This document provides a series of excerpts from poems and literary works that relate to food and meals. It uses these excerpts to discuss themes of meals bringing people together or dividing them, the relationship between food and hospitality, depictions of despair related to food, and observations about modern society. The excerpts are analyzed and connected to the author's experiences traveling in Hungary.
10. 2
And so, as the Gregorian calendar ordained, this year too- 1944, on
Sándor day, March 18- we invited several relatives to dinner to celebrate
the occasion.
From Land Land, by Sándor Márai
One of the first thigns i read is this personali memoir of hungary chronicling the
end of World War II and the years after. Meal as metaphor, meal as bringing
together, but also meal as conflict
11. 3
A knife slips on porcelain,
then silence again.
A shaking fork sheds half its load of rice.
I swallow meat as unchewable as a horse chestnut.
Family lunch with an unknown family.
From quot;Lunchquot; by Krisztián Peer, out of Hide and Seek
More contemporary, younger generation of poets, leaning towards post-
modernism. meal as alienating. connect with awkward social situations as i got
settled.
12. 4
Today's good deed is done.
I help clear the table,
no longer a guest, becoming family
This passage, taken from later i the same poem, shows how the simple act of
dining together can bring forth so much, and join people together. Connect with
the hospitality i experienced (kata's, maria's, etc.)
13. 5
The world was void.
The populous and the powerful-was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death
From quot;Darknessquot; by Lord Byron, taken from quot;The Ode 'To Autumn' as
Ecosystemquot; by Jonathan Bate
Jumping off from my documentation, i my readings took a turn in the direction
of non-fiction. I started reading some eco-criticism, a new genre of literary
anlysis that explores a text as a landscape, and the landscape as a text. The
world around us tells a story, but so does our food. I paired this depressing
quote with this depressing looking burger (the McRoyal, if you must know)
because they convey the same feelings of despair and misery.
14. 6
Scene One
Afternoon. A hanged cat dangles from the carpet-beating stand. Old lady
enters from depths of coachway, carrying shopping bag dripping with
blood.
From Chicken Head by György Spiró.
This absurdist drama presents a counterpoint to the examples of food's
uplifting, social power. It displays a group of people, thoroughly disconected
from one another, heading towards violence and psychosis. The play's opening
lines display this. The closest thing to genuinely good character is the cat,
dead by the time the play begins. The cat connects the characters to
something greater, to the spiritual, especially because of the way people
handle its death. It makes sense, then, that the cat is the only character related
in any way to food, as the old lady devotes herself to keeping it fed, despite the
struggles she has to endure to procure its food, a bag of bloody, frozen chicken
heads. The desperation and desolation of the grund, or empty lot lacks food, or
sustenance of any kind, to unite the characters.
15. 7
The diet of the young is unrefined,
that's why their innards are in such a pother;
From quot;Ethologyquot; by Ádám Nádasdy
One section of my readings was devoted to contemporary comments on the
depressing nature of our current age, as exemplified on this poem, which
reveals the hungarian youth to be a crude and fragile. We referred to this
group of poets as the 'fast food' poets, for the subjects they explicate are
cheap, disposable, and lack quality and the ability to sustain.
16. 8
as I waddle among you, bearing my albatross
shopping bag, I mutter a line of verse, quot;Milk,
a loaf, sliced hame, some brawn and yeasr...quot;
All essential things, everythign needful
for the long journey, for the last great voyage
when I shall discover the Land of Nothing,
as have so many other tarvellers before me,
From quot;Albatross with Shopping Bagquot; by István Csukás
This poem reveals the painful trudge of a disillusinoed traveller, who's only
company is his bag of groceries, a reminder of what keeps him moving
towards his destination, whcih may or may not be death. I felt this way in Pecs,
when I had the worst hangover of my life, and the only thing i the world that
could sustain me, was this club sandwhich.
