An interesting strand in Balzac’s “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee” is the war strand. The war strand is used to explain that when writers drink coffee it gives them power to complete their work like an army in the heat of battle. The war strand begins with “ideas quick‐march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages”. Ideas are the first of many important parts of writing that Balzac connects to different parts of war that are important to winning a war, creating the war strand. Balzac writes, “memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink ‐ for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder”. These highlighted elements of writing finish off the war strand, and further Balzac’s idea that writers gain power from writing while drinking coffee. The connection from war to power is that power is won in wars, and if the ideas, metaphors, imagination and the other elements of writing are the integral parts of an army that wins a war then writing wins power because it is the strength of the army that is winning the war. As long as writers drink coffee then work, they will have power because writing while having coffee in their system is what wins power.
The order that the elements of writing are in, and the parts of war that they are connected with are very important because they show which parts are the most important to Balzac. Ideas come first because ideas are needed to start writing, and ideas come in small groups like battalions, which are small groups of the whole army, and the ideas start the battle that is completing the writing. Balzac values ideas greatly because ideas are the first occurrence of the war strand, and are the part of an army that does the most fighting. Next is memories because like ideas, memories are also needed to write because without them writers would not be able to connect their writing to real life. Memories charge in because moments quickly become memories, and memories are not recalled slowly, but in a flash like a charge of an army. After memories comes the cavalry, which are soldiers riding on horses, or metaphors. Metaphors are created and used not directly say what the writer is trying to get the reader to understand. Metaphors are the cavalry because they are the heavy hits of a writing like the cavalry is in a war. This shows that Balzac values metaphors greatly because he puts metaphors as a highly esteemed part of an army. Additionally, he describes the metaphors as being deployed with a magnificent gallop, which using the word magnificent implies that metaphors are beautiful and a sight to behold. Describing an element as beautiful shows that he more than values metaphors, he adores metaphors as what creates beauty in a piece. After metaphors comes “the artillery of logic,” which means that Balzac sees logic as a weapon that writers can use in their works. Logic is artillery because artillery does not have to be used, but it is a tool to make the job easier like logic makes it easier for the reader to understand. The last element is “imagination’s orders” which means that the writer’s imagination is pulling the strings behind everything going on in this war. Imagination is the most important element to Balzac because he chooses to have imagination giving the order, therefore he believes that imagination is what makes the writer, and gives way to all these are parts that make a piece of work good.
The war strand is very important because the war strand shows Balzac’s idea that through drinking coffee while writers gain more power through the creativity war. This connection between the war and writers means that the writers have power, which connects the writers to the strand on spirituality. Because of coffee “writers are actually becoming more spiritual” and a definition of spiritual is “deriving from the mind or intellect associated with the higher faculties” (Oxford English Dictionary). Since writers are drinking more coffee, they are gaining more power, or intellect, from writing, which makes them more spiritual, and in turn they write more, continuing the cycle until they decide to stop writing. This cycle is important because it means that the writers are becoming better writers as a result of coffee. Balzac is attributing coffee to the reason that writers are winning the war to gain power and becoming better writers as they continue to write. The war strand is the catalyst for this cycle as it is how a writer gains power and begins the cycle of becoming more and more spiritual.
In a war, one side wins and the other side loses, so if the writers are winning power, who is losing power. In this war of creativity, the middle class are losing power because coffee does not give them these weapons to create and again intellect. Balzac makes this loss obvious by only using the war strand to describe writing, and not the bourgeoisie. Coffee does not make the bourgeoisie go through the same war, so they do not gain intellect and lose the war because they do not even fight in the war.
