Cafe Corner - Honore de Balzac

Legend has it that the prolific 19th century French writer  Honore de Balzac c. 20th May 1799 - 18th August 1850 had passed away after innumerable and copious quantities of this infamous brew, once scandalously known as the devil's own brew. The properties of literatti had not held itself back. Honore de Balzac had truly lived a driven life through flashes of inspiration. Though it cannot be said that the hallmark of genius and properties of inventiveness were found to be wanting through the course of his brief but prodigious literary career, Honore de Balzac could truly find his immense source of inspiration from a very humble dark drink known to stir the very heights of emotion and intellect. The property mantle of intellect had it's origins from this mere humble drink. Known to have arisen at the darkest hours, time knew not how to slow the seeds of genius when slumbers would have called another, lesser mortal man, to put down the pen and peacefully repose towards a mundane life of dim wittery.  

Indeed, once he had wrote -

"if those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life ... "

Therefore, Honore de Balzac, we salute your genius and rever your name for it's literary glory.

Honore de Balzac is best know today for his enormous collection of books collectively titled La Comédie humaine and portraying French society of the early nineteenth century. At its inception after an insightful flash of true genius, and a cup of coffee, Honore de Balzac famously declared to his sister -

"I am about to become a genius!"

In the literary world the French writer Honore de Balzac is a name that is eternally coupled with the passion for coffee as much as the name of Samuel T. Coleridge, author of such fantastic visionary works such as - The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, became synonymous with opium. 

Varying reports identify his daily consumption habits in the region of 10 - 50 cups! Depending of course which article you read.


Selected titles from La Comédie humaine -

    Les Chouans (1829)
    Sarrasine (1830)
    La Peau de chagrin (1831)
    Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (1831)
    Le Colonel Chabert (1832)
    Le Curé de Tours (1832)
    La Fille aux yeux d'or (1833)
    Eugénie Grandet (1833)
    Le Contrat de mariage (1835)
    Le Père Goriot (1835)
    Le Lys dans la vallée (1835)
    La Rabouilleuse (1842)
    Ursule Mirouët (1842)
    La Femme de trente ans (1829-1842)
    Illusions perdues (I, 1837; II, 1839; III, 1843)
    La Cousine Bette (1846)
    Le Cousin Pons (1847)
    Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (1847)

Pieter Bergli - Cafe enthusiast, raconteur extraordinaire on the dark but illuminating property of the humble coffee bean...

Cafe Corner - Reflections with Chopin...

 

Sunday's are for solitude and finding time away from ourselves

Watching the world through the rain that purifies with deep cleansing thoughts over a nice warm cuppa ...

Pieter Bergli - Cafe enthusiast ..

The Age Of Reason And Coffee In The 17th Century

In Europe the early 17th-century saw a whole new era of philosophical discussion which steadily came to be known as the Age of Reason or Age of Rationalism, widely regarded as the precursor to be the early form of modern philosophy. Gone was the earlier understanding of the Renaissance an in it's place all forms of rational inquiry was now the vogue. 
 

In England the very first coffee house to be opened was situated in Oxford in 1652.  It quickly came to earn a reputation of a place of disrepute; for what gentleman would stoop to shops of clamor and argument over a drink with no less a reputation than a sordid glass of alcoholic beverage. Coffee had at once become l'enfant terrible! Yet, tastes can become cultured.  In London, in that very same year, another coffee house was opened at St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, by a Greek gentleman Pasqua Roseé amidst a great deal of controversy. Local tavern keepers offering alcoholic beverages were quite literally aghast that almost 600 cups of the black devilish brew were being sold every single day! Thus a culture of coffee enthusiasm was growing fast and unbounded by popular opinions.

By 1656, there was a second coffee house that had opened at the sign of the rainbow on Fleet Street and by 1663 indeed there were no fewer than 82 coffee houses with thriving custom in London alone. “Black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love”, said an old Turkish proverb. yet, that did stop an insatiable demand as a thriving London coffee mores quickly became established, whose manners inspired heated debate and discussion on almost every topic form God to nature, to finances to politics. 

The arrival of the London coffee culture, first and foremost in a newly enlightened Europe, coincided with the dawn of reasoning that laid the foundations for the English economy to  growth, compete and innovate in the decades to come. London coffee houses were the sources of inspiration for the organization of the stock exchange, the currency markets the insurance industry, the banking industry, commodity trading and auctioneering. At the forefront of the new English economy and its lieberal rational mind was the 17th-century coffee houses that ignited a new era of global trade and financial domination and prosperity for Great Britain.

The property of genius and sources of inspiration brewed at the very heart of the English Industrial Revolution and the birth of a future Empire. From the darkest house of clamor and ill-repute, men's minds huddled over the darkest of brews, in pensive reflection, were unleashed upon a new age of mercantile, scientific and political expansion. 

Pieter Bergli - cafe narrator and enthusiast...

historical narrations and commentaries upon the properties of coffee and the chapters of human ingenuity.

Cafe Corner- Browning Musings - The Best Is Yet To be!

Rabbi Ben Ezra
By Robert Browning

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Rejoice we are allied
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.

Then, welcome each rebuff      
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!                                     


For thence,—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

What is he but a brute
Whose flesh has soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test—
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?

Yet gifts should prove their use:
I own the Past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole,
Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn?"

Not once beat "Praise be Thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
Perfect I call Thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
   Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what Thou shalt do!"

For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!

Let us not always say,
"Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"
As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplexed,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armour to indue.

Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.

For note, when evening shuts,
A certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the grey:
A whisper from the west
Shoots—"Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."

So, still within this life,
Though lifted o'er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
This rage was right i' the main,
That acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."

For more is not reserved
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

As it was better, youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
So, better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right
And Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own
With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.

Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?

Not on the vulgar mass
Called "work," must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

What though the earlier grooves,
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?

But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I,—to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife,
Bound dizzily,—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

So, take and use Thy work:  Amend what flaws may lurk,  
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

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Solitary musings of contentment with a morning cafe

The Life of Robert Browning -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Browning

Pieter Bergli - cafe enthusiast and some daily musings with a cup of coffee.....

a man may find peace within himself staring into the dark emptiness of an early swirl.

The Genteel World Of Coffee

Welcome to each and every bon vivant who has found such great delight in the fine art of drinking a decent cup of coffee!

This is a wonderful little blog dedicated wholly to  that lovely little drink that soothes the mind, enriches the soul, and inspires the drinker to the higher levels of creativity and genius.

So do find delight in the pages that follow for this is a blog about everything and anything to do with the world of coffee. As passionate as we all are about our delicate coffee foibles equally are we enthused by a decent level of intelligent conversation. So enjoy this little blog dedicated to one of life's most of finest drinks.

Yours sincerely,

Pieter Bergli - Coffee Connoisseur Extraordinaire 

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