the bottle

Today, May Day, is a day out of the office here and lazy... I slept most of the day, so tired I was of my intense days working! Not wanting to venture out in the rain, I took still shots of items I had at home. Several themes... But I picked this one. Perhaps because on some levels it is me: I love perfume! It finishes to define someone: that extra layer that says so much to the world! I know that we are the only species to wrap ourselves in other scents to "fool" the other, but....something's got to be said about the power of perfume: art of putting together difference scents to create an ensemble provoking passion, attractiveness, revulsion sometimes....

And to illustrate this post I have found a poem written by Charles Baudelaire (part of the Flowers of Evil) which is both very sensual and very dark too (obviously this is one of many translations):

The Perfume Flask

All matter becomes porous to certain scents; they pass
Through everything; it seems they even go through glass.
When opening some old trunk brought home from the far east,
That scolds, feeling the key turned and the lid released —

Some wardrobe, in a house long uninhabited,
Full of the powdery odors of moments that are dead —
At times, distinct as ever, an old flask will emit
Its perfume; and a soul comes back to live in it.

Dormant as chrysalides, a thousand thoughts that lie
In the thick shadows, pulsing imperceptibly,
Now stir, now struggle forth; now their cramped wings unfold,
Tinted with azure, lustred with rose, sheeted with gold!

Oh, memories, how you rise and soar, and hover there!
The eyes close; dizziness, in the moth-darkened air,
Seizes the drunken soul, and thrusts it toward the verge —
Where mistily all human miasmas float and merge —

Of a primeval gulf; and drops it to the ground,
There, where, like Lazarus rising, his grave-clothes half unwound,
And odorous, a cadaver from its sleep has stirred:
An old and rancid love, charming and long-interred.

Thus, when I shall be lost from sight, thus when all men
Forget me, in the dark and dusty corner then
Of that most sinister cupboard where the living pile
The dead — when, an old flask, cracked, sticky, abject, vile,

I lie at length — still, still, sweet pestilence of my heart,
As to what power thou hast, how virulent thou art,
I shall bear witness; safe shall thy dear poison be!
Thou vitriol of the gods I thou death and life of me!