Don't
you just hate it when someone casually drops in a name, a first name
or surname, and expects you to know to whom they're referring?
Scholars, I find, do this a lot, as do introductions to classics by
translators or authors, since they seem to assume that if you've got
this far i.e. picked up a certain volume that you must be
well-informed and know all the persons and works they might
reference. Now, I like to think I have scholarly leanings, but I'm
still learning i.e. there's a lot I don't know and even more I don't
retain, and when you have only a surname, for example, to go on, then
you just have to hope that any further research comes up trumps with
the very man or woman you want to verify, as well as blindly trust
the source it comes from.
The
above, whilst it's not a very gripping way to start an article, is a
sort of disclaimer before getting on with it (I'm getting to it, I
promise!), for I'm still not sure I've got the right Lichtenberg
(Georg Christoph) and if I haven't I can deny that I've done anything
wrong, other than attribute something the Lichtenberg I want said to
the wrong Lichtenberg. And before then laying the blame at the feet
of Michael Hulse, the author and translator, unless of course I've
missed an earlier paragraph where a brief sentence mentions all I
needed to know: his name, in full, and what he did or was known for,
maybe. In which case, if such a passage is discovered, my sincere
apologies to Hulse for denying any responsibility for the matter and
for being an ignoramus i.e. for wanting more detail, of the sort that
a university educated person would know or be able to infer.
Though
I'm not such a fool as not to gather, from his introduction, that
this Lichtenberg was a satirist, or at least had a dry wit, which he
used to great effect in his letters. In one, he is said to have
remarked: 'the smell of a pancake is a more powerful reason for
remaining in this world than all young Werther's supposedly lofty
conclusions are for quitting it.'
I
find that amusing, but don't agree; I can think of other smells that
would convince me to remain. The smell of a pancake is not the first
I would think of - I can't even think, at present, what a pancake
smells like, but I can taste the lemon and white sugar - it must be
white sugar, though I am often led by my nose.
Why
a pancake, I wondered? And wonder still. And then, too, for
Lichtenberg wrote this in May 1775. Perhaps pancakes were the best
thing since (or even before) sliced bread. Though Thackeray (oh,
another surname, no first name, but I know of him – do you? It's
William Makepeace) in 1853 made a to-do about bread and butter, and
also in connection with Werther, which incidentally was another Hulse
note. But at least the cutting of bread was featured in the novel.
Pancakes were not.
Had
they been and if I were in young Werther's (or maybe even Goethe's)
position would the smell of a pancake, or the mere thought of tasting
one, make me choose this world over the next? Could those intent on
doing themselves harm be saved by pancakes?
Maybe
a pancake would delay the inevitable, and then if you kept on eating
them, because well, who can refuse another, would keep postponing it,
until the act he or she thought they would commit had been escaped
from. Can food do that?
It
fills a hole, definitely. But not indefinitely.
Maybe,
however, pancakes have some magic I don't know of. Although now I
come to think on it, my maternal nan's were so light and airy they
must have contained not just the usual ingredients. We would all (all
those in the household on Shrove Tuesday) come back for more. With a
squeeze of real lemon and a sprinkle of white sugar. I never found
out exactly what she did to that batter; she must have done something
different to it, for even imperfectly cooked it was perfect.
Is
perhaps that their magic? They can be a little burnt or a little
underdone, but none of that matters, nor somehow affects the
mouth-feel or the lifelong remembrance of it.
Pancakes,
then, mixed well, might just be the saving of you.
Picture credit: Making Pancakes, Boris Grigoriev (source: WikiArt)
Acknowledgement to: The Sorrows of Young
Werther, Goethe, Penguin Classics , intro/notes by Michael Hulse.
This post was penned during 2019.
