EUROPA 2005 - GASTRONOMY - BREAD

A sketch on bread and wine If we were to make up a most inadequate list of wines and bread, every conversation covering such a small space would remain a mere catchword, If, on the other hand, we were to emphasize their deeper hidden meanings, in various parts of the world, in different civilizations, religions or simply in human history, the task would turn out to be impossible. In this case, along with a brilliant erudition one would almost need an encyclopaedia! The entry ‘bread’ in the lexicon states the following: “known from times immemorial as the well-known fundamental food of many peoples, made by baking dough from cereal flour and water, with the addition of leaven and salt”. In the same lexicon the entry on wine states “wine is a drink made by alcoholic fermentation of unfermented grape-juice. According to colour wines can be divided into white, rosé and red.” This is the most basic division in the framework of which there is a profusion and uncountable number of classifications and meanings to be found. Bread and wine are the two most important things in man’s life. The culture of cultivating cereal crops and the making of wine has grown from the needs of everyday life to cult and mystery. This is why bread and wine can be called victuals but also symbols full of mystical and symbolic meanings. Their spiritual communion is the foundation of the Eucharist, i.e. the sacrament of the sacrifice of the Lord’s body and blood. This is the reason that both bread and wine used to be divided, particularly in the Middle Ages, into the sacral and profane. If bread should be taken as the symbol of Jesus Christ’s body and his sacrifice, a loaf of bread is the attribute of Saint Dominic (with a snake it is also the attribute of Saint Benedict, while small loaves are symbols of Mary of Egypt, etc.). One should not completely disregard the fact that a dog took a loaf of bread to Saint Rock into the wilderness where God’s gift, the manna, fell from heaven. According to the Hebraic tradition leavened bread is a sin, and unleavened bread is used as ritual bread. Bread “must be baked from wheat flour and that means body, while wine as blood means the soul” (C.G.Jung, Psychology of Alchemy, p.320). Where would the story of bread and wine take us? Only the listing of their sorts, their tastes or colours, ways of their preparation and ingredients would endanger any effort that seeks to preserve and stay within the anticipated frame. It is the basic food both of the rich and the poor that puts the wealth and poverty on the same level and actually gives certain precedence to the poor. How come? While the poor feed on dark, brown, simpler and poorer but to all appearances wholesome bread, the rich eat “blindingly white” and presumably unwholesome bread. Enjoyment of food, particularly wine, recognizes moderation but also exaggeration, real bacchanalia and feasts where temperance and common sense were not highly appreciated. “Only no water” says an inscription on a Dionysian temple (1). This is supported by Jesus’ first miracle in Cana in Galilee but also the “sober intoxicating quality of wine” referred to by Saint Augustine. The Old Testament sages considered wine to be a liar. The Hebrews used to offer it to their enemies, there are some who sing praise to it (the Greeks), others consider it a mortal temptation, others yet think it is the “mirror of the soul” (Alcheius). Those who, since time immemorial, consider it to be the friend of truth actually sow the seeds of the later Latin proverb In vino veritas – or in a simpler, more sincere translation this means ‘what to say when drunk is what you think when sober’. Drinking wine according to this proverb means pave the way to sincerity and veracity. There is an underlying thought that sober persons worry too much about what they say, applying tactics, expressing themselves diplomatically and carefully (so you do not know what they think), while persons who have had a glass or two of wine are an open book. This sincerity is at its best the consequence of good wine. Along with good wine goes veracity, while after having imbibed bad wine one can only lie or talk incoherently. This is best expressed by Béla Hamvas who recognizes hybrid grapes as those from which you can only make reeking wine made by the devil himself. According to Hamvas it is the “drink of puritans, pious persons, spinsters, bachelors, predatory persons, misers, envious persons and mean bastards”. Differentiating between religious and atheist grapes, Hamvas mentions that “the devil envied the Lord’s art of making wine and decided to make wine himself”. There is an entire oenologist collection of newspapers and journals and library, symbolism and metaphors about bread, and particularly about wine. The book Philosophy of wine (Ceres, Zagreb 1993) is possibly the best book about wine (and bread), a small, concise catechism of the culture of drinking (how to drink, when, with whom, before or after which meal to drink, etc.), not as an instruction and catalogue of suggestions and expertise, but as a sign of corporeal and spiritual health. This work of a wise man and connoisseur also found a place for the social categorization of wine. So, for instance, he quotes wines for gala dances, engagements, weddings, ... for all the life’s events and awkward situations, the wine from Somlos is the “loners’ wine”, while the one from Kiskörös “suffers no loneliness”. Drink or victual? For Hamvas, wine likes to accompany fish which is “the wine’s best side dish”. The dilemma is a false one. For a clever person wine is food and a way to reach into one’s own soul. A clever person drinks in order to find oneself; an intemperate person drinks to lose oneself. (1) Dionysus is the son of Zeus and Semele, the Greek god of intoxication, vine and enjoyment, the friend and muse, a symbol of insobriety and unrestricted love. There are many festivals held in his honour, like the Dionysia, but also orgies and drunken feasts.