Roy Bedichek tells of going on a walk through a grove of sycamores. He started looking for a word to describe the odor.
Dictionaries failed. He checked the poets, but they don’t help either.
Indeed, there seems to be no way of imparting to the unfamiliar nose a hint of what it is like to inhale in early morning or at nightfall this damp, woodsy odour.
Knowing a smell is a bit like knowing a color. It’s something you’ve experienced or you haven’t. If you don’t know what red is, a description isn’t going to help.
I don’t know what gave Bedichek the idea of writing The Sense of Smell, but I suspect it had something to do with that morning walk through a grove of sycamores.
I do know what that is like: experiencing some natural wonder and then finding myself at the limits of language — and thus thought.
• Source: Roy Bedichek, The Sense of Smell; London: Michael Joseph, 1960, p. 17.
No comments:
Post a Comment