I can still recall my surprise when I happened upon a volume in a second-hand bookshop by Maurice Maeterlinck, author of Pelleas et Mellisande and one of history’s most famous Belgians, only to discover that it was all about the natural history of bees. If “James Meek’s piece in the latest LRB”:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n21/meek01_.html is anything to go on, I’m in good company:
bq. Not long after the First World War, the movie baron Samuel Goldwyn set up a stable of Eminent Authors in an attempt to give silent screenplays more literary weight. One of the recruits was the Nobel Prize-winning Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck. Initially, neither party seems to have been troubled that Maeterlinck spoke no English, and the great Belgian set to work on a screen version of his novel La Vie des abeilles. When the script was translated Goldwyn read it with increasing consternation until he could no longer deny the evidence of his senses. ‘My God!’ he cried. ‘The hero is a bee!’
Further on in Meek’s review of Bee Wilson’s _The Hive_ [1] he claims that Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserts somewhere that nations which eat honey are natural democracies but those which use sugar as a sweetener are fit only for tyranny. I guess I can see what the argument might be — something about honey-gathering being a suitable activity for free citizens whereas sugar came from large plantations worked by slaves — but does JJR _really_ say it anywhere?[2]
fn1. One of the names we canvassed for this blog before we launched was “The Grumbling Hive”, I’m glad I lost that argument.
fn2. Montesquieu makes explit the link between sugar and black slavery at _Spirit of the Laws_ I.15.v.
{ 32 comments }
washerdreyer 11.05.04 at 11:54 am
You’re a Mandeville fan? I know he’s using rhetoric, but it terms of any argumentative content it’s all equivocation.
jet 11.05.04 at 12:38 pm
Duly noted. I’ll start using honey in my coffee.
rea 11.05.04 at 12:40 pm
And of course, post election, one can point out that the US overwhelmingly prefers sugar to honey. . .
Joshua W. Burton 11.05.04 at 12:52 pm
See also Shaw’s _Man and Superman_, act 2.
  OCTAVIUS. I want you to tell her sincerely and earnestly what you think about me. I want you to tell her that you can trust her to me—that is, if you feel you can.
  TANNER. I have no doubt that I can trust her to you. What worries me is the idea of trusting you to her. Have you read Maeterlinck’s book about the bee?
  OCTAVIUS [keeping his temper with difficulty] I am not discussing literature at present.
  TANNER. Be just a little patient with me. I am not discussing literature: the book about the bee is natural history. It’s an awful lesson to mankind.
The full text is at http://www.bartleby.com.
jet 11.05.04 at 12:58 pm
Rea,
Fructose corn syrup is by far the most popular sweetener in the US. How does that fit into your little metaphor?
“The USA, tyranny over the corn fields, enslaver of combines, corrupter of farmers, mutilator of earth worms. By far the largest evil to ever till the soil.”
Tom T. 11.05.04 at 1:02 pm
You do know that honey is just bee vomit, don’t you?
Backword Dave 11.05.04 at 1:08 pm
Jet, putting honey in your coffee isn’t the issue. It’s what your fellow country, ah, persons do. That is, assuming that the premise is even remotely correct. You have to move to a country where other people use honey. As democrats, they will tolerate eccentricity, and you can continue with sugar, or indeed, corn syrup in your coffee. (Well, unless your dentist objects, anyway.)
Jeremy Osner 11.05.04 at 1:14 pm
What does this mean for those of us who drink our coffee sans sweetener?
jet 11.05.04 at 1:21 pm
But, but, but……I like it here.
What if I were just to start a campaign promoting the virtues of honey use and how it leads to moral leadership, clean living, long life, lint-less clothes dryers, wrinkle-proof pants, and cleaner air, fat free donuts, and fluffier bunny rabbits?
I’m sure I’ll be apposed by the powerful lobby, The Dentist Coalition for Higher Wages.
jet 11.05.04 at 1:35 pm
For a country that does prefer adding sugar, over honey, to foods that usually have sweetener added after preperation, the US has one of the most liberal abortion laws (far more liberal than liberal France), more liberal buggery laws than many in Europe, although not as liberal as some, lower crime than a few in Europe (while having a much more ecclectic mix of cultures), and a much smaller history of tryanny abroad than most in Europe.
Was England a honey using country while the East Indian Tea company was starving millions in India so that tea could be grown?
Maybe America isn’t a shining city on the hill, but it is probably the brightest house on the block. And we prefer sugar over honey. And Rousseau was a bitter old man who probably got it backwards just to spite everyone.
