Georg Gottfried Gervinus

“ Ceremonious etiquette gives us work and trouble when we should find recreation, and fatigues our minds when imagination should have free play. Only where men, here and there, permit themselves to meet about the bottle, according to the good old custom, and where no committee is necessary to approve of the toasts, pure, genuine pleasure revives once more, together with the pure, genuine art of drinking. For there is no intellectual power that is so directly quickened and strengthened by any nourishment as imagination is by wine. ”

“ At your cup you find the freest and most enlightened spot in the world, where you may not only think what you please, and say what you think, but where your thoughts themselves take the highest flight man is capable of. I do not know whether it is due to jealous gods that the excessive enjoyment of wine proves its own penalty. Without this depressing fire in the wine itself, it seems to me heaven and its secrets would be far more endangered by the spiritual flight of the drinker than by the towering rocks of the Titans. ”

“ Only in Germany could be conceived the idea of a history of the art of drinking. Perhaps the fates have ordained me to be the historian of wine, in the very meaning of my name—ger-wîn, not gêr-wîn. And perhaps some readers may be found for it in Germany who do not consider it too indelicate to speak or to read of the natural needs of man. Let man never, in foolish pride, think himself above his own natural wishes and enjoyments, for it is the reasonable care given to these which keeps him close to human nature. ”

“ And since all human culture proceeds from the manners and forms of society and social intercourse, we would plainly see in such a history—what has often been divined and pointed out, but also frequently smiled at—that wine is most closely connected with the civilization of States and with the development of free human culture, and that the art of drinking at all times keeps step with this culture and development, and sinks or rises with them. For not at all times have men practiced this art with equal wisdom, nor yet even practiced it in like manner ”

“ I have alluded to wine-drinking as a partly intellectual and partly physical enjoyment. Among material enjoyments, it is one of the most spiritual; among spiritual ones, one of the most material, keeping about the right middle course. A history of the art of drinking would prove this. Everywhere in the history of nations we shall come upon times where amid a fulness of physical power, the desire for more refinement in outward life, as well as a striving for greater inner perfection, began to manifest itself. In Germany, the time of the Reformation was such a period. ”

“ And at such times, when outer and inner powers begin to stir with wonderful [Pg 9] energy—times as yet divided between old roughness and new humanity; between the coarse, ordinary fare of every day for mind and imagination, and the new hope of some finer nourishment—at such times the genial enjoyment of wine, and the delights of regular social pleasures, have always struck deepest root and had freest play. ”

“ How dreadful it is, however, to see these crude and childish remnants of antiquated customs most closely knit now with the most refined and elaborate tastes, wants and habits thus in vogue among the people, together with secret and most pernicious vices, and yet to find that not a single voice can be raised against it, because, with the most subtle cunning, down to the very limits of physical needs, every expression of indignation or of joy has been forbidden by law! ”

“ Wine makes man liberal and generous; the offered cup was formerly the symbol of hospitality granted, and even the miser is more ready to share tobacco and wine than any of his other possessions. For it makes us communicative and confidential in social intercourse; it founds friendships, and is still the symbol of brotherhood. If it sometimes stirs up heat and dissension, it also smooths the way to union again; and, formerly, no reconciliation could take place without having a seal set upon it by a common cup of wine. ”

“ He must understand and know, from historical experience, that in times like ours, which have outgrown the activity of imagination—that is to say, Art—and, on the other hand, are not yet ripe for speculation—that is to say, Philosophy,—universal observation, which includes all departments of human activity, is the only thing that in these very times and for this generation can furnish positive information and prove a certain gain. The real historian, whose profession it is to be equally interested in everything, thus becomes an image of impartiality. ”

“ It is plain that there was always a pretense put forward that the grape-wine detracted from the culture of the grain, although, with some care, the same area might probably have yielded a nobler beverage than was made of the rice and barley, grown where the grape had been rooted out. But the intellectual effect of it was evidently feared. In so regular a clock-work as the Chinese State, what might be more dangerous than irregular movements so very easily produced by wine in the heads of people? Even the making of the grape-wine was often prohibited. ”

“ As the culture of the grape is only found where a higher human civilization has begun to develop, it also shows itself at once where a new civilization appears; it may be even in regions unfavorable to it, where it is only cultivated till wine has become so great a want that it can no longer be dispensed with, despite the lack of sufficient native production. The first cultivators of the vine, history praises as benefactors of mankind and propagators of civilization. ”

“ This dull intoxication is about what a warm grain-wine would produce, and fits the disagreeable character of the Chinese as well as the anecdote occurring in another song, where one whose invited guests do not appear at the right time, is actually rejoiced to think he may now drink up his wine alone. The value of wine for social enjoyment can scarcely be known there, where conventionality ties the tongues, where there is a tribunal of ceremonies, and where the tea-kettle is forever on the fire, which among us, too, fosters only embroidery, gossip and nervous debility. ”

“ If the same laws of chemical combination govern immense masses of matter as well as the smallest atom, if the march and development of mankind are the same as those of the most insignificant individual, the observation of the smallest as well as the greatest is of equal importance, and man may well feel comfort in the fact that each hair upon his head is, indeed, numbered. ”

