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Curnonsky Maurice Edmond Sailland[a] (October 12, 1872, in Angers, France – July 22, 1956, in Paris), better known by his pen-name Curnonsky (nicknamed 'Cur'), and dubbed the Prince of Gastronomy, was one of the most celebrated writers on gastronomy in France in the 20th century. He wrote or ghost-wrote many books in diverse genres and many newspaper columns. He is often considered the inventor of gastronomic motor-tourism as popularized by Michelin, though he himself could not drive. He was a student of Henri-Paul Pellaprat. BiographyMaurice Edmond Sailland was born in Angers (Maine-et-Loire) on October 12, 1872 to Edmond-Georges Sailland and his wife Blanche-Alphonsine Mazeran.[1] His mother died within a month of his birth, and his father abandoned him. He was raised by his grandmother in Angers and attended the Collège Saint-Maurille in town. At the age of 18, he moved to Paris to attend the Ecole Normale Supérieure to prepare for a career in journalism.[2] Curnonsky's friend Paul Reboux wrote in 1933: "For 40 years, Curnonsky did almost all of the jobs in the literary profession. He was a novelist, a columnist, a humorist, a publicists, a music hall critic ... and a 'discreet collaborator,' that is to say, a 'ghost writer.' ... But it would be to speak of Curnonsky in a quite incomplete manner to not insist on his merits as a gastronome."[3] His role in promoting French gastronomy is perhaps what he is best known for today. Curnonsky took every occasion to promote his theory of the four cuisines of France:
Curnonsky's professional activities were truly wide-ranging. He even created a number of advertising slogans for important companies.[2] According to his biographer Arbellot, he coined the name Bibendum for the Michelin Man in 1907—because "Michelin tires drink [i.e. 'soak up' or 'eat up'] everything, even obstacles"—, and wrote Michelin's weekly column "Les Lundis de Michelin" in Le Journal starting on November 25, 1907. It was originally signed "Michelin" but starting on March 2, 1908, it was signed "Bibendum". Michelin had used the phrase "Nunc est bibendum" ("Cheers!" in Latin) on a poster in 1898, showing the Michelin Man swallowing a glass full of nails, but it is unclear when the word "Bibendum" became applied to this character. In 1921, he began writing a series of regional travel guides with Marcel Rouff, published under the collective title of La France Gastronomique: Guide des merveilles culinaires et des bonnes auberges françaises (Gastronomic France: Guide to the culinary marvels and the good inns of France). This was the early days of automobile tourism, which served to highlight the regional foods of France. Curnonsky and Rouff played an important role in the increasing popularity of discovering regional dishes and restaurants. Between 1921 and 1928, Curnonsky and Rouff wrote 28 volumes, which totaled 3,000 pages and included more than 5,000 recipes.[5] The historian Julia Csergo writes that Curnonsky and Rouff "invented the 'gastronomic guide' with the publication of their Gastronomic Tour of France".[6] He was named a knight of the Légion d'Honneur in 1928 and was made an officer in 1938.[1] In 1928, he co-founded the Académie des gastronomes, modelled on the Académie Française, and served as its first president, until 1949.[7] In 1947, he started the magazine Cuisine et Vins de France along with Madeleine Decure. In 1950, he was a co-founder of the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs His other associations included honorary member of the Club des Purs Cent, member of the Association des Gastronomes régionalistes, and member of the Académie de l'Humour.[8] To honor his eightieth birthday, eighty restaurants marked his favorite table with a copper plaque reading: Cette place est celle
de Maurice Edmond Sailland-Curnonsky This led to the legend that eighty restaurants reserved a table for him every night in case he should show up, though by that point, he rarely went out at all. Curnonsky died on July 22, 1956, at the age of 89. He fell out of the window of his third floor Paris apartment. He was on a severe diet at the time and was anemic, thus it was speculated that he had fainted while standing on his balcony.[9] A year later a commemorative plaque on nr. 14 of the place Henri-Bergson, Paris 8e was installed and a booklet published on this occasion. NameThe name "Curnonsky" comes from the Latin cur + non "why not?" plus the Russian suffix -sky, as all things Russian were in vogue in 1895, when he coined it. He once said that this nickname was "my tunic of Nessus, as I am neither Russian, nor Polish, nor Jewish, nor Ukrainian, but just an average Frenchman and wine-guy [sacavin]". He would later come to regret his pen name, but by then his literary career was launched.[10] Sailland wrote, co-wrote, and ghost wrote over 150 books, some under other pseudonyms, including Perdiccas, Sailland-Curnonsky, and Maurice Curnonsky.[5] In 1927, the newspaper Paris-Soir organized an election, or referendum, among its readers to choose the "prince of the gastronomes." Curnonsky (who signed his articles as "Cur" at this time) beat out the likes of Maurice des Ombiaux, Léon Daudet, and Ali Bab.[11][12] For the next several years, into early 1930, he edited a weekly full-page feature in Paris-Soir entitled "Annales of Gastronomy"; on the masthead he was identified as "Cur I, Prince des Gastronomes."  PhilosophyA celebrated aphorism of Curnonsky's was:
He advocated simple food over complicated, rustic over refined, and often repeated the phrase
In a 1937 interview, Curnonsky drew a contrast between his philosophy of French cuisine and that of the great chefs of the day. He noted that he was elected "democratic prince [of gastronomy] ... by the cooks and cordon bleus who, every day, make healthy, simple, good food," and the great chefs, "the grand aristocrats of cuisine, the Prosper Montagnés, the Escoffiers, the Philéas Gilberts, ... who, in Paris or in the provinces, maintain the traditions of elaborate and skilled French cuisine."[13] Curnonsky praised women who he believed cooked by instinct, without formal training. It was a cuisine that was "straightforward, clear in taste and never aimed at effect... A tranquil and well-prepared cuisine, a cuisine of cordon bleu."[14] Partial bibliography
In 2003, German art historian Inge Huber discovered five boxes with letters of Curnonsky, and authored a biography "Curnonsky. Oder das Geheimnis des Maurice-Edmond Sailland" 2010, Rolf Heyne Editor. See alsoNotes
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