巴爾札克談咖啡 -〈咖啡甘苦談〉

咖啡、巴爾札克。同時熱愛文學和咖啡的人，看到這兩個關鍵字，或許馬上就會想到「我不是在咖啡館，就是在前往咖啡館的路上」。沒錯，這句話就出自巴爾札克的手筆，他甚至還預言自己「將死於三萬杯咖啡」。咖啡可謂是巴爾札克生命機體的石油。不過， 巴爾札克談咖啡 的這篇〈咖啡甘苦談〉（The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee ）看過的人可能就比較少了，我也是機緣巧合下才看到這篇文章的英譯版，目前也僅在「穆勒咖啡」的部落格有節錄片段。認真中帶點爆笑，所以就順手轉譯成中文，以饗咖啡老饕。

On this subject Brillat-Savarin is far from complete. I can add something to what he has said because coffee is a great power in my life; I have observed its effects on an epic scale. Coffee roasts your insides. Many people claim coffee inspires them; but as everybody likewise knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring. Think about it: although more grocery stores are staying open in Paris until midnight, few writers are actually becoming more spiritual.

針對咖啡這個主題，薩瓦蘭( Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin，拿破崙一世時期的作家、政治家及美食家)的論述遠未完備，我可以加以補充，因為咖啡是我生命中的強大能量來源，且我對咖啡的提神效果所做的觀察已經達到了史詩級的程度。咖啡會燒灼五內。許多人聲稱咖啡可以激發神思，不過大家也都知道，咖啡只會讓無趣的人更無趣，看看巴黎，雖然越來越多雜貨店開到午夜，卻很少有作家真的變更有靈性。

But as Brillat-Savarin has correctly observed, coffee sets the blood in motion and stimulates the muscles; it accelerates the digestive processes, chases away sleep, and gives us the capacity to engage a little longer in the exercise of our intellects. It is on this last point, in particular, that I want to add my personal experience to Brillat-Savarin’s observations, and to add some remarks about coffee from the great sages.

不過就像薩瓦蘭之所觀察，咖啡促進血液循環，刺激肌肉，加速消化，驅逐睡魔，讓我們有能力在進行智力活動時更持久。尤其是最後一點，我想根據個人經驗替薩瓦蘭的觀察結果做點補充，及援引大智者們的評論。

Coffee affects the diaphragm and the plexus of the stomach, from which it reaches the brain by barely perceptible radiations which escape complete analysis; that aside, we may surmise that our primary nervous flux conducts an electricity emitted by coffee when we drink it. Coffee’s power changes over time. Rossini has personally experienced some of these effects, as, of course, have I.

咖啡會影響橫膈膜和腹腔神經叢，並以某種我們僅能感知而無法分析的方式輻射到大腦，或許可以推測是神經串流在導引咖啡釋放的電流。咖啡提神的作用會隨攝取週期拉長遞減，羅西尼(義大利作曲家)和我對此都有所察覺。

“Coffee,” Rossini told me, “is an affair of fifteen or twenty days; just the right amount of time, fortunately, to write an opera.”

「咖啡，」羅西尼告訴我，「大概只有15到20天管事，恰恰是創作一部歌劇的時間，幸好。」

This is true. But the length of time during which one can enjoy the benefits of coffee can be extended. This knowledge is so useful to so many people that I cannot but confess the secrets of releasing the bean’s precious essence.

這是事實，不過，咖啡能夠發揮提神作用的週期其實有辦法延長。這個竅門對太多人會有助益，以至於我不得不向大家坦白榨取咖啡精華的秘密。

All of you, then, you illustrious Human Candles—you who consume your own brilliant selves with the heat and light of your minds -approach and listen to the Gospel of the Watch, of Wakefulness, of Intellectual Travail!

