In 1915, T.S. Eliot published his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Poetry. It presents the wandering thoughts of an alienated, likely depressed, and certainly indecisive modern man. In thinking of his indecisiveness and unsatisfactory life, he says, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Here, instead of representing productivity and speed, coffee symbolizes wasted time, unrealized fantasies, pensiveness. For Prufrock, coffee—itself suggesting that one should be productive—instead reminds him of what he was not able to do with all of the energy he was supposed to have gleaned from drinking it.
So, if Eliot finds coffee to be not a symbol of productivity but of unrealized productivity, where does this position him in relation to the other modernists concerning the values of futurism? Is Eliot lamenting speed, asking us to resent the expectation to be productive? Is Eliot the anti-Pound, the anti-Marinetti?
As if in reference to Pounds “In the Station of the Metro,” (“Prufrock” was published at Pound’s request), Prufrock finds frustration in his inability to make out faces in a crowd, at his bewilderment to their constant movement, and tries to comfort himself, saying, “There will be time / to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” But Eliot’s Prufrock isn’t frustrated with speed or productivity itself, but with his own inability to keep up with the pace that has been set for him. By the end of the poem, he resigns himself to a lower position in the social hierarchy, understanding that the unity of society is what propels this necessary speed. He says:
[I] Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
He is willing to find solace in being a part of the whole, “an easy tool,” “of use,” for something bigger. While he himself may not be able to represent the pinnacle of futurist/modernist values, he will serve those who can, “an attendant lord” to the truly exceptional ones. There is a sense of duty here, as if he has no real choice but to serve this system, like a bureaucracy he is beholden to. And if he must do this, he might as well enjoy it, “glad to be” a part of the whole.
But an important question remains: what kind of coffee was Prufrock drinking? He mentions “coffee spoons”—otherwise known as demitasse spoons—which would suggest espresso. But the poem suggests he’s in a smokey city, and with the amount of references to tea in the poem, as well as Eliot’s location at the time of writing the poem, it is likely that it takes place in London. Espresso, having barely been invented at this point, was not readily available outside of Italy and parts of France. Had it been written later, say after World War I (maybe 1922, after an interesting Victoria Arduino poster was printed, as well as Eliot’s own The Waste Land “the Hoftgarten / And drank coffee, and talked for an hour”[i] (espresso was in Switzerland early too)), or even right before World War II (1933 perhaps, officially A.M.P.) things may have been different for Prufrock. Perhaps he would have encountered a genuine espresso machine, maybe even a Victoria Arduino Mural Machine, and had himself a good cup of coffee. Hard to tell. However, soon after the publication of Prufrock, most of Italy, even rural areas, would have access to espresso via the Moka Pot.
[i] T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
I outlined the basic mechanism by which the Moka Pot operates in Part I of this series, but it is especially important to dwell on the Moka Pot’s use of aluminum. Trying to maintain a level of self-sufficiency among the Italian Empire, Mussolini supported the use of aluminum as “an Italian metal… the inexhaustible Italian resource!”[i] Marinetti in his Futurist Cookbook (yes, a real book), he claims that all plates should be made out of aluminum (and also claims that spaghetti makes you weak). The Moka Pot, among other Italian productions, became a nationalist symbol, representing the technological prowess of Italian manufacturing. It is a micro-machine of expedient production—a futurist’s dream—which in turn fuels even more production for the “everyman.” Whether in Turin, Milan, or the coastal village of Pingone, one could experience the national pride of Italy, a pride based in movement, unity, and of course, proper coffee bean extraction. Italians know how to suck the very life out of grounds—fragments and ruins of a roasted bean, shored there from distant waste lands.
But where did Italy get its coffee beans from? The very origins of coffee—then under the command of the Italian Empire as a colony, existed in Ethiopia. Coffee is next to impossible to grow in Europe, and so most of the coffee consumed in Europe had its agricultural origins in an equatorial colony. Much has been said about sugar in this regard, but coffee is a similarly important crop. While Italy isn’t talked about in the same regards to colonialism as Great Britain, Spain, or Belgium, for example, it is notably responsible for colonizing the region of the world with the greatest coffee production. Thus, espresso becomes not only symbolic of the speed of futurism and fascism, but is also a product of imperialism. Without imperialism, there is no espresso, and without espresso, well, modernism isn’t… as fast.
So, let’s move forward in time a bit. After World War II, the Moka Pot became a world-wide commodity, and a symbol of the charm of Italy. The Moka Pot remains an important object in Italian culture, and according to the nearly sixteen thousand reviews the product has on Amazon presently, it’s safe to say that the Moka Pot is here to stay. As “coffee culture” continues to grow, the Moka Pot is likely to end up in more and more home kitchens (I have two myself!) where aficionados may experiment, practicing proper bean extraction—that violence which became one of the many fuels of fascist political perversity. The Moka Pot is charming; it reminds us of the romance of the Italian countryside, visions from Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, perhaps.
[i] https://medium.com/@Nicola.Romagnoli/exploring-the-caffeinated-legacy-of-italian-fascism-aff8b3db36
Call Me by Your Name is about an American graduate student Oliver travelling to Italy and the love affair he has with his professor’s son during the summer of 1982. There has been little to nothing said about the ways in which this film very subtly interacts with Italy’s fascist legacy, but the film is not ignoring it. A commonly forgotten detail about the film is that all of the main characters are Jewish, something that the son Elio learns to accept, rejecting the mother’s assertion that they are, “Jews of discretion.” Later, Elio and Oliver laugh at noticing an old fascist political poster and Elio adds, “That’s Italy for you…”—a subtle reminder of the countries’ strained past, but also suggesting that, perhaps in some ways, this past is harmless.
Throughout the film, the Moka Pot is presen, at every breakfast table and on the counter while the family’s maid does their dishes. It is embedded within the Italian landscape and atmosphere, an atmosphere of romance and charm. Instead of being the pinnacle of speed and invention, the Moka Pot is now reminiscent of the slow pace of the Italian countryside. Italy’s very own technological advancements in espresso, contrary to their original purpose, evolved to create a very different image of Italy: that of a beautiful and historical space steeped in the culture of slow food—a movement which celebrates local food cultures—even if the coffee is still be shipped from foreign shores.
