Continuing the Meat and Vegetables Series, from
Related article: Hydrogen 24 And The Heart and others in the Food Factory Series of articles.
Basic familiarity with Fourth Way writings and principles is assumed.
Please see Introduction and Bibliography for full citations of abbreviated references.
Elizabeth Bennett says that during one meal at Gurdjieff's Paris flat, on September 24th, 1949, which was just over a month before his death, there was a long conversation about fish.1 Maybe Gurdjieff was speaking about the fish they were eating, what it combines well with, the character of various kinds of fish, or telling stories about fish, using fishes and fishermen allegorically as well as literally. All these aspects may be found either in Gurdjieff's writings or in the records of conversations with him. And, apart from talk about fish, fish seemed to have often been present in the meals that Gurdjieff shared.
For instance, regarding the literal use of fish as food, the trout seems to have been a significant component. Trout combines well with butter, but not any sauce, according to what Gurdjieff told the women of the Rope group:
Trout, he very spoiled fish. Not can live in any river but only where water move fast over stones and difficult places, only then can be happy. Also you notice one thing; never any sauce will mix with him, only butter, fresh butter. This alone mix with what he have specific under skin.2
Active elements concentrated under the skin are spoken of by Gurdjieff regarding the vegetable world as well, for example, melon3 and, just underneath the "husk," wheat.4 He said, "Everything depends on active elements."5
It's as if the trout likes, and even needs, struggle, which could play a part in the development and accumulation of these active elements under the skin. Using the analogy of what Gurdjieff says regarding the active elements just under the husk in wheat,6 it seems to be implied that the person who has worthily expended active elements in Nature's service, may absorb these special active elements under the skin, when eating. And on the contrary, the person who eats but has not worthily served Nature in this way, cannot have access to, or cannot absorb, such active elements, even though they eat food containing them.7
At one meal, Gurdjieff says to the Rope,
[Ghengis Khan] . . . he like trout, that spotted trout from one river in Tibet, And this he have fresh every day. He have organization, even one hundred thousand people from Tibet to wherever he is, in Caucasus for example, and this trout in buckets they pass. One man twenty-five kilometers go, very fast, then next man, and so on. Such Emperor, such influence he have . . .8
Likewise, there is the description of Gurdjieff and Soloviev being brought black-spotted trout at the Sarmoung monastery in Meetings With Remarkable Men:
Neither on that day nor on the following did anyone come to see us, but regularly three times a day we were brought food, consisting of milk products, dried fruit, and fish—black-spotted trout—and almost every hour our samovar was refilled. We either lay on our beds or went to the waterfall, where, to its monotonous sound, we memorized Tibetan words.9
In the mountains, near Vichy, France, Gurdjieff and the Rope women, and perhaps others, visit the trout breeding grounds.10 On arriving back at their hotel in the evening, trout and chicken are eaten, no doubt with Armagnac.
A trout is not good when it is not tasty, and one time, when travelling, "G complained about the tastelessness of the trout."11 The presence or absence of active elements in food is surely reflected in the taste, of one who is able to distinguish such things. It may not be only "under the skin" that a trout accumulates active elements; the eyes are another possibility. Kathryn Hulme mentions that in a "swell casino café restaurant," she wanted "to remember Gurdjieff picking up a trout skull and sucking out its eyes in that place!"12
Like Ghengis Khan, Gurdjieff liked his trout fresh, and he spoke of "the Tiflis fish merchants famous for humor - to know if a trout is fresh you smell behind the ear . . ."13