All about scents

Is smell a neglected sense ?

That remains to be seen, or rather to be sniffed in the heady pages devoted to it by Casanova, Zola, Proust, Huysmans, Albert Cohen, Doris Lessing or Donna Tarttt.

It in this excellent company that the present book explores the sens of smell guided by the keen nose of a fragrance historian, a landscape artist, a perfumer, a wine specialist, a philosopher, an artist, a writer/ traveler… What do we actually smell ? Can an olfactory experience be put into words ? And can smells yield a work of art ?

Throughout these olfactory strolls, evocative words and strange, poetic images embody a sense  thatis is volatile and elusive yet essential to our lives. With its highly original graphic design, the book, like a cabinet of curiosities, surprises at every page, revealing peculiar scientic experiments here, an anthology of picturesque phrases there, and elsewhere fragrants stories of appetites, desires, memories, childhood… Perfues, aromas and smells yield intnse emotions. What could we do wihout a nose ?

A graduate of the École normale supérieure, Anne de Marnhac is the author of art books, essays and literary anthologies, including Séducteurs et Séductrices and Beauté, histoire, florilège ( Éditions La Martinière), as well as Les visages de la beauté, avant, après (Balland),  Femmes au bain, les métamorphoses de la beauté (Berger-Levrault).

 
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All about scents (L’Odorat dans tous ses états, éd. américaine)
Éditeur : Archibooks / IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances)