evolver
September 25, 2009, 3:47am
1
I recently completed reading a novel called “Against Nature” by J.K. Huysmans. A novel that was written in 1894 in France and caused a stir. Each chapter describes a certain piece of art, whether it’s writing, interior design, paintings, or…perfume. It was suggested by a stylist in new york as the most influential book he had read so I bought it on amazon and enjoyed it thoroughly.
I liked this chapter so much, and it has a lot that I think has meaning for the forum. I am posting some excerpts for the phorum to enjoy. This link will bring you to the entire chapter to read. I copied over the parts that I think apply most to the phero-community.
Chapter 10, À Rebours [Against the grain; Against Nature] by Charles Baudelaire and Decadence Joris-Karl Huysmans
During the course of this malady which attacks impoverished races, sudden calms succeed an attack. Strangely enough, Des Esseintes awoke one morning recovered; no longer was he tormented by the throbbing of his neck or by his racking cough. Instead, he had an ineffable sensation of contentment, a lightness of mind in which thought was sparklingly clear, turning from a turbid, opaque, green color to a liquid iridescence magical with tender rainbow tints.
This lasted several days. Then hallucinations of odor suddenly appeared.
Des Esseintes rang for his servant and asked if he smelled anything. The domestic sniffed the air and declared he could not detect any perfume. There was no doubt about it: his nervous attacks had returned again, under the appearance of a new illusion of the senses.
Fatigued by the tenacity of this imaginary aroma, he resolved to steep himself in real perfumes, hoping that this homeopathic treatment would cure him or would at least drown the persistent odor.
He betook himself to his dressing room. There, near an old baptistery which he used as a wash basin, under a long mirror of forged iron, which, like the edge of a well silvered by the moon, confined the green dull surface of the mirror, were bottles of every conceivable size and form, placed on ivory shelves.
He set them on the table and divided them into two series: one of the simple perfumes, pure extracts or spirits, the other of compound perfumes, designated under the generic term of bouquets.
We all have a collection of bottles like such… Bottle upon bottle of pheromones, putative pheromones and mixes.
He sank into an easy chair and meditated.
He had long been skilled in the science of smell. He believed that this sense could give one delights equal to those of hearing and sight; each sense being susceptible, if naturally keen and if properly cultivated, to new impressions, which it could intensify, coordinate and compose into that unity which constitutes a creative work. And it was not more abnormal and unnatural that an art should be called into existence by disengaging odors than that another art should be evoked by detaching sound waves or by striking the eye with diversely colored rays. But if no person could discern, without intuition developed by study, a painting by a master from a daub, a melody of Beethoven from one by Clapisson, no more could any one at first, without preliminary initiation, help confusing a bouquet invented by a sincere artist with a pot pourri made by some manufacturer to be sold in groceries and bazaars.
This part is the best bit, and really outlines where I want to develop my skills as a pheromone user. I hope everyone can get some value from the prose written here!!!
In this art, the branch devoted to achieving certain effects by artificial methods particularly delighted him.
Perfumes, in fact, rarely come from the flowers whose names they bear. The artist who dared to borrow nature’s elements would only produce a bastard work which would have neither authenticity nor style, inasmuch as the essence obtained by the distillation of flowers would bear but a distant and vulgar relation to the odor of the living flower, wafting its fragrance into the air.
This is true for us, of androstenone that vulgar relation.
Thus, with the exception of the inimitable jasmine which it is impossible to counterfeit, all flowers are perfectly represented by the blend of aromatic spirits, stealing the very personality of the model, and to it adding that nuance the more, that heady scent, that rare touch which entitled a thing to be called a work of art.
Ahh jasmin, we miss you!!!
To resume, in the science of perfumery, the artist develops the natural odor of the flowers, working over his subject like a jeweler refining the lustre of a gem and making it precious.
Little by little, the arcana of this art, most neglected of all, was revealed to Des Esseintes who could now read this language, as diversified and insinuating as that of literature, this style with its unexpected concision under its vague flowing appearance.
To achieve this end he had first been compelled to master the grammar and understand the syntax of odors, learning the secret of the rules that regulate them, and, once familiarized with the dialect, he compared the works of the masters, of the Atkinsons and Lubins, the Chardins and Violets, the Legrands and Piesses; then he separated the construction of their phrases, weighed the value of their words and the arrangement of their periods.
The language of scent, beautiful.
Later on, in this idiom of fluids, experience was able to support theories too often incomplete and banal.
Classic perfumery, in fact, was scarcely diversified, almost colorless and uniformly issuing from the mold cast by the ancient chemists. It was in its dotage, confined to its old alambics, when the romantic period was born and had modified the old style, rejuvenating it, making it more supple and malleable.
I see this passage of representative of Androtics. They have taken an industry that was going no where, and made it into something fantastic.
I hope you enjoyed this and I’m glad I could share it with you.
Peace love and smelly stuff,
Evolve