Recomandare de lectură — „A Natural History of the Senses” de Diane Ackerman

Primul capitol al cărții scrise de Diana Ackerman este dedicat mirosului, iar această alegere nu este deloc întâmplătoare. Poetă, eseistă și naturalist, Diane Ackerman subliniază demnitatea și măreția unui simț prea adesea ignorat – “the fallen angel”, cum îl numește, cu o expresie preluată de la Helen Keller – și îi schițează unul dintre cele mai frumoase „portrete”. Este o lectură de neocolit, accesibilă și poetic scrisă.

 

 

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the senses
Vintage Books (at Random House), New York, 1991

 

One of the real tests of writers, especially poets, is how well they write about smells. If they can't describe the scent of sanctity in a church, can you trust them to describe the suburbs of the heart?

 

Not only do we owe our sense of smell and taste to the ocean, but we smell and taste of the ocean.

 

Just what do we mean by a bad smell? And what is the worst smell in the world? The answers depend on culture, age, and personal taste.

 

Smells spur memories, but they also rouse our dozy senses, pamper and indulge us, help define our self-image, stir the cauldron of our seductiveness, warn us of danger, lead us into temptation, fan our religious fervor, accompany us to heaven, wed us to fashion, steep us in luxury. Yet, over time, smell has become the least necessary of our senses, "the fallen angel," as Helen Keller dramatically calls it. [...] We may not need smell to survive, but without it we feel lost and disconnected. 

 

Women in general iust have a stronger sense of smell. Perhaps it's a vestigial bonus from the dawn of our evolution, when we needed it in court- ship, mating, or mothering; or it may be that women have tradition- ally spent more time around foods and children, ever on the sniff for anything out of order. Because females have often been responsible for initiating mating, smell has been their weapon, lure, and clue.

 

“A perfumer's life is not a picnic. It's not what it used to be. In the great old days, there were perfumers who were free-lancers. A famous perfumer would make one fragrance in three or four years, and they had no restric- tions-no price limit, no deadline. They would make two or three experiments a day for perhaps a week, then really live with it, wear it for weeks and weeks without any pressure. What's happening now is that it's very commercialized. You want to do things that will make a name for you, money for the company, and you must do them fast. A perfume can't be made overnight. Every perfumer has little accords that, during their ten years of practice, they put away and keep in their memory bank. Oh, I need a floral, they might say, I remember that floral I had years ago. But it must be new. You'd be a fool to sell a copy. You can't plagiarize. You have to start from scratch. But there are accords you might return to as themes, as a kind of shortcut. I make approximately five hundred to seven hundred formulas a year. Maybe you see two big pieces of business come out of that, but this doesn't mean all the seven hundred formulas aren't good.” (Sophia Grojsman)