of beauty than the essence of her corporeal person, descended from

a heaven where all things are formed and perfected in the clearest Wine and Milk
light. She herself knew this: how many actresses have consented to
let the crowd see the ominous maturing of their beauty. Not she,
however; the essence was not to be degraded, her face was not to
have any reality except that of its perfection, which was Wine is felt by the French nation to be a possession which is its
intellectual even more than formal. The Essence became gradually very own, just like its three hundred and sixty types of cheese and
obscured, progressively veiled with dark glasses, broad hats and its culture. It is a totem-drink, corresponding to the milk of the
exiles: but it never deteriorated. Dutch cow or the tea ceremonially taken by the British Royal
Family. Bachelard has already given the 'substantial
And yet, in this deified face, something sharper than a mask is psychoanalysis' of this fluid, at the end of his essay on the reveries
looming: a kind of voluntary and therefore human relation between on the theme of the will, and shown that wine is the sap of the sun
the curve of the nostrils and the arch of the eyebrows; a rare, and the earth, that its basic state is not the moist but the dry, and
individual function relating two regions of the face. A mask is but that on such grounds the substance which is most contrary to it is
a sum of lines; a face, on the contrary, is above all their thematic water.
harmony. Garbo's face represents this fragile moment when the
cinema is about to draw an existential from an essential beauty, Actually, like all resilient totems, wine supports a varied
when the archetype leans towards the fascination of mortal faces, mythology which does not trouble about contradictions. This
when the clarity of the flesh as essence yields its place to a galvanic substance is always considered, for instance, as the most
lyricism of Woman. efficient of thirst-quenchers, or at least this serves as the major
alibi for its consumption ('It's thirsty weather'). In its red form, it
Viewed as a transition the face of Garbo reconciles two has blood, the dense and vital fluid, as a very old hypostasis. This
iconographic ages, it assures the passage from awe to charm. As is is because in fact its humoral form matters little; it is above all a
well known, we are today at the other pole of this evolution: the converting substance, capable of reversing situations and states,
face of Audrey Hepburn, for instance, is individualized, not only and of extracting from objects their opposites - for instance,
because of its peculiar thematics (woman as child, woman as making a weak man strong or a silent one talkative. Hence its old
kitten) but also because of her person, of an almost unique alchemical heredity, its philosophical power to transmute and
specification of the face, which has nothing of the essence left in it, create ex nihilo.
but is constituted by an infinite complexity of morphological
functions. As a language, Garbo's singularity was of the order of Being essentially a function whose terms can change, wine has at
the concept, that of Audrey Hepburn is of the order of the its disposal apparently plastic powers: it can serve as an alibi to
substance. The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn, an Event. dream as well as reality, it depends on the users of the myth. For
the worker, wine means enabling him to do his task with demiurgic
ease ('heart for the work'). For the intellectual, wine has the reverse
function: the local white wine or the beaujolais of the writer is
meant to cut him off from the all too expected environment of
cocktails and expensive drinks (the only ones which snobbishness
leads one to offer him). Wine will deliver him from myths, will
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remove some of his intellectualism, will make him the equal of the the evil it can generate is in the nature of fate and therefore escapes
proletarian; through wine, the intellectual comes nearer to a natural penalization, it evokes the theatre rather than a basic temperament.
virility, and believes he can thus escape the curse that a century
and a half of romanticism still brings to bear on the purely cerebral Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a
(it is well known that one of the myths peculiar to the modern morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the
intellectual is the obsession to 'have it where it matters'). slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack (plonk
and camembert) to the feast, from the conversation at the local cafe
But what is characteristic of France is that the converting power of to the speech at a formal dinner. It exalts all climates, of whatever
wine is never openly presented as an end. Other countries drink to kind: in cold weather, it is associated with all the myths of
get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, becoming warm, and at the height of summer, with all the images
drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as of shade, with all things cool and sparkling. There is no situation
the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an involving some physical constraint (temperature, hunger, boredom,
effect which is sought: wine is not only a philtre, it is also the compulsion, disorientation) which does not give rise to dreams of
leisurely act of drinking. The gesture has here a decorative value, wine. Combined as a basic substance with other alimentary figures,
and the power of wine is never separated from its modes of it can cover all the aspects of space and time for the Frenchman.
existence (unlike whisky, for example, which is drunk for its type As soon as one gets to know someone's daily life fairly well, the