那麼，你們這些用心智的光熱把自己燃燒殆盡的人間明燈，快來聽我傳如何在黑夜裡守望、保持醒覺、煎熬自己腦汁的福音呦。

1. Coffee completely pulverized in the Turkish manner has a much richer flavor than coffee ground in a coffee mill.

1.土耳其咖啡的極細粉比一般研磨程度的咖啡風味更濃郁。

In many of the mechanical aspects of pleasure, Orientals are far superior to Europeans. Their particular genius—to observe as carefully as do those toads who spend entire years squatting on their haunches, holding their unblinking eyes open like two suns—has revealed to them what our science has only recently been able to show us through analysis. The principal toxin in coffee is tannin, an evil substance which chemists have not yet studied sufficiently. When the stomach membranes have been ‘tanned,’ or when the action of the tannin particular to coffee has numbed them by overuse, the membranes become incapable of contracting properly. This becomes the source of the serious disorders affecting the coffee connoisseur. There is a man in London, for example, whose immoderate use of coffee has left him with a stomach twisted in knots. An engraver in Paris I know personally needed five years to recover from the physical state his love of coffee had put him in. Finally, an artist, Chenavard, was burned to death by coffee: all because he went to cafés excessively, as workers go to cabarets, on the flimsiest excuse. Connoisseurs pursue coffee drinking the way they pursue all their passions; they proceed by increments, and, like Nicolet, move from strong to stronger stuff, until consumption becomes abuse. Yet when you pulverize rather than grind coffee, you crush it into a unique form of molecule which retains the harmful tannin and releases only the aroma. That is why Italians, Venetians, Greeks, and Turks can drink coffee incessantly without harm, a coffee the French contemptuously call cafiot. Voltaire drank just such coffee.

從研究如何引發喜悅的機制來說，東方在諸多面向上遠勝歐洲。他們可以像蟾蜍那樣蹲在定點不動，眼睛眨也不眨，仔細觀察事物的天賦，老早就向他們展現了西方科學最近才通過分析發現的事實。咖啡所含的主要毒物是丹寧，一種化學家尚未研究透徹的邪惡物質。當胃的黏膜被丹寧「燙到」了，或者因為濫飲咖啡被燙到麻痺了，便會失去收縮能力。這是咖啡愛好者生理嚴重失調的根源。倫敦有個男人因為咖啡過量，腸胃千纏百結；又比如我在巴黎認識的一個雕刻師，他需要五年的時間來復原他的咖啡熱所造成的傷害。最後是什納瓦，一個畫家，「五內俱焚」而死，因為什納瓦過度流連於咖啡館，就像工人會用最纖毫的事當成藉口，去酒館看卡巴萊歌舞那樣。美食家愛上咖啡的過程一如其他食物，漸進，並且越吃越重，直到過量。然而，當你把咖啡粉磨成土耳其咖啡式的細粉而非常見的小顆粒，咖啡就會被壓碎成某種特殊的分子形式，使有毒的丹寧被鎖在咖啡哩，只有香氣釋放，義大利、威尼斯、希臘、土耳其人之所以能咖啡不停，身體還行，原因便在於此，而法國人把這種喝法蔑稱為「加非」。

Remember, then. Coffee is composed of two elements: one, the extractable matter, which hot water or cold water dissolves quickly and which conducts the aroma; the other element, the tannin, is less dissolvable in water, and emerges from the surrounding plant tissue only slowly and with more effort. From which follows this axiom: To brew coffee by contact with boiling water, especially for a long time, is heresy; to brew coffee with water that has already passed through coffee grounds is to subject the stomach and other internal organs to tannin.

記住，咖啡是由兩種元素組成的。一種是引領香氣，能在冷、熱水中快速溶出的可萃取物；另一種元素就是丹寧，較難溶於水，只能從周圍的細胞組織緩慢溶出。這就產生了以下的沖煮原則：用滾水泡咖啡是異端邪說，長時間沖煮尤甚；用已經濾透過咖啡粉的液體進行二次沖泡，是讓腸胃和其他內臟直接承受丹寧的燒灼。

2. Using as a benchmark coffee brewed in the immortal coffeepot of my secretary, Auguste de Belloy (the cousin of a Cardinal, and, like him, related to the ancient and illustrious Marquis de Belloy), the very best coffee is made by an infusion of cold rather than boiling water; controlling the water temperature, after pulverizing the beans completely, is a second method of managing its effects.

