You smell, I stink of Yatagan
“You know, Bijou, I would love you more if you did not bathe so often. I love the smell of your body, but it is faint. It vanishes with so much washing. […] I like the strong female smell. Please wash a little less.”
~ the Basque to his lover Bijou in the story The Basque and Bijou (from Anais Nin’s collection of stories, Delta of Venus.)
It’s a peculiar habit of modern life that we wash away all our natural smells only to slap on new ones. Weirder still is the popularity of “clean” scents aimed to further obfuscate the aroma of actual cleansed skin. The social bias against the unwashed masses has resulted in a cultural predilection to remove the stink of humanity from the human body.
We pluck and remove hair that nature put there. We obsessively freshen breath when our mouths exist in a golden age of dentistry that prescribes frequent brushing anyhow. We wash inside orifices which by design already evacuate themselves. We paint new faces on old ones - intending to merely enhance what we already like, but sometimes it looks more like trying to subvert what we were born with.
We were born to decay; decay has a stink; we are made to stink.1
However, one can’t discredit the benefits of hygiene for humanity. Nor can one exist in a creative vacuum where, out of all the senses, smell alone remains artistically unexplored. Perhaps the best perfumes, like the best applications of makeup or fashion, serve to highlight what we like best about the natural through cunning use of utter artifice.
Caron’s Yatagan revels in the feral innocence of the Nature Child. Yatagan is not an attempt to imitate the smell of traipsing through the forest without access to indoor plumbing and hot showers, it is an impression of it. Just as in comedy, it is impression rather than imitation that startles and delights us. Impressions investigate minutiae, amplifying details that don’t ordinarily stand out. Imitations, on the other hand, leave us unsatisfied, appearing like wan ghosts of diluted reality with nothing novel to say.
Yatagan shows off dirty pine needles littering the forest floor in a sticky relief map of hidden smells. The spicy little voices of herbs (lavender, fennel, basil) and grass strain under the shade of bellicose trees, singing with a more delicate tenor than the woody baritone shadows they grow in. Its armpit funk from patchouli accompanies a dark whiff off Pan’s sun-leathered skin, and brings us back to the realization that we are all Nature’s Children wandering through the world, whether our forests are wooded or urban.
We cannot deny nature. We cannot invent it. We can, however, share impressions of it. The delight found in Yatagan’s impression lies in a rejection of the hypervigilant scrubbing away of nature, while paradoxically being a product of the basic hygiene ritual.
If you’re wearing perfume, you’re not feral. But you can remind yourself and the rest the world you could be.
As one version of a highly apocryphal story goes, Dr. Samuel Johnson had been traveling for weeks without access to a bath. As he waited on a rail platform for his train to arrive, a fellow passenger complained about his disheveled state with an admonishment that he smelled. The annoyed Dr. Johnson responded, “No, madam. You smell, I stink.”
1Maybe this is why fragrances geared towards a youth demographic always smell so insipidly fresh and fruity, while heavier animalic ones are frequently derided as “old lady perfumes.” Perhaps fragrance characteristics represent an evolving comfort level (or lack thereof) with aging and our own organic rot, rather than being strictly a matter of taste. Or perhaps perfume as an artistic manifestation of the fear of dying is such an imaginative stretch that it’s just too silly an idea to entertain. Either way, it’s a tangent that’s too long for a little ol’ footnote to contain, so I’ll leave it there.
August 14th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Ah, fresh and not so fresh. Not to belabor a point, but when I was at the funeral home after my father had passed away, I noticed in the ladies lounge they had orange flowers & sandlalwood scent poured over salt crystals in a dish. Why? One can only guess. It was a very 1920’s sort of odor in a California way. So much so I “borrowed their supply”. Talk about Proust and the scent of memory.
I think the cloying fragrances for older women is due to memories and quite probably lack of scent ability. You tend to stick with what you know.
And your point is spot on - watching the recent movie “Perfume” and the rather ghoulish way he created his “key” to the Egyptian scent mentioned earlier in the movie. The reality is that it would have smelt like boiled meat, not an aural aphrodisiac.
Thank you again for the recommends and I am feverishly looking for them this evening. “Lady in the Lake” by Raymond Chandler is about scent - chypre to be exact.
I so enjoy your site. It makes one think.
August 14th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Orange flowers can be a very calming fragrance, as can sandalwood, perhaps it’s there for aromatherapy purposes? But you’re right, one can only guess.
I suspect the love of stronger fragrances definitely has something to do with the diminishing returns of smell as we age. But I feel like that’s not entirely it.
