THE OLDEST ROLE of scent, predating its use as a cosmetic, is as a vehicle to the realm of the spirit. And why not? Smell has always been recognized as the most ethereal of the senses. Perfumes are here but not here, of substance and of air, literally conjured out of spirit. Fleeting but embedded in memory, they embody both the evanescent quality of earthly existence and the possibility of eternity. As perfume seems to be the soul of the flower, so the spirit in man has seemed, in all ages, to be the elusive, immortal essence of his mortal body. All that is sacred in the human seems to be most poignantly hinted at in perfume.

“The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness.”

Poetry's another word