)
Pleased to hear all that.