“ For only at such times of universal public spirit and feeling could one take counsel of the imagination in practical affairs and matters of State, and hope for such results of the evening discussion at the cup as would bear the test of the sober next day’s light. For only such heroic conditions as are represented by the Germans and Persians of ancient times can really show the virtues of truth and faithfulness, and in the most public concerns could hear the voice that always speaks in wine ”

“ Sleep has been praised as the friend of poverty; but there were times when wine also was called its friend, which, even in waking hours, calls up dreams that charm away the burden of a miserable existence. For wine tempts even the beggar to extravagance, that vice which has often been set down to the account of wine ”

“ This also accords with experience elsewhere, for beer of various kinds (and the grain-wines of the Chinese are nothing else, except that they frequently mix them with all sorts of fruit, including grapes) everywhere became the national drink in advance of wine, as brandy and other liquors follow wine. Grape-brandy has, it appears, been known in China only since the seventh century of our era, but is now a favorite beverage with the common Chinamen, and is drunk by them warm and almost as strong as alcohol in large quantities, in spite of its very unpleasant taste. ”

“ Even at the feasts where wine was permitted, its use was limited by cautious restrictions. All meals and banquets were subjected to rules of etiquette almost as rigorous as those which the Court is accustomed to give its ambassadors. The careful law is extended to the very preparation and serving of the viands, and everywhere clips the wings of the art of cooking and of drinking. ”

“ There the poorness of the plant itself, no less than the peculiar use of it, shows plainly what a stranger it is. Thus, also, among the Griquas it is cultivated by the missionaries only, who, confining, as they are wont, all civilization which they offer to the elements of Christian religion, give to grape-culture also only a Christian significance, planting the vine merely for its use at the Communion table. The celebrated Cape wine is a different matter. Enlightened French emigrants, Protestants driven from home by the Edict of Nantes, first planted the grape there ”

“ Only emigrants, in the most ancient as well as most recent times, have introduced the grape-vine at different times into Africa, and we will briefly glance at this. First, the Egyptians must be named, Caucasian races not autochthonically at home in Libya. The ancient culture of the grape in Egypt is proved not only by historical documents, but even by the ruins of old buildings, and I shall return to the paintings in the vaults near El Kab, which represent, among other things, the manner of gathering the grapes, and of preserving and cooling the wine. ”

“ And still more, certain ceremonies were prescribed, long healths and salutations, circumstantial rites, at which a free-thinker, as the Jesuits say, may laugh, but in which a philosopher must admire the wisdom of the lawgiver, and the subtlety with which he banished intemperance, and that injudicious freedom of speech which is its inseparable companion, from among the people! ”

“ And wherever, on the other hand, in more enlightened history, a man took an active part in the development of human civilization, he did so also instinctively, it would seem, for that of wine—be it a Heracles Ipoctonos among the Erythræans; or an Alexander, who, with his Greek culture, brought the grape-vine back to hot Babylon ”

“ The real historian must be a stranger to all prejudice and preconceived opinion; he cannot treat of any subject separately, but is attracted by everything in a certain order and connection. He must not choose any subject from personal inclination, but according to the needs and demands of his time and of human society ”

“ And this genial pleasure in spending helps the poor man in his misery; consoles him for his destitution; offers him who is homeless a spot where he may feel comfortable, and teaches him to forget all that oppresses him. ”

“ And then the greedy desire for physical enjoyment is the one thing which makes the Chinaman love his wine and his spicy concoctions, and which in this point has ever driven him into a never-before-heard-of opposition against his Government. ”

“ The climate seems there to favor the culture of the grape extremely; the soil, however, appears most unfavorable, and Colebrooke, in his work on the condition of the Cape of Good Hope, ascribes [Pg 16] the earthy taste, which makes the Cape wines unpleasant, to a substratum of the soil, otherwise rather good, consisting in many places of layers of clay and sand that has been washed up. And what is not spoiled by the soil, seems to have been spoiled by the indolence of the Dutchmen, or some other disadvantage with which the African country is cursed. ”

“ A sort of fairy-tale is told of the totally wrong manner of planting the first vineyard; and still not even the example of the far better Constantia wine has induced men to make vineyards in rockier spots. ”

“ A history of oinology or potology would be able to show that man, in satisfying a partly physical and partly intellectual desire, is bound by the same laws that govern him in the satisfaction of the highest needs of his striving mind. ”

“ As long as a people cannot live on newspaper reading and on staring about in public places, as do Frenchmen and Italians, it keeps its hands busy, its powers actively employed, and its eyes open, and wherever active powers are astir, no nation is in so very bad a condition. ”

“ The impartial observer is attracted by all phenomena, and to him nothing appears small, insignificant or unimportant, as soon as he begins to draw conclusions from his observations and to discover laws in the physical as well as the moral world. In the world of reason there exists nothing small, accidental or unimportant. ”

“ I, however, would scorn a justification of this kind, for I hold that recreation ought to be recreation, and not work, and should consider it far better if our labors were pleasures, rather than our pleasures, labors. ”

“ It is singular that at the Ararat, to which Jewish tradition also points, Tournefort, in his “Journey to the Levant,” discovered a regular workshop of the European plant, and on the borders of transcaucasian Georgia he saw the land covered with wild grape-vines and fruit-trees. ”