Listening to Scent - by Lesley Downer

The Tale of Genji, Chapter 34

Catching the scent 

of orange trees that wait to bloom
until the fifth month
I recall from long ago
the scented sleeves of one now gone
Kokinshu poem number 139 (published 915 AD)

Of all the senses, perhaps smell has the greatest power to evoke and transport, to bring sudden sharp memories flooding back of a person or place once beloved and long forgotten.

A thousand years ago in Japan, while on another small island on the other side of the world Beowulf was fighting Grendel, the Wanderer was sitting desolately by the seashore bewailing his fate and monks were putting together the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Japanese poets were examining their senses and probing their feelings in a way that would not be unfamiliar today.

In the Heian period, around the eleventh century, one of the most highly appreciated artistic skills among the noble class was the art of blending perfumes. While we developed oil-based perfumes, Japanese perfected the art of heating the woods which formed the basis of their scents so that they produced no smoke, only fragrance. 

Wakamurasaki, Tale of Genji, Chapter 5

In this society - depicted in the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji - noblewomen lived hidden away in their palaces, occasionally allowing a brocade sleeve to waft its scent from a carriage window as a hint of their beauty. Noblemen would exchange poems with them, decide on the strength of their poetic skills and the beauty of their calligraphy if they were worthy of pursuit, then creep in to visit them at dead of night. No matter how dark it was the ladies always knew exactly who the visitor was by his distinctive perfume. 

In the perfume competition chapter in The Tale of  Genji the judge, Prince Hotaru, complains that it’s so smoky that he finds it very hard to judge the perfumes properly. The author, the court lady know as Murasaki Shikibu, describes one of the perfumes as ‘a calm, elegant scent,’ another as ‘full and nostalgic’, one as ‘bright and up-to-date with a slightly pungent touch’ and another as having ‘a gentle aroma and rather touching tenderness.’ 

The exquisite world of the Heian nobles was as fragile as the scent of orange blossom. It faded away but the tradition of creating and appreciating scent lived on. 

Kimono laid over rack above censer to scent

Till the mid-nineteenth century women scented their kimonos overnight, laying them on a wooden framework over an incense burner, and draped their glossy long black hair over incense burners to scent it. 

A woodblock print at the Tokyo National Museum shows a courtesan reclining languidly, her kimono suggestively parted at hem and neck, with an incense burner between her feet. We can imagine the perfume coiling up through her clothes and emerging from the loose folds of her kimono at her breast. 

Young men about town, geisha and courtesans carried pieces of scented wood in their sleeves and rubbed powdered scent onto their hands and neck. 

When I lived in Japan I once went to the great city of Kanazawa on the Japan Sea coast. A friend had put me in touch with a celebrated master of the Noh theatre. Japanese tend to be rather formal around each other, especially if they are famous as this gentlemen was. But they relish the chance to relax with foreigners who are not such sticklers for the proper Japanese ways of behaviour. 

Preparing for incense guessing game

He introduced me to the incense ceremony. It’s somewhat more recherché than tea ceremony and while tea ceremony ends with a cup of tea, the incense ceremony is more like a game. In fact it’s a bit like wine tasting.

There’s a whole connoisseurship of the different incenses, much like wines. To the novice they may seem similar but to the trained nose they’re quite different. Some are musky, some more like sandalwood or pine or plum blossom. The most exquisite and expensive scent of all is kyara. Imported from Vietnam, it’s an ancient wood that takes thousands of years to develop and, so I’m told, costs many times more than the equivalent weight of gold.

As with tea ceremony, the implements are works of art. There is an ash smoother, chopsticks to handle small incense pieces, an answer sheet holder and tweezers. The central piece of equipment is the incense censer which holds hot ashes on top of which you put a tiny fragment of incense.

Listening to incense

In a game there are five or six scents to choose from. Players kneel in a row or a square and pass the censer around, holding it in the prescribed fashion. You take turns to inhale long and slow and guess which of the scents it is. The referee writes down your guess. Then you go on to the next. The person who gets the most right is the winner.

