Hors D'Œuvres--a Panegyric

To say that there is no disputing tastes is to be ridiculous. What else is worth disputing except tastes? There are, of course, contests of fact or of pure reason, which may be determined by the weight of evidence or by the principles of consistent thinking. But in any other kind of dispute, what can be at issue ultimately except some kind of taste, some kind of preference, either trivial or profound, involving either a light and casual affinity of the organism, or a whole-hearted and crucial one, for which a man, if sufficiently driven, will be prepared to fight? To say that there is no disputing tastes is to say that we should never contest any question except one of fact or pure reason — that is, one which can be determined and settled by evidence or logic. It is true, of course, that in a dispute about tastes neither party to the conflict can finally establish his point. But we do not argue points of preference for the sake of reaching an ultimate decision. We are really engaged in the effort to define our allegiances, and to state the grounds of our loyalties. We try to show that we are worthy of their excellence by defending them with spirit and imagination; and that they are worthy of our faith by the eloquence they evoke in us.

The difficulty arises because people confuse taste with judgment, or it would be better to say, tastes with judgments. Because we affirm a certain preference for ourselves, we are not obliged to condemn all others, or refuse to admit that they have any merit. The first duty of the taster — whether of books, or wines, or varieties of human character — is discrimination; judgment is a luxury he should permit himself only after long schooling and experience. He should first be acquainted with the varieties of his material, and acquire a nice series of perceptions and distinctions along the spectrum of its diversities. Then he may venture to pronounce upon the examples that are presented to him for judgment, to classify them and compare them, to condemn the crudity of one, to praise the purity of another. The defect of most critics is that they make haste to praise or to condemn before they have made a careful discrimination of the qualities of the object about which they are talking. Much of the odium that attaches to the disputation of tastes is the result of this failing. We are all delighted when anyone makes an apt definition of some object in the realm of our preferences or hatreds; we do our best to remember his epigram, and quote it on the first occasion that offers. But such a man is a critic; he has been attentive to the qualities of experience, and discriminating enough to describe them. This is the best part of criticism. It does not forbid a man to reject what finally antagonizes his palate or his conscience; but such a temperament on the whole makes for catholicity or at least for liberality of taste. And if the act of rejection must ultimately be performed, the indictment will be the more brilliant and the more damaging because it has been drawn up with finer attention and more educated perceptions.

There are tastes in food, I must admit, which I am not catholic enough or omnipeptic enough to regard with approval. I have sometimes suspected that there is a masochism in certain articles of diet which a psychoanalyst might construe as evidence of deep-seated disorders. When, for example, I see a number of women afflict themselves with alligator pears (which, surely, are voluntarily eaten exclusively by women) I begin to wonder what obscure consciousness of guilt is expiating itself in the consumption of this unpleasant vegetable. I know that those who devour alligator pears assert that they enjoy them; and I do not call their honesty in question. But how do they enjoy them? Psychologists tell us that certain people take a malignant and unnatural pleasure in afflicting themselves with voluntary injuries and submitting to experiences which the normal mind regards as uncongenial. Of this kind, I maintain, is the pleasure derived from eating alligator pears. It is an example of masochism in diet. How else account for the taste which seeks out a stimulation so subtly corrupt, so smoothly and delicately degenerate? Consider the pulpy but elastic texture, yielding to the teeth, even so soft as to be yielding to the gums; yet not melting, but rather persisting with a kind of decadent strength, and insinuating itself into all the recesses and secluded caverns of the mouth. Consider the flavor: has it not a tincture of the fetid, has it not an almost Byzantine sophistication, a quality that proclaims it the last refuge of languid and corrupted appetite? And consider also how these properties are soothed and coddled and anointed in the glib solvent of the salad oils; can the entire dish be fairly described as anything but dis-gusting, in the truest sense of the word? I feel sure that it betrays a sense of punishment due for obscure crimes or inadequacies, punishment which nature has not yet exacted and which the unhappy victim inadvertently imposes on himself.

But to speak thus of the alligator pear is to admit that I too practise a milder degree of the masochism of diet. As a matter of fact we all enjoy small degrees of pain and certain forms of the unpleasant, especially as ingredients in pleasure. The small boy likes to twist and torture his first loose tooth around his tongue, and the little shoots of incipient soreness which he derives exert a powerful fascination over him. I have sometimes suspected that the pleasure which many people seriously aver they take in certain pieces of contemporary music is of the same kind. (This is not said in depreciation of such great musicians as Stravinsky.) All this being so, it is only to be expected that in such a fundamental and universal pleasure as eating we should enjoy an ingredient of the repulsive and the decadent. It should of course be added that all tastes tend, in some individuals markedly, and in many individuals considerably, to become as sophisticated as possible; and sophistication, on one side, is nothing but dissatisfaction with simple and natural pleasures, and the adulteration of them with elements which at first would seem unpleasant and unhealthy.

The ingredient of the corrupt which is almost inevitable in civilized diet I find in hors d’œuvres. And I should like to compose a hymn of praise to hors d’œuvres, whether it argues in me an obscure sense of guilt and expiation, or whether it is merely the exuberance of a healthy and largely unconstrained appetite. It seems to me that in hors d’œuvres the stimulation of the sophisticated, which we must admit means the faintly corrupt and the delicately repulsive, is carried to the nicest degree of successful judgment. Blessed be hors d’œuvres! Yes, give me the tail of a small and infirm fish glibbed over with yellow oil, give me the sardine smeared with the native unguent of its tin, give me the black and globular roe of the sturgeon cohering in a pungent paste, and make me thoroughly happy. True enough, there are some edibles which may be served as hors d’œuvres which I must sadly exclude from my gamut of appreciation; among them, the ripe olive. But the crisp cells and bunched fibres of the radish are welcome; the little serpentine coils of I know not what sable substance, nestling on squares of salty biscuit, are a delight; even the ropy tobacco-twists of kippers, like splinters of wood impregnated with brine, give the stimulation of novelty, and are acceptable if only for the surprise of discovering that they are edible at all. The institution of the cocktail party is open to objection on many grounds; but it must be said in its favor that it has popularized hors d’œuvres. For my part I am as ready to go to such a party for the canapŌs as for the cocktails; and lustrous in my eyes forevermore is the hostess who provides them amply and with subtle and ingenious attention to the due compounding of all their degenerate and corrupt and delicious elements!