i was once invited to the house of a certain writer who had made a name for himself by several very clever novels and had acquired a fortune by the publication of a successful journal. he was now living on an estate in the country, retired from active life, spending his days in luxurious peace. much too soon, as i very quickly found out. for he was in no sense old. a man about fifty whose eyes still looked challengingly at the world. his look had in it nothing of the asceticism of one who is tired of life. no; here the fire of secret passions still blazed; here one could still detect power, ambition, and desires.
much in his conduct seemed puzzling to me. a stony calm, a certain lassitude in his movements,—an enforced pose calculated to conceal the internal restlessness which his eyes could not help betraying.
only when the time to eat came he became all life. then he stretched his neck aloft, that he might see clearly the dish that was being brought in. his nostrils dilated as if the sooner to inhale the delightful aroma. his mouth made remarkable twitching movements and his tongue moved over his thin lips with that peculiar [pg 81]rapid movement that one may observe in a woman when she is engaged in animated conversation with a man. he became restless, fidgetted nervously in his chair, and followed tensely the distribution of the food by his wife, a corpulent, energetic and almost masculine woman, who, very naturally and to his secret distress, helped her guests first. finally—much too late to suit him—he received his portion. first he regarded his food with the eye of an expert, turning it from side to side with his knife and fork. then he cut off a small piece and rolled it about in his mouth with audible clucking and smacking of his tongue, let it rest on his tongue awhile, his face the meantime assuming an expression of visionary ecstasy. it was easy to see that for him eating had become the day’s most important task. during the meal he never stopped talking of the excellence of the food, all the while smacking his tongue and lips, and literally expounding a system of culinary criticism.
when finally, to my great relief, the grace after dinner had been pronounced, i hoped at last to be done with the wearying, unpleasant chatter about eating. but this time i had really reckoned without my host.
“what shall we serve our guests to-morrow, my dear?” the gourmand inquired of his sterner half.
“to-morrow? the big white goose with the black patch.”
[pg 82]
“the big white goose with the black patch! ah! she’ll taste wonderful! you don’t know how childishly happy it makes me. come, let me show you the white goose with the black patch!”
resistance was useless. i had to go into the poultry-yard, where my host stopped in front of a well-fed goose. “she’ll make a fine roast! i am greatly pleased with this goose.”
no matter what subject was discussed, political, literary, or economic, the main motif kept recurring: “i love to think of the big white goose with the black patch!”
the meaning of gourmandism then suddenly flashed on me. what passions must this man have suppressed, how much must he have renounced, before his craving for pleasure had found new delights in this roundabout way! behind this monomaniac delight in eating, thought i, there must lurk a great secret.
and such was indeed the case. my amiable host was really his wife’s prisoner. while he was residing in the capital he had begun to indulge in a perversion. his vice grew on him to such an extent that it threatened to destroy everything, health, fortune, mind, ambition, personality, spirit, everything. there was nothing left for him to do but to tell his wife all and implore her assistance in saving him. the virile woman soon hit on the only remedy. he became her prisoner. they broke off all relationships that bound them to their social group. most of the year they spent in the [pg 83]country and lived in the city only two or three winter months. the time was spent in eating and card playing, to which fully half of the day was devoted. he was never alone. at most he was permitted to take a short walk in the country. his wife had charge of the family treasury, with which he had nothing to do. of course, this did not cure his pathological craving, but it made gratification impossible. and gradually there began to develop in him the pleasure for delicate dishes. in this indirect way he satisfied a part of his sensuous craving. thus he transformed his passion. his meals took the place of the hours spent in the embraces of a lover. for him eating was a re-coinage of his sexuality.
