This is the only publicly available English translation of this important work by Edmond Roudnitska, often credited as the essay that made Jean-Claude Ellena decide to become a perfumer, among others.
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Edmond Roudnitska, 1962
From the “Dragoco Report”, April 1962.
As a preamble, an act of faith: I believe in the future of Perfumery because I believe in the youth of today. After a period of confusion that was entirely understandable, the intellectual youth has magnificently recovered its composure. Affirming day by day a precocious maturity and a remarkable awakening of consciousness, it shows that it can be trusted to shake off the lethargy of a society frozen in obsolete and absurd conventions.
The young are not merely a “number” on the rise, in an unprecedented demographic surge; they are also “quality.” They must be quality; their mission will not be fulfilled unless they rehabilitate quality. On the whole, apart from the inevitable minorities of “zazous” or “blousons” that every generation drags along (and who are, moreover, more “snobbish” or rebellious than greedy for gain), the mass of young people today is less preoccupied with immediate profit than with finding its path toward the realisation of aspirations and an ideal.
In our trade, with its laborious apprenticeship and therefore its distant rewards, the “nouvelle vague” has not yet manifested itself, but I am convinced that not ten years will pass before it makes itself known with brilliance. I hope for this and spare neither my time nor my effort that it should be so. The advice that follows is particularly addressed to this new generation.
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– To approach this trade with any chance of success, one needs less in the way of exceptional aptitudes than a certain cast of mind, a certain openness of mind. My young colleagues, cultivate your taste through the contemplation of beautiful things and by living in an atmosphere of good taste, which is possible however modest the setting. Seek guidance, from a reliable mentor, as to what is worthy of admiration and what is not, having him comment on both qualities and defects so as to develop in you simultaneously the love of the beautiful, the horror of the ugly, and the critical sense.
– Submit yourselves, in the beginning, to the servitudes of imitation. To study the compositions of one’s elders, as the young painter copies the canvases of the masters, is for the apprentice composer the surest means of taking stock of his copious palette, the best method of training and developing his olfactory memory, and it is also an opportunity offered to his judgement to confront different techniques. These are exercises of which the one who longs to express his own impulses soon tires, but which must nonetheless be pursued long enough to assimilate the indispensable fundamentals.
Do not forget, however, that imitation is merely an exercise, not a method of work. Free yourself as soon as possible from the grip of the past, become aware of your originality, and so develop your own style. You will then no longer be tempted to copy.
– Be simple, for simplicity is not merely a quality of character; it is also a sure path. By thinking simply and formulating simply, you will arrive at a better understanding of the techniques of composition and you will produce a work more accessible to the public.
In the work of art, as soon as the abundance of motifs exceeds the possibility of a simply ordered equilibrium, decadence appears. The more encumbered a formula, the fewer its chances of originality, for the greater is the risk of producing accords already exploited. At the limit, were several composers each to elaborate, independently, a formula containing – even in very different proportions – the two or three hundred common notes of fragrance, we know well that they would nearly all arrive at the same result and that all their compositions would resemble one another like sisters, bearing an unfortunate kinship to that detestable “mille fleurs” – the graveyard of disappointed hopes – well known to specialists. It is the inevitable dirty grey hue that is the despair of the child dauber when he mixes too many colours.
But one must not confuse simplicity with a simplistic spirit, nor swing from one extreme to the other. Simplicity does not proceed from ostentation in poverty, but from modesty in richness. A formula that is “too rich” – that is, excessively laden with essences of Jasmine, Rose, or other heady materials, without their proportions corresponding to any technical purpose – will very likely prove “poor” in aesthetic value. Yet a fairly lengthy formula may remain simple if its constituents submit to an arrangement that is itself simple, and if incompatibilities are carefully avoided.
– Your principal concern, young friends, must be to assert your personality in your compositions. Your compositions must express an ideal – yours – and it is for this reason that you must strive, above all, to give character to your compositions, so that your perfumes may not be confused with any other. This is what is essential. Then, as craft comes with experience, you will see to it that each perfume manifests a vigour and a diffusing power that do not preclude delicacy and clarity.
You will devote particular attention to volume, a quality more precious and more difficult to obtain than persistence. You will ensure the latter quite sufficiently if you respect the rules of simplicity and if you carefully observe the reactions of your materials.