of drunkenness - 'the most agreeable, with the least painful after- absence of wine gives a sense of shock, like something exotic: M.
effects' - which one gulps down repeatedly, and the drinking of Coty, having allowed himself to be photographed, at the beginning
which is reduced to a causal act). of his seven years' presidency, sitting at home before a table on
which a bottle of beer seemed to replace, by an extraordinary
All this is well known and has been said a thousand times in exception, the familiar litre of red wine, the whole nation was in a
folklore, proverbs, conversations and Literature. But this very flutter; it was as intolerable as having a bachelor king. Wine is here
universality implies a kind of conformism: to believe in wine is a a part of the reason of state.
coercive collective act. A Frenchman who kept this myth at arm's
length would expose himself to minor but definite problems of Bachelard was probably right in seeing water as the opposite of
integration, the first of which, precisely, would be that of having to wine: mythically, this is true; sociologically, today at least, less so;
explain his attitude. The universality principle fully applies here, economic and historical circumstances have given this part to milk.
inasmuch as society calls anyone who does not believe in wine by The latter is now the true anti-wine: and not only because of M.
names such as sick, disabled or depraved: it does not comprehend Mendès-France's popularizing efforts (which had a purposely
him (in both senses, intellectual and spatial, of the word). mythological look as when he used to drink milk during his
Conversely, an award of good integration is given to whoever is a speeches in the Chamber, as Popeye eats spinach), but also because
practising wine-drinker: knowing how to drink is a national in the basic morphology of substances milk is the opposite of fire
technique which serves to qualify the Frenchman, to demonstrate by all the denseness of its molecules, by the creamy, and therefore
at once his performance, his control and his sociability. Wine gives soothing, nature of its spreading. Wine is mutilating, surgical, it
thus a foundation for a collective morality, within which transmutes and delivers; milk is cosmetic, it joins, covers, restores.
everything is redeemed: true, excesses, misfortunes and crimes are Moreover, its purity, associated with the innocence of the child, is
possible with wine, but never viciousness, treachery or baseness; a token of strength, of a strength which is not revulsive, not
congestive, but calm, white, lucid, the equal of reality. Some
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American films, in which the hero, strong and uncompromising,
did not shrink from having a glass of milk before drawing his Steak and Chips
avenging Colt, have paved the way for this new Parsifalian myth.
A strange mixture of milk and pomegranate, originating in
America, is to this day sometimes drunk in Paris, among gangsters
and hoodlums. But milk remains an exotic substance; it is wine Steak is a part of the same sanguine mythology as wine. It is the
which is part of the nation. heart of meat, it is meat in its pure state; and whoever partakes of it
assimilates a bull-like strength. The prestige of steak evidently
The mythology of wine can in fact help us to understand the usual derives from its quasi-rawness. In it, blood is visible, natural,
ambiguity of our daily life. For it is true that wine is a good and dense, at once compact and sectile. One can well imagine the
fine substance, but it is no less true that its production is deeply ambrosia of the Ancients as this kind of heavy substance which
involved in French capitalism, whether it is that of the private dwindles under one's teeth in such a way as to make one keenly
distillers or that of the big settlers in Algeria who impose on the aware at the same time of its original strength and of its aptitude to
Muslims, on the very land of which they have been dispossessed, a flow into the very blood of man. Full-bloodedness is the raison
crop of which they have no need, while they lack even bread. d'être of steak; the degrees to which it is cooked are expressed not
There are thus very engaging myths which are however not in calorific units but in images of blood; rare steak is said to be
innocent. And the characteristic of our current alienation is saignant (when it recalls the arterial flow from the cut in the
precisely that wine cannot be an unalloyedly blissful substance, animal's throat), or bleu (and it is now the heavy, plethoric, blood
except if we wrongfully forget that it is also the product of an of the veins which is suggested by the purplish colour - the
expropriation. superlative of redness). Its cooking, even moderate, cannot openly
find expression; for this unnatural state, a euphemism is needed:
one says that steak is à point, 'medium', and this in truth is
understood more as a limit than as a perfection.

To eat steak rare therefore represents both a nature and a morality.

It is supposed to benefit all the temperaments, the sanguine
because it is identical, the nervous and lymphatic because it is
complementary to them. And just as wine becomes for a good
number of intellectuals a mediumistic substance which leads them
towards the original strength of nature, steak is for them a
redeeming food, thanks to which they bring their intellectualism to
the level of prose and exorcize, through blood and soft pulp, the
sterile dryness of which they are constantly accused. The craze for
steak tartare, for instance, is a magic spell against the romantic
association between sensitiveness and sickliness; there are to be
found, in this preparation, all the germinating states of matter: the
blood mash and the glair of eggs, a whole harmony of soft and life-

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