2. 用我秘書的咖啡壺沖泡出的咖啡當成參考基準，最好的咖啡是冷泡而非熱沖出來的，咖啡磨到極細後，水溫是控制咖啡風味的第二項參數。

There are, as we have seen, two basic types of coffee which you might brew with hot or cold water: coffee pulverized in the Turkish manner, and coffee that is ground. As we also have seen, when you merely grind coffee in an ordinary grinder, you release the tannin along with the aroma; pulverized coffee flatters the taste even as it stimulates the plexus, which reacts on the thousands of capsules which form your brain.

不管是冷泡熱沖，我們喝的咖啡有兩種類型：土耳其咖啡的極細粉、一般的顆粒狀咖啡。我們已知，若把咖啡磨成常見的顆粒度，丹寧連同香氣便會一併釋放出來；但粉末狀咖啡可以在即使刺激腹腔神經叢的情況下優化滋味，而腹腔神經叢會對組成大腦的上千小囊產生反應。

3. The quantity of coffee in the upper receptacle, the way the beans have been crushed, and the amount of water passed through them, determine the strength of the coffee; this three-part formula constitutes the ultimate consideration in dealing with the beverage.

3.上壺的咖啡粉量，咖啡豆的研磨度，和沖泡水量，決定了咖啡溶液的濃度。這些參數組成的公式體現了調控一杯咖啡最終該怎麼呈現的所有考量。

Thus, for a while—for a week or two at most—you can obtain the right amount of stimulation with one, then two, cups of coffee brewed from beans which have been crushed with gradually increasing force and infused with hot water.

因此，有段時間 ─ 頂多一、兩個禮拜 ─ 喝一、兩杯熱水沖泡、研磨力道逐漸增加的咖啡，便能產生全效提神的作用。

For another week, by decreasing the amount of water in the upper receptacle, by pulverizing the coffee even more finely, and by infusing with cold water, you can continue to obtain the same cerebral power.

再下一週，透過減少沖煮水量，粉磨更細，但改冷水萃取，咖啡激發神思的作用仍能持續不墜。

When you have produced the finest grind with the least water possible, you double the dose by drinking two cups at a time; particularly vigorous constitutions can tolerate three cups. One can continue working this way for several more days.

當進展到把咖啡磨成極細粉，並且已經是用最少水量來沖煮咖啡時，可以把攝取量提升一倍，從一杯變兩杯，而那些健壯如牛的人可以加到三杯，咖啡的醒腦作用便能再延長幾天。

Finally, I have discovered a horrible, rather brutal method that I recommend only to men of excessive vigor, men with thick black hair and skin covered with liver spots, men with big square hands and with legs shaped like bowling pins. It is a question of using finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold and anhydrous (a chemical term meaning without water), consumed on an empty stomach. This coffee falls into your stomach, which, as you know from Brillat-Savarin, is a sack whose velvety interior is lined with tapestries of suckers and papillae. The coffee finds nothing else in the sack, and so it attacks these delicate and voluptuous linings; it acts like a food and demands digestive juices; it wrings and twists the stomach for these juices, appealing as a pythoness appeals to her god; it brutalizes these beautiful stomach linings as a wagon master abuses ponies; the plexus becomes inflamed; sparks shoot all the way up to the brain. From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink-for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.

最後，我發現了一個驚世駭俗且慘絕人寰的絕招，只建議那些身體底子特別好，頭髮粗黑，膚有肝斑，手掌方正，並且雙腿形如保齡球瓶的男人使用，方法是空腹內服極細粉末純咖啡，室溫，不調水。胃囊袋有絲絨般的內襯，許多乳突和吸盤織於其上，這些肉肉的內襯便會因為胃裡空空如也而直承咖啡粉襲擊。就像消化食物，需要胃汁分泌，胃會整個擰絞起來，以便擠出胃汁，就像一個皮媞亞女祭司在向太陽神祈求的樣子。胃囊的美麗內襯就像被趕車夫鞭撻的小馬，腹腔神經叢開始灼燒，延伸到大腦的神經傳導線路沿途迸射花火。此時此刻，全身上下開始躁動，點子成串出現，就像大軍列營開赴將會名載史冊的戰場，然後戰鬥打響。記憶開始衝鋒陷陣，隱喻像大隊騎兵鋪開疾馳，邏輯的火炮和彈藥在哐啷作響的馬車上趕赴定位，神射手在想像的指揮下瞄準射擊。形式、形狀、文字不斷炸開，鋪開來的圖紙墨跡橫肆，因為徹夜未眠的勞心者以墨線的激流開始與結束了他的創作，就像黑火藥開啟和蓋棺論定了一場戰役。

