Several years ago I was staying at the Ota's house outside of Copenhagen. Hiroko prepared a wonderful eel dish from eels caught in the Baltic. The preparation was Swedish in style but with a touch of soy sauce! (I will try to find and test a recipe later, assuming I can find any live eels in Boston to test it on.)
So to remember Hiroko, here is the famous Eugenio Montale poem The Eel. Like Hiroko, these eels spent time in the Baltic but seem to love Mediterranean waters. Montale grew up in Monterossa al Mare in the Cinque Terra and his family's grave can be found above the town (he is buried near Florence, Hiroko in Tokyo).
You may also remember the smoked eels we serve at the Christmas party, or unagi-don for lunch on a hot summer day in Tokyo, just after the rainy season has broken.
The Eel
The eel, siren
of cold seas, who leaves
the Baltic for our seas,
our estuaries, rivers, rising
deep beneath the downstream flood
from branch to branch, form twig to smaller twig,
ever more inward,
bent on the heart of rock,
infiltrating muddy
rills until one day
light glancing off the chestnuts
fires her flash
in stagnant pools,
in the ravines cascading down
the Apennine escarpments to Romangna;
eel, torch, whiplash,
arrow of Love on earth,
whom only our gullies
or desiccated Pyrenean brooks lead back
to Edens of generation;
green spirit seeking life
where only drought and desolation sting;
spark that says that everything begins
when everything seems charcoal,
buried stump;
brief iris,
twin to the one your ashes frame
and you set shining virginal among
the sons of men, sunk in your mire--
can you fail to see her as a sister?
from Eugenio Montale, The Storm Etc., translated by Jonathon Galassi
In the original (read for the music of the words)
L'anguilla
L'anguilla, la sirena
dei mari freddi che lascia il Baltico
per giungere ai nostri mari,
as nostri estuari, ai fiumi
che risale in profondo, sotto la piena avversa,
di ramo in ramo e poi
di capello in capello, assottigliati,
sempre piu addentro, sempre piu nel cuore
del macigno, filtrando
tra gorielli di melma finche un giorno
una luce scoccata dai castagni
ne ascende il guizzo in pozze d'acquamorta,
nei fossi che decliano
dai balzi d'Appennino alla Romagna;
l'anguilla, torcia, frusta,
freccia d'Amore in terra
che solo i nostri botri o i disseccati
ruscelli pirenaici riconducono
a paradisi di fecondazione;
l'anima verde che cerca
vita la dove solo
morde l'arsura e la desolazione,
la scintilla che dice
tutto comincia quando tutto pare
incarbonirsi, bronco seppellito;
l'iride breve, gemella
di quella che incastonano i tuoi cigli
e fai brillare intatta in mezzo ai figli
dell'uomo, immersi nel tuo fango, puoi tu
non crederla sorella?
from La Buffera E Altro
