September 30th, 2013
163 years after his death, Honoré de Balzac remains an extremely modern-sounding wag. Were he alive today, he’d no doubt be pounding out his provocative observations in a coffice, a café whose free wifi, lenient staff, and abundant electrical outlets make it a magnet for writers.
One has a hunch Starbucks would not suffice…
Judging by his humorous essay, “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” Balzac
would seek out a place that stays open past midnight, and the
strongest, most arcane brewing methods. The Bucket of Black Snakes was
his Green Fairy. He was that most cunning of addicts, sometimes imbibing
up to 50 cups of coffee a day, carefully husbanding his binges, knowing
just when to pull back from the edge in order to prolong his vice.
Coffee — he called it a “great power in [his] life” — made possible a grueling writing schedule
that had him going to bed at six, rising at 1am to work until eight in
the morning, then grabbing forty winks before putting in another seven
hours.
It takes more than a couple of cappuccinos to maintain that kind of
pace. Whenever a reasonable human dose failed to stimulate, Balzac would
begin eating coffee powder on an empty stomach, a “horrible, rather
brutal method” that he recommended “only to men of excessive vigor, men
with thick black hair and skin covered with liver spots, men with big
square hands and legs shaped like bowling pins.”
Apparently it got the job done. He cranked out eighty-five novels in
twenty years and died at 51. The cause? Too much work and caffeine, they like to say. Other speculated causes of death include hypertension, atherosclerosis, and even syphilis.
via The New Yorker
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