the brutal history of perfume (2024)

Chapter 1. Rovesti

This is a retrospective tour to identify junctures in the engineering of anti-Life machineries — the chemical makeover — let’s have a look.

“Humanity has never been very pleased with how life goes, has never been accepting of how lives end. We offer the following tutorial chronicling the history of perfume in order to afford a good view of the ensuing drama,” Saffron provides as introduction, adding, “the nature of olfactive perception is to land our focused attention at a salon to come,” which is a separate question, that she’s right to mention, as it bears on this topic.

The origin of perfumery with concentrated fragrant principles can be traced, thanks to Rovesti’s discovery of an alembic-style distillation vessel, to the area covering part of present Pakistan roughly five thousand years ago, and blah blah … how many times have you heard this flat recital? achh, tedious.

“Alembic from the Spanish alambico from the Arabic al inbiq from the Greek ambix, which means vessel.”

Really, should we care precisely when or how or where the art and science of perfumery originated? whether it was the ancient Chinese or early Egyptians cooking up oily odoraments? whether India’s immemorial chameli ka tel (mmm, jasmine-soaked sesame oil) is traceable back two versus three thousand years?

“Perfume, the primary mode of contact among the living, the epitome of primal meaning in the matter of Life.”

We’ve learned again and again, the term perfume derives from the Latin perfumum (through smoke) and … well, listen — shall we agree here to dispense with the standard history lesson? and instead highlight events that have been surreptitiously spun by crafty conquistadores in chemistry? to suppress the actual material account that is the factual serial story of perfumery?

“Perfume, the original currency of vital connection, packed with nuanced indications and signals of urgent distress.”

Perfume was never an ordinary vehicle, influencing courses of mystical and medical and other disparate lines of inquiry since antiquity. We’re interested in the suspicious fate of this medium.

“Can you see the washers nuts and rivets teetering?”

Suspicious, why? Because volatile metabolites, storehouses of scentfully encoded information concerning Life, are vulnerable to subversive operations of extortion, of perfume piracy, hence our experience of sequestered chemical Nature has forever been co-opted by a line of surrogates and self-appointed mediators — priests alchemists shamans designers industrialists and … predatory perfumers committed to remaking their prey into proxy perfumes, by reengineering the manifold aerial organic expressions of Life on Earth.

“Can you make out the cogs gears and bolts flying off the machine?”

Naturally, the ambitious program has courted a measure of blowback from Living Nature, but the schemers always double down with progressive ventures to decommission, to stow and scramble, as much as possible, the genuine communications of Creation.

“To be clear, this next instruction doesn’t cover the full chronology of perfume on Earth, rather it’s a story of sabotage carried out by our anteceding peers.”

3000 B.C. — So our timeline must properly begin thousands of years before today if we are to abide Rovesti’s terra cotta alembic discovery. But we’ve agreed to pass cursorily over subsequent dozens of centuries during which diverse cultures in areas now India and China, Pakistan and Egypt, appreciate aromatic compounds from Nature, which they use variously as found and augmented, to cure consecrate flavor barter and adorn.

“As resins, wines and ointments, incense, gums and unguents, plant juices, honeys and oleaginous seeds.”

The earliest applications, which foreshadowed sophisticated solvent extraction techniques in waiting for several thousand years following, were based on a manner of physical diffusion common to procedures both primordial and continuing as we speak, in which odorful elements move from their source into watery (though aqueous tinctures are faint) and especially fatty or oily (much better) menstruums.

“The gist is in the matter of the mobile substances fashioned by Creation to be the most bioactive in the World.”

But essential oil distillation is different, as the movement of metabolic messengers is primarily influenced by measure of volatility, along a divide of vapor pressure, not chemical compatibility. It appears that our ascendants of long ago had devised this exercise as an alternative to imbuing scents by soaking and impregnating. The method hinges on the capture of molecules relatively prone to vaporize, as they break away from a heated pot (retort) of plant matter (charge), on forcing their condensation and collection. (Though the implementation will become more efficient when water-cooled condensers are introduced ages later in eleventh-century Persia and employed in full swing by early sixteenth-century France.)

“And our interest in alchemy bears on the most ancient sensory faculty, you’ll see.”

750 (A.D. from this point on) — Our timeline jumps to here by skipping quite a few fragrant millennia of aromatica evolvement. Materials to register include: in the Orient, well-known products of jasmine and lotus and aloeswood, and a secretion for medicine from the musk deer … in India, prominent scented wares of tuberose narcissus benzoin olibanum and of course sandalwood, animal products of civet and ambergris too … in the Near East, celebrated anointing oils of spikenard myrrh saffron galbanum labdanum and cinnamon, the Arabian Peninsula a source of many.

“We are drawn to these elicitative fumes which we regard as cryptic confidences which we regard as evaporative voices of plants.”

It appears that almost four thousand years pass during which there is little progress to improve methods of abducting the metabolic ciphers — can that be right? Apparently so. It’s what we understand from historians of chemical technology, notwithstanding some scattered reports of Hellenistic advancements.

“We are keying on these enigmatic emanations which we regard as emissive etherealizations which we regard as storytelling vapors of Nature.”

And Persian (Arab according to some) alchemist Abu Musa Jabir ibn Haiyan al-Azdl, shortened to Jabir ibn Hayyan, shortened further to the Latinized Geber for our benefit, designated the father of chemistry (paternity is of course disputed), is often credited with contributing a mighty upgrade to the sweeping enterprise of plant perfume appropriation: an alembic-type still with a retort tapered and curved to connect with another in such a way that aromatic volatiles, being liberated from heated plant material, on the escape, are condensed and isolated and purified. The innovative method is referred to as pure distillation and is destined to inspire alchemists of India and eventually medieval Europe.

“If we have time, we’d be remiss, not to recount in rhyme, if time permits, relative to the fortified wine, the work of Middle Ages alchemists, and their designs to press on developing practices of distillation.”

1025 — The Persian scholar Avicenna (also Latinized, and don’t call him an alchemist or his adherents will be affronted) is usually praised for laying the groundwork for modern methods of distillation, especially by steam. Here we’re speaking about the various refined and embellished reflux vacuum and separatory techniques, and the liquefaction of vapors by means of the refrigerated coil.

“So straightaway, there is no longer the need to round up scent principles and squeeze them out from impregnated white wool.”

Notice, in full swing now is the formidable project of flushing out, by virtue of their volatility, messaging metabolites from plants. Hang on to your hats — the grand program, rather benign so far, is soon to get ugly.

“We repeatedly hear that aroma oils queued for distillment are hardly to remain unscathed during their jarring entrainment by water vapor?”

To that we rejoin that it’s true. With respect to this time-honored technology, certain volatile compounds that become subjected to a forced hot bath often react to produce artifacts such as chamazulene which newly appears in chamomile oil, or suffer hydrolysis such as that of esters, say, linalyl acetate which becomes diminished in proportion in lavender and clary sage essential oils. And a number of other molecular gains and losses and rearrangements are possible.

“The standard arguments presume an equivalency between distillates originating as such from growing and breathing beings and their industrial counterparts incorporating coal tar derivatives.”

In any event, let’s not get caught up on tripwires strewn by the everything-is-chemical clique. The familiar shtick of that bullying ilk serves their cynical sport prosecuted according to rules of zero-sum reduction. In Earth-based reality, we experience life in grades and extents, with little that’s all-or-nothing. The straw-man parody holding the vitalist as a superstitious kook may go over well at Perfume Industry functions, but not here.

Yes, we affect plant volatiles in our capture, but how? to what degree? for what purpose? to whose benefit? detriment? risk? to yield what new to Nature? how much and how new? to what effects, be they evident or subliminal or even imperceptible? — all questions subsumed by a pressing concern before us: the fate met by infochemicals in the Natural World upon their seizure. Our attention isn’t casual and we should do without condescension from the fraudful fraternity of neomanic fanatics in perfumery.

“The crusaders against Nature are anti-Life unto death, Earth-estranged with every breath, malevolently cavalier and disdainfully deaf to subtle and even blatant cries of Creation.”

*****

Chapter 2. Grasse.

1190 — Continuing our survey through time, water-cooled distillation condensers are now in common use, and crusaders have been returning to Europe from faraway conquests, bearing all sorts of aromatic treats. And alcohol, long since discovered, is gaining momentum to impress with its wondrous amphiphilic properties for perfumery.

But let’s take a moment to take notice of something that’s becoming more noticeable, of hiddenness that is becoming less hidden, of clandestinity becoming harder to ignore and secretiveness becoming more evident.

“The odorful principles of plants have long been regarded as curiously incomparable, their sequestering with heated water reveals a kind of substance uniquely unique,” Saffron just now arrives.

Surprised? that relative to other historic aspects of cultures, again and again is a paucity of records? that precious few recipes were written down, or sacramental rites detailed? that concealed compositions are lock-and-key guarded, be they formulae of medieval alchemists or apothecary pharmacists or ancient Egyptian priests? This dearth goes a ways to explain why historians have been so challenged to describe aromatic culture of antiquity.

“Chemical communications … they’re mythic, if not sanctified … cryptic, if not classified.”

Around this time, the aura of exclusivity and elevated status for perfumery are encouraged in France as master perfumers are granted a charter by King Philip Augustus, a required course of training is stipulated, and the bar of entry raised. This sort of official recognition would not be the last, as various institutions of power will continue to promote the visage of elitism.

“All this bodes the nature of mass perfumery to come.”

1420 — The cooling-with-cold-water condenser is upgraded again, this time by its reshaping into an elongated coil to improve the efficiency of intercepting infochemical compounds.

