Fragrance Quote
In “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman separates bottled perfume from open air: “The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation.”
In His Own Words
“Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,”
— Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass (1855)
Essential Details
Whitman on Perfume and Open Air at a Glance
- Speaker: Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
- Source: Leaves of Grass, 1855 (section 2 in later numbering)
- Status: Public domain
- Theme: Perfume versus fresh air
Why the Quote Resonates
Whitman admits he likes perfume, then sets it against the air outdoors, which he prefers because it carries no distillation at all. The contrast is still how fresh and outdoor fragrances are discussed. Materials such as ozonic notes try to suggest that clean-air feeling in a bottle.
Bottled Air
Perfumers have long tried to capture air, rain and sea, often with synthetic materials because those things yield no extract. See the aquatic group in the Library, and read how Piesse first tried to organize scents into a scale. Whitman’s older contemporaries wrote about scented rooms differently, as in Huysmans.
Why it matters
Whitman liked perfume, but he loved air that smelled of nothing.
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