(an Epilogue by
Antal Dúl for
The Philosophy of Wine)
The Philosophy of Wine is an apology for the rare, solemn instants
of life, of ease, play, and self-forgetting serenity. This
is the world of dionysian, Mediterranean intoxication, the bee-master’s
half-awake, half-dreaming meditation on an August afternoon,
under the nut tree, the pure, glittering serenity of Orpheus: some
of the rare, idyllic moments lived by Hamvas. It is precisely a glass
of fiery Szekszárdi or green-golden Somlói that could make us aware
of them.
In the summer of 1945, during a short holiday spent in Balatonberény,
Béla Hamvas writes, practically in one breath
The Philosophy
of Wine. It expresses the first quiver of a people who, harrowed
and starved, sorely tried by front lines, concentration camps,
and bomb shelters, have just reached the sunlight; curiously,
it expresses not despair over the ruins, but an exuberant joy of
life.
Hamvas begins by saying that he is writing a prayer book
for atheists. But what is atheism? “The sickness of abstract
life.” It is also a religion, because the most obdurate sceptic,
and even the materialist, has a religion. But a bad religion:
a belief in negation, and a belief in the lowest level of consciousness.
For Hamvas, atheism is not a question of Weltanschauung or
confession; it is not even an abstract speculation as to whether
God exists. And, if the answer is yes, it does not inquire
how God exists and in what manner: in substantial unity with the
world, or high above the created being? These questions concern atheists
just as the negation of God does, and neither Jesus, Buddha, Lao-tse,
nor Heraclitus was willing to speak about them. For the atheist
is not only someone living in the religion of matt er, and
not only the Cartesian fanatic of reason. The circle is much
wider. The zealously praying, devout pietist or the daily communicant
could be, to the same extent, an atheist. One can hardly provide
an exhaustive list of all those – from the fanatics of Weltanschauung
to the hypocritical overeater, from the mad worshippers of
fame, rank, power, and money to the stone-hearted misers, from
the obsessive advocates of hygiene to the indignant prudes, from
the life-torturing ascetics to the alcohol addicts – who belong to
this group. One thing is certain: the number of inanities is infinite,
and normal existence is always the same. As Heraclitus put
it: “The waking share one common world, but when asleep each man
turns away to a private one.”
The infallible sign of bad religion is “existence without intoxication.”
The cause is a stiff fear of life, penetrated deeply into the
soul. Nothing is more difficult to achieve than liberation
from this state.
Good religion (the vita illuminativa) means higher sobriety.
The first sign of healing: seeing God in stones, trees, fruit,
or stars. In love, food, and wine. He who does not know, says
Béla Hamvas, that God is in the cooked ham will not understand
anything of this book. “I understood that Brahman’s highest
form is food.”
Whose religion is good? The religion of he who dares to live
in an immediate manner and knows that the joy of life is not
something forbidden. Not something forbidden but, as the Gospel
says, a plus. Food, wine, and love are not the goal, but helpful
means. This world is a place of crisis and separation, and
everybody has to declare his intentions. But in whoever the
order is re-established, he does not need laws, prohibition,
and asceticism.
The Philosophy of Wine is not an inventory of Hungarian wine
treasures. Neither is it that of botany nor gastronomy. As
in his other writings, Hamvas always pays attention to the
main features of human behavior, to the bases of life. Classification
is the task of books on oenology. The concern of this book
is altogether different. It prepares the reader to worship
the Presence.