This matter of the tenacity of perfumes will have caused much ink to flow and doubtless still more saliva. I do not disown a single line of what, as a young composer still, I wrote in August 1938 in the “Revue des Marques – Parfums de France,” under the title “Fixatives.” After thirty-five years of experience, and God knows I have reflected upon these problems, I see nothing to add to what I then affirmed by intuition, save that I regret not having been more persuasive and that I still hear, twenty-three years later, this question raised by technicians.
Persistent odours are obviously precious agents of tenacity in a composition, but it is an error very generally spread among the public, and unfortunately among perfumers as well, to bind too closely the persistence of perfumes to the presence of highly tenacious elements and to believe that a perfume must be “fixed.” The problem of persistence presents itself quite differently. The proof is that a composition rich in highly tenacious substances may nonetheless give the impression of not “holding.” For a perfume to have a brilliant opening and then to diffuse over a long period of development without having suffered “gaps,” it is necessary and sufficient that, in the formula, the judicious conjugation of volatilities take account of the affinities and antagonisms between notes, so as to prevent the components from neutralising and smothering one another. This is neither simple nor easy, but in this case it is a general problem of “composition,” not of “fixation” – a word that means nothing in this context.
I wish to state this quite plainly: the problem of the tenacity of perfumes, because it was very badly posed, has been even more badly resolved. And neither the consumers (who have not been enlightened) nor the manufacturers have perceived the drawbacks of rendering perfumes too tenacious. I have explained my position clearly on this point in “The Future of Perfumery” (1).
But whatever the theme you may choose, do not forget, young composers, that the purpose of your composition is to perfume women or men; its character must therefore harmonise with the human person. Originality must not be confused with extravagance or eccentricity, both of which are equally condemned by people of taste.
To ensure the quality of your output, limit it. Resist those who would try to transform you into a scenting automaton. Do not smell too much; do not compromise with the imperatives of our trade, which demands repose – of which we shall speak further on. You will, moreover, bring greater returns to your employers (and to yourselves, should they have had the wisdom to give you a stake in your creations) through a few successful compositions than through a mass of commonplace ones. And above all, do not take our trade for a lottery. Do little, but do it well; once you have courted beauty, you will conceive of no other commerce.
– Be propagandists, be educators, as soon as you feel qualified for the role. Speak about you of your work, of your conceptions of perfume composition, so that the circle of the initiated may widen day by day and perfume may cease to be a thing misunderstood. You will thereby facilitate the acceptance of your own works by the public and you will contribute, little by little, to opening new and vast perspectives for Perfumery – that is to say, for yourselves.
Combat the old legends, all the more tenacious for being old, such as, for example, the blind prejudice of the public against “synthetic perfumes,” by which the public means perfumes composed with “chemical products.” Rather than futilely denying this and building advertising campaigns around “perfumes based on flowers” or other fables of the same sort, it is simpler and more effective to explain to consumers that perfumes have at all times been “synthetic,” since they have always constituted a “synthesis” – that is to say, a composition proceeding from the simple to the complex. So that a composition containing only natural essences is all the same a synthetic perfume.
For fifty years, the most beautiful perfumes have been composed of natural essences and chemical products. These latter must be rehabilitated, and one must not seem to blush at employing them, since we know well that there exist natural essences costing only a few new francs per kilogram and odorant chemical compounds at three thousand new francs per kilogram. It is therefore not for economy that we use, increasingly, in our finest perfumes, chemical products of which some cost us very dear, but rather to draw upon magnificent notes of odour, unobtainable in nature. If many chemical compounds are powerful and tenacious, others are of an extreme delicacy. The ever-growing number of these materials assures us of limitless possibilities for creation. Does the lover of paintings concern himself with whether the canvases he purchases are painted with natural or chemical colourants?
Your role as educator may be exercised effectively in the domain of the practical use of perfumes. Consumers are left to their own devices and, too often, use perfumes without discernment. They must be guided, directed, counselled. It is you, the composers, who are the qualified judges of the best use of perfumes; it falls therefore to you to train commercial agents who will undertake a sustained effort with the retailers. But you must also exercise your authority through periodic and personal contact with the principal distributors themselves. This will not be time lost; quite the contrary, for these visits may be arranged in the moments of respite that are technically necessary to you, and they will moreover allow you to emerge from your “ivory tower,” communicating indirectly with the public, and even directly should you attend the sales. You will thus be able to emphasise the advantages of the vaporisation of perfumes, which the success of aerosols will demonstrate ever more clearly.
