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咖啡的快乐与痛苦（1830）
The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee (1830)
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导读
这是法国作家巴尔扎克 1830 年所写的散文《咖啡的乐与苦》，以极具戏剧性的文笔描绘咖啡带来的精神亢奋与创作快感，也预言了长期滥用咖啡因对身心的损耗。巴尔扎克本人正是靠大量咖啡支撑极端作息、完成《人间喜剧》的写作者。
为什么经久不衰：它把咖啡因的兴奋与代价写得既生动又诚实，近两百年后仍是关于咖啡最动人的文字之一，对今天的咖啡爱好者依然有共鸣。
HN 评论精选
补充巴尔扎克的极端作息与咖啡摄入量，说明他是用生命在写作
巴尔扎克是个狂野而多产的作家。他受巨大的文学野心和源源不断的债主驱使，无情地压榨自己，靠无数杯咖啡支撑。工作日极其残酷：晚 6 点简单晚餐后入睡，凌晨 1 点起床写作七小时；8 点小睡 90 分钟，9 点半到下午 4 点继续工作，一杯接一杯地喝黑咖啡（据估计他一天最多喝五十杯）。他自己写道：“日子在我手中像阳光下的冰一样融化。我不是在生活，而是在可怕地消耗自己——但无论死于工作还是别的什么，都无所谓。”
nappy查看英文原文
Balzac was a wild guy, and prolific. Here's how he worked: Balzac drove himself relentlessly as a writer, motivated by enormous literary ambition as well as a never-ending string of creditors and endless cups of coffee; as Herbert J. Hunt has written, he engaged in “orgies of work punctuated by orgies of relaxation and pleasure.” When Balzac was working, his working schedule was brutal: He ate a light dinner at 6:00 P.M., then went to bed. At 1:00 A.M. he rose and sat down at his writing table for a seven-hour stretch of work. At 8:00 A.M. he allowed himself a ninety-minute nap; then, from 9:30 to 4:00, he resumed work, drinking cup after cup of black coffee. (According to one estimate, he drank as many as fifty cups a day.) At 4:00 P.M. Balzac took a walk, had a bath, and received visitors until 6:00, when the cycle started all over again. “The days melt in my hands like ice in the sun,” he wrote in 1830. “I’m not living, I’m wearing myself out in a horrible fashion–but whether I die of work or something else, it’s all the same.”[1] [1] http://meaningring.com/2015/05/06/daily-rituals-balzac-by-mason-currey/
对比咖啡与抹茶：咖啡是猛烈冲击，绿茶是平稳提升，按状态选择更明智
我也可以为抹茶写一篇颂歌，但残酷的真相是：绿茶最大的优点就是它不是咖啡。咖啡像戏剧化的散文，绿茶像俳句——咖啡用大腿踹门（咖啡因），把人送入狂热的忙碌；绿茶则先礼貌敲门（茶氨酸），而礼貌的敲门难道不足以打开许多门吗？咖啡的作用像糖分冲击，亢奋后是人为的低谷，绿茶则是平稳的升空。我压力大时选咖啡，结果更糟；休息好了想高效工作时选抹茶，总能带来好的工作状态。
vijucat查看英文原文
I could write similar paens to Matcha, and the harsh truth, coffee lovers, is that the top feature of green tea is that it is not coffee. Coffee , as is this piece by Balzac), is like dramatic prose, whereas green tea is like a haiku. Coffee seeks to kick the door open with it's legs, applying the full force of the femur (caffeine), sending the imbiber into a frenzy of activity, while green tea knocks on the door first (L Thanine). And isn't a polite knock enough to open many a door? Coffee's influence is like a sugar rush, an exaggerated high followed by an artificial low, while green tea's influence is like a smooth lift-off. For some reason, I end up choosing coffee when I'm stressed, and it worsens matters. I go for matcha when I'm well-rested and want to be productive, and it always leads to a good work session.
惊叹 1830 年的文风已非常接近现代，语言演变之快
从语言学角度看，这篇 1830 年的文章读起来几乎像今天写的（只是带点浮夸的正式感），令人惊叹。而往前不到一百年，美国开国元勋们的文风就与之有天壤之别。
AdmiralAsshat查看英文原文
Pretty impressive from a linguistic standpoint how close an 1830's document reads like something that could have been written today (with perhaps a touch of pretentious formality). Try reading the communications of the US Founding Fathers less than a century before, and the stylistic changes are like night and day.
巴尔扎克的极端生活方式最终以 51 岁早逝收场，印证了文中对咖啡代价的预言
巴尔扎克关于咖啡的精彩文字。研究表明他是个走极端的人——‘超重、工作狂、咖啡因滥用者，奥诺雷·德·巴尔扎克过着过度放纵的生活。他 51 岁时因充血性心力衰竭相关的坏疽过早去世。’
ballsyballsman查看英文原文
Great writing of Mr Balzac about coffee. According to research he came out as a man of extremes - "Overweight, workaholic, and a caffeine abuser, Honoré de Balzac lived a life of excess. He prematurely died at the age of 51 owing to gangrene associated with congestive heart failure." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27638234
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