Martin Wisse 11.05.04 at 1:38 pm
Of course, a bee hive is the ultimate totalitarian organisation, with every member having a clearly defined task, ruled by a queen who herself is just as much a slave as her subjects.
So much for that comparison.
Jason Kuznicki 11.05.04 at 1:46 pm
In Voltaire’s Candide, a slave laments the European taste for sugar, too:
“When we labor in the sugar works, and the mill happens to snatch hold of a finger, they instantly chop off our hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off a leg. Both these cases have happened to me, and it is at this expense that you eat sugar in Europe…”
http://www.online-literature.com/voltaire/candide/19/
jet 11.05.04 at 2:23 pm
I hadn’t realized Candide was a history of actual events. I thought it was more of a metaphor, or perhaps a parabole, but alas I was wrong.
If we can use Candide as a primary source on sugar mill slavery, what else can we use it for? Obviously a primary source on the church, the crown, and the peasant class.
Great find Jason. This under-utilised source will expand historical knowledge quite significantly.
:P
des von bladet 11.05.04 at 2:25 pm
As for JJ, I’d say no: the free-text search here turns up matches for “sucre” and “miel”, but not together and not arguing that.
(I’ve got Les Confessions now, BTW, but I am reading Heidegger in French and Husserl in Swedish and Locke in Engleesh and I May Be Some Time.)
jet 11.05.04 at 2:36 pm
I think I’ve found a new way to divide sheep and goats. I bet we can divide those willing to joke and be unserious and those to which every post must be to “the cause” in this way:
1. Those with tenure, professional jobs, or undergraduates will allow humor to occasionally supercede their desire to convert the unconverted.
2. Those in graduate school, without tenure, or educated yet margianlized in society, will never let humor be their primary goal, and ever post will include a significant premise attempting to convert the unconverted.
:P
Jason Kuznicki 11.05.04 at 3:36 pm
Jet,
I was merely providing a pointer to a text I thought might be helpful. Yes, Candide is a canonical work, but I don’t assume that everyone has read it. And did I even once imply that Candide was historically accurate? You’re putting words in my mouth, and your lame attempt to call it humor does not exuse you.
If Chris believes that my post was genuinely inaccurate or misleading, I trust him to delete it. Heck, if he really agrees with you, then I INVITE him to delete it. I may be humorless, but you are an idiot.
jet 11.05.04 at 3:48 pm
Wow, which would you rather be, humorless or an idiot? Yet another way to divide the sheep and goats:P
Chris Bertram 11.05.04 at 3:49 pm
I thought your comment was very interesting Jason.
Jet – you are getting to be a nuisance. Please behave.
Marc Mulholland 11.05.04 at 4:00 pm
JJR does say in the Constitutional Project For Corsica (1765) the following:
“The island of Corsica, says Diodorus, is mountainous, well wooded, and watered by large rivers. Its inhabitants live on meat, milk, and honey, with which their country supplies them in abundance; in their relations with one another they observe the rules of justice and humanity with greater strictness than do other barbarians; the first to find honey in the mountains and in the hollow trunks of trees is assured that no one will challenge his possession. They are always sure of recovering their sheep, each of which is marked by the owner, and then allowed to graze unguarded over the countryside. This same spirit of equity seems to guide them in all the circumstances of life. . . “
Marc Mulholland 11.05.04 at 4:02 pm
JJR does say in the Constitutional Project For Corsica (1765) the following:
“The island of Corsica, says Diodorus, is mountainous, well wooded, and watered by large rivers. Its inhabitants live on meat, milk, and honey, with which their country supplies them in abundance; in their relations with one another they observe the rules of justice and humanity with greater strictness than do other barbarians; the first to find honey in the mountains and in the hollow trunks of trees is assured that no one will challenge his possession. They are always sure of recovering their sheep, each of which is marked by the owner, and then allowed to graze unguarded over the countryside. This same spirit of equity seems to guide them in all the circumstances of life. . . “
Marc Mulholland 11.05.04 at 4:04 pm
JJR does say in the Constitutional Project For Corsica (1765) the following:
“The island of Corsica, says Diodorus, is mountainous, well wooded, and watered by large rivers. Its inhabitants live on meat, milk, and honey, with which their country supplies them in abundance; in their relations with one another they observe the rules of justice and humanity with greater strictness than do other barbarians; the first to find honey in the mountains and in the hollow trunks of trees is assured that no one will challenge his possession. They are always sure of recovering their sheep, each of which is marked by the owner, and then allowed to graze unguarded over the countryside. This same spirit of equity seems to guide them in all the circumstances of life. . . “
Dubious 11.05.04 at 4:11 pm
What about Saccharine, Nutrasweet, Splenda and other synthetic cousins?