On the other hand, you will show that the skin is not a good support for perfume, that it risks greatly denaturing it. Per square centimetre of skin, there are in fact two hundred orifices of sudoriferous glands, orifices that are particularly close together on the palm of the hand. Under normal conditions, without any physical exertion, the sudoriferous glands secrete forty to fifty grams of perspiration per hour. This perspiration contains water, a little sea salt, traces of urea, and a substance that is alkaline when leaving the gland but becomes acid on contact with the air and with the fatty substances secreted by the sebaceous glands. Moreover, the skin breathes – that is to say, it absorbs oxygen and expels carbonic gas.
The skin thus presents itself as a veritable laboratory of chemistry: water, mineral salts, urea, carbonic gas, various fatty substances, oxidation, acid or alkaline reactions accelerated or amplified by the warmth of the body; it is quite evident that our delicate compositions will be deteriorated or at the very least sullied in this unfortunate environment. One must strongly advise against perfuming the skin directly, which, constituting moreover an immense outstretched nervous termination, is an organ of particular sensitivity.
You will not fail to initiate the distributors, and first of all your sales agents, into the subtleties of the ageing of perfumes which, like the great wines, must “mature” to acquire their definitive patina and character. This ageing is progressive; considerable during the first six months, it then continues more slowly over the years. Each composition presents a particular case, of which you will be objective but severe judges. Ageing explains and justifies the differences, more or less noticeable, that the purchaser observes between the bottle she opens for the first time and the one she has just finished after handling it frequently. The difference will be all the more pronounced when more time has elapsed between the two purchases. It is important that all distributors understand this phenomenon and explain it with conviction to their clientele, in order to radically eliminate all those utterly groundless complaints presented to them by suspicious customers who are simply uninformed.
It has long been known to lovers of fine wines that an old Medoc, or a respectable Chambertin, is kept, handled, and tasted with certain precautions: it is the role of distributors to show that our bottles, yet more precious, require analogous treatment. Are the retailers of perfumes more closed-minded than wine merchants?
You will not fail, naturally, to enlighten equally your commercial agents and your retailers on everything concerning the tenacity of perfumes, of which we have spoken above. It would also be desirable for a regrettable practice to cease: that of vaporising, simultaneously or at brief intervals, several different perfumes in the same shop. What would you think of the record dealer who, having no listening booth, were to present different records simultaneously in his shop to several customers? Do you believe that what is done in perfume shops is any more sensible?
With the progress achieved in air conditioning, it is now possible to install olfaction cabins (of glass, or internally lined with non-absorbent materials) in which the air would be entirely renewed after each vaporisation (2). The major distributors might well attempt the experiment.
(1) One would renew it while maintaining it at the temperature of the shop, for the passage from ambient air to an air too much cooled (in summer, for example) would not be a circumstance favourable to olfaction.
(2) Published in “Parfumerie, Cosmetiques, Savons”, September 1959.
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THE ART OF SMELLING
This important pedagogical section will reappear, in revised form, in the chapter “The Art of Composing,” page 275.
(newsletter subscribers will be the first to know when I’ll have translated it!)
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HOW TO EXAMINE A NEW ODORANT PRODUCT PRESENTED TO US?
– 1960 –
In response to the question posed at the Colloquium of Paris, 24 February 1960.
– As a first examination, it seems preferable to smell the product in alcoholic solution, or diluted in whatever excipient is appropriate to our activity. Apart from the fact that our sense of smell is to be spared, odours being generally used in dilution, an examination of the product at 100% can only distort the judgement, for good or ill. Most often, odours are enhanced by dilution; but it also happens that dilution, by revealing the excessively fugitive character of qualities that created an illusion in the 100% form, spares us false joys and false manoeuvres. There will equally be advantage in examining the product at various concentrations, if one wishes to know all its aspects and not let escape a possibility that may appear only at a high dilution, for example.
