Simple Message 7 is "The Martini belongs to the past, not to the present" (M,SU, 31-34).  This Message, like the others, concerns symbolism.  In reality, the Martini is drunk in the present.  Symbolically, however, it is drunk as a drink of the past.  It is always of the past.

But can it have really been always of the past?  After the Martini came into existence (probably in the 1870s), it must for a certain time have been new.  At what point, it can be asked, did this new drink become, symbolically, an old one?

Phillips A. Lyman, in A Bachelor's Cupboard (Boston, 1906), has a source in New York who gives him a commentary on the "only really decent drinks," which includes the statement: "what a pity it's no longer made - a dry, very dry Martini cocktail" (146).  Already in 1906 the dry Martini is a thing of the past.

As a drink that is of the past, the Martini, whenever it is noticed, is perceived as returning.  One gives the synchronic structure of the symbol (past vs. present) a diachronic tweak and says: the Martini is making a comeback.  "Every Year There's an Article Called 'The Return of the Martini'" (M,SU, 122).  If Lyman's source was lucky enough to have a very dry Martini in, say, 1907, presumably he said: "The dry Martini has returned."

As a classicist, I have been aware that the Latin language receives the same publicity. While the numbers of students have been constant since the 1960s, people always say that Latin is making a comeback.  If something of which oldness is felt to be an essential property is still around, people say, whenever they happen to notice its existence, that it is making a comeback.

Andrea Higbie, The New York Times, Tues. Oct. 12, 1999, p. F9: "Like the martini and other long-ago icons, the medicine ball is back."

Henry Allen, "407 Highland Ave., Orange, N.J.," NYRB, July. 16, 1998, p. 25: This poem makes excellent use of the Martini as a long-ago icon.

© 2001, Lowell Edmunds