Paris in spring.
Word has it that no one can resist Paris in the spring. Personally, I beg to differ, possessing a special emotional resistance to blossoming flowers and abundant sunshine and the romance of je ne sais quoi that is generally conferred to people only in curmudgeonly old age. Still, I offer a few excerpts from Émile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris (1873) today for those who do mourn their inability to stroll along the Champs Élysées this seasonal cycle, lover or ice cream in hand.
Literally, Zola’s title means ‘The Belly of Paris’, though Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, who made the translation that the excerpts below are taken from, rendered it as ‘The Fat and the Thin’–which sounds like it might have unintentionally inspired the catty title of the recent book comparing American dietary habits to French ones that garnered so much press and generated massive hoopla. Zola’s novel is probably more worthwhile, though sometimes difficult going. Let’s just say that there are a lot of characters, and it is very long. The full book (trans. Vizetelly) can be accessed here on Project Gutenberg, though I think the new translation by Mark Kurlansky is probably a better bet, if his ability to make salt and cod into fascinating historical topics that remain engaging over hundreds of pages is any indication.*
From Le Ventre de Paris:
I. Picnicking Youngsters
Cadine and Marjolin had struck up an acquaintance with Leon, Quenu’s apprentice, one day when he was taking a pie to a house in the neighbourhood. They saw him cautiously raise the lid of his pan in a secluded corner of the Rue de Mondetour, and delicately take out a ball of forcemeat. They smiled at the sight, which gave them a very high opinion of Leon. And the idea came to Cadine that she might at last satisfy one of her most ardent longings. Indeed, the very next time that she met the lad with his basket she made herself very agreeable, and induced him to offer her a forcemeat ball. But, although she laughed and licked her fingers, she experienced some disappointment. The forcemeat did not prove nearly so nice as she had anticipated. On the other hand, the lad, with his sly, greedy phiz and his white garments, which made him look like a girl going to her first communion, somewhat took her fancy.
She invited him to a monster lunch which she gave amongst the hampers in the auction room at the butter market. The three of them—herself, Marjolin, and Leon—completely secluded themselves from the world within four walls of osier. The feast was laid out on a large flat basket. There were pears, nuts, cream-cheese, shrimps, fried potatoes, and radishes. The cheese came from a fruiterer’s in the Rue de la Cossonnerie, and was a present; and a “frier” of the Rue de la Grande Truanderie had given Cadine credit for two sous’ worth of potatoes. The rest of the feast, the pears, the nuts, the shrimps, and the radishes, had been pilfered from different parts of the market. It was a delicious treat; and Leon, desirous of returning the hospitality, gave a supper in his bedroom at one o’clock in the morning. The bill of fare included cold black-pudding, slices of polony, a piece of salt pork, some gherkins, and some goose-fat. The Quenu-Gradelles’ shop had provided everything. And matters did not stop there. Dainty suppers alternated with delicate luncheons, and invitation upon invitation. Three times a week there were banquets, either amidst the hampers or in Leon’s garret, where Florent, on the nights when he lay awake, could hear a stifled sound of munching and rippling laughter until day began to break.
II. The famous ‘Cheese Symphony’ scene
As the three women stood there, taking leave of each other, the odour of the cheeses seemed to become more pestilential than ever. It was a cacophony of smells, ranging from the heavily oppressive odour of the Dutch cheeses and the Gruyeres to the alkaline pungency of the Olivets. From the Cantal, the Cheshire, and the goats’ milk cheeses there seemed to come a deep breath like the sound of a bassoon, amidst which the sharp, sudden whiffs of the Neufchatels, the Troyes, and the Mont d’Ors contributed short, detached notes. And then the different odours appeared to mingle one with another, the reek of the Limbourgs, the Port Saluts, the Geromes, the Marolles, the Livarots, and the Pont l’Eveques uniting in one general, overpowering stench sufficient to provoke asphyxia. And yet it almost seemed as though it were not the cheeses but the vile words of Madame Lecoeur and Mademoiselle Saget that diffused this awful odour.
*A slight post-post digression: Ah, the fearsome and pungent beauty of French cheeses. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that the translation done by Mark Kurlansky for the Modern Library series in 2009 is the way to go if you’re looking for Le Ventre de Paris but can’t read the original French. I haven’t seen it yet, but as I mentioned above, Kurlansky is also the author of the unexpectedly fascinating Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (1998) and Salt: A World History (2003). He’s probably among the first and the best to venture into the history-of-the-world-through-one-type-of-edible-item genre that seems to have become ridiculously popular recently. The titles of such works, if you are not familiar with them, inevitably follow a surefire formula:
[Food Item] + [Colon] + [Grandiose/scintillating claim about said food item’s role in shaping human history]
Examples:
(a) Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerers
(b) Spice: The History of a Temptation
(c) The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World
Mad Libs, anyone?
The Endless Potluck 