In the recent notes on coffeehouses, I should have mentioned Alfred Polgar’s essay “Theory of the Café Central.” The café in the heart of Vienna is one of the famous coffeehouses of Europe.
Polgar was a journalist who loved the theater. He was a regular at the café before World War I brought down the Habsburg Empire. He kept up the conversation there until the Nazis forced him to flee to Prague, then Paris and finally Hollywood.
His tongue-in-cheek thesis is that the atmosphere of a real coffeehouse appeals to those who are unfit for life — people for whom daydreaming, conversing, reading and chess-playing are far greater goods than real work.
The only person who partakes of the most essential charm of this splendid coffeehouse is he who wants nothing there but to be there. Purposelessness sanctifies the stay.
Some people will read his essay and see themselves there. I’m at one of the quieter tables in back.
• Source: “Theorie des 'Cafe Central,’” 1926. The original text was in Alfred Polgar, Kleine Schriften, 4:254-59. I found it through the University of Washington’s site on Vienna:
https://depts.washington.edu/vienna/documents/Polgar/Polgar_Cafe.htm
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