An aesthetics of the mouth

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Notes

The author wishes to thank Amis Boersma, Marcel Cobussen and Bregje van Eekelen for their comments..

1 Sara Guyer critiques Deleuze (The Logic of Sense) for having misread what happened at Alice's coronation dinner (Carroll, Alice in Wonderland); this event was not about eating or about being eaten, she claims. On the contrary, Alice remains hungry and speechless throughout this dream. And it is accordingly – through her non-eating, in the removal of the mouth – that she questions language, logic, or, rather, the definitions of writing.

2 Once again an argument that reminds us of Proust's famous excerpt on the madeleine, where he also, unarguably, shows us the power of comestibles:

• But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and most impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. (Proust 50–51)

3 It was not only China's most famous poet Li Bai (or Li Po or Li Tai-pé) (701–62) who eagerly explored the realm of food but also less famous artists such as Zhou Bang-Yan (1056–1121), who devoted much of his poetry to the edible. Their use of the alimentary is quite similar to the directions pointed out by Dalí/Bosch and Rabelais/Marinetti. Li Bai uses food, and especially wine, in order to reach for the world of Taoist truths. Even in style and in wit his work comes very close to Rabelais/Marinetti. Zhou Bang-Yan, on the other hand, practicing the conventional wanyue pai style (the “graceful-suggestive” style), prefigured, in a way, what Bosch/Dalí did centuries later; in his work, everything refers to the alimentary territory in order to verbalize heartache, sadness and transitoriness.

4 The influence of Antonin Carême on European Cuisine cannot be underestimated because he wrote many timeless books on cuisine and (notably) because he was most popular with the new French post-Revolution elite, Napoleon himself and the other great names of the then European royal houses and nobility (such as King George IV from England, Tsar Alexander I, Lord Steward and Baron Rothschild) and thus also practically inspired an entire new generation of chefs.

5 A search for the exotic was established mainly by experimenting with new vegetables from China, Japan, India, and North Africa. Later, the concept of fusion cooking was derived from this practice.

6 The first person to ridicule the advancements of nouvelle cuisine was, strangely enough, Paul Bocuse himself. In an attempt not to become the victim of the growing antipathy against the new cuisiniers, Bocuse quickly distanced himself from nouvelle cuisine.