Soup with a Little Toothpaste – Gombrowicz on Balzac in 1958

 ‘I cannot stand his Human Comedy. Think how easily the finest soup is spoiled by adding a teaspoon of stale fat or a little toothpaste. (…) It is easier to hate someone for picking their nose than to love them for creating a symphony. For a detail is characteristic and defines a person in their everyday dimension.’ (Diary, Sunday, 1958).

And now, how are we to stir these random and frequently out-of-date ingredients in our 5in cauldron? Clockwise, or perhaps to the left, so as at least to delay the moment when it becomes clear that what has been prepared may figure on the menu—or rather the panel: order & collect—as the human comedy? Such is the fate of lasting ventures, foundations and institutions, especially ‘cultural institutions’. Their intention and purpose is always to bustle about producing a symphony (symphonia mundi), but over time they prove to be a conglomerate of pettiness and rancid trifles. If we are to add nourishment to this pulp of books, we shall seek fat of good quality, aged and matured—perhaps from Joseph Beuys’s Fat Chair? Reading with a book in hand, Эuropejщyk looks around for a chair, after all.