1500 — The essential oil trade comes into its own now as distillation is more widely carried out. Granted, elements in Nature are confronted more aggressively, yet emissive fragrances are still encumbered in a way that minimizes trauma (mostly), as volatile oils survive the ordeal relatively intact (usually), the chemical heist mimicking natural processes (to a degree), by which we refer to the sequestration of nutrients, the transformation of metabolites, cycles of evaporation and condensation, to the moving and morphing of molecules in wind and water and on furs and seeds and —

“Furs seeds and insect proboscises.”

And not coincidently, the art of perfumery forges ahead, still to most shrouded and out of reach, still customarily associated with medicine or nobility or the occult, but progressively with a palette for perfumers broadened to include not only tinctures and waters and oily macerates but also the more concentrated distillates of fragrant plants.

“Around this time in southern France, humanity professes its love for vaporous expressions of Nature with a historic burst of innovative demonstration.”

Yes, we acknowledge with some sentimentality that the Grasse perfume industry is more or less fully fledged by now. They seem there to be faithfully improving their methods, guilelessly refining their reverent practices of gentle seduction and respectful coaxing, their well-intended operations to summon and foster the scentful secretions of plants.

“The developments call to my mind a romantic relationship that appears outwardly to be flourishing but is actually in trouble, perhaps done for.”

As we’ll see, groundwork is laid in Grasse for rougher treatments upcoming and the eventual flat-out undermining and violation by humankind of sensuous Nature.

(Class breaks.)

“But before we move on, let’s pause for just a flash, to tip our hats and recognize the eminent alchemist of these times who conceived of the term essential oil, the Swiss medical man Paracelsus, who set about interpreting the novel aromatic substance obtainable from plants by entrainment with steam, which he judged to be an expression of Nature fortified beyond its grade, the soul or innermost nature of the plant, so incomparable as to be designated, alongside earth water fire and air, the fifth classical element — the element of imbued Life — the quinta essentia or quintessence, essence being the spirit of the thing. So upon extraction, we have in the oil the drawn-out spirit of the thing — the essence oil — the essential oil.”

*****

Chapter 3. Camphor

We now resume our period retrospection.

1643 — In England, association between perfumery and healing is reinforced by pharmaceutical vendors who also sell aromatic waters for non-therapeutic applications. And in France, association between perfumery and lofty social status is reinforced as King Louis XIV renews the Perfumers Charter and institutes rigid rules of admission to the select profession, including requirements of four years apprenticing followed by three years in a kind of probationary role.

1708 — And, the aura of elitism is reinforced in London by Charles Lilly with his exclusive enactment of the well-known storyline concerning celebrity perfumer among high society, his shop (nice collection of scented snuffs) serving as a meeting place for the literary and fashionable (to be succeeded by other perfume apothecaries, for instance those established by Bayley and Floris, later Yardley, and in France, Houbigant and Lubin).

1719 — Early stirrings portend changes approaching? In Europe there’s a surge of interest to study volatile oils, and drawing a great share of scrutiny are phenomena of fractional congealing at lower temperatures and glaze-like coatings and particulate secretions on leaf surfaces. Such observations will hold the attention of researchers for decades.

Caspar Neumann, working in Berlin, notices a certain separating and sorting behavior in the form of coalescing crystalline deposits among constituents of essential oils, namely those of thyme and cardamom and marjoram, and is beckoned to identify the single chemical component disassociating from the context of the whole. He designates the congealing chemical as camphor.

“Our present interest shifts…”

Neumann is followed by others who isolate similar compounds that they too call camphor: French chemist Geoffroy (1720) looks at crystals of sage among other oils, Dutch scientist Gaubius (1771) separates colorless precipitates from peppermint oil, German chemist Wiegleb (1774) examines crystalline substances in mace oil, and Spanish scientist Arezula (1785) finds like materials in lavender sage rosemary and marjoram.

“To the coroner’s lab bench?”

Investigators will eventually elucidate the respective correct identities of these volatile metabolites characterized by relatively high congealing and melting points. The compounds will prove to constitute a heterogeneous group of chemicals, not just the singular ketone that will later become widely considered as camphor.

“The pathologist’s autopsy table?”

It’s a historic time, we now recognize — integral aromatic oils are manifestly composed of parts, and the enterprise of enumerating the chemistry of Life has been inexorably embarked upon … in full swing … no going back. The full set of Nature’s molecular expressions is being lined up for investigation, each to have its turn on the dissecting tray.

“The vivisector’s counter?”

1798 — The campaign’s frontline combatants welcome a weapons upgrade — vacuum distillation — by which reduced pressure allows the separation of oils to be carried out at lower temperatures. Much as this appears, on the face of it, to be a benign, even promising, means to protect the labile and fleeting constituents of fragrant vapors and thus defend the integrity of whole harmonious plant exudations, it is, however, developed along with corresponding methods for fractionation, and so the two operations come to be commonly administered in tandem — termed vacuum fractionation — useful to purify, more or less, metabolic principles that are otherwise signaling only upon commingling within perfumes of the Natural World.

“The necrophiliac’s altar?”

(The privilege of hindsight affords us the revelation that this technology is not so harmless, rather more like a loaded gun in waiting.)

1816 — The press is on to extricate recently discovered molecules from their entanglement. Benzaldehyde has already been discovered in bitter almonds, and vanillin is newly isolated from cured vanilla pods. The infatuation of humanity with reductionism, with the practice of reduction, is in its early phase.

“Remember your first crush?”

(Who had any idea of what was coming? — who could have predicted? that large-scale institutions like big-agra big-oil big-pharma big-infotech and big-perfume would bear such big enmity toward anything little, anything local and limited, native and primitive, innocuous and passive, the vulnerable by virtue of being diminutive, and that they would develop such big plans to implement big designs to roll out big guns to prosecute a big siege to be laid to Creation?)

“The onslaught is presently looming.”

*****

Chapter 4. Petroleum

We continue now to chronicle past events. This following section might prompt a recollection, it might spark a memory trace cached from the past, but whether this takes place or not, whichever, please abide the endeavor, and we’ll reward your patience in some measure.

“Life, now to be laid out upon the sacrificial altar.”

1820 — An American chemist, Alexander Garden, working in Britain with a certain John Kidd, describes white crystals that form upon the pyrolysis (decomposition by heating) of coal tar, calling it naphthalene, a finding succeeded a few years later by Michael Faraday’s working out the chemical formula (C10H8) of this mothball-scented substance, and some decades later by Emil Erlenmeyer’s revealing the structure to be straightforwardly a couple of fused benzene rings.

“It should be plain to recognize, the reason that we emphasize — ”

Soon afterwards, another crystalline chemical you may recognize, caffeine, is first isolated from coffee beans by a chemist in Germany, yet Friedrich Runge will apply much of his career to a program of deriving compounds from coal tar.

“It should be plain to recognize, chemical innovation is on the rise.”

1824 — And another German chemist, while busy isolating a variety of substances (stamp his name into your neuronal tissue), Friedrich Wöhler (that is, into a memory bank for later retrieval) stumbles upon a synthesis that may portend the coming revolution in organic chemistry … he prepares oxalic acid — by all accounts an organic compound found in living organisms (responsible for that sour taste of sorrel or rhubarb leaves) — from cyanogen, an inorganic and wickedly toxic (cyanide) gas. Some declare this to be the first ever fabrication of a material that’s biological from a substance that’s inert.

“Some ring the liberty bell to proclaim freedom, to announce that humanity is free from the impenetrable complexity and unfathomable immensity of the wild open realm of Living Nature.”

1825 — That fellow Faraday is still busy burning hydrocarbons to make new discoveries of the residues. This time it’s an odorous liquid remaining upon the combustion of illuminating gas derived from whale oil. Later, we’ll be calling this consequential compound … benzene.

“They ring the bell to proclaim freedom, to announce that mankind is free from the idiosyncratic specificities and fluid intricacies of Creation in process.”

Am I losing my audience? to the sounds of science? Shall I provide a sixty-second primer? Here goes — the most compressed course ever in organic chemistry…

“Life, on schedule, to be sacrificed to power.”

It’s a sprawling subject, and would be a daunting project, to become well versed in the chemistry of biotic Nature, but you’ll be well on your way if you just keep in mind that … that all Life is held together by carbon atoms, as they are uniquely and elegantly suited to serve as elemental building blocks of Nature, and involved in innumerable kinds of molecules, often in alliance with hydrogen atoms, the two together forming hydrocarbons — sound familiar?

“Domination gains, Life drains.”

These basic organic compounds are found prominently under the Earth’s surface as deposits of fossil fuels, fossilized biomass, having originated from decomposed biological matter that became subject to the crockpot of geologic formations and geologic time. These C and H atoms en masse, densely compressed together and heated, are prone to develop into large chain and ring-like structures by chemical bonding, hence the abundant formation of complex hydrocarbon co*cktails known to us as crude oil or petroleum and natural gas and coal.

“Petrochemicals, feedstocks for the production of a chemical bounty upon the spree of industrialism and all-around ravaging of the Natural World in store.”

Petroleum is that dark soupy speculators’ prize formed of prehistoric zooplankton and algae, coal the more compact combustible rocks made of ancient terrestrial plants, natural gas the separating lighter fractions formed at relatively great depths under the Earth’s crust and harvested mostly from oil or gas fields. Yet all these big-time fuels and solvents are multiplex mixtures, refined variously by fractional distillation operations to yield kerosene and gasoline and cooking gas and paraffin and naphthas and lubricating oils.