It’s a social activity yet also peaceful and contemplative. Instead of guessing you can just sit back and ‘listen’ to the incense as they say in Japanese or compose a poem or talk about the scent.

The fragrance -
more alluring than the colour -
whose scented sleeves have brushed
the blossoms in my garden?
Kokinshu

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, is an epic and fragrant tale set in nineteenth century Japan and is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

Top 2 images: The Tale of Genji chapter 34 (18th century Japanese painting, Honolulu Museum of Art) 

Wakamurasaki, traditionally credited to Tosa Mitsuoki (1617 - 1691),part of the Burke Albums, property of Mary Griggs Burke

Both courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Other images mine.

Scents and Sensibilities: The Not So Smelly Middle Ages? By Catherine Hokin

Setting: one of the most important things for an author to get right. That might be the most obvious statement you read all day and no, you haven't stumbled into a 'how to write' blog but this balancing act of anchoring the reader fully in a time period very different from our own while not bludgeoning them to death under a tsunami of description is occupying a lot of my time with the current WIP.

One of the best ways to communicate a sense of place is through smell. The modern world is obsessed with fragrance: from beauty and cleaning products to the artificial bread that wafts through every supermarket, we walk through such a vanillery-bakery-flowery world that any slightly unpleasant scent feels like an assault. I am beginning to think that most of our Proustian moments will shortly be controlled by Airwick. The challenge for the writer, however, is that this most crucial sensory experience is the hardest to research and to replicate.

That the Middle Ages was a morass of stinking towns and villages filled with people whose body odours would have made a skunk weep is one of those history myths that gets peddled at school and repeated incessantly until it ends up on QI. Scrape under the mucky surface and things are rather different.

There are admittedly plenty of stories of medieval people who did not regard hygiene as a priority. Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) reputedly only bathed twice in her lifetime, once when she was born and once when she married. King Louis IX (1214-1270) was described by the Russian ambassador to his court as stinking like a wild animal. They, however, were not the norm for their class: foul odours were associated with disease, low standing in the social order and moral corruption (based on the idea of miasma). Those who could avoid smelling revolting did.

At the height of the Middle Ages, bathing was a serious business. For the wealthy this would take place in tented wooden tubs lined with cloth; the better-off town-dwellers had communal bathhouses; the peasants made do with rivers in the summer and fire-warmed water in the winter. Whatever rank you were, de-lousing with salty water would probably feature somewhere in your life. Health manuals such as the Regimen Sanitatis (c.1308) contained dozens of rules for bathing at specific times such as pregnanacy and noted the importance of bathing for getting rid of dirt and grime beyond that which was visible: “if any of the waste products of third digestion are left under the skin that were not resolved by exercise and massage, these will be resolved by the bath.” As with medicine, herbs and plants were central to the process of sweetening the body for those who had access to them. Thyme and rose petals were widely used to perfume bath water, the body could be dried using sheets sprinkled with rosewater and then dusted (men and women) with a powder made from ground rice, ground orris root  (a violet smell favoured by King Edward IV) and fragranced with cloves or lavender. Bay leaves, hyssop and sage were used to make deodorants and sachets of lemon balm and dried rose petals could be slipped into clothes already boiled in water scented with orris root and stored in chests containing 'sweet bags' which held a mix of ingredients such as musk, citrus peel and marjoram. Finally a 'pomme d'ambre' (an apple of ambergris) filled with a fragrant paste could be attached to a waist belt and, once Arabic gums and essential oil distillation methods could be combined with the discovery of alcohol distillation in the early 1300s, a perfume with notes of mint and rosemary could be added to the mix. The notion of a court filled with walking pot-pourri bowls is rather hard to escape.

