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Dedicated to Coffee and Sugar

Coffee & Sugar (Interviews with Bruegel IV)

(20.6.2023) Another interview with Bruegel, this time with a guest.

– Mr. Bruegel, your painting depicting the Land of Cockaigne seems to be a very nutricious painting. But is it also a healthy painting? There seems to be much sugar in it.
– Yes, much sugar. Much sugar. But not industrial sugar. Industrial sugar did not exist then. But nutricious, yes, very nutricious. But healthy? In some sense, yes. Sweets can be healthy, in that they may improve your mood.
– What about drinks now, Mr. Bruegel? Tea or coffee?
– What is coffee, what is tea?
– Don’t play the innocent again, Mr. Bruegel. You know what I mean. I believe that you might be a coffee-man. Perhaps a black-coffee-man?
– Fine. Coffee is fine. Black coffee is fine. But not from coffee capsules.

(Both sipping coffee, while looking at the picture)

– Mr. Bruegel, are you the ›sustainable‹ type of a coffee consumer?
– Certainly not!
– So what type of coffee consumer are you? The ›adventurer‹ type? The ›quest for meaning‹ type?
– Type? I am the ›hipster‹ type of a coffee consumer.
– Just kidding?
– No, certainly not.
– So what is a ›hipster‹ type of coffee consumer?
– The ›hipster‹ type? This is a question that perhaps Mr. Ponce de Leon, our Habsburgian guest, may answer.

Juan Ponce de Leon, the Habsburgian conquistator who is said to have searched for the fountain of youth, has agreed to join our conversation with Mr. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose only economic activity, right now, is to be the godfather of one single orange tree in an orange orchard near Valencia. Mr. Ponce de Leon, on his part, is heading a company which is one of the leading producers of coffee capsules, a company that also is propagating ›sustainable coffee‹, and seeks for the ›sustainable coffee consumer‹ This is propagated as the new ›plus ultra‹, as was, once ago, the slogan of the Habsburgians.

– Mr. Ponce de Leon, what is a ›hipster‹ type of coffee consumer?
– Well, first let me thank you for having me. The ›hipster‹ type of a coffee consumer is defined by three things: coffee is more than just a beverage, it is part of a life-style; the coffee-to-go works as a sort of accessory. And as to the flavours: citrus flavours, like oranges and…
– Mr. B: oranges, how very original…
– Mr. P: …on the tongue of the hipster…
– Mr. B: oranges and double-tongue!
– Mr. P: Our customers respond very positively to it! Aren’t you a customer as well, Mr. Bruegel? And thirdly: the ›hipster‹ does know that the supply chain, from the peasant to the rostery, to the capsule and to the consumer, is the right one. There is history, and there is meaning. As well as enjoyment! Isn’t your painting about enjoyment, too?
– So what is the difference between the ›hipster‹ type and the ›sustainable‹ type? Mr. Bruegel?
– It is the degree of hypocrisy in the capsule.
– What exact hypocrisy?
– The ›sustainable‹ type is s claiming to seek responsibility for the future…
(– Mr. P: And he is!)
–…while the hipster does concede that it is mainly about a life-style capsule. And, no, my painting is not about enjoyment.
– Mr. P: But all people in that painting seem to enjoy themselves. It works very well as an advertisement for a Vienna Kaffeehaus. People have vices. People want to enjoy! You know that best, Mr. B, don‘t you?

– The figures in your painting are obviously not drinking coffee, Mr. Bruegel? Did you do that for the reasons you just have outlined? Or for the reasons Mr. P has just outlined?
– No, certainly not.
– Mr. P: may I answer for Mr. Bruegel then? It was for the reason that coffee, at the time, was still unknown in Europe. (Ah, sugar, thank you) But one knew sugar. And, as I may say, the demand for sugar… not yet industrial sugar, but sugar…
– Mr. B: the sugar trade was one of the major crimes of colonialism. The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets…
– Mr. P: …that has an article on colonialism in it, I know…
– Mr. B: …has an entry about it. And this is why the figures in my painting are consuming a lot of sugar (even the pig is a marzipan pig). It is to show how these people had being manipulated to demand sugar. It is a painting about the crimes of colonialism, about the crimes of the Spaniards, which were, from 1516 onwards, the crimes of the Spanish Habsburgians. Mr. P?
– Mr. P: The demand for sugar…
– Mr. B: Your customers did respond very positively to it, right.
– Mr. P: Yes, right, And the demand for sugar… And yes, certainly. The sugar trade…
– Mr. B: Colonialism. Slavery.
– Mr. P: Right, right, certainly, but today…
– Mr. B: My painting, in fact, shows that it was you who created a demand for sugar; my painting shows how people have been manipulated to demand sugar; and everything else that followed was colonialism and slavery.
– Mr. P: Well, well, don’t be that ideological, it doesn’t suit you. Your painting is usually interpreted as showing general human vices, such as: having a big appetite, for example for oranges, or for sweets. Didn’t you say that sweets may improve one’s mood. And coffee… the small things. The capsule… Your painting, be honest, is an open advertisement for the human vices… And coffee has always been welcome to the intellectual man, and to the intellectual woman.
– Mr. B: no, it shows you. My painting is the Black Book of the Habsburgians. It is about ›plus ultra‹, the slogan of the Habsburgians. Having a big appetite…
– Mr. P: yes, yes, but this is cheap Anti-Habsburgian propaganda. And the ecological footprint of the coffee capsule is not as bad as its reputation. And your painting works also very well as an advertisement for the Habsburgian Mehlspeise, which, certainly, you do enjoy as well. Mr. Bruegel is never that one-dimensional and ideological.
– Mr. Bruegel, you are, as I am realizing right now, mentioned in the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (entry for Land of Cockaigne), but only once, this is not as good as the Habsburgian Mehlspeise (which even has an entry for itself). Do you feel a little bit disappointed?
– No, no, I have never denied Habsburgian ideological success (in terms of the Mehlspeise), I am happy not to be a black-coffee-capsule-man, and I live well in the Land of Cockaigne entry, while Mr. P lives in the entry for colonialism.
– Mr. P: we are awaiting the two paintings by Mr. Bruegel on colonialism vs. post-colonialism. Our company will be flattered to be represented by Mr. Bruegel, and, I am sure, on the right side of history.
– Mr. B: I already have done my painting. Which is a capsule, a time-capsule, to be understood.
– Mr. P: which deserves to be remembered as a monument to the human vices, I agree.

Selected Literature:
Darra Goldstein (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, Oxford etc. 2015

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