“Our capacity to control inflates, Life abates.”

As to coal tar, it’s a thick blackish sludge, scented of naphthalene, produced by the destructive distillation or carbonization of coal.

“The old-time medication is an affirmation of old times,” Saffron mimes her approval, “topical coal tar treatments are still to be found knocking around the marketplace.”

As to naphthas, they are lighter liquid hydrocarbon fractions that are considerably volatile. Those of petroleum are raw materials to yield a good number of industrial derivatives.

“Manipulation gains, Life wanes.”

All this is to lead up to our identification of a class of naphthas particularly odorful and powerfully dissolving, namely those from coal tar. These crude resources comprise major petrochemicals such as benzene, toluene, xylene, cresol, phenol, naphthalene, and others, important starting points for the synthesis of dyes drugs explosives preservatives and paints and … perfumes.

“By artificial we mean made by men, and occasionally women who behave like men.”

Along with turpentine from trees, coal-tar naphthas are primary feedstocks for the production of fragrant, mostly terpenoid, molecules for subsequent assembling into modern perfumes of commerce —

…by which we mean those aggressive agents of flagrant statements of disengagement, those diffusive runny batteries of abusive synthetic semaphores of scent.

“Eternity by Calvin Klein makes a rhyme with assembly line and dollar sign.”

Finally (how am I on time? to address a lexical misconception?) … it is owing to the historic appellation that coal tar derivatives are today classified as aromatic. Yes, they tend to be more redolent than their aliphatic or chain-like hydrocarbon counterparts, nevertheless they’re distinguished not by odor but by molecular structure — the incorporation of six carbon atoms in a (benzene) ring with three double bonds — the geometry causes electrons to behave differently, as they become delocalized, more spread around, and the molecules are thus less reactive. So the term aromaticity denotes a chemical behavior of comparatively low reactivity.

“Not much of an organic chemistry primer and not even close to sixty seconds.”

So now, this excursus brings us back to the point of diversion from our timeline, to Faraday’s 1825 research analyzing whale-oil residues and his discovery of … benzene, the first in an hom*ologous series of aromatic hydrocarbons that play heavily in the commodification and counterfeiting of Nature.

“But we have scheduled soon, perhaps the most seminal event for us to cover…”

*****

Chapter 5. Wöhler

1828 — Look, Mom, no kidneys needed — who doesn’t recognize this historic declaration?

“I can make urea without calling on my kidneys,” Saffron recites the actual quote.

In any case, the story on record is that Friedrich Wöhler deals the vital-force theory a fatal blow by demonstrating that there is no mystery to organic substances, thus disproving the notion that unknowable forces in organisms make life possible. That’s the official account, that Wöhler’s experiment upsets the theory of vitalism. So now, humankind won’t be held back from cooking up any chemical compound under the sun.

“Of course, we don’t buy it, the great lie of physicalism.”

This is to say that we’ve come to a critical juncture along our timeline, at which point Wöhler resumes his offensive against biological exceptionalism. First he made oxalic acid, now he’s making urea. This time he really does it, scoring big, obscuring the distinction between organic and inorganic, eagerly blurring that line.

“Of course, we’re not going along with the reduction of breathing beings to inert chemicals.”

The celebrated event transpires on a routine day in February … Wöhler heats up ammonium cyanate, expecting only to liberate some cyanide, but instead is left with crystals of urea, which happens to be the same metabolite concentrated in our urine.

“Of course, we would never agree that Living Nature is, in essence, dead matter and energy in space.”

Wöhler’s synthesis suggests that organic substances, such as sugars and alcohols, known of living organisms, can be prepared from non-living materials. The implications of this are understandably disconcerting to vitalists, who defend the sacrosanct status of all Life.

“High-flown mystical conceptions of what it means to be alive, owing to Wöhler’s fateful find, appear now to be belied.”

The discovery looks to be at variance with the vitalistic idea that mechanistic models are not by themselves sufficient to explain living processes. And so, conquistadors in Chemistry are congratulating themselves for invalidating our deep intuition that Earthly Life comprises more than the scrutable sum of inert physical and chemical and energetic components. Vitalism, we have no choice but to admit, has been dealt a significant blow, and is presently on the retreat.

“The depreciators of Life, who scoff at the mystery of living, with an early streak of determined binging to knock off Nature, they are just beginning. And as it turns out, they’ll never stop.”

Yet, a fact remains that is scarcely addressed: organic compounds in their nature bear out the meaning of the term … inimitable. And the organic tissues that they constitute are an order more distinguishably involving. The new scientific consensus rules that nothing supernatural is at work — all right, fine. And the exceeding chemical complexity of living substances will soon be widely attributed to the capacity of multiple carbon atoms to bond together — okay, sure. And this novel biotic elaborateness and associated chemical behavior will be advanced to justify the measureless patterns of fluxing variousness in Nature — mighty straightforward.

“For all that, physicalists have not had the final word.”

Is the benign synthesis of a small amount of urea truly such a fatal setback for vitalism? still and all no, we don’t think so. Territory has been surrendered all right, defensive outposts breached, but the new frontline trenches, we’ll see, are where they should have been all the while — defending the sanctity of irreplaceable organic beings among countless unfolding biological economies, in this way defending the immensely entangled ecologies of Life in continuous development for billions of years to the point of impenetrable intricacy.

“Vitalism is the unambiguous affirmation of the goodness of Creation, where gardens are associated with Eden and other names for paradise,” Saffron has memorized the poetic argument of Paul Lee? who doesn’t shy from the moral dimension of the matter.

“…and a defense of botanical and herbal gardens against the experimental laboratory of modern science. After 1828, almost everyone forsook the garden and botany and went into the lab. They’ve yet to come out.”

And Wöhler, however prideful and worked up, can also foretell the hurt and damage in store. He remorsefully relates to a mentor that he’d witnessed the great tragedy of science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact (his words).

“No life force, nor any recondite influence from a mysterious source, now stands in the way of the designs of humankind to redesign and redefine and consign Life to an assembly line or some comparable kind of denial of the vital at this time. Only the limits of our ingenuity can impede the advancement at hand.”

Wöhler’s contribution to the grand program is both concrete and symbolic, on account that urea produced in a factory has critical implications for farming, as age-old traditions involving manure composting will soon be broken up by the introduction of industrial synthetic fertilizers. And soon too will surge other cases of intervening by humanity in Nature-honed cycles, and of the technological denial of limits in many spheres of life.

“The neomanic push will prove to be unbending, to replace the fine-tuned situational time-tested contingent expressions of the Natural World with unconditional fabrications of sapiens.”

1832 — The German poet botanist zoologist geologist physicist philosopher and … professed vitalist … becomes mortally ill.

“Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”

Some of his colleagues theorize that his death was a reaction to Wöhler’s synthesis, given that he was surely aware of the deteriorating prospects for vitalism as an organizing influence in fields of inquiry and endeavor. For several decades he’d been providing commentary in the form of his running epic poem Faust, based upon the classic German legend concerning a man who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge. Rest in peace, Goethe.

“It’s starting, the symbolic commencement party in honor of the new campaign of biophobic boundlessness.”

*****

Chapter 6. Nitrobenzene

1834 — To continue our retrospective review, I direct your attention to German chemist Eilhard Mitscherlich, eager and ready to work with coal tar naphthas. Beginning with benzene, he decants slowly into mixed nitric and sulphuric acids, separates washes and distills…

“Lo, there it is, comes near the aroma of benzaldehyde, but harsher,” Saffron says.

The forged almond-scented substance, nitrobenzene (or nitrobenzol), alternatively termed artificial oil of bitter almonds, soon to be recognized in the marketplace as Oil or Essence of Mirbane, will be the first compound prepared from a petrochemical feedstock to find use in mass perfumery (Collas will introduce it as a perfume of commerce). It will also come to be fancied as a safe alternative, especially for soap perfumery, to the perilous prussic-acid-laden genuine essential oil of condensed botanical vapors.

“Septimus Piesse, in his influential perfumery tome (1957), will even promote the material for flavoring foods.”

But it turns out that there’s a problem, an inconvenient health hazard, in that it is also highly irritating to mucous membranes and especially poisonous upon skin contact. So woe to those afflicted by way of hairdyes containing toxic traces, and to those wearing garments colored with a nitrobenzene-type dye.

“A 2005 industrial accident in Northeast China made headlines for the environmental devastation caused. The chemical culprits were benzene and nitrobenzene.”

In the future, chemists acting out their disdain for Creation will become sophisticatedly canny by increments. Stealthy insidiousness will be the hallmark of those working on the epic project to overhaul the fabric of Life.

“Killing customers outright en masse and in plain view will not be endorsed for the grand program.”

It’s a tragic irony, we suppose, that this almondy aromatic toxin that too-readily permeates skin is favored by formulators as a fragrance for soap that is expressly to cleanse skin.

“You might say that its popularity is self-limiting,” Saffron quips again.

It will be another fifty years or so before another synthetic molecule, this time coumarin, which happens also to be known from Nature, fronts a charge to distinguish a commercial-scale fragrance — branded Fougère Royale and launched by manufacturer Houbigant (a preferent of royalty), it turns out that this ersatz preparation is to forever conceptualize an eponymous soon-to-be fancied approach to perfumery, hence an Industry-indulging olfactive classification: the fragrance family fougère.

“The appellation fougère is French for fern, whereas real ferns are rarely then barely sensed to bear scent even sparely.”

Make no mistake, the designation foretells the turning away from the natural, the breaking from the ecologically actual and factual, which are marked for replacement by the self-satisfaction that comes with abstraction, upon the growing attraction even infatuation by perfume makers with insubstantiality, an early indication of what will be their potent and lasting love for meaninglessness.