is this an exceptional case, or is this phenomenon the rule? this is the first question that forces itself on our attention. an answer to it would take us into the deeps of the whole sexual problem. but let us limit ourselves for the present only to what is essential for an answer to our immediate question. between hunger and love there is an endless number of associations. the most important is this: both are opposed by one counter-impulse, namely, disgust. both love and hunger are desires to touch, (to incorporate or to be incorporated with the desired object); disgust is the fear of doing so. love is accompanied with a counter-impulse, a restraining influence, which we call shame. but this very feeling, [pg 84]shame, is manifested by certain primitive peoples in connection with eating. in tahiti, says cook, not even the members of the family eat together, but eat seated several metres apart and with their backs to one another. the warua, an african tribe, conceal their faces with a cloth while they are drinking. the bakairi are innocent of any sense of shame in connection with nakedness, but never eat together.
the viennese psychiatrist freud, the englishman havelock ellis (“the sexual impulse”), and the spanish sociologist solila, regard the sucking of the breast by an infant as a kind of sexual act which creates permanent associations between hunger and love. and the language we speak has coined certain turns of expression which bring these connections out unmistakably and which have great interest for us as fossilisations of primitive thought processes and as rudiments of cannibalism. note, for example, the following expressions: “i could bite her”; or, “i love the child so i could eat it up!” but we express even disgust, aversion and hatred in terms of eating, e.g., “i can’t stomach the fellow,” or, “he turns my stomach,” “she is not to my taste,” etc.
on the other hand the names of certain dishes reveal connections with other emotional complexes than the pure pleasure of eating. there is an everyday symbolism which we all pass by blindly. let him who has any interest [pg 85]in this subject read rudolph kleinpaul’s book, “sprache ohne worte” (language without words). this symbolism plays a much more important r?le than we are wont to admit. for it alone is capable of interpreting the puzzling names of the various delicacies on the bill of fare. we are cannibals, for we eat “moors in their ‘jackets’” (a fine revenge on the tawny cannibals!) “poor knights,” “master of the chase,” “apprentice-locksmith,” and many more of the same kind. “bridal roast” holds an important place in the menus of the whole world. social inferiority is compensated for by numerous royal dishes ... e.g., steak-a-la-king, cutlet-a-la-king, chicken-a-la-king, royal pudding, etc., etc. one who will take the trouble, as kleinpaul did in his “gastronomic fairy-tale,” to follow up these things, will discover many remarkable links with unconscious ideas. we are really hemmed in on every side by fairy tales. every word we speak, every name we utter, has its story. and the many fairy tales in which children are devoured by wolves, witches, man-eaters, and sea-monsters, together with the tales in which so much is said about man-eating cannibals, reveal to us a fragment of our pre-historic past in which love and hate actually resulted in persons being eaten. in their na?veté our children betray this very clearly. when the little ones eat maccaroni, noodles, or similar dishes, they often make believe they are eating up somebody.
[pg 86]
but, “something too much of this.” let us turn our attention again to the epicures, the little progeny of a great race. it is not difficult to divide them into five classes according to which one of the five senses is being chiefly gratified during the eating process. first, there are the “voyeurs,” to use the term so aptly coined by the french with reference to a phenomenon in the sexual sphere. they must “see” before they can enjoy. to see is the important thing with them. the dishes must be served neatly and must look inviting. they are the admirers of the many-coloured adornments on patisserie, of torts, cakes, and puddings built in the shape of houses, churches, towers, animals, wedding-bells, etc. they reckon their pleasures by the colour nuances of their foods. their chief delight is in the fore-pleasure derived through the eyes. (this is clearly implied in the popular phrase “a feast for the eyes.”)
not quite as common are the listeners “who are thrown into a mild ecstasy by the sizzling of a roast, the cracking of dry crumbs, and the fiz of certain liquids.” numberless are the “smellers” whose sensitive noses drink in the aroma of the foods as their chief delight, whereas the eating, as such, is performed mechanically, as an unavoidable adjunct. such persons can revel in the memories of a luscious dish, and many of their associations are linked with the olfactory organ. the pleasure in offensive [pg 87]odours, such as arise from certain cheeses, garlic, rarebits, and wild game is to some extent a perversion nutritional instinct and betrays innate relationships to sexual aberrations, as are unequivocally indicated by certain popular ditties and college songs. the folk-lore of all nations teems with hints at such things.
