Smelling like Elves, continued

I think we’ve found the ur-text for olfactory theory. The question of how Elves smell has been popping up again. And what does that have to do with the Holy Grail, I wondered, since we just finished Le Morte d’Arthur.  Here we go, with a tip of the hat to JSTOR Daily.

Harvey, Susan Ashbrook. “St. Ephrem on the Scent of Salvation.” The Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 49, no. 1, 1998, pp. 109–128. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23968211 .

Early Christians didn’t include incense in their ceremonies, perhaps because they wanted to distinguish themselves from the other religions around Syria in Late Antiquity. St. Ephrem was instrumental in getting smells back into the Mass, in the 4th Century AD. Even if Tolkien didn’t think along these lines himself, Charles Williams certainly did, and it seems likely that he would have suggested it. (Certainly the assertion that he did not would require some proof.)

Not as tasty, but still sage.

But there are other channels besides the sacramental at work, getting smells into LotR. Studies of religious practice are outside the Idiosopher’s ken, but puns are right in the middle of it.

Culinary sage belongs to the genus Salvia, and we get our word by mispronouncing that.

Elves are sage, too. According to the OED, sage-the-herb has nothing to do etymologically with sage-the-wise-person, so we English-speakers must have made the connection ourselves.

Harvey suggests in her footnote 3 that a broad survey of olfactory cultural significance can be found in her footnote 4. (A linked series of footnotes like this presents a challenge for the mathematical theory, which assumes independence of information.) Anyway, an aspiring olfactory literary critic would do well to start with these references:

• Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: the Cultural History of Smell (New York: Routledge, 1994);

• Béatrice Caseau, Euodia. The Use and Meaning of Fragrances in the Ancient World and their Christianization (100-900 AD) (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1994);

• W. Deonna, ‘EUWDIA: Croyances antiques et modernes: L’Odeur suave des dieux et des élus’, Genava 17 (1939), 167-263;

• Marcel Detienne, The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology, with an introduction by Jean-Pierre Vernant, trans. J. Lloyd (Hassocks, Sussex: the Harvester Press, Ltd., 1977);

• S. Lilja, ‘The Treatment of Odours in the Poetry of Antiquity’, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 49 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1972).