1835–38 — In France, Pierre Robiquet now casts his attention toward several flowers that yield their scented messages only hesitatingly, blossoms reluctant to provide metabolic information to entraining steams of distillation, exemplified by jasmine heliotrope tuberose and narcissus (known too as jonquil or daffodil). The chemist demonstrates that instead of solid hot (for maceration) or cold (for enfleurage) lipidic solvents, which pose drawbacks, namely, their proneness to rancidity and imparting of artifactual fatty notes, jonquil is effectively seduced to surrender its labile fragrance to a highly volatile less-messy gaseous solvent — diethyl ether.

And … chemists Buchner (1836) and Favrot (1838) extend Robiquet’s findings to draw out nectareous perfumes from flowers of linden acacia lilac mignonette and mock orange. Extraction technologies will soon begin to leapfrog past each other with new mechanisms of vacuum filtration and separation and purification.

“Next we turn to how we learn to discern indicators to help us make out the progression taking shape, that is, to make sense of what the sequence of events represents, that is, the emergence of dual tracks of purported advancement in perfumery.”

Yes (insert asterisk here) exactly, two courses of forward motion — (first) scientists become more adept at intercepting the evanescent source codes of Life, and (then) we discover and develop means to copy these original expressions.

“And later the third track, to redesign and redefine, to one-up Creation,” Saffron jumps ahead.

1841–43 — Vitalism is wounded and Goethe is dead. Things are about to really roll, as the campaign is oh-so-close to taking wing, the siege now approaching full swing, nearing operation at maximal level. Jean-Baptiste Dumas has already reported the chemical formulae for borneol and anethole and camphor, and with Peligot has also identified cinnamic aldehyde as the major constituent of cinnamon bark oil. Walter now isolates cedrol from cedarwood, as Gerhardt and Cahours meanwhile discover cuminic aldehyde in chamomile.

“And Cahours isolates anethole from star anise, and methyl salicylate from … (hint: the authentic oil these days comes from Nepal, procured from foliage of an ericad, which is to say a phylogenetic ally of blueberries heaths and azaleas) guesses anyone?”

1843 — When the Frenchman Auguste Cahours identifies oil of wintergreen, Oleum Gaultheriae, to consist almost entirely of the ester methyl salicylate, it becomes destined for replacement with another distillate chemically very similar yet more readily obtained, sweet birch bark, Oleum Betulae. He then synthesizes the characterizing compound and proclaims it precisely the same no matter whether it dwells within a living plant or is fabricated at a human plant, and by this provides testimony to endorse the exercise of adulterating natural extracts with newly cooked up so-called nature-identicals.

“And where does this practice lead?” Saffron generously sets up my punchline — to no end.

So begins the perennial argument that looks to never lose steam, the back-and-forth squabble (I’ve such a headache) to this day (eesh) regarding the so-claimed scientific fact that any pure chemical compound will have precisely the same properties whether made in a laboratory or found in Nature. (Rebuttals are forthcoming here, but the simplest of answers seems to lack traction? — that assertions of purity are immaterial, on the grounds that purity, as with other qualities held as perfect or absolute, is an abstract concept, not a property of any actual entity taking up residence in the Natural World, so the discussion is largely moot — how is this not evident?)

“The prudent intelligence of our shared intimacy with Living Nature is now to be replaced by the disassociated kind of knowledge that comes by crudely mounting her,” Tulíp suggests with a pained smile.

1845 — If there remains any question about the facility of Science to create organic from inorganic compounds, the German chemist Hermann Kolbe (a raving xenophobe, we read) now appears to resolve the matter once-and-for-all by publishing the total synthesis of acetic acid (the odorously sour note of vinegar and women’s natural vagin*l lubrication) from substances certain to have no connection to any living being.

“So, the body of any biological organism, animal or plant or otherwise, is essentially no more than a machine made of inert dirt? dead matter? just dust? monotonous mass? that’s it? nothing more? no point to seek further?”

Chemical reductionists are thusly waging an offensive and mean to break the will of any remaining forces of opposition, figuring Kolbe has likely dealt the vital-force theory a fierce final blow, a solid nail into the coffin probably. Derivation from living cell or test tube? — no difference — so chant the scientists who now join hands with enterprisers in promenade to the century’s banquet called the Industrial Revolution. Perfumery, as with most other endeavors that reflect aspects of living and aliveness and Life, is never to be the same.

“Die endlösung der naturfrage.”

*****

Chapter 7. Synthetics

1850 — Still following our timeline, the last half of the nineteenth century is a pivotal stretch for humanity. What was once incremental is now an unabashed unabated campaign, its course charted and direction set. But we’re short on time to dwell over details, so let’s blow through and cover some basics about the molecular makeover that’s proceeding…

First, from previous designs we have extensions, new inventions drawing attention. The latest extraction technologies yield impressive industrial aromatic materials, concretes and absolutes (en français, concrètes et absolues).

“The abductors (en español, levantadores) of fragrant plant dispatches are becoming more cunning in their capacity to round up authentic perfumes purveyed by flowers,” Saffron adds.

These operators (in customary parlance, producers) embark more aggressively by means of newly designed extractors and innovative chemical solvents to plunder Nature for metabolic confidences.

“They could be called agents, or brokers, or arguably embezzlers (or my preference, secuestradores).”

Whereas, unlike distillation, the latest techniques can hardly be compared to a natural hydrologic cycle, the stamp of sapiens upon the extracts is arguably less obtrusive. Sophistication is greater, human investment is more, risk of accident and injury is higher, and technological possibilities are less bounded.

Proper historians will no doubt scoff at this cursory review, nonetheless following is a glance at developments to intercept plant volatiles in the 1850s and soon thereafter — ready steady go — Millon experiments with various solvents in Algeria … Hirzel in Leipzig suggests replacing diethyl ether with petroleum ether … experiments centering around southern France develop as a competition for patents … Charabot is an early pioneer, someday to influence the direction of the namesake long-standing Grasse aromatics supply firm … Piver engineers solutions to challenges posed by volatile solvents … Garnier sets up operations in Egypt and Reunion Island, fixes on roses in Bulgaria and acacias in Syria … Roure develops and shows off his concentrated alcoholic extracts (essences concrètes) at the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair … Naudin and Schneider improve vacuum distillation and litigate for patent priority against Vincent and Massignon … the latter first employ the menstruum methyl chloride but will later settle on light hydrocarbon fractions of petroleum, so called petroleum ether (which we’ve referred to as petroleum naphtha), to include hexane, a favorite solvent to be.

“From the garden to the workshop they go.”

Forgive my butchering the capsule biographies of these notables, yet the idea comes across, no? — the hectic contest to stake territory, as competitors race to successfully apprehend and appropriate the encoded messages of Life, each assembling contraptions to better the next, to one-up the other, with more elaborate extractors, stationary and rotatory, in sets called batteries, more automatic pressure valves, gasometers and stopco*cks and gauges, better purifiers and condensers and purging pipes, reservoirs for compressed gas, evaporators and vacuum pumps, bigger boilers, perforated metal grids — it’s the machine age after all (or sometime thereabouts).

“From the workshop to the lab they go.”

Also during this period, the isolation of new compounds from plant tissues continues with rates accelerating. The earlier to give themselves up are those that exhibit crystalline structures, for their inherent nature is to separate from tissues and other metabolites and coalesce for easy harvest by chemists. To exemplify the escalating movement we highlight just a few: thymol (as in Listerine) surrenders to Lallemand from thyme oil (1853), coumarin (think of a new-mown hay aroma) reveals itself to Wöhler from its hideout of cured tonka beans (1856), geraniol (the influential rose alcohol) submits to Jacobsen from palmarosa oil (1871), eugenol (the toothache remedy) presents to Wasserman from clove oil (1876).

“From the lab to the bank they go.”

Soon all kinds of carbon-based odorants are being mined from living organisms. Skatole (etymologically, oil of dung), for instance, in the main bound up in animal feces, readily seeps out to make its introduction to Brieger (1877).

“To widen the bounds of human empire.”

And the isolation and study of irones (which express the olfactive character of violets) from orris (Iris) rhizomes bode big trouble for fragile chemical ecologies of Life. This groundwork sets off a cascade of revelations, superintended by the pioneering German researchers Tiemann and Krüger (1893), leading to the elucidation and eventual presaging syntheses of several violet flower compounds and men-made chemical analogues, collectively termed ionones.

“We’ll say more before long, we’ll continue to pick at these scabs right or wrong, errr, rightly or wrongly,” annotating in song, Tulíp drives the story, helping it along.

So, more and more messaging molecules from plants will now yield their physical structures to resourceful investigators. The chemical nature of cinnamic acid is determined by Erlenmeyer, crystals of vanillin by the Haarmann-Tiemann team. Another crystalline solid, heliotropin, is established by Barth. Terpineol and alpha-pinene and related terpenes, which constitute the abundance of essential oil scent principles, are now subjects of an inquiry onrush led by a forward-leading slew of skilled chemistry sleuths, including —

“…Semler, Tilden, Wagner, Wallach, Berthelot, Barbier, Kekule, Bouchardat, among others, some other fraternal brothers by some other maternal mothers,” Saffron reads from her notebook.

“Considerable blows, one after another, rendered to the slow soft shifts and flows of Living Nature,” Tulíp says.

