"Nourishing the spirit," "devouring a book," "hunger for knowledge." These and other metaphors we use as common expressions involve two worlds that, curiously, have always been linked: that of food and that of intellectuals.
The intellectual, a term now somewhat distorted and widely used to refer generally to a cultured person, basically designates those who use their intelligence to carry out any professional activity. However, we all think of those great geniuses whose contributions and achievements changed the course of human history in many ways. By reviewing the eating habits and customs of these figures, we find a variety of anecdotes.
On one hand, there are those who believed food was a trivial act that only distracted the mind and kept it from truly important matters, so they consumed frugal diets to, in their view, maintain cognitive sharpness. Among these are the Greek Aristophanes and Steve Jobs, who ate almost exclusively almonds, dates, and carrots. On the opposite side, there are those who distrusted people who did not enjoy good food and drink, like Thomas Alva Edison, who interviewed his assistants by inviting them to soup. If the candidate seasoned the soup before tasting it, they were immediately discarded. Representing lovers of food on the edge of the exotic, Charles Darwin not only liked to study animal species but also to eat them at his gluttons' club. Ernest Hemingway is famous not only for his literary contributions but also for his fondness for drink and parties. It is almost impossible to separate Van Gogh from absinthe, or Balzac from caffeine—which even caused his death. Would the great works be the same if they had not been produced under the influence of stimulating substances? A difficult question to answer, considering that a discourse praising the need for such “inspirations” could be interpreted as an apology for addictions.
Gastronomic allegories have also remained as evidence of intellectual activity. Here, it is inevitable to mention Proust’s madeleine, that little butter cake the author references in Swann’s Way. Today, Proust’s madeleine is used to designate those smells and flavors that, when perceived by our palate, bring us back to a memory: grandma’s chocolate, the smells of mom’s kitchen, the scent of wet earth from home, etc.
The intellectual’s task also requires exchange with peers. The first cafés became the first public spaces for meeting and discussing ideas. It is impossible to imagine the conspiracy for the French Revolution without the gatherings at Le Procope—the oldest restaurant in Paris still in operation—which would later be frequented by Benjamin Franklin for ideological inspiration for the independence of the United States. And speaking of revolutions, in Mexico City, Café La Habana is famous for having been the meeting place for the planning of the Cuban revolution, serving as a gathering spot for Fidel Castro and Ernesto Guevara. This place was also immortalized in the novel “The Savage Detectives” by Roberto Bolaño, who in this same café would create the infrarrealist poetic movement with Santiago Papasquiaro.
The legendary Café de Flore today would only be a café for jet-setters and bourgeois bohemians, had it not been a mandatory stop for Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others. In Mexico, cantinas like La Ópera were silent witnesses to the revolutionary war, as well as to revelries with participants ranging from a Nobel Prize winner in literature, the muralist, the concert pianist from Bellas Artes, to the city chronicler.
The gatherings of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera likewise served as a framework for the exchange of ideas in the prolific intellectual life that characterized their era, and Frida’s love for cooking is legendary. The recognition of cuisine as an essential part of human activity and evolution is magnificently honored by Nobel laureate Günter Grass in one of his most important literary works, The Flounder. Countless are the quotes that pay tribute to the value of food, drink, and good company at the table.
In the end, genius is a social construct, in the sense that society determines which specific characteristics of a type of intelligence will be considered outstanding by the standards of the time. The genius of one era is the madman of another. On the other hand, the intellectual is one who makes thinking both a passion and a profession. Food, for its part, represents a world that, while for some may seem trivial, for others is not just a pleasure or a necessity, but an entire way of seeing the world through the eyes of those who find in smells and flavors sources of pleasure, inspiration, and, why not, discussion.
@Lillie_ML
— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.