Perfume, Vocabulary and Dictionary

People usually repeat the same mistake when they blame a certain lack of vocabulary for perfumes and the difficulty to communicate them. I cannot blame the English language just because of my basic understanding of a foreign language which allows me very little freedom, unlike a native writer who masters all the subtleties. In our daily existence we do not need to understand or verbalize a scent as we rarely analyze pictures except their most obvious content. The highly formalized vocabulary of art is extremely recent compared to the history of Art. The recognition of the perfume as an art form starts with the Word and the scent has all the attributes of a language.

If you show to anybody about 100 raw materials asking to describe a scent with those "words" contained in a bottle, he will immediately select several bottles which represent the description or definition of the unknown scent and eventually will verbalize some aspects which cannot be found within the given range. It's exactly what Jean Baptiste Grenouille did in the movie Le Parfum when he selected the "words" to make the beautiful "phrase" of the perfume, without knowing or understanding the label of the bottle. On a similar level, you cannot reproduce a fragrance by nose if you have never smelled they key ingredients or if you have a very limited range of "bottles". (clique aqui para ler o artigo completo)