Early on, only compounds that are known of Creation are synthesized. Cahours produces benzaldehyde (as in almond marzipan) while the Fettig-Mielck collaboration prepares heliotropin (think of powdery cherry pie). And Tiemann’s crew makes vanillin (yes, as in vanilla), at first from the feedstock of coniferin, the fir tree metabolite, soon to be followed by other involving pathways for synthesis, such as that from eugenol. These new imitative products of the embryonic Industry, glibly referred to as nature-identicals, are fated to become smashingly popular as mainstays of mass perfumery.

“In advance of the approaching tidal wave of fabrication, are signs of swelling and lift, which portend Life adrift.”

And the lab-bench re-creation of coumarin, this from the Perkin and Graebe group, obliges us to bow our heads in lamentation, as the new unfaceted depthless Nature knockoff replaces the rich dimensional dynamical rum-soaked savory tobacco-like genuine yet impure isolate derived of tonka bean extraction. Rose and neroli and ylang-ylang simulations will be following soon.

“Nature generates but people fabricate — it’s a maxim moonlighting as aphorism but perhaps merits consideration as an adage?”

The grim descent into a new world of botched synthetic copies of Creation is chronicled by catalogue records of the research outfit Schimmel and Company, later to be named Fritzch Brothers, who report in 1898 of the early demand for benzyl-acetate-rich fake jasmine oil and reveal a few short years hence that this impostrous Nature reduction is a commodity in widespread use.

“Hear that drumbeat of progress? shh, listen … it’s getting louder?”

So next, Earthly Life is finally discredited entirely, or at least decidedly. After the development of numerous artificial pathways to produce odorants known of Living Nature, the next destined advancement concerns materials unfamiliar to any Earth inhabitants over the span of almost four billion years of Earth habitation.

“One day hominids are rubbing organic pigments on interior cave walls, the next self-adorning with chemicals alien to Life.”

The ensuing shift will follow the model of development for various other kinds of substances that have traditionally been biotic — anesthetics, disinfectants, pesticides, dyestuffs, and medicines — whereby novel molecules are cooked up, purified, and filtered, usually in European laboratories first, ostensibly to serve humanity. While these are mostly analogues of natural compounds, nevertheless they are new-new-new to Nature.

“Not coincidentally, the first plastics were created from cellulosic feedstocks circa 1890.”

So motivated phytophobes, now gathering with a hankering to redesign the Natural World, have in waiting a proliferating selection of venues in which to exercise the growing extent of their power over things alive, to replace the immense works of Creation with works of their own. No surprise then as the surge of innovation will spark even more surging? — so will run the onslaught of incongruity, the snowballing siege of Nature at full tilt.

“Say goodbye to heedful Life-affirming sensibilities and hello to reckless necrophilic fantasy,” Saffron has a knack for summing up.

We should reckon with the prospect that these transformations administered by the venturesome, ever heralded to address people’s needs and desires, in truth result from a deep-beneath tragically obsessive drive to plunder and conquer Nature, to reduce and control Life.

“Get ready, ticketed to launch in 1919 is Tabac Blond by Caron.”

Now, we can plainly see neomania and biophobia align, but we’re short on time, to fret over the fine line, between a model of evil and the anomaly of humankind.

*****

Chapter 8. Prussic acid

“Today’s instruction is titled sticks and stones (injurious), or better, skulls and crossbones (the widely acknowledged graphic indicator of poison),” Saffron gives the lead-in.

We now continue to survey the intensifying technological mugging of Life. For those of you uninitiated, I’m your neovitalist tour guide, to provide annotation on behalf of Creation, in the interest of Nature.

“We take sides and won’t hesitate to admit it.”

At this juncture it remains for us to visit an important stretch of chronology. We last covered late nineteenth century introductions of molecules lab-derived, unfamiliar to Nature, strangers to Life.

“Ethyl vanillin and methyl ionone have been promoted by the Perfume Trade, like favored children, the Fragrance Industry carrying on as the myopic parents.”

Both of these blockbuster compounds are penetrating and dramatic imitations of their more temperate natural counterparts, vanillin and alpha-ionone or beta-ionone, which have been fashioned over evolutionary time to engage with Life on Earth.

“Who will name the three letters that sum up the burgeoning chemistry scene in Germany?” Saffron provokes blank faces, though she’s referring to the most famous pesticide ever. The perniciousness of DDT is for many years not to be much appreciated, not until the 1930s, close to the time that admiration is being won over for chemical concretizations of other ideas of heedless genius, however unsettling, by molecule-meddling chemists, however troubling, by metabolism-muddling scientists. We allude to one telling formulation in particular, based on a so-called nature-identical compound…

Here then, let’s backtrack some (I’m now reading from my notes):

First of all, the French chemical concern Gilliard Monnet et Cartier becomes Société Chimique des Usines du Rhône which merges with Poulenc Frères to become Rhône-Poulenc which combines with a certain German company to become Aventis while spinning off a division to form Rhodia SA … and the identity of that certain pivotal German firm is Hoechst Atkiengesellschaft, of course, or its parent company IG Farben.

“Just another routine round of corporate merging and acquiring and financing.”

Let’s proceed. I’ll lead, you pay close heed:

Next, the German Ministry of War forms Technische Ausschuss für Schädlingsbekämpfung which births Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung (Degesch) of which the controlling shares are acquired by Degussa (later to become Evonik), then splits its financial interest in Degesch with IG Farben and Th Goldschmidt AG in advance of Degesch infamously developing the application of hydrocyanic acid (prussic acid) to silica gel crystals, designated Zyklon-B and manufactured by Dessauer Werke für Zucker und Chemische Industrie with the chemical warning agent furnished by Schering AG and prussic acid procured from Dessauer Schlempe and the stabilizer from an IG Farben factory, for supply mostly to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek death camps under license from IG Farben, Degussa eventually acquiring Degesch while selling the marketing rights to Heerdt and Linger GmbH (Heli) and Tesch und Stabenow, Internationale Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung (Testa) — seriously, that’s only the beginning.

“Fragrant metabolism is replaced with flagrant diabolism.”

Can you follow the permutating? and make it all out? or are you made dizzy cause it’s so busy and disorienting? which is precisely the point. After Nazis dropped pellets of cyanide gas through vents into gas chambers of various European extermination camps, and more than a million victims with mouths frothing and nostrils spewing blood gasped and clawed to their deaths, who can trace the degrees of separation? or track back and follow all the possible audit trails to assign responsibility? A practical and manageable number of unlucky scapegoats are tagged as villainous criminals and then for everyone else, it’s back to business — and that’s the operating model for the most abominable offenses of the modern era, namely the chemical warfare against Creation and the full-on pandemic ravage and degradation of vulnerable Life — masterful, no?

Saffron mutters under her breath, “Seems our perfumery timeline has bogged down upon reaching the busy action of the late nineteenth century.”

Right, well, our linear time measurement proliferates like a bottle rocket with exploding stars of alien aroma-molecule introductions, and Living Nature progressively suffers besiegement by the rapid-fire events compressed in multiplicative time, a time of snowballing human innovation and enterprise, of an expanding barrage of corporate armies, axes of forces to go against biotic beings, developments manifestly ominous for the fate of fragile plant and animal communities, including the countless extant ecologies of fragrant Life.

“With the de-mystification of natural splendor, genuine perfumes are sent back to the sender.”

Inaugurated before the century’s turn are Lever Brothers (will become Unilever), California Perfume Company (will become Avon), Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers, Dow, Hoffmann-La Roche, Monsanto, Gillette … then from the early 1900s arrive Max Factor, Elizabeth Arden, Fabergé, Quest International, more too.

“A formidable hodgepodge of malefactors, that list.”

A number of companies, for instance Haarmann & Reimer, are set up specifically to exploit newly realized pathways for chemical syntheses. Others, such as Fritzsche Brothers, already involved in trading aromatic Nature extracts, now jump upon the caravan of counterfeiting. Some small players grow, some large become larger … most race to amplify and augment operations and extend their reaches of business.

“The crusade is like a holy affair, being waged everywhere — ”

Leading the onslaught are a couple of Swiss firms founded circa 1895, influenced on account of geography by their immediate neighbors, accomplished organic chemists from Germany to the north and established aroma-extractive concerns in France to the west and Italy to the south.

“…while bystanders go about as if they just don’t care, or are unaware — ”

House of Givaudan, conceived mostly to manufacture synthetic violet and musk compounds, will stand strong over time as a heavy-hitter in the field of prepared aromatic materials. And Chuit & Naef, later to become Firmenich SA, earns early honors by introducing Earth-incongruous hydroxycitronellal — indispensable for impostrous muguet (lily of the valley) impressions like Houbigant’s (1912) Quelques Fleurs — and is eventually to churn out a star-studded series of fragrance bases, and then … achh, never mind.

“…but don’t despair, Salonnier.”

No, yet I do intend to impress that it’s a foreboding time for the susceptible biosphere and all its living constituents in all their exquisite detail, under threat by venturesome assailants in white lab outfits, urged to advance pioneering organische chemie by boosters who campaign aggressively on behalf of synthetic odorants, components indispensable, they assert, for sophisticated future-fashioned perfumes.

“It’s the business of abstracting unseen natural mystery, and wiping clean the factual history, of perfume.”

Granted, there is a modicum of resistance, a hesitancy to welcome these novel chemicals foreign to the Natural World, particularly in France, where some have felt that artificial plant fragrances will threaten the raw-material supply houses and corrupt the craftsmanship in botanical perfumery. Yet around this time, as the nineteenth century converts to the twentieth, the half-hearted recalcitrance gives way —

“Tradition begets convention begets conformism begets compliance begets change (the one before begets the other after but which follows which is not so plain to answer).”