I recommended this way of drinking coffee to a friend of mine, who absolutely wanted to finish a job promised for the next day: he thought he’d been poisoned and took to his bed, which he guarded like a married man. He was tall, blonde, slender, and had thinning hair; he apparently had a stomach of papier-maché. There had been, on my part, a failure of observation.

我推薦一個朋友試試這種醒腦絕招，因為他想在承諾的死限前一天完成工作，結果他感覺中毒了，不得不臥床休養。他體型瘦高，金髮纖細，顯然有個紙糊的胃。對我而言，則是我對咖啡提神效果的觀察遭逢挫敗。

When you have reached the point of consuming this kind of coffee, then become exhausted and decide that you really must have more, even though you make it of the finest ingredients and take it perfectly fresh, you will fall into horrible sweats, suffer feebleness of the nerves, and undergo episodes of severe drowsiness. I don’t know what would happen if you kept at it then: a sensible nature counseled me to stop at this point, seeing that immediate death was not otherwise my fate. To be restored one must begin with recipes made with milk, and a diet of chicken and other white meats; finally the tension on the harp strings eases, and one returns to the relaxed, meandering, simple-minded and cryptogamous life of the retired bourgeoisie.

當你開始這麼攝取咖啡，卻因筋疲力盡而加量攝取之後，你會開始盜汗，神經衰弱，極度倦怠感也會接連襲來。我不知道如果持續下去會發生甚麼事：我的理智告訴我該打住了，因為我的命運不該以猝死終結。想要從這種狀態復原，飲食應該從奶類製品開始，三餐改吃雞肉或其他白肉，讓心弦得以鬆開，這時人就會回歸退休資產階級那種放鬆、閒蕩、頭腦簡單的、好比不會開花的蕨類植物般的生活模式。

The state coffee puts one in when it is drunk on an empty stomach under these magisterial conditions produce’s a kind of animation that looks like anger: one’s voice rises, one’s gestures suggest unhealthy impatience; one wants everything to proceed with the speed of ideas; one becomes brusque, ill-tempered about nothing. One actually becomes that fickle character, The Poet, condemned by grocers and their like. One assumes that everyone is equally lucid. A man of spirit must therefore avoid going out in public. I discovered this singular state through a series of accidents which made me lose, without any effort, the ecstasy I had been feeling. Some friends, with whom I had gone out to the country, witnessed me arguing about everything, haranguing with monumental bad faith. The following day I recognized my wrongdoing and we searched the cause. My friends were wise men of the first rank and we found the problem soon enough: coffee wanted its victim.

按照上述方式空腹攝取咖啡，會讓人處於一種舉手投足看起來都很憤怒的狀態：聲音變高，手勢透顯著一種病態的不耐，想讓所有事情按念頭的速度進行，粗魯，沒事亂發脾氣，反覆無常，以為所有人都跟自己一樣頭腦清楚。一個有靈性的人此時應該避免前往公眾場合，我是在經過一系列意外，讓我丟失那種喝咖啡帶來的狂喜後，才發現這種狀態的。那些會和我一起下鄉的朋友發現我甚麼事都能吵，帶著史前巨大的惡意呵斥所有事情，次日我發現自己的過錯，並和我的朋友一起探詢緣由。我的朋友都是頂級的聰明人，我們很快就發現是咖啡惹的禍。

---

（原文分隔線）

OBSERVATION:

Among certain weak natures, coffee produces only a kind of harmless congestion of the mind; instead of feeling animated, these people feel drowsy, and they say that coffee makes them sleep. Such individuals may have the legs of serfs and the stomachs of ostriches, but they are badly equipped for the work of thought. Two young travelers, Combes and Tamisier, found the Abyssinians almost universally impotent; the two travelers did not hesitate to regard the misuse of coffee, which the Abyssinians abuse to the last degree, as the cause of this disgrace. If these remarks make it to England, the English government is hereby petitioned to settle this question by experimenting on the first condemned soul at hand, provided that soul is neither female nor too elderly.