Are these the people who will eventually become genetically engineered superhumans?
Zizka 11.05.04 at 4:15 pm
Corn syrup is linked to agricultural subsidies and protectionism.
Sugar production is also linked to rum (specifically Screech), to codfish, and to Canada’s most despised minority group.
arthur 11.05.04 at 4:44 pm
There were news reports a while back about al qaeda infiltrating the international honey trade for the purpose of smuggling across arabic wrold national boundaries. Honey is very popular there, and a substnatial import/export. Honey imports are a great way to smuggle bombs and stuff, because just try to inspect the inside of an oil-drum size honey jar.
Jackmormon 11.05.04 at 7:46 pm
One of the earliest moral consumer boycotts was against sugar from the West Indies. In the later eighteenth-century, Puritanical types were encouraged to eat only honey or maple syrup to protest slavery in the cane fields. Didn’t really work, of course, but the effort did raise consciousness of slavery among the middle classes.
I’ve also read that the famous stereotype of English people’s having bad teeth dates from the 18th c., when the middle classes of England could afford what was then considered massive amounts of sugar. (The sugar may even have been a more decisive factor than the tea…)
George 11.05.04 at 10:07 pm
There’s a book out there these days called The Secret Life of Bees, any connection?
James Hamilton 11.05.04 at 10:56 pm
So you lost the argument for calling the blog “Grumbling Hive”: there are those of us who were quite happy with “Junius”, but never mind. Rumour has it that Norm Geras came up with “Crooked Timber” for you all. I have occasionally wondered if he was teasing, and y’all taking yourselves too seriously to notice.
Simon 11.06.04 at 12:24 am
Try Sidney Mintz, _Sweetness and Power._
jet 11.06.04 at 1:24 am
Sorry Jason, I’d plead hungover, but that isn’t really an excuse. How about I plead bad sense of humor, or perhaps, inability to properly contain my inner asshole?
Or closer to the truth, how about I plead hyper-sensitivity to attacks on the US?
Dave F 11.08.04 at 7:17 pm
Eventually the movie was greenlighted when the hero became an ant, not a bee, thus dispelling studio unease about the communistic nature of the hive. I assume there was extensive rewriting of Maeterlinck’s original screenplay.
Turlough 11.10.04 at 9:16 am
Martin Wisse
The bee colony as a totalitarian state ruled by a Queen? No, the hive is perhaps the ultimate in a worker state — a female worker state at that. The main colony decisions are largely controlled by the Queen’s pheromones, but the workers control her pheromones by what and how much they feed her. The Queen doesn’t lead, she follows.
And all those hard working worker bees? No, they lounge around quite a lot of the time. And they have a rich working life, changing jobs every few days until they eventually become foragers and get to go out in the big wide world for a bit of sight-seeing and fieldwork.
The life of the men (drones) is a doddle — sex machines not required to do any work. Just one snag: come the autumn they cease to be fed by the female workers and are chucked out of the hive to die. Oh yes, if they do successfully mate, they explode and die. Way to go!
But in the words of one politician: I warn you, do not become sick or grow old. The sick and disabled are shown the door and there ain’t no retirement plan.
Turlough 11.10.04 at 9:26 am
Martin Wisse
The bee colony as a totalitarian state ruled by a Queen? Not quite. The hive is perhaps the ultimate in a worker state — a female worker state at that. Many of the colony decisions are responses to the Queen’s pheromones, but the workers control her pheromones by what and how much they feed her. The Queen doesn’t lead, she follows.
And all those hard-working worker bees? No, they lounge around quite a lot of the time. And they have a rich working life, changing jobs every few days until they eventually become foragers and get to go out in the big wide world for a bit of sight-seeing and fieldwork.
The life of the men (drones) is a doddle — sex machines not required to do any work. Just one snag: come the autumn they cease to be fed by the female workers and are chucked out of the hive to die. Oh yes, if they do successfully mate, they explode and die. Way to go!
But in the words of one politician: I warn you, do not become sick or grow old. The sick and disabled are shown the door and there ain’t no retirement plan in the hive.
Comments on this entry are closed.