After several centuries, in Europe coffee became a serious competitor to alcohol, which had thus far been a popular stimulant for inspiring writers. French historian Jules Michelet put it roughly this way:
Coffee finished off the taverns, the infamous taverns in which, during the reign of Louis XIV, young people went wild among the wine barrels and street girls… Since the advent of coffee, there have been fewer drunken songs at night and fewer men ended up in street gutters.
Poet Antoni Lange, charcoal drawing by Stanisław Wyspiański, 1899, photo: Marek Skorupski / Forum
The Polish Symbolist poet Antoni Lange considered coffee to be a panacea for the creative impasse and the spleen. In 1895, Lange published a collection of five poems titled Ballady pijackie (Drinking Ballads). It included ‘Absynt’, ‘Poncz’, ‘Szampan’, ‘Haszysz’ and ‘Kawa’ (Absinthe, Punch, Champagne, Hashish and Coffee).
Referring to Voltaire, who argued that coffee should be as sweet as the love of two tender hearts, as black as streams of tar and as hot as the depths of hell, Lange wrote about coffee in the loftiest of tones:
I love your soul, O liquid ebony,
The aromatic vapour of your clouds,
With which you gush in a poured jug
When the boiling of your beans
Enthrals me with earthly delights;
Behold, you rest in white porcelain,
O, daughter of Arabian deserts, black coffee!
When I get bored of idle townsfolk,
I plunge my spirit into your mirage.
Thou art my inspiration and my song and my fame,
In you I have wonders and heavenly knowledge,
O, daughter of Arabian deserts, black coffee!
The sun of Arabia did your juices brew,
The wilderness rocked your flower in a hurricane
And from you hail the inspired prophets,
They, who accompany Allah in his domain.
Mother of mirages, sultan of intoxication,
Which dreams awake, and dream awake makes,
Praise you for this thoughtfulness
O, daughter of Arabian deserts, black coffee!
It is easy to see why many writers have long preferred coffee to alcohol when working. This was made very clear by the writer Jan Parandowski in his remarkable book Alchemia słowa (The Alchemy of the Word, 1951), dedicated to the high art of literature. Among other things, he wrote about the benefits of coffee as follows:
Not even wine can compare with it. Coffee does not insert itself between our mind and reality, it does not violate the mechanism of our imagination, it does not distort our senses. It leaves us completely independent, only intensifying the persistence in the intensity of our thought, which becomes light and unconstrained, dissipating weariness with all that it brings, such as apathy, the doubt in one’s abilities, dilemmas, the bitterness of imaginary obstacles and hardships.
