Frisson of Electric Sparkle
Sheila Fitzpatrick: Scratch ’n’ Sniff, 15 July 2021
The Scent of Empires: Chanel No. 5 and Red Moscow
by Karl Schlögel, translated by Jessica Spengler.
Polity, 201 pp., £20, May,978 1 5095 4659 6 Show More
by Karl Schlögel, translated by Jessica Spengler.
Polity, 201 pp., £20, May,
“... Quelle est cette odeur agréable/Bergers, qui ravit tous nos sens?’ In the old French carol, the shepherds to whom the angel announces the birth of Christ are first struck by a ravishing scent they can’t identify, then by a great light, and finally by heavenly sounds. This introduction of a smell to the Annunciation story has no biblical justification, as far as I can discover, but it certainly stakes a claim for smell in a hierarchy of the senses ... ”