It will be wise, moreover, to repeat the examination of the product at spaced intervals, while also varying the different factors of olfaction: hour of the day, season, hygrometric state of the air, place of examination, and so forth. This will place us in differing physiological and psychological conditions, and increase our chances of discovering all the facets of the odour, all the characteristics of the odorant, and consequently its diverse interests.
– Our first reflex is to judge the quality of the odour – that is to say, its note, its originality. There may immediately follow, in an imaginative observer and if the odour warrants it, associations of ideas, whether the olfactory impression received coincides with studies in progress, whether it revives past preoccupations, or whether it opens new perspectives. A wise precaution will then be to catalogue at once one’s impressions and ideas, for these notes may prove precious later on. The important thing is that the professional observer smell with objectivity, unlike the layman whose reaction is affective and who thereby taints his judgement with personal factors that are the effects of an uneducated imagination.
This first impulse, relative to quality, would seem bound to seriously influence the opinion of the observer; in reality, while it is rather rare that one reverses (all prejudice aside) a disagreeable or banal impression, it is unfortunately more frequent that the subsequent examination and further trials destroy an initial impression that was too favourable. Which must put us on our guard against hasty judgements.
– After the intrinsic quality, attention turns to the other attributes of the odour: intensity, diffusion, volume, tenacity; then to the physical characteristics of the material: appearance, solubility, alterability, behaviour on different supports; and finally, to its price and conditions of supply.
These elements of appraisal, taken together, permit no more than a preliminary estimate. The olfactory impression given by a product in isolation is one thing; its behaviour in a composition is quite another. This behaviour, which will determine the real interest presented by the product, is a function of the intrinsic qualities of the odour, certainly, but above all of the use we shall know how to make of it. Only subsequent trials will allow a valid judgement to be passed upon the odour, and to say that such a judgement will be definitive would be to suppose that all possible trials have been conducted and that we harbour no doubt as to our own skill.
– But when the question is asked: how does one examine a new product? In reality, what one wishes to know is: how does one make use of a new product? To answer that, one would have to show how a perfume is composed, and one sees how far that might lead. To know how to make use of a new product, like knowing how to compose a perfume, is, among other things, a matter of intuition and imagination.
Intuition and imagination are faculties that may be developed through appropriate exercises and through general culture. It is to this that education should devote itself, from childhood through the university and beyond – an education properly understood, an education that would place judgement before erudition, and that would aim at forming clear-sighted men who know how to go to the heart of things. Erudition does not confer judgement; it contributes only to its formation.
It is not in a few phrases that one may define such a programme, nor in a few words, however well turned, that one may cause ideas to spring forth in minds not previously trained to this exercise. Ideas, like seeds, germinate only in well-prepared soil, and they develop only through cultivation.
To appreciate a new substance, a new essence, and to know how to make use of it, demands judgement. It does not suffice to smell well; what counts most is the interpretation of the sensations and the intellectual process that follows from it. There is, unfortunately, no magic formula; there are only humble and patient personal efforts, which bear fruit in due season and bear it all the more handsomely when the efforts have been methodical and sustained.
This is, personally, the answer I believed it my duty to bring to the question posed at the Colloquium of Paris, and to that which all researchers and all creators ask themselves, in anguish, in the hours of impotence. If I have permitted myself to speak of it, it is because I have known those hours. This language is, I believe, an honest one; it has, moreover, nothing discouraging about it; on the contrary, since it places work above gifts and thereby sets all courageous men upon an equal footing.
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To this succinct reply, I must add several complementary observations.
The question, then, was how one might judge the value of a new odorant product: “With judgement,” one is tempted to answer. Indeed, those who possess the judgement that allows them to evaluate a new product and, above all, to make use of it, do not pose the question: they judge. Those who do pose it lack this judgement, and one cannot see how they might answer it. Nor is it really possible to answer it for them. The only means of escaping the impasse is to develop one’s own judgement. This is a long undertaking; sureness of judgement is acquired only gradually, through personal efforts and through an appropriate education upon which there would be a volume to write.