 Woodcut 1489

So, if the people battled the negative associations of fetid smells rising from their bodies, where does the notion of the smelly medievals come from? For that we have to turn to place. I have always been an urbanite but I think medieval England may have forced a love of the country on me. Wood smoke, days old pottage and damp over-close animals still seem preferable to the alternative. Medieval towns stank. Clearly sanitation was an issue: towns were cramped, pavements were rare and Roman drains were long forgotten although muckrackers were well-paid. Houndsditch, which runs through London's glossy financial district, gets its name from the amount of dead dogs deposited in it when it was a great open ditch running through one of the medieval  city's main thoroughfares. In the 14th century, Sherborne Lane in the east of the capital was officially known as Shiteburn Lane and every town had its equivalent, Pissing Alley apparently being quite a favourite.

 

 Fes Medieval Tanneries

The main problem, however, was not the disposal of human waste,  it was the industries and commerce that multiplied as the towns grew. Anyone who has battled down the narrow Shambles in York can imagine how disgusting this road must have been when it was the open air Great Flesh Shambles with a drain filled with blood and offal running down its centre. Even more noxious were the great tanneries which used copious amounts of urine, dog excrement and stale beer in their processes. The smell of the tanneries in Nottingham was said to be so terrible it even repelled rats although, on the plus side, this is credited for reducing the incidents of plague in the area.

Awareness of the links between filth and disease can be seen in the regulations that were constantly passed in medieval towns. Fines were imposed for throwing waste from high windows and dumping it in clean water sources and on butchers for failing to clear waste which attracted dogs and wild pigs. But, as town populations continued to rise, the battle became increasingly hard and raw sewage continued to flow into the Thames until the nineteenth century. The towns smelled bad and, by the end of the Middle Ages, it is likely that the majority of people smelled pretty bad too. The public bath houses had long been associated with sexual activity, the Stews in Southwark for example were largely regarded as a front for brothels. The Church railed against them in vain but attitudes to communal bathing began to change after successive outbreaks of plague and the new disease syphillis, which began to make its presence felt in the late 1400s. Taking a bath became a rather risky adventure.

So back to the balancing act. No one wants to read a seduction scene where the protagonists' body odour acts like extra characters but drowning everything in herbs seems like a recipe for a cliched dish. I'm off to Glasgow's West End streets to breathe in petrol fumes and ponder.

All the Perfumes of Arabia by Kate Lord Brown

Perfume is the key to our memories – Kipling said ‘it makes our heartstrings crack’. It evokes people, a place, a time. Here in the Middle East, fragrance is highly prized, and enjoyed everywhere from malls scented with the delicious smell of incense and oud burning in gently smoking mabkharas, to the dedicated perfumeries found in every souk. 

 At home, incense is burned to fragrance robes, and perfume is offered as a refreshing gift for visitors. During my first trip in the Middle East, after dining with a princess/interior designer one night, she carried round a crystal bottle of sandalwood oil and anointed the wrists of her guests. It was a great honour, and the scent of sandalwood still evokes the sights and sounds of that trip more clearly now than any photograph.

Perfume comes from the Latin ‘per fumum’ meaning ‘through smoke’, and it is either extracted from the natural world, or created synthetically to produce scents that cannot be stabilised, or to invent entirely new ones unknown in nature. It was in Arabia that perfumes were first distilled. By about 1500 many of today’s scents such as cedar wood, calamus, costus, rose, rosemary, spike, and incense had been extracted. In the 1900’s chemical characterisation of the oils led to expansion of production, and paved the way for the modern perfume industry.