an important group, the fourth, is that of the “toucher.” as we know the tongue of man is the most important of the gustatory organs, even though it has not that primacy and importance which it has in many animals. such “touchers” derive their greatest pleasure from the mere touching of the food with the tongue. they prefer smooth and slippery foods, e.g., oysters which they can suck down, and they love to roll the food around in their mouths. it goes without saying that these persons are also “tasters,” as indeed the majority of eaters are. but for all that, these have their own peculiar traits; whereas the feeling of fullness or satiety is to many persons a kind of discomfort, and a full stomach gives rise to a disagreeably painful sensation, to these “touchers” a full stomach means the most delightful sensation the day has to offer.
of the “gourmands” (literally “the relishers”) we need not say much. the whole world knows them; to describe them many words and phrases have been coined, e.g., sweet-toothed, cat-toothed, epicures, etc.
as might have been expected, these various [pg 88]forms are often combined in one person, and your genuine gourmand eats with all his senses. we need only keep our eyes open at a restaurant to observe that most persons show some trace of epicurism. very few resist the temptation to follow the platter the waiter is carrying to some table. (almost every one likes to see what his neighbour is eating.) we may be discussing art, politics, love, or what not, yet watch carefully how much the person serving is taking for himself or dishing out for the others, and how little he is leaving for us. most of the time in these cases we are the victims of an optical deception. our neighbour’s portion always seems bigger than ours. hunger and envy magnify the other person’s portion and minimise ours. and is it not an everyday experience that we order what our neighbour is eating? “waiter, what is that you served the man over there? bring me the same!”
how a person eats always reveals something of his hidden personality. in the case of most human beings at meals the same thing happens that one may observe at the menagerie during feeding-time: the peacefully reposing lion becomes a beast of prey. that is why beautiful women become ugly when they eat and lose their charm, cease to become interesting when they are seen eating. it is not a meaningless custom that we honour distinguished persons by dining them. by so doing we create a situation in which there is no superiority and [pg 89]in which we feel ourselves at one with the great man and on a level with him.
much more complicated than the psychology of the ordinary eater is that of the gourmand, who always seems even to himself to be an exceptional kind of person and who has in unsuspected ways enlarged the sphere of possible pleasures. in most of these cases we shall find that they are persons of whom life has demanded many renunciations. just as the habitual drinker rarely stupifies himself because of the pleasure he takes in drinking but mostly out of a desire to drown in unconsciousness a great pain, to draw the veil over some humiliation, disillusionment, failure, or disappointment, so the gourmand likewise compensates himself for his lost world. he has the same right to the pleasures of life that others have. well for him that he is capable of securing his portion in this way!
inexperienced humanitarians long for the time when eating will be superfluous, when a few pills of concentrated albumin combined with a few drops of some essential ferment will supply the necessary energy for our mental and physical labours. what a stupid dream! if such a time ever came, how unhappy humanity would be! the most of mankind, truth compels me to say, live only to eat. for them “eating” is synonymous with “life.” with the discovery of such pills the wine of life would be drawn. no! no! no! if there were no such thing [pg 90]as eating we should have to invent it to save man from despairing. eating enables one who has suffered shipwreck on life’s voyage to withdraw into a sphere which once meant the greatest happiness to all human beings and still means it to all animals. one takes refuge in the primal instincts where one is safe and comfortable, until mother earth again devours and assimilates him before she awakes him to new life. we are all eternal links in an unending chain of links.
and that is the whole meaning of eating: life and death. every bite we eat means a quick death for myriads of living things. they must die that we may live. and so we live by death until our death gives life to others.
it’s no mere accident that don juan is summoned from the feast to his death.
