“Coffee, the sober drink, the mighty nourishment of the brain, which unlike other spirits, heightens purity and lucidity; coffee, which clears the clouds of the imagination and their gloomy weight; which illuminates the reality of things suddenly with the flash of truth.”
Bach's coffee cantata:
"Dear father, do not be so strict! If I can't have my little demi-tasse of coffee three times a day, I'm just like a dried up piece of roast goat! Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have my coffee, and if anyone wishes to please me, let him present me with—coffee!"
"Hot coffee helped him breathe more easily and he was inclined to drink a great
deal of it." (Marcel Proust: A Biography by Richard H. Barker)
"...he had to prepare himself by drinking coffee-- seventeen cups of it, he said..." (Marcel Proust: A Biography by Richard H. Barker)
"Why had coffee survived as his only food? I never asked him. I didn't like to ask
questions." (Monsieur Proust: A Memoir by Celeste Albaret)
15 comments:
I read a clever book a few years ago called "My Name is Red" in which there were several wonderful musings over Turkish coffee--inspired.
Thanks Edie - what kind of book is it and who by?
I have been appreciating very much these posts on coffee and friendship.
Perhaps I am not the only one to find a relation between them?
There are those moments of having a cup of coffee with a friend in the early hours of the morning when one is barely awake, and where the presence of a friend does something - which i cannot quite name - to the coffee, the patch of sunlight on the wall, or the dim overcast sky. the absence of friends does something too to the coffee, the sunlight and the sky.
or the moments in a cafe, where one sits with friends, sipping coffee for an indefinite period of time, not saying much, maybe a smile now and then, a gesture - look at that! and o yes, the arguments - do you not see!
Coffee and writing and books. I would imagine I am far from the only one who has coffee-stained books and notebooks and who, coming across such stains, tries to remember how and where and when they came about...
I started this comment only wanting to share a couple of lines that I became aware of thanks to a blogger - www.stingykids.net - who had responded to an attempt at my translating Celan. I do wish she would post more.
"a coffee stain on p.38
imagined itself
into a new land"
(Hezy Leskly, "Poem of the Cities")
Thanks Amie. Yes, definitely a relation between the two. The first and immediate relation being that I was at my current café of choice when I bumped into F., who joined me for coffee and reminded me about the conference on friendship. I’d not been greatly interested in this conference, but talking to him some new ideas took shape and it began to seem interesting.
It’s important for me to have a café of choice at any one time, a place which is not private, which becomes the place of certain kinds of writing (often the writing that ends up here at the blog). And yes, the innervation of coffee is best externalised in either writing or conversation! Thanks for the poem and the link. Was Celan translation the tantalisingly brief paragraph published at Long Sunday ("[To seek] an affirmation of this fragile thing..”), or is there more –would love to see it if so.
http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/2005/09/the_last_to_spe.html
Was just revisiting it there, as it happened.
"My Name is Red" is a sort of mystery/historical novel/meditation on art by Ohran Pamuk, a Turkish writer. There are a lot of reviews online, but this one seems to give a pretty good overview of the form with brief excerpts. I had never even realized that it was acclaimed; I just picked it up at the library because its cover illustration was a montage of Islamic art and seemed unusually humanizing of Islam to me right after September 11, 2001, which was refreshing.
whoever this 'meche-matt' person is , do hope no one will confuse it with me!
"The coffee had cleared the master's mind and given him the eyes of a jinn." - Pamuk, _My Name Is Red_ (chapter 31, "I Am Red")
whoever this 'meche-matt' person is , do hope no one will confuse it with me!
why would you say such a silly thing?
Amie - people are more likely to confuse him with Matt of Pas-au-dela. At the level of prose style, I don't think anyone would confuse you with Meche Matt or Matt. I'm not sure why Matt has chosen meche as an appellation - a quick googlesearch told me it's from the Greek meaning 'mucus', so I take it to be M's ironic reappropriation of a description of his writing style.
As for Ammie's comment, Matt, I'd just asked her a question about the Celan translation, a question promptly responded to by y'self (or meche) - so her (jokey) remark was understandable, on that level alone. Let's keep things amicable (no pun intended).
And thanks everyone for the references and suggestions.
"They don't understand the evil of coffee, the horror, and what will become of them if they drink it....
"'It isn't a pleasure,' I snapped. 'It's a sin. It's the devil's nectar. It's filthy and unhealthy and it enslaves half the world.' "
-- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case
(um, well, as far as I know, Amie and I *are* amicable, but that's very noble of you just the same.)
'keep it amicable'
"it" = the comments thread, obviously.
Paul Erdos, a Hungarian mathematician famous for his collaborative work with others, once said that a mathematician is machine for turning coffee into theorems.
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