To perceive is to smell while reflecting. To perceive an object is to judge that it is, and to judge what it is. Perception is therefore a judgement; this is why, if many persons sense, there are fewer who perceive. One sometimes confuses sensation and judgement; even though it bears upon sensations, judgement is not itself a sensation, but more precisely the relation that we establish between them. Judgement is thus an activity of the mind, subsequent to sensation. Hence it follows that a judgement may be erroneous whereas the sensation – a subjective state – was not, could not be.
One may thus explain the divergences of opinion observed between two observers whose sensations may yet be very similar. The first may have a sense of smell as fine, as sensitive as the second, and yet form, at the conclusion of his examination, an erroneous judgement or none at all; it suffices that his thought be less active, less rich in images, less trained to judge and, consequently, less apt to perceive. It is this that prompted Carlyle to say: “For Newton and for his dog Diamond, what dissimilar universes! And yet their retinal impressions were much the same.”
To judge, we must therefore submit ourselves constantly to a double effort of analysis and synthesis. And it is also through an effort of analysis that we may discover sensations as elements of our perceptions. But perception is not a sum of sensations; it is a synthesis in which an active mind combines sensations, images, and ideas. It is a function of thought.
The disciplines of thought that such an education implies, and the time it requires, mean that these remarks are addressed by preference to the youngest members of our profession – to those who have a long future before them and have not yet acquired too many habits.
In saying that there is no magic formula, I mean simply that it does not seem possible to me to describe a method – simple, rapid, and sure – that would permit, through a standard series of questions or trials, the determination of the value of a product and the use to be made of it. These are decisions too complex and too personal for one to be able to systematise them and to found them upon the imagination of others, the intuition of others, the perceptions of others (1).
To succeed in composition, the best course is to begin very young and to devote oneself to it entirely, for this trade demands a great deal of him who wishes to progress: to free oneself from the preconceived ideas that certain training may engender; to admit “a priori” no prohibition, whether aesthetic or scientific; but to accept, in return, the long patience that the methodical and considered accumulation of observations and knowledge requires – observations and knowledge that will one day permit what was obscure to become clear.
In a closely related order of ideas, the question was also raised as to what method might be chosen for the systematic study of a new odorant product. Apart from trials of substituting one product for another – an unproductive method – I do not believe that one can, as one does for its physical or chemical properties, study “systematically” an odorant substance on the olfactory plane. The supposed system would, in reality, have to concede a great deal to chance. One does not command inspiration; one has ideas or one has not. But method may play a very important role in intellectual formation, in general culture – which must not be the plaything of passing inclinations – in the artistic education that may be harmonised with the imperatives of our trade, in practical manipulations all the more fruitful for being more rational, in the training of the olfactory sense – a more precious auxiliary when better directed – and finally in the recording and classification of observations and ideas.
The field of application of the methodical spirit is vast, as one can see, even for an activity that lies upon an artistic plane. This method will have a most fortunate influence, a determining one, upon the formation and refinement of judgement. And it is then, but only then, that the observer will not feel disarmed before the new product, and that ideas will spring forth in far greater number.
By submitting every new odorant to the methodical examination advocated in the present address, each composer would singularly augment his potential for inspiration; by methodically maintaining an alphabetical repertoire of odours, he would have constantly at hand a precious aide-memoire.
The examination of an odorant product almost always triggers, in the mind of the composer, a current of associations of ideas. These associations of ideas may be of three kinds: by contiguity, by resemblance, by contrast. To govern them, various principles have been proposed with more or less success: the law of frequency, the law of recent acquisition, the law of vividness, and above all the law of interest. But it seems that the true laws governing the recall of memories remain to be discovered. This does not facilitate the analysis of our intimate reactions. What may be said is that well-ordered memories favour useful associations of ideas and that it is essentially under this form of activity that our mind judges, makes use of things, and invents. The expression “to have ideas” most often means “to form associations of ideas.” It will therefore be wise to cultivate everything that may favour such associations. Associations of ideas depend upon our mental dispositions, upon the degree of tension of our memory, upon the necessities of the moment.
It has been very justly observed that if great sensitivity is very useful to the composer (it permits, indeed, a finer apprehension of nuances), what he needs above all is a good memory for odours. Let us say first that by memory for odours we must understand not only the memory of odorant products (synthetic and natural) but also, and especially, an excellent recording of all olfactory observations: odorant accords, reactions of products upon one another, and in a general way all the phenomena to which the blending of odorant materials may give rise. Without this memory, indeed, how is one to progress in composition?
