A Rebours

[Guest guest]

Have many of you read " Against the Grain " (A Rebours) by JK Huysmans?

It is a truly strange and decadent classic from the 20's with an

extreme chapter on perfume. I'll try to copy the fragrance section and

post it in episodes. the perfume organ made me remember this

intoxicating book...

Katlyn Breene

Mermade Magickal Arts (since 1984)

katmermade@...

http://www.mermadearts.com/

[Guest guest]

Huysmans is one of the greatest writer classified as a decadent close to Wilde

or

Baudelaire.

Here is an extract of " A Rebours "

" Naturally he had a collection of all the products used by perfumers. He even

had the real

Mecca balm, that rare balm cultivated only in certain parts of Arabia Petraea

and under the

monopoly of the ruler.

Now, seated in his dressing room in front of his table, he thought of creating a

new

bouquet; and he was overcome by that moment of wavering confidence familiar to

writers

when, after months of inaction, they prepare for a new work.

Like Balzac who was wont to scribble on many sheets of paper so as to put

himself in a

mood for work, Des Esseintes felt the necessity of steadying his hand by several

initial and

unimportant experiments. Desiring to create heliotrope, he took down bottles of

vanilla

and almond, then changed his idea and decided to experiment with sweet peas.

He groped for a long time, unable to effect the proper combinations, for orange

is

dominant in the fragrance of this flower. He attempted several combinations and

ended in

achieving the exact blend by joining tuberose and rose to orange, the whole

united by a

drop of vanilla.

His hesitation disappeared. He felt alert and ready for work; now he made some

tea by

blending cassie with iris, then, sure of his technique, he decided to proceed

with a

fulminating phrase whose thunderous roar would annihilate the insidious odor of

almond

still hovering over his room.

He worked with amber and with Tonkin musk, marvelously powerful; with patchouli,

the

most poignant of vegetable perfumes whose flower, in its habitat, wafts an odor

of mildew.

Try what he would, the eighteenth century obsessed him; the panier robes and

furbelows

appeared before his eyes; memories of Boucher's Venus haunted him; recollections

of

Themidor's romance, of the exquisite Rosette pursued him. Furious, he rose and

to rid

himself of the obsession, with all his strength he inhaled that pure essence of

spikenard,

so dear to Orientals and so repulsive to Europeans because of its pronounced

odor of

valerian. He was stunned by the violence of the shock. As though pounded by

hammer

strokes, the filigranes of the delicate odor disappeared; he profited by the

period of

respite to escape the dead centuries, the antiquated fumes, and to enter, as he

formerly

had done, less limited or more recent works.

He had of old loved to lull himself with perfumes. He used effects analogous to

those of

the poets, and employed the admirable order of certain pieces of Baudelaire,

such as

" Irreparable " and " le Balcon, " where the last of the five lines composing the

strophe is the

echo of the first verse and returns, like a refrain, to steep the soul in

infinite depths of

melancholy and languor.

He strayed into reveries evoked by those aromatic stanzas, suddenly brought to

his point

of departure, to the motive of his meditation, by the return of the initial

theme,

reappearing, at stated intervals, in the fragrant orchestration of the poem.

He actually wished to saunter through an astonishing, diversified landscape, and

he began

with a sonorous, ample phrase that suddenly opened a long vista of fields for

him.

With his vaporizers, he injected an essence formed of ambrosia, lavender and

sweet peas

into this room; this formed an essence which, when distilled by an artist,

deserves the

name by which it is known: " extract of wild grass " ; into this he introduced an

exact blend

of tuberose, orange flower and almond, and forthwith artificial lilacs sprang

into being,

while the linden-trees rustled, their thin emanations, imitated by extract of

London tilia,

drooping earthward.

Into this decor, arranged with a few broad lines, receding as far as the eye

could reach,

under his closed lids, he introduced a light rain of human and half feline

essences,

possessing the aroma of petticoats, breathing of the powdered, painted woman,

the

stephanotis, ayapana, opopanax, champaka, sarcanthus and cypress wine, to which

he

added a dash of syringa, in order to give to the artificial life of paints which

they exhaled,

a suggestion of natural dewy laughter and pleasures enjoyed in the open air. "

Therese