Quartas-feiras, dia de ostras na Cave Nacional (Foto Pedro Mello e Souza)
Lendo sobre a chegada das ostras para as terças-feiras de Botafogo, em bares e restaurantes como o Belisco, a Casa Polvo e, nas quartas, na Cave Nacional, me lembrei das rimas do escritor irlandês Jonathan Swift, o mesmo de “As viagens de Gulliver”, sobre essas iguarias.
Mas um fato chamou a atenção até hoje sobre estes versos: além de escritor e poeta, Swift também era religioso severo, reitor da St. Patrick Cathedral, a mais importante da Dublin da época. Por isso, muita gente estranha até hoje o tempero quase erótico desse poema, que escreveu em idos de 1774. Há 250 anos, portanto.
Reparem que o autor já se referia, na época, às ostras de Colchester, bem longe da diocese de Swift, no litoral leste da Grã-Bretanha, 50 quilômetros de Londres.
Charming oysters I cry:
My masters, come buy,
So plump and so fresh,
So sweet is their flesh,
No Colchester oyster
Is sweeter and moister:
Your stomach they settle,
And rouse up your mettle:
They’ll make you a dad
Of a lass or a lad;
And madam your wife
They’Il please to the life;
Be she barren, be she old,
Be she slut, or be she scold,
Eat my oysters, and lie near her,
She’ll be fruitful, never fear her.
(ENGLISH VERSION)
While reading about the arrival of fresh oysters brightening up Tuesdays in Botafogo — featured in bars and bistros like Belisco, Casa Polvo, and, come Wednesday, at Cave Nacional — I was reminded of a rather unexpected admirer of this mollusk: the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, best known for Gulliver’s Travels.
What still fascinates readers today is not just Swift’s ode to oysters, but the tension it embodies. Beyond his literary fame, Swift was a devoted religious figure — the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin’s most important church at the time. Which is why the subtly sensual tone of his 1774 poem about oysters continues to raise eyebrows, even two and a half centuries later.
Curiously, even back then, Swift referenced Colchester oysters — harvested far from his Irish deanery, along Britain’s eastern coastline, some 50 kilometers from London. It seems the allure of a good oyster knows no borders — nor, perhaps, ecclesiastical restraint.
