Book Reviews

Book 4

Scent (The Mysterious and Essential Powers of Smell) 

By Annick Le Guérer

Chatto & Windus London 1993

 

The author attempts to write an unpretentious and well-researched book for the layman linking smell with magic, hunting, memory and sex.  

The major portion of the book (some 110 pages) under the heading “The Philosophical Nose” examines the philosopher’s attitudes to smells as the author believers the philosophers to be the scientists of their time. (It is not surprising to discover that the author holds a degree in philosophy and doctorate in anthropology from the Sorbonne). 

We are taken smell and odours according to  Greeko-Latin philosophy, Christianity through the ages, and we meet up with Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Nietzche, Froud and Proust amongst others, along the way.  

Earlier sections of the book cover the power of odours with respect to magic and possession and we are treated to the possession of nuns by the Devil after smelling musk roses as described in La Possession de Loudun by Michel de Cerateau (they really knew how to grow the real stuff then!) through to a frankly frightening description of a sorceress who utilised mandrake root – fertilised by the fat and sperm of hanged men. Mmmm! 

More selections describe perfumes adapted to your zodiac sign to maintain humoral balance and autoimmune reactions. All very thought provoking stuff, and I feel I got my moneys worth by page 6 already!  

Further sections cover Pestilence and disease, spice trading, and a section on mummy’s, for the uninitiated, this is a rather gruesome episode in medical history where fresh or not so fresh corpses (dried or liquid) were employed in various forms against specific diseases.

Clocking in  some 260 pages this book represents an interesting collection of things you knew, things you once knew but forgot, and lots of things you were better off not knowing! The constant referencing to philosophic connections compensates somewhat for any deficit in the readers' arts education. 

What is especially delightful is that the book has many references, should the need for further exploration. Altogether everyone should try this experience once, if you see for sale it in a second hand
bookshop!

BACK       BACK TO BOOK REVIEWS       NEXT

Copyright © 2001 by Tony Burfield
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED