Essence and Alchemy (2 page)
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Authors: Mandy Aftel
The Spirit of the Alchemist A Natural History of Perfume
When from a long-distant past nothing subsists after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
â
Marcel Proust
, Remembrance of Things Past
Marcel Proust
, Remembrance of Things Past
3F
RAGRANCE has the instantaneous and invisible power to penetrate consciousness with pure pleasure. Scent reaches us in ways that elude sight and sound but conjure imagination in all its sensuality, unsealing hidden worlds. A whiff of a once-familiar odor, and memories surge into consciousness on a sea of emotion, transporting usâto a first camping trip, steeped in the smell of pine and burning wood; to the steamy windows and vanilla-laced air of a winter kitchen where cookies are baking; to a classroom where a teacher opens a brand-new box of cedarwood pencils; to a college in the Midwest, evoked by the sweet smell of apple cider and rotting leaves, or by the scent of the first rain of spring, all green grass and wet earth.
The twentieth-century French philosopher Gaston Bachelard observed that scent is tantamount to the tracks that mark the passage of
solid bodies through the atmosphere, and consequently redolent of memories. An odor can immediately evoke the details and mood of an old experience, as vividly as if no time at all had passed. “Odor, oftener
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than any other sense impression, delivers a memory to consciousness little impaired by lapse of time, stripped of irrelevancies of the moment or of the intervening years, apparently alive and all but convincing,” writes Roy Bedichek in
The Sense of Smell
. “Not vision, not hearing, touch, nor even tasteâso nearly kin to smellânone other, only the nose calls up from the vasty deep with such verity those sham, cinematic materializations we call memories.”
solid bodies through the atmosphere, and consequently redolent of memories. An odor can immediately evoke the details and mood of an old experience, as vividly as if no time at all had passed. “Odor, oftener
4
than any other sense impression, delivers a memory to consciousness little impaired by lapse of time, stripped of irrelevancies of the moment or of the intervening years, apparently alive and all but convincing,” writes Roy Bedichek in
The Sense of Smell
. “Not vision, not hearing, touch, nor even tasteâso nearly kin to smellânone other, only the nose calls up from the vasty deep with such verity those sham, cinematic materializations we call memories.”
That scent should have so powerful a link to recollection is not surprising. Smell is one of the first senses that awakens in a baby and guides its movements through its first days in the world. An infant can locate its mother's milk by the use of its nose alone. Babies smile when they recognize their mother's odor, preferring it to the smell of any other womanâwhich, in turn, pleases the mother. This evolving and reciprocal situation built on the sense of smell plays a key part in creating an intimate relationship between mother and child.
As potent as it can be, however, smell is the most neglected of our senses. We search for visual beauty in art and in nature, and take care to arrange our homes in a way that pleases the eye. We seek out new music and musicians to add to our CD collections; perhaps we have learned to play an instrument ourselves. We spend time and money on sampling new and exotic cuisines, even learn to cook them. We pamper our sense of touch with cashmere sweaters, silk pajamas, and crisp linen shirtsâwe can hardly help refining it through our constant interaction with an infinitely varied tactile world. Yet most of us take our sense of smell for granted, leaving it to its own devices in a monotonous and oversaturated olfactory environment. We never think about its cultivation or enrichment, even though some of life's most exquisite pleasures consequently elude us. In a bouquet of mixed roses, most people can distinguish at a glance
the delicacy of a tea rose from the voluptuousness of a cabbage rose, but how many could so readily differentiate between the tea rose's scent of freshly harvested tea and the spicy, honeylike, rich floral scent of the cabbage? As cultural historian Constance Classen observes, “We are often
5
unable to recognize even the most familiar odors when these are separated from their source. That is, we know the smell of a rose when the rose itself is there, but if only an odor of roses is present, a large percentage of people would be unable to identify it.”
the delicacy of a tea rose from the voluptuousness of a cabbage rose, but how many could so readily differentiate between the tea rose's scent of freshly harvested tea and the spicy, honeylike, rich floral scent of the cabbage? As cultural historian Constance Classen observes, “We are often
5
unable to recognize even the most familiar odors when these are separated from their source. That is, we know the smell of a rose when the rose itself is there, but if only an odor of roses is present, a large percentage of people would be unable to identify it.”
Gathering roses at Grasse
It is easy for us to take our sense of smell for granted, because we exercise it involuntarily: as we breathe, we smell. A dime-size patch of olfactory membrane in each of the upper air passages of the nose contains the nerve endings that give us our sense of smell. Each of the more than 10 million olfactory nerve cells comes equipped with a half dozen to a dozen hairs, or cilia, upon the exposed end, equipped with receptors. Gaseous molecules of fragrance are carried to the receptors. When enough are stimulated, the cell fires, sending a signal to the brain.
