C R Y S T A L

Roland Barthes
Empire of Signs
trans. Richard Howard

"The Interstice" is about food preparation (tempura) and makes reference to the Branch of Salzburg. Which is a reference to Stendhal on the crystallization of love.

In the summer of 1818 Stendhal took a recreational trip to the salt mines of Hallein near Salzburg with his friend and associate Madame Gherardi. Here they discovered the phenomenon of salt “crystallization” and used it as a metaphor for human relationships. "In the salt mines, nearing the end of the winter season, the miners will throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the abandoned workings. Two or three months later, through the effects of the waters saturated with salt which soak the bough and then let it dry as they recede, the miners find it covered with a shining deposit of crystals. The tiniest twigs no bigger than a tom-tit’s claw are encrusted with an infinity of little crystals scintillating and dazzling. The original little bough is no longer recognizable; it has become a child’s plaything very pretty to see. When the sun is shining and the air is perfectly dry the miners of Hallein seize the opportunity of offering these diamond-studded boughs to travellers preparing to go down to the mine."
Stendhal (1822). On Love. New York: Penguin Books
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystallization_(love)

A different selection from the Stendhal source, crystallized around the branch of a French Wikipedia article and with a link to an optical scan of a 1906 edition.

C'est dans le chapitre 2 de De l'amour, intitulé « De la naissance de l'amour », qu'il décrit les étapes par lesquelles l'amoureux pare l'être aimé de toutes les qualités, certaines imaginaires : « Aux mines de sel de Salzbourg, on jette dans les profondeurs abandonnées de la mine un rameau d'arbre effeuillé par l'hiver ; deux ou trois mois après, on le retire couvert de cristallisations brillantes (…) Ce que j'appelle cristallisation, c'est l'opération de l'esprit, qui tire de tout ce qui se présente la découverte que l'objet aimé a de nouvelles perfections »
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5550781f/f73.image

And so via Barthes and throwing a branch into the salt mines of the World Wide Web we capture the crystal of a reference to Gallica and its publicly-available treasures from the Bibliothèque nationale de France which into its search engine we throw "tempura" and become acquainted with the traces of French acquaintance with Japanese cuisine.

And so for day 1435
17.11.2010

States of Salt

In what I consider a tour de force Adam Mars-Jones gives us in The Waters of Thirst a narration with a single point of view for pages and pages. From beginning to end of this novel, our author animates a narrator who has a kidney condition who happens to be an excellent cook who in his comments on his cookery laments the limitations imposed on his ability to season and does so in terms of the raw and the cooked.

It grieved me to cook without salt, and to leave my guests to season their food at table individually. It felt uncivilized. But more than that, the two tastes are quite different, cooked salt and raw. Raw salt is brash and unsubtle; it has had no chance to permeate a dish. I felt I was shortchanging our guests by offering only the crudest form of seasoning, as if I didn't know better.

So very tempting to read metaphor at work. (And shades of Levi-Straus). But this is the same narrator that anatomizes nicely the various pieces of a porn collection (in much the same fashion as he comments on the niceties of seasoning).

And so for day 797
17.02.2009