I have books about perfume, and perfumes that smell like books. My most recent purchase in the book-perfume arena is an essential oil called Ex Libris from Bee Essential oils, which I've added to some carrier almond oil and made into a wee portable perfume. So yes, I was instantly on board with Fragrant Texts, a session at WORD Christchurch Festival in which award-winning multisensory artist Dr Jo Burzynska talked to erudite "lover of certain smelling things" Dr Erin Harrington.
The session covered the question what is smell, how is the sense of smell is portrayed in literature, and what do books smell like.
Smells like literary fiction
Jo read a section from Swann's Way, home of the famously sensory Proust madeleine incident. Eating a cake reminds the protagonist of his aunt feeding him “a little crumb of madeleine… dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea”:
“When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory”.
Writing about smell is writing about nostalgia. It is a sense that connects us with memories.
And yet ... most writing is anosmic. This smell blindness is revealed in books which don't mention smell AT ALL. Why? Jo suggests it's because smell in not up front in the culture and also because it is challenging to convey smell in words. Especially so in English, which doesn't have category words for smell (maybe 'fragrant'). Other languages have richer odour lexicons.
Erin mentions that genre fiction might be more smell-friendly. It plays a role in romantic fiction; love interests need to smell good. Maybe it's because genres are more about sensuality.
Emile Zola's The Belly of Paris is selected by Jo as literary fiction that does smell well (and she reads a piece about cheese in a market).
Later on, Jo reads from our own Janet Frame, who has an ability to evoke smell. Edward in Scented Gardens for the blind recalls the "musty grief" characteristic smell of the building he lives in, and its "soap and death atmosphere".
How smell works
So how does smell work on a scientific level? Smell goes directly into our brain, it's instant and powerful.
It's intimate because when we smell something we take it into our body. It's a chemical sense, we smell an odour and it triggers from the olfactory bulb into the brain. This is unlike how our other senses work. There are theories about how smell operates, but there is a lack of research.
We need to develop our smell vocabulary and do smell training if we want to become more aware of it. Lots of people lost their sense of smell after Covid and are now realising its value in both pleasure and basic navigation. Smell is working all the time - how else do we enjoy cooking, or know who's attractive.
Why we sniff books - and what is it we are smelling
The book sniffers in the crowd are asked to raise their hand. Unsurprisingly, most of us put them up. Why do we sniff a book? To get the full multisensory experience. It also allows book conservators and experts to monitor a book's condition in a non-destructive way.
Books are "offgassing" so that's what we smell. Degrading cellulose smells bready and nutty. The lignin from wood-based paper smells like vanilla as it breaks down (due to its vanillin content):
What you are really smelling is the smell of its decay.
Olfactory scholarship is an expanding field, and Jo has learned a lot about the smell of books. She singled out the work of Cecilia Bembibre, part of Odeuropa (a European research project which bundles expertise in sensory mining and olfactory heritage). Check out the Odour wheel of historic book containing general aroma categories, sensory descriptors and chemical information on the smells as sampled from Smell of heritage: a framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours by Cecilia Bembibre & Matija Strlič.
Dr Jo and Dr Erin trade books for a huff. Jo sniffs Erin's old horror movies book, and Erin smells Jo's husband's Heidegger book. The horror movies book has hints of vanilla, it smells musty, sweet, dusty, and maybe a hint of Eau de Rothmans. Heidegger is smoky, chocolatey, vanilla, and so good it smells edible.
Then we get our "sniffable elements" experience. One is benzaldehyde - smells like almond, marzipan, another smells like grass clippings on the turn, and one that's a bit rancid.
How can we describe smell better?
Since Aristotle, our senses have been divided up. But Jo makes it sense don't exist in silos. Life is a multisensory experience, and our senses interact with each other.
Smell everything. Develop your vocabulary and memory. Talk about smells.
It isn't true that people who are blind or have low vision can smell better. They just pay smell more attention. That is open to us all. We can all be super sensory beings.
Photos
More Dr Jo
- Listen to Dr Jo Burzynska: Why books smell so good RNZ
- Visit the exhibition Hā at the Rei Gallery in Lyttelton for Olfactory portraits of Ōtautahi people
- Dr Jo's website
- Dr Jo's Instagram
- Osmis Resonance Perfumery Instagram
More smelly stuff
- Saving the smells of history 2020 RNZ Interview with Cecilia Bembibre who is doing a PhD project at the University College London Institute for Sustainable Heritage on identifying and documentation of heritage smells.
- This perfume smells like old books. Is that a good thing? by Claire Mabey in The Spinoff.
- Odour wheel of historic book containing general aroma categories, sensory descriptors and chemical information on the smells as sampled from Smell of heritage: a framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours by Cecilia Bembibre & Matija Strlič.
Favourite books that identify and describe perfumes.
More WORD Christchurch
- WORD Christchurch website
- Follow WORD Christchurch on Instagram, Facebook and X FKA Twitter
- Our WORD Christchurch 2024 page - event reports and books by Festival writers
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