The finest perfumes may have up to 100 ingredients, and while there are only four or five taste qualities there are over 40,000 identifiable odours. After being sprayed onto the skin, each fragrance goes through a number of stages. At first, you smell the top note, which is volatile and refreshing. Then, as the fragrance melds with your skin, a full middle note becomes apparent. Finally, when the perfume fully reacts with your own chemistry, the base or end note persists. Floral perfumes focus on jasmine, rose, lily of the valley or gardenia. Spicy scents are carnation, clove, cinnamon, or nutmeg. The woody fragrances often present in aftershaves are vetiver, sandalwood, cedar wood, and oak moss. Blends of these basic groups create the perfumes we love. For example, ‘Orientals’ are woody, mossy, and spicy with vanilla or balsam, and musk or civet accents. ‘Herbals’ focus on fresh clover and sweet grass. The ‘Leather-tobacco’ fragrances contain (not surprisingly), leather, tobacco and birch tar. Lighter Aldehydic fragrances have fruity characters. Men’s fragrances often have a vibrant blend of citrus, spice, leather, lavender, fern or woody elements. Here, it is Oud, the dark resinous heart of Agarwood that is most highly prized, and it forms the core of favourite perfumes for the home and individual.

Alongside all the familiar brand name perfumes, you find stalls and boutiques selling what looks like kindling or driftwood. Even in supermarkets like Carrefour you will find a section selling incense and resinous perfumed wood alongside the shisha pipes and charcoal.

Browsing the jewel-like gilded bottles in one of the local souks, you may think that the elaborate, elegant designs are a new trend, but even in early history packaging was integral to the whole luxurious experience. The earliest known perfume bottle dates to 1000 BC. Gold, silver, enamel, copper, glass and porcelain bottles gained favour during 18th century, and the 19th century saw a trend for classical designs. During the 1920’s Lalique revived the interest in bottles with moulded glass creations that set the trend for today’s dazzling range of designs. It was a joy researching the history of perfume making for 'The Perfume Garden', and realising how our love affair with fragrance goes back to the earliest of times. There is something magical, alchemical about the way perfume conjures the past - I wonder what your favourite scents are, or whether you have come across interesting historical fragrances in your research?

A HEADY MIX – Perfume and Poetry by Dianne Hofmeyr

I’m not a historian but the minutiae of lives gone by fascinate me. What perfume someone applied before they went to bed. The list of ingredients in a recipe. The dowry list of young girl being sent as a gift to a king. Tiny details – clues that help unlock the character and the story.

I want to know what Kiya (presumed mother of Tutankhamen) took with her when her father sent her with a thousand horsemen and three hundred serving girls from his kingdom of Mitanni at the age of eleven to join the Royal harem of the aging Amenhotep III, in exchange for gold. What father would put his young daughter through this arduous journey from the very upper reaches of the Khabur River, all the way down to Tyre and across the Mediterranean and up the Nile to Thebes and why? According to clay tablets found in Amarna, Egyptian gold is the answer. Horses, copper, lapis lazuli and the sisters and daughters of the kings of Mitanni were all exchanged for Egyptian gold. And since lapis lazuli wasn’t mined in Egypt and if the abundance of it in Egyptian jewelry is anything to go by, one can only imagine how much lapis lazuli accompanied this girl. It was a political exchange of convenience.

When I see the deep indent on the forehead of the mummy of Queen Tiy and look at the size of the gold Vulture Crown, I slip into the head of Nefertiti and understand why she eschewed this crown. Does research tell me? No – but I imagine a girl of fourteen, newly appointed to the throne of Egypt, not wanting to follow in the footsteps of her mother-in-law and wanting something modern and startling – a green leather crown to accentuate the colour of her eyes and match the grey-green galena or ground turquoise paste on her eyelids, tall with upswept lines and worn wigless to show off her long neck, with gold cobras twining down the side of her face to show off her sculpted cheekbones.
And what lists were up on the walls of her Royal Unguent rooms? In Daunts Bookshop I found answers in a fascinating book called Sacred Luxuries. Most temples in ancient Egypt would have had their own ‘magic’ book of unguent recipes and the practice of anointing a deity was as common as the practice of anointing someone you loved. In 1300 BC in Egypt oils of acacia, basil, celery, camomile, cinnamon, cumin, dill, fenugreek, fir, henna, iris, juniper, lily, lotus, mandrake, marjoram, myrtle, rose, rue, and sage were all being used to make perfume. And because roots, barks, grasses, spices and resins held their fragrance, they travelled easily from Syria, Phoenicia, India and the land of Punt (debatable whether this was present day northern Somalia or the Arabic peninsula).