…and multiplying numbers of scent handlers succumb, they stop disagreeing, so modern perfumery irreversibly comes into being — synthetics, which in reality exhibit xenobiotic activity, are evidently here to stay — and scientific innovations are followed finally by momentous commercial introductions —

“…experienced by the biota of Earth as a rush of violent thrusts (which has nothing to do with carnal lust, yet even so, such sexual assault imagery may be apropos),” at least Tulíp says so.

More and more step out of the garden and into the laboratory, and slough off their sensual selves in order to embrace reductive chemistry and abstract scent art. The age of me-me-mediation has dawned, and with it the gathering relentless campaign to capture appropriate co-opt control redesign reengineer subvert and replace the molecular expressions of Creation.

“We are the lords and the possessors of Nature.”

****

Chapter 9. Couture

We now resume our retrospective tour — we’re nearing the finale, we promise — as the twentieth century is frightfully kicked off by François Coty, who enacts his fabled Parisian department-store stunt (oops, sorry for the dispersing fumes but the brimming promotional flacon accidentally fell and broke!) to launch the methyl ionone vector known as La Rose Jacqueminot.

“Truth can be defined as something that happens to an idea when it’s shoved down the throats of dissenters,” Tulíp says.

Faster faster, push faster — momentum now has an influential grip on our timeline. In a couple of short decades, the practice of perfumery will change more than it has in the four thousand previous years. Stephan, the son of iconic perfumer Paul Jellinek, heralds the complex sophistication that replaces the simple harmony of Nature (honestly, he said that).

“Is neomania so profound, anywhere else to be found?”

The writing has been on the wall, about who will eventually advance the charge, put the screws to Creation, which is surely screwed, threaten whatever Life is true to Life, which is truly in peril, put on notice any in Nature now in danger to become de-Natured.

“Warning is hereby issued to all labile conditional temporal ephemeral instrumental or incidental metabolic transmissions from feral beings of forests marshes and meadows.”

Sorrowfully poetic and sadly predictable, perhaps it was bound to develop this way, with the launch of a fashion brand. Paul Poiret (1911) is likely the first to associate perfume (Les Parfums de Rosine) with a line of women’s clothing.

“Subsequently begins the sustained flamboyant procession … of those who’ve forsaken botanical gardens in favor of Paris and London and New York galleries warehouses and lofts.”

The realm of plant perfumes, the fundamental messaging medium of Nature, mother tongue of organic expression, inherent epitome of deep primal meaning in the matter of Life, is finally hijacked by modern surrogates serving a community that conversely is a paradigm of insignificance, of cultural shallowness — yes, that’s the capricious world of fashion, of superficial chic, with some support from a broader kindred fickle crowd of designers.

“The evolvement isn’t happenstance.”

We’ve chronicled the historic lineage of exclusivity, the confinement of aromatics, the shrouded occultism, the elitist royalty, the restricted medicines, now this … a perfectly effective means to conceal the wellspring of Life’s secret ciphers? secreted out of our plane of view … by surrendering the fate of perfumery to couturier caretakers … Coco Chanel? could that be right? Christian Dior? believe it — frivolous fashionistas in alliance with technocratic chemists command the caravan while Nature-estranged abstraction-happy designers ride shotgun … brilliant.

Saffron adds, “They speak of reaching beyond the skies, floating without any tethers or gravity, free from Earth-based qualifications and contingencies, are preoccupied with themes of unencumbered fancy, virtual indulgences and vicarious experiences, and vie for who’ll be more unaffected and unfettered by mere biology, who’ll be less concerned with metabolic implications, less restrained by settings and situations.”

It adds up, that this contemporary power axis, charged to administer the technological program of modern perfumery, functions as an arrangement for securing control. The system operates by decommissioning and stowing and scrambling the emissive information-bearing principles of Nature.

“The ordering principles of Life?” Tulíp asserts.

(Saffron gestures to check her imaginary wristwatch, as Tulíp moves to circulate soda glasses for sampling tonight’s tinctured libation, a simple Austrian alpine infusion of immature megastrobili, baby pine cones.)

“Clouds of fledgling vapors rise reservedly yet briskly from the glass — the wisps of volatiles highlight youthful terpenoid compounds — not much body to the embodiment, nonetheless the impression is … splendide, being that of a vital vernal greeting, a fleeting verdant forest-breathing resiny coniferous bouquet that’s seeming ever leaning towards retreating.”

“Life is on its last legs.”

In these last minutes, a last agenda item remains, to preview the last stretch of our timeline study, in the matter of Life’s last act, Life’s last gasp —

“Famous last words.”

These will be culminating rough reviews concerning three transgressing chemical assemblages, a transformative triad of synthetic odorants. Shall we then? proceed straight to the points for assignment to memory?

“Life is in its last stages.”

Manipulated musks and ionones and aldehydes are like the father son and holy spirit of counterfeit Creation, a trinity of Life-despoiling man-made fragrant constellations of compounds. Along with their analogues and derivatives, one two or (most often) all of these are incorporated into virtually every mass perfume of established commerce, which is not an overstatement. The marauding trio, chemical archetypes of hubristic human reduction, have spread widely to violate the Natural World.

“Life’s last stand, just as they planned.”

Much as we may be inclined to dramatize, our concern over the advance of meaninglessness, the ascent of insubstantiality, along with the ravaging of Life, it is not hyperbolic at all.

“Because of a fluke organic detail? a swollen forebrain fragment? a deeply rooted disdain ingrained in our brains? an innate impulse to reject our origins? an inherited tendency to turn against our biotic heritage?”

The history of perfumery … indicates an answer.

“Because those who are powerful profit from the enterprise? or because shortsightedness in most cases serves the interests of influential people? or because institutions that gain strongholds benefit to destroy what they can’t control?”

The epical running account of perfume … provides essential insight.

“We try to destroy Creation, not comfortable with what we know, try to change the equation, not pleased with how it goes, try to somehow move beyond Life, not accepting of how life ends. We’re terrified by the knowledge that death is coming?”

The plight of perfume through the ages … tells the story.

*****

Chapter 10. Musks

We press on.

Our chronicle of past events continues with the following excursus, leading off with the matter of perfume principles drawn from musk-deer exocrine scent glands. The actual tincture from the so-called pods, then grains upon drying, is confounding by its simultaneous or oscillating expressions of polar odor effects, an attribute inimitably characteristic of many complex natural substances, as compiled and described by fragrance chemists. Philip Kraft, for example, details his inventory of sensations that may register concurrently as nauseating and seductive and repulsive and attractive:

“Sweaty ammoniacal spicy chemical balmy acrid waxy resinous earthy pungent fatty dry leathery warm woody fig-like nutty chocolate-like and powdery,” Saffron reads from his paper in which he set down a diverse tally of aromatic notes suggested by emanations of genuine musk. Alas, the indefinable totality of impressions is usually abstracted to some sorrowfully diminished short list of identifiers, like warm and sweet, powdery and sensual.

“The series of qualifiers applies also to an array of musky communications in the Natural World. For instance, infochemical transmissions of alligators muskrat crocodiles and hyrax, musk weed and carrot seed, whales goats and galbanum, angelica root and aloeswood, muscovy duck and musk wood, snakes costus and African civet, musk ox and musk mallow, musk beetle and musk turtle, musk shrew and musk thistle.”

So why would those cavalier crusaders, the resource raiders and reigning traders in perfumery, cooperatively campaign to reduce Nature’s multifaceted marvels and embrace substitution with mere laboratory synthetics?

“Even those ravagers of Life, with their devil-may-care temper, would not dare ever, or rather, would rather never dare, aware that they had better never allow their customers to become aware, that cute and cuddly animals are being wantonly mutilated on their behalf,” Tulíp says.

“The straightforward answer, absent theories about the negation of Creation, is that authentic animal extracts resist long-term storage and standardization, are spiking in cost, and invite adverse publicity,” Saffron says.

The string of representations and the historic succession of attempts to forge musk begins in 1888 Germany, with Albert Baur’s chance discovery while working with trinitrotoluene (TNT) … as he is trying to develop a bigger bang (pow), and does he ever (and how), but not as he expects (so how?) … the serendipitous explosion (ow) set off is a musk bomb (yow) ignited by his initial discovery of Musk Toluene (wow), which he names Musk Baur (now), which is followed by more findings (soon) in the form of structural analogues (boom), a cascade of new aromatic contrivances (boom boom) produced by chemical factories far and wide (boom boom boom). Some of the new concoctions seem familiar, some not (since the perception of powdery muskiness often appears a stranger to our olfactive memory), yet all reek of some variation of phony musk, of which the principal redolent aspect is animalic sweetness (eew).

These early introductions are arenes called nitromusks, which include 2,6-dinitro-3,4,5-trimethyl-1-t-butyl-benzene, 2,6-dinitro-3-methoxy-4-t-butyl-toluene, 4,6-dinitro-1,1,3,3,5-pentamethyl-indane, 2,4,6-trinitro-5-t-butyl-xylene, and 4,6-dinitro-2-acetyl-5-t-butyl-toluene.

“I recognize the shorthand … it’s Brut by Fabergé,” Tulíp makes a good guess.

“We should rather go by the registered trade names for these compounds, and also forgo identifying the manufacturers, and disregard for now all the trademark wars,” Saffron motions to shake off the vertiginousness that I’ve expressly encouraged.

All right then. Musk Tibetene and Musk Ambrette as well as Moskene and ever-popular Musk Xylene plus soon-to-become smashingly ubiquitous Musk Ketone are found in untold perfumes of commerce, notably during decades preceding the 1960s.

