The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour and the Social Imagination

"You’re in for a treat. Like that famous Churchill quote that “history is written by the victors,” history is actually also written by the visualists. We rely so much on the eyewitness, the first-hand observer. There’s a bias in favour of defining history by what can be seen. What we lose—and what Corbin’s book provides—is a historical account that relies on all five of the senses, and especially olfaction. It looks at the way that smell has played a powerful role in the evolution of science, in the evolution of cities, in class identities and in politics and in sanitation. “Versailles used to be a cesspool: it smelt of urine and dead cats” He explores, for example, why Europeans refused to wash, then how they learned to shower. Once upon time, people assumed they could cleanse themselves by sweating. The Foul and the Fragrant is also an absolute delight to read. It is one of the most carnal books I’ve ever read. It is messy and it is disgusting, and, as a result, it is a joy. Smell is usually very difficult to translate into words, but Corbin does a phenomenal job. We hear about “morbific vapours” and decaying cheese that is “acidocacious”, the smells of blood and bones and burning. We fail to realize how deodorized modern life is, and Corbin reminds us, telling us about the dizzying stench of cities with their sewers, slaughterhouses, you name it. Versailles, which we now think of as this Eden, used to be a cesspool: it smelt of urine and dead cats. They were roasting pork and slaughtering things right outside the palace. Corbin is a historian, so he draws on a lot of firsthand descriptions from writers and intellectuals and scientists working at the time. It doesn’t sound like they got too used to the smell of raw sewage flowing through the streets of Paris. Yes. Part of what intrigues me is the fact that we’ve lost those specific stinks. We have preserved the buildings from that period of time, we have streets that date back hundreds of years, but the olfactory signature of a place disappears, especially in the present day, when we’ve become obsessed with deodorising the spaces that we occupy, and ourselves. Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful that cities don’t smell like sewers. But this book sheds light on the fact that this progression is not inevitable. And it’s also a reminder to pay attention to the sensory richness that we might be losing, rather than just getting rid of odours before we’ve even stopped to savour or recognise them."