Читать книгу The Wiener Schnitzel Love Book! - Severin Corti - Страница 19

ALFRED POLGAR

The legendary columnist of pre-war Vienna Alfred Polgar explains why the Wiener Schnitzel brings dinners together in human kindness, especially when paired with cucumber salad.

There is truth in wine, but good food brings forth love. A drunk speaks from the heart, people who are satiated by food suddenly have a heart that they did not have before. They are overcome by the joy of understanding and by a desire for justice. Bridges of sympathy make connections both near and far. A pink mist curtails distances and covers up abysses. Man becomes good. Their tongues convert the calories they have taken on board into chatter. They behave differently from the tongue of a drunkard, which spills out content from a full bowl of consciousness and reveals what lay at its bottom.

The laws governing the psychological impact of good food go hand in hand (or rather soul in stomach) with the physical being. They are puzzling and impenetrable, but a few constantly recurring basic types do exist.

Breaded schnitzel with cucumber salad, for example, fosters the development of a kind of glue for the mind. This brings the table together to form a symbolic unit. Some eaters sense this unity so strongly that they feel a need to preserve it beyond the fleeting hour of dining. This sort of person is touched by human kindness before the soup course is over. By the main course, an invitation for a home visit will have been issued to all those present. Arrangements for joint holidays will be finalised over the cheese, and these plans will be extended to cover the whole of a lifetime whilst the company is drinking their black coffee.

The familiar counterpart to this type of figure is the pessimistic glutton. In this case, moral over-compensation for bodily enjoyment leads to a prevailing mood which is characterised by moodiness and bitterness. This type of person feels that the joy of eating has infringed the ethical laws. A sense of gloom is produced in order to satisfy any injury given. They are ashamed to be savouring their food and tend to show the displeasure they take in such pleasure. If you ask them: “Would you like compote or salad?”, they will respond caustically: “This issue was already settled in the Communist Manifesto.” They will then help themselves to both.

There is another very peculiar type of reaction to good food. In this case, and without being encouraged and provoked in any way, persons eating will give their views on a range of matters on which they actually hold no opinion at all. Out of the blue, and without having been led to the topic by previous association, they will say something like: “X has the loveliest voice of all female soprano concert singers.” It is not true that X has the best soprano voice, but this does not matter. The person might equally have said: “She has the ugliest soprano voice” or “She is the worst female bass singer.” The point is not to express an opinion but merely to provide some kind of intellectual food to chew on. It is simply a question of producing speech sounds.

Initially, I thought that such passion for passing a judgement without arriving at one or for setting out a stance without having one in the first place was a kind of pantheistic degeneracy of the sense of ego that is enhanced by eating well. I saw it as a variation of the urge to reach out to millions and as a consequence of increased vitality seeking to dispense its surpluses in an offhand manner. But then I realised that this wondrous apparition has its foundations in a simple psychological process – a straightforward brain burp.

Consuming meat and desserts causes increased blood pressure. The extraneous and confused material floating around inside the brain is then pushed upwards and out. The pleasurable sensations obviously experienced by the speaker are expelled in the same way as the conventional singultus communis burp given by persons of a coarser nature following a good meal.