Word-Hoard…Moveable Feast

The other day I was reading a review in the New York Times of David McCullough’s The Greater Journey Americans in Paris, tales of 19th-century American travelers to Paris. In her conclusion to the review, Stacy Schiff contrasts these with later American visitors when she writes that, “the movable feast came later.” I immediately thought of Hemingway.

His memoir of 1920s Paris, published posthumously in 1964, was given the title A Moveable Feast by his widow who used a remark Hemingway had made to a friend, Aaron Hotchner:  “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast” (from the “Foreword” of the Restored Edition by Patrick Hemingway, 2009). (Both spellings, moveable and movable are accepted. The OED prefers the latter.) According to his son, Patrick, Hemingway used the term in the metaphorical sense similar to the feast of St. Crispin speech of Henry V in Shakespeare: an experience that becomes part of you. It also carries the connotation of things which change over time.

The term’s etymology has religious associations.  In 325 CE, the First Council of Nicaea set the dates for both Easter and Christmas. The latter is not a moveable feast since it always occurs on December 25. Easter, on the other hand, is a moveable feast because it’s always on the same day of the week but the date varies. It is on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox and it is the date used to organize other Christian feasts or fasts (Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday for example). Before 325 CE Easter was associated with Passover, 14 Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. Interestingly, “Easter” is derived from the Old English name for the goddess of spring, Eostre. “Feast” is derived from Latin festa meaning festive, joyful, merry, and is associated with feriae, holiday (holy day) and fanum, temple. It’s connection with food goes even further back to agrarian cultures when food was used as sacrifices to the gods.

I always connect “feast” with Paris where I rented an apartment for a month several years ago and experienced probably the best food in the world—better than the food in New Orleans, which, of course, has a French connection. Even “fast food” is good there.  I remember getting a ham sandwich off of a mobile food truck outside the Grand Palais. The truck had a route up and down the Champs-Elysees. That meal was the best combination of bread, butter and ham that I’ve ever tasted.

All of which brings me nicely back to the moveable feast which is Paris.