The topic may seem futile, but it is a topic that some great readers or bibliophiles care a lot about. Does the smell (indeed, the perfume) of books really exist, or is it just a feeling, let’s say, self-induced by too much love? Book lovers have always talked about it, but non-fans often make fun of what is generally considered a harmless obsession. Desy Icardi wrote to the propopsito a novel (very pleasant) some time ago, L’annusatrice di libri (Fazi, in the meantime he also published The Whisper Library) but in that case his protagonist “saw” thanks to the sense of smell the plots and adventures, in short, the nose was a reading tool. It is also true in the case of those who limit themselves, so to speak, and outside of any fantastic context, to savor the smell of the pages and bindings: but it is a very particular “reading”, of an aromatic type, which it does not concern the text, but rather what is called the paratext, in short, the object itself.
A series of research has shown that if the sensitivity is good, this is indeed possible: the books give off a rather diverse range of scents, which affects our brains. In 2017, two scholars from the University College of London, Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič, had already demonstrated this. in an essay published in Heritage Science (a magazine specializing in heritage sciences), working on the aromas emanating from paper and bindings, and relating them to the reactions they arouse in people: unpredictable, among other things. The smells of a book from 1928, adequately enhanced with a removal of fibers and therefore transformed into a sort of perfume, reminded the people to whom they were subjected now chocolate or cocoa, now coffee, wood or simply something burnt. The problem is in fact the subjectivity of the definitions. There is no recognized vocabulary, one goes by taste or by groping.
Bbc Mundo, that is the Spanish-language channel, has meanwhile taken a step further on this issue, conducting a vast investigation, with various specialists who have proposed many examples of chemical substances resistant over time, at least as regards their smell. . Among them is the “vanillin”, which tastes like vanilla; or acetic acid, which resembles vinegar; or the short-chain aldehydes, which taste like dry grass. Another compound, benzaldehyde, reminds finer noses of bitter almonds, and so on. All of these substances are the result of papermaking. And everything – or almost everything – arises from the elimination of the “lignin”, which would make it too fragile: but some of its essential oils remain together with the cellulose, and what gives the paper its characteristic aroma (which is also used in some perfumes).
The smell can thus come to be almost a poignant farewell, because the more the book is degraded, as happens for very old ones, the more it smells (collectors know this, from taste and experience, and perhaps melancholy). As for the rest, on the almost always pleasure effects that can be derived from it, the word goes to the psychologist. Or better still, to readers, even without twilight nostalgia. Alberto Manguel, the famous bibliophile writer who as a young student read to Borges, the great blind man of Buenos Aires, revealed for example in a lecture at the British Library that he loved Penguin paperbacks very much: for their smell of fresh, fragrant rusks. Never give in, it goes without saying, to the temptation to put them in the toaster.