Perfumery

The meaning of Perfume, or, rather, vice-versa:

But what comes nearest to a woman’s perfume is the meaning of a thing. An object which has a meaning points over its shoulder to another object, a general situation.. It exists under our eyes, but is not really visible. Meaning is an intermediary between the present thing which supports it and the absent object which it designates; it retains within itself a little of the former and already points to the latter. It is never completely pure; there is in it, as it were, the memory of the forms and colors from which it emanates.. It does not exhibit itself; it holds itself back.. For Baudelaire whose spleen always demanded an ‘elsewhere’, it was the very symbol of non-satisfaction; a thing which has meaning is always an unsatisfied thing.. it will be seen that in Baudelaire the words ‘perfume’, ‘thought’ and ‘secret’ are more or less synonymous.

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.