Someday, I will host a 20-course meal. For a while now I've been working on the menu, which will feature both food and non-food courses. The details are best kept secret for full effect, but I can say that the feast will likely begin with a recitation of Gustav's gorgeous, erratic speech from Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. Just prior to the speech a small child has been christened, and now the entire family is gathered at the table. The wild patriarch rises to speak:
If I could I would throw my arms round you all in a vast embrace and I would plant a kiss of affection on your brows, a kiss that, more than any words, would tell you of my happiness and my love. We are all together again now. Our little world has closed round us in security, wisdom, and order after a time of horror and confusion. The shadows of death have been routed, winter has been put to flight, and joy has returned to our hearts …. We must live in the little, little world. We shall be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it. Suddenly death strikes, suddenly the abyss opens, suddenly the storm howls and disaster is upon us—all that we know. But let us not think of all that unpleasantness. We love what we can understand. We … like our subterfuges. Rob a man of his subterfuges and he goes mad and begins hitting out. Damn it all, people must be intelligible, or we can’t dare either to love them or speak ill of them. We must be able to grasp the world and reality, so that we can complain of its monotony with a clear conscience. Dear, splendid actors and actresses, we need you all the same. It is you who are to give us our supernatural shudders and still more our mundane amusements. The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. Soon it will be the hour for robbers and murderers. Evil is breaking its chains and goes through the world like a mad dog. The poisoning affects us all, without exception … No one escapes …. So shall it be. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy, let us be kind, generous, affectionate, and good. Therefore it is necessary, and not in the least shameful, to take pleasure in the little world, good food, gentle smiles, fruit-trees in bloom, waltzes. And now, my dearest friends, my dearest brothers and sisters, I’ve done talking and you can take it for what you like—the effusions of an uncouth restaurant owner or the pitiful babbling of an old man. It doesn’t matter to me, I don’t care one way or the other. I am holding a little empress in my arms. It is tangible yet immeasurable. One day she will prove me wrong, one day she will rule over not only the little world but over—everything! Everything!Unhinged, and not a bad way to begin a feast.