In the barbaric
stages of society this element becomes self-conscious and is clearly
avowed; personal odors are constantly described with complacency,
sometimes as mingled with the lavish use of artificial perfumes, in much
of the erotic literature produced in the highest stages of barbarism,
especially by Eastern peoples living in hot climates; it is only necessary
to refer to the _Song of Songs_, the _Arabian Nights_, and the Indian
treatises on love. Even in some parts of Europe the same influence is
recognized in the crudest animal form, and Krauss states that among the
Southern Slavs it is sometimes customary to leave the sexual parts
unwashed because a strong odor of these parts is regarded as a sexual
stimulant. Under the usual conditions of life in Europe personal odor has
sunk into the background; this has been so equally under the conditions of
classic, mediaeval, and modern life. Personal odor has been generally
regarded as unaesthetic; it has, for the most part, only been mentioned to
be reprobated, and even those poets and others who during recent centuries
have shown a sensitive delight and interest in odors--Herrick, Shelley,
Baudelaire, Zola, and Huysmans--have seldom ventured to insist that a
purely natural and personal odor can be agreeable.
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