But, however necessary it may be, this memory is not sufficient. The olfactory memory permits one to classify, to retain, to summon at will everything that constitutes the odorant material of the composer, but it will not permit the invention of a new olfactory form. Memory, by definition, can only suggest the known; to invent is a different act. Certainly, once the creative process has been set in motion, memory has a great role to play in answering the calls of the imagination (an imagination subject to judgement, not the “madwoman of the house”), but it is not the instigator of this process.
The aptitude for a given art, Henri Delacroix maintained, if one looks at it more closely, does not depend upon a sensory predisposition; it presupposes a whole complex series of functions.
To show in brief how a new perfume may be conceived: if I may be permitted this figurative expression, I shall say that one has an olfactory vision, or more precisely the vision of an olfactory form, either following an emotional shock whose causes may be very diverse – among them the effluvia of an odorant product (new or otherwise) – or because one has set oneself a problem to solve (2). The task of the composer is to translate this vision from the domain of the abstract to that of the concrete, through the medium of a formula that will be the mode of expression of the vision in question. It is then that, leaning upon taste, craft intervenes and may render the task relatively easy. The essential thing is to know what one wants – that is to say, to have represented to oneself beforehand, even in imprecise fashion, an objective to be attained.
At the origin, then, the activity of creative imagination; thereafter, technique, which is expressed through further efforts of imagination (creative or reproductive). This is said in few words, but represents a great deal of preliminary work and the notation of a multitude of facts to constitute the equipment of an accomplished composer. Preliminary work of experimental – not bookish – formation, which, after so many years of apparently sterile efforts, will allow the composer, from a simple association of ideas, to create, in twenty trials, a new perfume.
The success of a perfume is not the fruit of chance. When one who applies a technique fails, it is not chance he accuses but his own clumsiness. Henri Poincare said: “Chance is but the measure of our ignorance.” When one has the taste for aesthetic constructions and has furnished the effort of acquiring the requisite knowledge, it is quite naturally that one provokes what, through laziness of mind, is called luck. Reflection has then become apt to seize the slightest pretext and transform it into an artistic vision. For the perfumer, this will be a theme for a perfume. This implies, certainly, a minimum of dispositions and, thereafter, a great deal of work, a great constancy in effort, the struggle against distraction and discouragement. At the outset, many individuals possess the minimum of dispositions; but subsequently, very few accept the sacrifices. Therein lies the whole secret.
One sees why, if it was useful to provoke the debate, it was not possible to respond with greater clarity than we did to the question posed at the Colloquium of Paris. How do you go about judging an odour and making use of it? It is to ask the juggler or the acrobat how he succeeds in a number that required ten years of preparation. I greatly disappointed, one day, by my embarrassed silence, a very good friend who reproached me for not teaching him to judge a Jasmine. Could I, in a few moments or a few lessons, inculcate in him what it had taken me thirty years to learn – and that I am learning still?
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(1) A regrettable tendency in our teaching, which Bergson had already denounced, is that of “thinking ready-made” instead of “thinking to measure.” Repugnant to the effort of adapting to each case, to each problem, in order to seek each time an original solution, we have acquired the lazy habit of considering a “standard case” whose solution has been shown to us, then of reducing the greatest possible number of problems to this standard case in order to apply to them, like a universal template, the stereotyped solution. This is the theory of least effort.
Let us guard ourselves against the “spirit of system” which, under the pretext of facilitating research, deprives the researcher of his personality and of the suppleness and liberty without which his possibilities will be diminished.
(2) For Bergson (“L’energie Spirituelle” – P.U.F., p. 182) the process of invention begins with a schema that must be transformed into an image. According to Ribot, cited by Bergson (Ibid., p. 174), “one leaps at a bound to the final result, to the end to be achieved: every effort of invention is then an attempt to bridge the gap over which one has leapt, and to arrive anew at this same end by following, this time, the continuous thread of the means that would realise it.”
Ed. Le Roy likewise sees “an act of creative synthesis in which the whole pre-exists the parts, in which one divines the end and the means in a single summary view.” And Pascal, before them, “perceives the thing at a single glance and not by progress of reasoning.”