Perfume: Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin. A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Perfume: Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin. A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present Gérard Gasarian Richard Stamelman . Perfume: Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin. A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present. New York: Rizzoli, 2006. 384 pp. With convincing elegance and graceful erudition, this book demonstrates that fragrance, in everyday life and cultural representations alike, is more than mere olfactory sensory gratification. "Within the spiritual essence of scent lies the spirit of its time," writes Stamelman, in a striking sentence that makes very clear that his project is a cultural history not of perfume per se, but of its representations. Through a wealth of well chosen and well analyzed references to literature, painting, music, theater, interior design, decorative art, glass-making, fashion, advertising, architecture, technological novelties, political events and world fairs, the author purports to describe and map out what he calls "the scented imagination," i.e. the volatile, ever-changing cluster of mental images triggered by olfactory experience at different times of modern European history (from 1750 to the present). This "scented imagination," as the book expertly shows, is subtly inscribed in "narratives," "tales" and "dramas" that are secretly contained and released by fragrant substances. Among the many stories that are silently told by specific perfumes, one finds narratives of seduction and of emancipation, tales of passion and of loss, dramas of love and of murder. In one of these stories, perfume—being "an essence of absence" or "a concentrate of loss"—tells a silent "tale of loss" and performs a latent "drama of unsatisfied desire" which is admirably scripted and interpreted by Stamelman, whose critical sensitivity to such issues as mourning, death and absence has already been evinced in a seminal book entitled Lost beyond telling: representations of death and absence in modern French poetry. Beyond their own merit as testaments to the specific workings of the creative mind, the representations comprising "the scented imagination" are also analyzed as historical mirrors of social practices, moral attitudes, erotic gestures and philosophical worldviews pertaining to their days. As Stamelman writes, "the representation of perfume in literature, art, music, advertising and design through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries mirrors the social and cultural transformations in the daily lives of women, the evolution in the power relations between the sexes, and the changes in the ideology and imagery of femininity." [End Page 268] This volume is as fascinating to read as it is captivating to look at. The illuminating scholarly references and critical commentaries that abound in its 384 pages are a perfect match for the 250 stunning illustrations that adorn it. Whether Stamelman deals with a painting by Bonnard, a novel by Balzac, Huysmans or Zola, a poem by Donne, Baudelaire or Mallarmé, Loïe Fuller's choreography, the iconography of perfume advertising, the glass-maker René Lalique, the everyday in Paris, or the Eiffel Tower, he consistently displays a dazzling array of pertinent observations, ideas, facts, anecdotes, quotations and pictures that help place perfume in a larger social and intellectual context. The vast, comprehensive knowledge that is summoned and exhibited in this rich study of fragrance reaches far beyond the confines of its apparent topic. Perfume is much more than just one more publication in the field of French and/or European Studies; it stands apart as a rare and priceless contribution, not only to the history of perfume, but to the history of cultural studies as well. Gérard Gasarian Tufts University Copyright © 2007 French Forum, Inc.