You know, it’s funny you mention that movie - I’m going to hold a draw for a free Perfume DVD later on this week or next, heh!
And thank you for such nice thoughts. It’s much appreciated. And for the book suggestion, too. I haven’t actually read any of Chandler’s stuff before, and I always have meant to get around to it. Looks like I should start with that one, clearly :)
August 15th, 2007 at 12:59 am
“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.” —The Little Sister (Chapter 12)
This is one from another novel.I’d guess he meant Shalimar, maybe Emeraude as they used to advertise with that story about the building of the Taj Mahal being the inspiration for Emeraude. But you get the picture. He was big on sandalwood or chypre scents. And red hair.
Have fun!
August 15th, 2007 at 8:12 am
K, great article (so agree with “Weirder still is the popularity of “clean” scents aimed to further obfuscate the aroma of actual cleansed skin”, what is with all the laundry detergent fragrances??) and so nice to see you back in action.
But ashamed to say I’ve still never tried Yatagan.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:24 am
“If you’re wearing perfume, you’re not feral. But you can remind yourself and the rest the world you could be.” LOVE this. Katie, please write more often (said she selfishly) :-)
August 15th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Thanks again, MA - I’ve always been more of a Dashiel Hammet kind of gal, but it sounds like the Raymond Chandler novels should be engrossing.
Robin - Thanks, m’dear, it’s nice to be in action. I’ve been stumbling over the worst case of writer’s block lately, sigh. You really must try Yatagan, not that I think you’d like it enough to buy, but you’d find sampling it very interesting.
Marina - Thank you, too. Trying to get back on the horse again when you still have writer’s block is just awful, but I’ll try :)
August 15th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Gah, I can’t spell. DashielL HammetT. Sheesh.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Writer’s block? It’s the summer doldrums, the Sargasso Sea of the season, waiting for a wind to arrive.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Oh, I LOVE me some Yatagan! I have seriously considered paying a man just to wear it for me. Yeah, it’s that manly, for those who have never tried it. We ladies can wear it too, but we are maybe just a little less ladylike when we do. And I mean that in a good way. :-)
August 16th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Flora - It’s slightly challenging for me to see Yatagan as specifically masculine. It doesn’t strike me as feminine, masculine, OR unisex. Which category that would leave Yatagan in I don’t know, though, hee!
“but we are maybe just a little less ladylike when we do. And I mean that in a good way”
Nothing wrong with that - it ain’t nearly so fun to be a lady than a tomboy, anyhow :)
August 16th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I do love Yatagan, and I love your writing- I am standing selfishly with Marina, begging for more.
August 17th, 2007 at 4:13 am
Yatagan. Marina made me do it awhile ago. It was lust at first sight. I’ve never looked back. In fact, I think I’ll trot up there right now and put some on. Joining in the chorus of folks happy to see your new posts.
PS Old Lady scents. Well, back in the day (you have, I think, a lot more vintage stuff than I do, but still) many of the ladies’ scents were pretty ripe, no? Leather, civet, musk? Broadcasting sexual interest and viability and potential availability through perfume, rather than walking around, sans undies, in pole dancer attire, like the nice suburban girls in my local mall. We’ve kicked this topic around before, but it seems that the fragrance got cleaner as the clothes got dirtier. Maybe it’s a counterbalance? I look like a prostitute but smell like a bowl of fruit being carried by a 12-year-old? Ungh. Okay, I need more coffee, my brain hurts.
August 19th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Tom - thank you. I don\’t know what else to say but that. Thank you :)
March - heh, Yatagan is all about life-lust somehow, so that makes a lot of sense. So how could one not lust for Yatagan? And on the Old Lady scents, I\’m sure that the varying state of visual clues versus aromatic ones has a lot to do with it. I didn\’t even think of the \”advertising\” of sexuality in an interpersonal way like that… I am sure that has so much to do with the state of things. Very interesting. A counterbalance of smell to visual as you have phrased it sounds so right as to be undeniable.
June 27th, 2008 at 12:08 am
What a delight to read about Yatagan. I have been using it off and on since it came out. Now it is hard to find, and certainly never at duty free! One of the greatest of men’s perfumes, it stands out as truly unique and apart from all other scents. What becomes a legend most…
June 27th, 2008 at 12:08 am
What a delight to read about Yatagan. I have been using it off and on since it came out. Now it is hard to find, and certainly never at duty free! One of the greatest of men’s perfumes, it stands out as truly unique and apart from all other scents. What becomes a legend most…