In 1300 BC perfume bottles and cosmetic spoons drew on an imagery of sensuousness. Delicately carved cosmetic spoons depicted girls swimming naked holding on to ducks. The symbolic use of ducks and vervet monkeys in perfume bottles was synonymous with an erotic iconography. The best material for storing perfume was a creamy white calcite known as alabaster and a special blue marble, as in the perfume flask of the two ducks, became sought after. The famous Greek herbalist, Dioscorides in his book, De Materia Medica written in the 1st century (the Persian translation is in the Topkapi Palace Library in Istanbul) tells of an ancient Egyptian recipe for Lily Oil:
1000 lilies x 2
4, 226 kg balanos oil (an ancient tree found in the Nile valley)
2354 kg sweet flag ( a type of grass)
140 g myrrh wine
1,530 kg cardamom
270 g best myrrh x 3
37g crocus x 3
281g cinnamon x 3
honey
salt

A total of 2000 lilies! Not your average household recipe I imagine, although
Queen Tiy was particularly fond of lilies and had her rooms at the palace arranged with hundreds and hundreds of lilies each day. But it was the scent of the lotus flower, namely the blue lotus that became the pervading scent of Egypt. The perfume of the open flower is like that of hyacinth. To adorn oneself with a lotus was to declare one’s intentions in love.

I found records of love poems like this one, written by a girl going down to the river to bathe in a diaphanous dress…
Oh my divine, my lotus flower
I love to go and bathe before you
I allow you to come and see my beauty
In a dress of the finest linen
Drenched with fragrant unguent
I go down to the water to be with you
And come up to you again with a red fish,
Looking splendid on my fingers.
I place it before…
Come! Look at me!

Whether ‘lotus flower’ was a pet name for her beloved, or whether it refers to Nefertem, the most handsome of all gods – the god of the Blue Lotus, I’m not sure but there’s no doubt about the girl’s intentions.

On reading the poem I was struck by the fact that the rhythms and what was portrayed was not unlike Solomon’s Song of Songs, which are filled with an evocation of sensuous awareness. So I went back to read Song of Songs again. Some researchers see the poems as Solomon writing allegorically of God’s relationship with Israel but in more recent times study has suggested it is more a tract of biblical wisdom – that gifts of God, like love, are to be received with gratitude and celebration. Song of Songs comes from about 1000 BC. My story setting in Eye of the Moon and Eye of the Sun is 1300 BC. Apparently interpreters have looked to ancient Babylonian and Egyptian love songs, to traditional Semitic wedding songs and songs related to Mesopotamian fertility cults and made comparisons… so I wasn’t far off.

Both the Egyptian poem I found and Song of Songs are poetic celebrations of a young girl’s spontaneous love with a strong connection to the sensuous in nature and include the use of perfume. In the Egyptian poem she draws the man to her with water against her body and the symbol of the red fish and a mention of being drenched with a fragrant unguent. In Song of Songs, the woman’s voice similarly draws the man with a subtlety and mystery to her allurements. She compares herself to a garden with choice fruits for the lover to feast. And says…
My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh
Resting between my breasts
My lover is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
From the vineyards of En Gedi

The problem with writing about history and particularly ancient Egyptian history is that there is almost too much to go on – far too many facts – but small details can infuse writing with piquancy. Add the use of nail colour, lip tints, eye pastes, body decoration, tattoos and strange dowry lists to that of poetry and perfume and one ends with a heady distillation.

http://www.diannehofmeyr.com/

http://awfullybigreviews.blogspot.com/ for a review of FArTHER - winner of 2011 Kate Greenaway Award