The olfactory membrane is the only place in the human body
where the central nervous system comes into direct contact with the environment. All other sensory information initially comes in through the thalamus. The sense of smell, however, is first processed in the limbic lobe, one of the oldest parts of the brain and the seat of sexual and emotional impulses. In other words, before we know we are in contact with a smell, we have already received and reacted to it.
where the central nervous system comes into direct contact with the environment. All other sensory information initially comes in through the thalamus. The sense of smell, however, is first processed in the limbic lobe, one of the oldest parts of the brain and the seat of sexual and emotional impulses. In other words, before we know we are in contact with a smell, we have already received and reacted to it.
The physiological configuration of the sense of smell is a reminder of the primacy it once had for our predecessors, who walked on all fours with their noses close to the groundâand to one another's behinds. In this way, scientists speculate, we were able to ascertain information about gender, sexual maturity, and availability. Freud postulated that, as we began to walk upright, we lost our proximity to scent trails and to the olfactory information they provide. At the same time, our field of vision expanded, and sight began to take precedence over smell. Over time, our sense of smell lost its acuity.
This displacement of smell by sight appears to have been a necessary step in the process of human evolution, and perhaps because of that, the status of smell has declined along with its keenness. With the Enlightenment especially, the sense of smell came to be looked upon as a “lower” sense associated with animals and primitive urges, filth and disease. (It didn't help that the stench of illness was long viewed as the cause of an ailment rather than its symptom.) Immanuel Kant pronounced smell the most unimportant of the senses and unworthy of cultivation. The marginalization of smell became one of the hallmarks of “civilized” man.
Yet, diminished as it is, the human sense of smell remains capable of extraordinary development. In more “primitive” societies, it continues to play a critical role in hunting, healing, and religious life, and consequently is a much more refined instrument, as Paolo Rovesti documents in
In Search of Perfumes Lost
, his study of the decline
of olfactory sensibilities and the use of natural perfume materials around the world. Among the remote peoples he visited were the Orissa of India, “who lived, completely naked
6
, in the mountains. They had never been touched by any civilization and continued to live as in the stone age.”
In Search of Perfumes Lost
, his study of the decline
of olfactory sensibilities and the use of natural perfume materials around the world. Among the remote peoples he visited were the Orissa of India, “who lived, completely naked
6
, in the mountains. They had never been touched by any civilization and continued to live as in the stone age.”
We were still out of sight of the crest of their plateau and separated from them by a dense jungle, when we heard a clamor of festive cries. “They have smelt us coming. They have smelt our odor,” the guide explained to us. We were still more than one hundred yards of jungle away from them. Moreover, a loud waterfall nearby would have made it impossible for them to have heard us. The realization on various occasions that these primitive people had olfactory capacities as sharp as those given to original man, as acutely sensitive as that of many animals, never ceased to amaze and surprise us.
Umeda hunters
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in New Guinea were reported to sleep with bundles of herbs under their pillows in order to inspire dreams of a successful hunt that they could follow, like a map, when they awoke the next day. The Berbers of Morocco
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were known to inhale the fragrant smoke of pennyroyal, thyme, rosemary, and laurel as a cure for headaches and fever. They believed that smelling a narcissus flower could protect them from syphilis, and that malicious spirits could be forced from the body by the scent of burning benzoin mixed with rue, and consumed in the aromatic fires.
7
in New Guinea were reported to sleep with bundles of herbs under their pillows in order to inspire dreams of a successful hunt that they could follow, like a map, when they awoke the next day. The Berbers of Morocco
8
were known to inhale the fragrant smoke of pennyroyal, thyme, rosemary, and laurel as a cure for headaches and fever. They believed that smelling a narcissus flower could protect them from syphilis, and that malicious spirits could be forced from the body by the scent of burning benzoin mixed with rue, and consumed in the aromatic fires.
People deprived of other senses often have an extraordinary olfactory awareness. Helen Keller, Classen notes, “could recognize an old country house
9
by its âseveral layers of odors,' discern the work people engaged in by the scent of their clothes, and remember a woman she'd met only once by the scent of her kiss. So important a role did smell play in her life that, when Keller lost her sense of
smell and taste for a short period and was obliged ⦠to rely wholly on her sense of touch, she felt she finally understood what it must be like for a sighted person to go blind.”
9
by its âseveral layers of odors,' discern the work people engaged in by the scent of their clothes, and remember a woman she'd met only once by the scent of her kiss. So important a role did smell play in her life that, when Keller lost her sense of
smell and taste for a short period and was obliged ⦠to rely wholly on her sense of touch, she felt she finally understood what it must be like for a sighted person to go blind.”