觀察：

對於某些體質不良的人來說，咖啡只會在腦中製造一種無害的壅塞，他們不會感到生氣勃勃，而是倦怠，他們還說咖啡會讓他們愛睏。這種人大概有農奴的腳和鴕鳥的胃，不過他們沒有進行思考活動的良好條件。兩個年輕旅人發現阿比西尼亞人(衣索比亞前身)幾乎普遍都是性無能，而由於阿比西尼亞人濫用咖啡的程度可謂到了頂點，這兩個年輕人毫不遲疑的把這個不光彩的事歸因於咖啡。如果這個觀點傳到英國，我在此向英國政府請願在被判處死刑的犯人身上做實驗，釐清這件事的真相，假如犯人不是女人也不會太老的話。

Tea also contains tannin, but since tea has narcotic qualities, it does not otherwise affect the mind; it stirs the plexus only while its narcotic substances are absorbed rapidly in the intestine. The manner of preparing tea, moreover, is absolute. I am not sure at what point the quantity of water that the tea drinkers pour into their stomachs should be computed in its effects. If the experience of the English is typical, heavy tea-drinking will produce English moral philosophy, a tendency toward a pale complexion, hypocrisy and backbiting. This much is certain: tea-drinking will not spoil a woman any less morally than physically. Where women drink tea, romance is depraved on its principle; the women are pale, sickly, talkative, boring, and preachy. In certain powerful constitutions, strong tea taken in large doses induces an irritation which overturns the treasures of melancholy; it produces dreams, but less powerful dreams than those of opium, for tea’s Phantasmagoria passes in a fog. The ideas are sweet, affable, bland. Your state is not the very deep sleep which distinguishes a noble constitution suffering from fatigue, but an inexpressible drowsiness, rather, which summons up only the daydreams of the morning. An excess of coffee, like that of tea, produces an extensive drying out of the skin, which becomes scorched. Coffee also often induces sweating and makes one violently thirsty. Among those who abuse the bean, saliva becomes as thick and as dry as paper on the tongue.

茶也含有丹寧，不過茶具有麻醉的性質，因此喝茶不會以另外的方式影響心智。茶只有在麻醉物質被腸子快速吸收的情況下會刺激腹腔神經叢。再者，泡茶的方式是固定的，不像咖啡。我不確定要怎麼度量灌進肚子裡的茶和茶的效用之間的關係。如果英國的經驗可以當作典型的話，重度飲茶會產生英式道德哲學，一種會使人臉色蒼白、偽善、暗箭傷人的傾向。可以確定的是：讓一個女人喝茶，對她道德層面的敗壞程度不亞於生理層面。女人會喝茶的地方，浪漫按其原則會病態扭曲，女人會膚色蒼白，弱不禁風，話講不停，無趣，愛說教。對某些體格健壯的人來說，攝取大量濃茶易使人惱怒，從而破壞了喝茶所帶來的憂鬱。茶會製造幻夢，但力度遠遜鴉片，因為茶引起的幻象會像朦朧的霧飄散，生出的點子甜美、可親、無味。這種狀態迥異於一個高貴的勞動者恢復疲勞時陷入的深層睡眠，反而像是難以言喻的困倦所召來的白日夢。過度飲用咖啡會像茶一樣，使人的肌膚大範圍乾澀焦枯，咖啡通常也會引發流汗，並且會讓人極度口渴，在那些濫飲咖啡的人中，他們的唾液會在舌上乾掉，厚得像紙。

(全文終)

巴爾札克談咖啡 英譯原文連結：https://urbigenous.net/library/pleasures_pains_coffee.html