I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight…

— A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Eva Luna was released in late June of this year, which was perfect timing since this fragrance was inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Indie brand Providence Perfume Co describes Eva Luna as “a spring green floral…a walk in a moonlit garden”; its composition includes top notes of Russian carrot, fresh mint leaf, French mimosa, and bois de rose; heart notes of tuberose, plumeria, rose de Mai, jasmine, and violet leaf; and base notes of Oman frankincense, ambrette, and orris.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s best-loved comedies, a fantastic roundabout of characters falling in and out of love over the course of one moonlit night, in a plot driven by magic potions, mistaken identities, and plays-within-plays. The comedy’s setting, an enchanted forest inhabited by an assortment of fairies, is the perfect analogy for an all-natural perfume. As Angela recently wrote, natural fragrances do have an allure and romance all their own, and it’s always a pleasure to encounter a natural perfume that delivers on its promise…

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E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View (1908) is one of my favorite novels, and its Merchant-Ivory film adaptation (1985) is one of my favorite movies. I’m also a longtime admirer of CB I Hate Perfume, so it’s strange that I only recently realized that this niche perfumery offers a scent inspired by a scene from the novel. Christopher Brosius created M4, or A Room with a View, for CB I Hate Perfume’s Metamorphosis Series and designed it to evoke “the moment when one simple beautiful gesture can transform an entire life.”

In the passage that gave Brosius the idea for this fragrance, the young heroine of A Room with a View, Lucy Honeychurch, is picnicking with several other proper English tourists in the Tuscan countryside. She strays from her prim chaperone and, after passing through a wooded area, finds herself looking down a hillside blooming with violets; the only other person enjoying the view is George Emerson, an enigmatic and free-thinking fellow traveler. George impulsively steps forward and kisses Lucy, thus opening her mind and her senses to new possibilities (in romance and in life) and setting the rest of the novel’s plot in motion…

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Quick reminder: join me for an online book club in October. We’ll be talking about Remembering Smell by Bonnie Blodgett.

Between my usual work commute, and an unusual amount of travel, I’m finding it difficult to curl up with a book these days. But I haven’t cut back on my reading. All of this road and plane time has led me back to one of my favorite indulgences — audio books, and to one of my favorite authors — Margaret Atwood.

I heard Atwood speak last April at a nearby university. She was promoting her newest book, The Year of the Flood (2009), a novel about environmental catastrophe, mass extinction, genetic engineering, world hunger, exploitation, the end of literacy, and the future of humanity. You will understand that although I was eager, I refrained during the Q&A from voicing my one burning query: “What perfume do you wear?”

This question isn’t quite as gratuitous as it sounds. As Atwood spoke, my mind filled with half-memories of her novels, many of which I’d read over a decade ago. While the details had blurred over time, I was still haunted by the olfactory ghosts of each and every one of them. There is a passage in Bodily Harm (1998) that I just can’t shake — only a sentence I think — where changes in a Lora’s bodily odors lead to a disturbing revelation. Early in Alias Grace (1997), the protagonist describes the word “murderess” as having the musky, oppressive smell of dead flowers in a vase. Later, Simon Jordon is distracted by Grace’s scent of skin, smoke, laundry soap, mushrooms, ferns, crushed fruit, and unwashed scalp. She in turn has detected his odor of lavender, leather and ears…

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Will we one day be able to sniff appreciatively and ask "is that the new Salman Rushdie you're wearing? I'm getting hints of post colonialism ..." What might a JK Rowling smell like? Unwashed teenage boy, perhaps, with a whiff of owl droppings. Ian Fleming would be suave, sophisticated – sandalwood, maybe, with topnotes of gunfire. I don't think I'd want to smell what they'd come up with for Irvine Welsh.

— From Making scents out of novels at The Guardian, an article that wonders what might ensue if others follow in the novel-as-perfume footsteps of Floris Madonna of the Almonds. Many thanks to Nancy for the link!

Floris has launched Madonna of the Almonds (shown above left), a limited edition perfume for women. The scent is being introduced in conjunction with the novel of the same name by author Marina Fiorato — “an unforgettable story of love and art set against the backdrop of the Italian wars”.

Fresh zesty citrus notes of bergamot and lemon, so redolent of Italy, mingle with the delicate floral accord…

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The building was pink stucco, big and new and ugly. It had a side entrance with “Romp Room” lettered above it in red neon…[I heard] The high titter of drunk and flattered women, the animal sounds of drunk and eager men. Babel with a wild jazz obbligato.

A big henna redhead in a shotsilk blouse was making drinks at a service bar near the door. Her torso jiggled in the blouse like a giant soft-boiled egg with the shell removed.*

The scent wafting off this dame was unmistakable: Coty Emeraude, in the bottle with the plastic lid. I bet she was saving up for Shalimar. Not that she should bother — the stink of cigarette smoke and bleach water bar rags would follow her wherever she went.

But who was this gorgeous dame down the bar? She was years away from drugstore perfume. At first glance, I'd peg her for Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower.

I stole a look at the woman, to confirm my first impression. Her atmosphere was like pure oxygen; if you breathed it deep it could make you dizzy and gay, or poison you. Her eyes were melancholy under heavy lashes, her cheeks faintly hollowed as if she had been feeding on her own beauty…Her hands fumbled with the diamond clasp of a gold lamé bag, and groped inside. “God damn and blast it,” she said.*

Hmm. Beautiful — ethereal even — but with a potty mouth…

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The first novel in the series, Anne of Green Gables, appeared 100 years ago, in 1908. According to Wikipedia, Montgomery “used a photograph of Evelyn Nesbit, clipped from an American magazine and pasted on the wall above her writing desk, as the model for Anne Shirley, the book's main character”, but the editions I had as a child, printed by Grosset & Dunlap in the 1970s…

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So…I'm sure I'm not the only one who watched much of the recent Masterpiece Austen-fest on PBS. I enjoyed it immensely…

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“A scent always dissipates, leaving in its wake no more than a faint echo, a lingering trace. Perfume is a 'here' en route to a 'there', a today floating away in the direction of a yesterday, a possession paradoxically coinciding with an immanent loss” (Richard Stamelman, p.19).

The notion of perfume as the 'essence of absence' has always been a great source of inspiration to poets and novelists. Few, however, have taken it as literally as Italo Calvino in his tale The Name, the Nose. This short story was published posthumously in 1986, together with A King Listens and Under the Jaguar Sun, and consists of three interwoven plots in which sensuality, desire, and the sense of smell play a central role…

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“If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that’s what I think. I don’t want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.”

These words by Alobar, one of the protagonists of Jitterbug Perfume (1984), secretly reveal what this epic novel is all about. Four intricately interwoven stories, themed around the pursuit of immortality and individualism, take us from ancient Bohemia (1000 A.D.) and the slopes of the Himalaya to modern-day Seattle, New Orleans, and Paris. The narrative shifts back and forth between past and present, featuring an ex-king (Alobar) and the love of his life (Kudra), the foul-smelling God of the woods (Pan), a waitress with a college degree and a little secret (Priscilla), a small-time perfumery in New Orleans (Madame Devalier and her assistant V’lu), and an eccentric big-shot perfumer in Paris…

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