And also, these molecules soon appear (inconveniently) in rainwater samples everywhere, threatening the physical health of people and their biotic environments. Moreover, some of the reagents and intermediate products are (dangerously) explosive. Moreover, some nitromusks set off a (damagingly) dermatologic phototoxicity to sun-exposed skin.

“Here we go again.”

So now what? yes, exactly — fragrance scientists are good for another round of innovative chemical counterfeiting, underway in the latter twentieth century, to replace nitromusks with a new group of benzene derivatives — polycyclic musks — appealing to formulators especially because of their stability in harsh laundry detergents: first Phantolide, later Celestolide, then Traesolide — the compounds become commodities without delay, such as Tonalide and Galaxolide, which predominate straight away.

It’s simple: dimerization of butylene gives di-isobutylene which undergoes olefin metathesis with ethylene to yield neohexene which is mixed with p-cymene to turn by Friedel-Crafts reaction into hexamethyltetralin which is acetylated to give Tonalide…

“Smile, to let us know that you’re still listening,” Saffron warns again that we’re losing our audience.

Once more, workbench musk compounds are observed accumulating in aquatic and marine systems, but this time both polycyclic and nitromusks are implicated. And moreover, vexedly, they are bioaccumulating in animal organs, including body tissues of us primates, as indicated by epidemiological assays of breast milk and blood.

“Here we go again.”

So it’s back to the lab, back out with pipettes and condensers, beakers and burners, funnels and flasks and feedstocks, back to visit the shrine of technological aspirations, to now usher in the third round of improvisational sweet-animalic molecules, to present a category of scentful compounds structurally more similar to many musks in Nature — macrocyclic musks comprise a bumper class of man-made odoraments, industrial chemicals that include Ambrettolide, Globalide, Habanolide, Thibetolide, Exaltolide, Velvione, Muscone, Astratone, and Civetone.

“These appellations are sometimes overlapping, and mostly proprietary.”

Yet the reception by Industry is not so welcoming, since fabricating large rings of atoms invites extra steps of synthesis. So these macrocycles tend to be costlier to produce, squeezing return on investment.

“Here we go again.”

So it’s back on with the white lab coats and safety goggles, to continue cooking up what appears as a steady stream of entries new to the musk parade. This next contingent is regardable as fourth-generation, each product distinguishable by trace nuances and tonal qualities. The lengthy processional catalogue includes but is not limited to Helvetolide, Nirvanolide, Habanolide, Muscenone, Cyclomusk, Romandolide, and Versalide. Some are more practical, some more praised, some more prized, some more promoted, (some more putrid), but none much investigated for their toxicity to Living Nature.

“Concluding,” Saffron fears the tedium of technical information wears on our panel members, “the wide range of musk compounds is not delineated by any chemical structure, rather the principles are held together by a common sensory scaffolding, united by a pattern of intersecting fragrant tonalities, namely those radiantly sweet and rankly animalic, the area of odorful overlap, I believe that’s right?”

I’ve been asked about the molecule Muscone. This is a synthetic macrocycle known also to be a component of real grain musk, therefore considered a so-called nature-identical, at least in theory. But questions of purity aside (a big aside), the laboratory substance is still only one of numerous constituents of the natural material, so I presume (and trust the pertinent literature) that comparing the two is an exercise in pointlessness.

Other questions? endorsem*nts? testimony?

Tulíp confides with a wink, “Don’t get me started recounting my memories of men (I was young then) who effluxed musk, dawn to dusk, the head-shop oils of the sixties, the Kiehl’s version from the seventies, the Body Shop White Musk of the eighties … of all perfumed instruments of warfare, musk must, really musk just must be the biggest bust.”

To fulfill this evening’s coda, I’ll relate a bizarrely biting irony regarding the various musk molecules. On account that they deposit well on fabrics and survive laundering intact, the synthetic odorants are widely added to washing powders … and so … have become associated with clean textiles, identified with cleanliness … and so … are added to other types of soaps, reinforcing the correlation, furthering the circularity … and so … are added also to fabric softeners, air fresheners, creams, to instill an impression of immaculacy, are used even to scent unscented products (an extra dollop of incongruity) … and so … designers of mass perfumes, to conjure the olfactive suggestion of untainted pureness, employ foul and toxic musk compounds (here, show my head spinning on a pivot with smoke pouring from my ears).

“Soon we’ll have a look at another class of weaponry sponsored by the chemical power complex — ionones,” Saffron announces.

*****

Chapter 11. Ionones

“Okay then, looking back through history, along our timeline, we next bring to light … ionones,” Saffron presides over tonight’s review.

We refer to the new-to-Life practice by the big guns in mass perfumery of concentrating isomeric ionones, molecules which otherwise, in Nature, less obtrusively flit among the exhalations of plants and animals. And we especially refer to the methyl ionones of commerce, compounds previously alien to the biosphere.

“I’ll get the aspirin.”

Say, if fake musks are imagined to saturate our sensibilities by infantry, while aldehydes permeate our orientation by way of an air force, ionones should be considered to infiltrate our Weltanschauung by special covert military units.

“Hence, our continuing study in how to defend the territory of Creation,” Saffron is running low on patience with what she calls my metaphorizing.

Let’s shift to borrow from the lexicon of boxing — say that ionones deliver the jarring right cross, the potent number-two punch of the one-two-three combo that is well recognized by prizefighters. It comes immediately after the destabilizing uppercut rip to the body (musks) and is followed by the finish, the decisive left hook (aldehydes), rendering a luckless victim stupefied.

“Advanced training is the point of our gathering here,” she says that I suffer from a bad case of metaphoria.

We now take up from a previous salon to discuss how breakthroughs in ionone chemistry (Tiemann, 1893) have the effect of undermining the essence of violet lore. We’re not surprised that the neomanic conquistadores of power perfumery are defiantly unmindful of this technological subversiveness.

“Nonetheless, the bombardment is difficult to guard against,” she says that I’m drunk with metaphoricity.

The violet legend, the meaning and myth, the symbolism, the entire idea is themed upon subtlety, old-style distinction. At the height of its vogue during Victorian times, the flower traditionally engendered an image of a soft fragility and daintiness, an association of shy aloofness and proper lady-like reserve (it was even embraced by manuals of manners of that period), these connotations all related to the subdued sugary floral peppery green powdery herbal character of fragrance interpreted then as an understated expression imparting a toned-down impression.

“Moreover, the unique aromatic etherealization provokes episodes of selective anosmia, temporarily inducing our olfactive radar to fatigue, thereby reinforcing its reputation of coy chameleon-like evanescence.”

In the cultural matter of violet blossom and scent, thousands of pages have been penned. Many of the accounts have emphasized the nature of genteelness and have involved royalty or other elite social ranks.

“And then, change happens.”

Upon the condensation of citral with a ketone followed by cyclization of pseudomethylionone with an acid catalyst.

“It’s who we are. We wrangle and concoct. And it’s our lot to never stop.”

With the advent of lab-bench ionones, we can now remove a terminal zero from the price-tag value for a kilo of violet oil, and knock off two zeros for some of the cheaper compounds. Phenomenal price reductions signal that the chemical rejiggerers are back to rejiggering. Once again, the molecule twiddlers and diddlers are busy twiddling and diddling to serve the profit margins of the synthetic-molecule missioners.

“It’s who we are, how we fare. It’s what we do, what we hold to.”

Yet still, early twentieth-century luxury perfumes often include modica (or more) of pricey enfleurage extracts (absolue de pommade) of Parma or Victoria flowers, along with extracts of orris (from aged iris rhizomes rich in the ionone analogues, irones) and cassie and jasmine and lots more from the Natural World.

“It’s who we are. We simulate, then innovate, then inundate. It’s how we operate.”

By the time that Allied forces prevail in successive world wars, the war to render authentic absolue de fleurs de violette irrelevant also comes to a close. From this point forward, commercial perfumes fashioned with a violet motif contain not a trace of any substance harvested from actual violet blossoms.

“It’s who we are, what we stand for, what we work toward, what we believe, what we endeavor to achieve.”

We presently cast our attention to the new-to-Nature methyl ionones, a series of chemical introductions pronounced and unabashed. In no way, at no time, by no one, will these aromatic materials be construed as muted or modest.

“It’s who we are. We know nothing else. It’s how we carry on, how we get it on, how we get along.”

With these methyl ionones, out the window goes demure restraint, next out is gentle delicateness, discriminating refinement now flies past, faint elegance goes tumbling.

“The plant debaser, Luca Turin, trumpets methyl ionone as the most poetic molecule ever.”

Wait, first some background. Ionones make for a sizable chemical clique, an extended and proliferating family of terpenoid ketones. The compounds are biosynthetically derived from the breakdown of carotenoids (plant pigments), whereas they are techno-synthetically produced by many laboratory methods, growing in number. There are myriad types and grades, qualities and names of the trade. The versions represent variations on a configurational theme, then variations of variations, the diversification being mostly isomeric, that is, by slight changes in how the atoms are arranged and oriented.

“One can look over catalogues of brokerage firms — go ahead, read through the lists of ionones — we did.”

There are structural isomers that involve the position of double bonds (go ahead, check the chemical formulas — notice the alpha and beta and gamma prefixes?) and the insertion of hydrocarbon side chains (notice the n and iso prefixes?). And there are stereoisomers where bond structures are the same, yet differences of right- versus left-handedness are observable in three dimensions — of these, some involve the position of substituents on double bonds (notice the cis and trans prefixes?) and some involve the optically active mirror-image varied placement of side chains on asymmetric chiral carbons (notice the plus and minus and E and Z prefixes?).

