December 10, 2012

Sausages: Food of the Intelligentsia


From Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson:

A letter to Einstein's first lover, Mileva: "We understand each other's dark souls so well, and also drinking coffee and eating sausages, etcetera."

Elsa [Einstein's second wife, and cousin!] "'recognized the need for keeping all disturbing elements away from him,' a relative noted. She would make his favorite meal of lentil soup and sausages, summon him down from his study, and then would leave him alone ..."

From Youth by J.M. Coetzee:

"His diet is unvarying: apples, oats porridge, bread and cheese, and spiced sausages called chipolatas, which he fries over the cooker. He prefers chipolatas to real sausages because they do not need to be refrigerated. Nor do they ooze grease when they fry."

"And what is the upshot of this lack of heat, this lack of heart? The upshot is that he is sitting alone on a Sunday afternoon in an upstairs room in a  house in the depths of the Berkshire countryside, with crows cawing in the fields and a gray mist hanging overhead, playing chess with himself, growing old, waiting for evening to fall so that he can with a good conscience fry his sausages and bread for supper."

The image is a Literaturwurst by Swiss artist Dieter Roth. It's the complete works of Hegel, ground up and made into sausage.