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part from allowing us to detect a gas leak or a carton of spoiled milk, however, to most of us smell is most “useful” for the immediacy with which it connects us to internal states of consciousness, emotion, and fantasy. Odor elicits strong reactions from us, unmediated by
oughts
and
shoulds.
For this reason, the sense of smell has long been celebrated in literature, from Charles Baudelaire's scent-laced
Les Fleurs du Mal
to the aromatic aesthetic of Joris-Karl Huysmans's
à Rebours
to Oscar Wilde's
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. Colette defined herself as an “olfactory novelist,” a title Marcel Proust could have claimed as well. Italo Calvino's story “The Name, the Nose” is devoted to the sense of smell, and Roald Dahl's
Switch Bitch
concerns a gifted perfumer who creates a formula for a perfume that “would have the same electrifying effect upon man as the scent of a bitch in heat.” The ultimate olfactory novel is Patrick Suskind's
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
, wherein Grenouille, the protagonist, is endowed with a prodigious sense of smell: “He would often
10
just stand there, leaning against the wall or crouching in a dark corner, his eyes closed, his mouth half-open and nostrils flaring wide, quiet as a feeding pike in a great, dark, slowly moving current. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way, he would lunge at it and not let it go. Then he would smell at just this one odor, holding it tight, pulling it into himself and preserving it for all time. The odor might be an old acquaintance, or a variation on one; it would be a brand-new one as well, with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled, let alone seen, till that moment: the odor of pressed silk, for example, the odor of wild-thyme tea, the odor of brocade embroidered with silver thread.”
part from allowing us to detect a gas leak or a carton of spoiled milk, however, to most of us smell is most “useful” for the immediacy with which it connects us to internal states of consciousness, emotion, and fantasy. Odor elicits strong reactions from us, unmediated by
oughts
and
shoulds.
For this reason, the sense of smell has long been celebrated in literature, from Charles Baudelaire's scent-laced
Les Fleurs du Mal
to the aromatic aesthetic of Joris-Karl Huysmans's
à Rebours
to Oscar Wilde's
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. Colette defined herself as an “olfactory novelist,” a title Marcel Proust could have claimed as well. Italo Calvino's story “The Name, the Nose” is devoted to the sense of smell, and Roald Dahl's
Switch Bitch
concerns a gifted perfumer who creates a formula for a perfume that “would have the same electrifying effect upon man as the scent of a bitch in heat.” The ultimate olfactory novel is Patrick Suskind's
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
, wherein Grenouille, the protagonist, is endowed with a prodigious sense of smell: “He would often
10
just stand there, leaning against the wall or crouching in a dark corner, his eyes closed, his mouth half-open and nostrils flaring wide, quiet as a feeding pike in a great, dark, slowly moving current. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way, he would lunge at it and not let it go. Then he would smell at just this one odor, holding it tight, pulling it into himself and preserving it for all time. The odor might be an old acquaintance, or a variation on one; it would be a brand-new one as well, with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled, let alone seen, till that moment: the odor of pressed silk, for example, the odor of wild-thyme tea, the odor of brocade embroidered with silver thread.”
Olfactory impressions are intermediate between the vagueness of touch or taste and the richness and variety of sight and hearing. Odors are, by nature, diffusive, their molecular mass spreading into the atmosphere so pervasively that it can be difficult to credit that odor, at all times, necessarily implies materiality. It is no accident that odors are called essences or spirits. They straddle a line between the physical and metaphysical worlds. This gives them a uniquely powerful role with respect to the psyche. As Havelock Ellis puts it:
Our olfactory experiences
11
thus institute a more or less continuous series of by-sensations accompanying us through life, of no great practical significance, but of considerable emotional significance from their variety, their intimacy, their associational facility, their remote ancestral reverberations, through our brains ⦠It is the existence of these characteristicsâat once so vague and so specific, so useless and so intimateâwhich led various writers to describe the sense of smell as, above all others, the sense of imagination. No sense has so strong a power of suggestion, the power of calling up ancient memories with a wider and deeper emotional reverberation, while at the same time no sense furnishes impressions which so easily change emotional color and tone, in harmony with the recipient's general attitude. Odors are thus specially apt both to control the emotional life and to become its slaves.
11
thus institute a more or less continuous series of by-sensations accompanying us through life, of no great practical significance, but of considerable emotional significance from their variety, their intimacy, their associational facility, their remote ancestral reverberations, through our brains ⦠It is the existence of these characteristicsâat once so vague and so specific, so useless and so intimateâwhich led various writers to describe the sense of smell as, above all others, the sense of imagination. No sense has so strong a power of suggestion, the power of calling up ancient memories with a wider and deeper emotional reverberation, while at the same time no sense furnishes impressions which so easily change emotional color and tone, in harmony with the recipient's general attitude. Odors are thus specially apt both to control the emotional life and to become its slaves.
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