“You’re sure that yours are not tension headaches?” Licorice asks.

“And there are derivatives and analogues including damascones with rearranged functional groups, and damascenones with a second double bond in the ring, and irones with an additional methyl group attached to the ring,” Saffron adds on.

All this is merely to point up the proliferation of odorants available to perfumers’ palettes. And to point out that the production of novel molecules is not just by innovative development of new pathways and feedstocks, but also accomplished by the nearly negligible manipulation of reaction conditions during synthesis.

“These chemicals of dissonance with respect to Creation are yet another instance of incongruence with respect to Life.”

And … one acclaimed gang of such incongruous chemicals — the methyl ionones — have influenced the complexion of so many perfumes, it’s futile even to begin listing. Pick up any extrait at any department store counter (exclude violet soliflores as too obvious) — classic, modern, no matter — a member of the stealthy ionone consortium is almost sure to be in there.

“Chanel №19 … it’s in there. Coty L’Origan … it’s in there. Nina Ricci L’Air du Temps … it’s in there. Yves Saint Laurent Paris … it’s in there. Lancôme Trésor … it’s in there. Dior Fahrenheit … it’s in there — really it’s almost everywhere and could be anywhere as we’re aware of few rare cases where it isn’t in there.”

In any event, this abbreviated roll is just to provide the warning — since we enthusiasts are often easy marks! — to avoid Nature-deprecating dupery and pass over opportunities to purchase true violet oil, which is certain to comprise Nature-deriding alpha-n-methyl ionone, either singly or among a Nature-depreciating co*cktail of allied Nature-demeaning isomers. The production of actual flower (not leaf) oil has long been consigned to history.

“Indeed, the genuine floral extract has been nearly phased out, but (psst) we should never say never when determined collectors of rarities are in the mix.”

All the same, those who submit to and defend the program of mass proxy perfumery have ideas to the contrary. They rhapsodize about Caron Violette Précieuse and Frédéric Malle Dans tes Bras, insisting that these compositions are not as we perceive, not brashly sweet and unrepentantly powdery, not blustery and obvious, but instead offer hints of or glimpses of violaceous elements in newly choreographed ways that simulate the hide-and-seek nature of violet principles in real-live living plants.

“Bois de Violette by Serge Lutens is called a love story in a bottle, and regarded as the perfumer Sheldrake’s peak-a-boo play of ionones.”

That perfume, meant to be identified with violets, is the perfumer’s creative exercise of gleaning and co-opting and repackaging expressions that are biologically compelling to us. Yet such contrived mimicry never rivals any scentful splendor, by any sensitive measure, that’s inherent in Nature.

“The fetishistic love story is more akin to misplaced love between a man and his inflatable doll.”

Licorice says, “To feign some opposition in the manner of devil’s advocate, I will note that many zealous perfumistas who are crazy for ionones have set in motion a groundswell, as niche perfumers are conceiving of unprecedented iononic effects with new disarming angles of orientation.”

Yes, we’re mindful of the sophisticated surrogating and mediating as it is practiced creatively by skilled technophilic perfumers. And we appreciate how fans of design trends in fragrance find each other in social cyberspace, how they exchange impressions and interpretations. And, we’re also aware of how the notional contents of such virtual communications are divorced from biology, and how disembodied fancies dance abstractly in the imaginations of people who are naive of natural history, and disregardful of real-World plant and animal ecologies and biotic associations. And when these adherents discuss plants, as they do, their botanical references are symbolic only, with no linkage to actual organisms that share this planet with us.

“Selections presently circulating include Parmavert from Bedoukian, Liffarome from IFF, and Undecavertol from Givaudan, as well as isopropylionone, methyl alpha-ionone glycidate, methyl decine carbonate…” Saffron takes a detour and proceeds for some reason to serve up samples from our collection of accessions of violet-themed isolated molecules. But it’s a punishing mistake, with heady head-achey consequences, to suddenly infect the aromatic ambience of our gathering with such battleship wakes of odor, by releasing these alien compounds from their hermetic enclosures (these strangers to Nature make dramatic entries tending to suck oxygen from rooms — figuratively and almost, though not exactly, literally — and their domineering declarations of pertinacity reverberate that they’ll stay around and refuse to leave even long after they’ve made their point).

“We are each to set down our individual inferences. Later we’ll discuss and compare these with ionone-rich botanical extracts, namely boronia and osmanthus and spikenard.”

Soon next, aldehydes.

*****

Chapter 12. Aldehydes

“Finally, to culminate our survey of history, we backtrack to the late nineteenth century…” Saffron starts out.

Aldehydes, more explicitly referenced as aliphatic aldehydes to distinguish them from terpenoid and cyclic aldehydes, or sometimes identified as fatty aldehydes, are a syndicate of fragrant compounds characterized structurally by a chain of carbon atoms with a terminal carbonyl group.

“Along with the two allied factions that we’ve previously covered, synthetic musks and ionones, aldehydes are soon to splash down upon human civilization.”

Some aldehydes (mostly those with longer carbon chains) are newly cooked up, molecules foreign to Creation that have been fondly bestowed with the appellation Children of Chemistry. Other aldehydes (mostly those with shorter carbon chains) are known to have been extant for ages as traces of vapors in Nature, by which we mean naturally occurring, yet are soon to be forged by Perfume Industry formulation scientists for assignment in unnaturally high proportions. Both of these categories of aldehydes, the Nature-strangers and the concentrated so-called Nature-identicals, the chemical fantasies and facsimiles, will foment surging recruitment of chemists and designers and others likewise estranged from organic Life, to join the runaway procession of operations for counterfeiting plant perfumes.

“The battery of fatty aldehydes are soon to become a scentful sensation against a backdrop of lamentation among Creation.”

Whereas the ascendancy of aldehydes doesn’t immediately come to pass upon Cesare Bertagnini’s early discovery (1853), and still not yet upon other revelations and introductions during succeeding decades, the big break is realized with the launch of №5 by Coco Chanel (1921), a fragrance deliberately created by (le nez) Ernest Beaux to be unabashedly bold and aggressive, and to be sure, it turns out to be defiantly obtrusive, I’d say a penetrating diffusive and trailblazing suffusive and tenacious in-your-face wall of intrusive synthetics.

“Innovative and influential … provocative and prototypical … it’s called … modern perfume.”

Certain of these aldehydes have been employed by perfumers before №5, but only in minute quantities. For example, you might recognize some of the soapy suggestions or orangey effects, or you might have happened upon the particular aldehydic evocation of snuffed-out candles.

“I don’t mind taking some poetic license to depict the fragrance as that of human contrivance.”

We shouldn’t be shocked that when elicitative principles are artificially concentrated and thus exhibit an unmitigated forceful intensity of odor, a disagreeable aroma might materialize. And indeed, it does in the case of massed aldehydes, a kind of permeating chemical perfuminess that’s distinct yet tricky to associate. This emissive aspect, in combination with those purveyed by aldehydes that are newly inserted into the fabric of Life on Earth, issue a groundbreaking collection of effluvial impressions…

“Flaunting fumes are thrown out that connote a hospital washroom — or an electric short circuit — the prominent and persisting swarm of assailing volatiles recalls burning plastic — or melting rubber — which is doused with bad champagne — in that, the totality of the tangled transmission effuses a unidimensional cloud of migraine-inducing brusque saccharinity — remindful of a bad embalming job maybe.”

With Beaux’s formulation — awash in aldehydes C10 and C11 and especially C12 aka 2-methylundecanal as well as phony musk and ionone compounds — for Mademoiselle Chanel, the blatant infiltrating aldehydic flagrant fragrance is embraced — no, not as a stunt — no, not as a joke — the new cultish chorus of perfumistas calls to bring it on — truly, the more the better — they can’t get enough — thereby kicking off an instantaneous legend-in-its-own-time notoriety and a pioneering trend destined to endure.

“There’ll be no putting this genie back into the aromatic-oil lamp.”

The marketing of the odorful artifice has been shrewd enough. The exaggerated break from the Natural World is billed as positively progressive, the cutting alien emanation redefined sympathetically as radiant, the molestful bouquet reinterpreted as fizzy and sparkly. It would seem that humankind is vulnerable to such subterfuge.

“Women don’t want to smell like a bed of roses, conceptualizes Mlle. Chanel.”

Still, it’s hard to make sense of such widespread olfactive acceptance of the massive noxious presence, which sets off such a reflexive rejective response by our indwelling instinct sense. We take it that the action of our imagination bears on the chemistry of connotation, which is subject to a measure of domestication. And we see this as an early accomplishment for the grand public relations program aimed to depreciate genuine perfumes of Life.

“No living plants were harmed in the manufacture of this perfume!”

And we presume that all the jubilating among the fraudful fraternity of promiscuous perfumers is owing to their success in stifling information that threatens to interfere with their campaign. It’s to celebrate their triumphal severing of linkages to Living Nature. It’s to rejoice over their newfound freedoms from inconvenient Earthly limits and contingencies.

“It’s a telling attainment, to drown out calls of the wild.”

(We’re now late into the night.)

“We analogize that aldehydes are the third of the convincing one-two-three punch combination of the chemical offensive,” Saffron raises a capitulating question to serve as this evening’s coda, “the round left hook to the head that follows the savage right cross to the face that follows the stiff uppercut to the torso delivered by human aggressors against vulnerable biological beings as well as bodiless expressions of life. But I wonder about an assault by such a wide swing? that it does not leave the attacker vulnerable to a meaningful counterpunch?”