What’s the smell of yellow? I remembered the first time I read T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J.F. Prufrock. I thought, this yellow fog must smell quite pleasant. Imagine a cat running through the windowpane and the breeze caresses its hair. The caressing might be in a sensual, decadent way, like people’s impression on the Savoy. But as I discussed the smell of yellow in Prufrock’s context, my friends disagreed. They said it should smell like chemical, like pesticide, for it’s a product of industrialization. The air got contaminated. Not romantic at all.
When it comes to the unpleasant side of the smell of yellow, I think about Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. The yellow, brownish stains on the yellow wallpaper. It’s a shame to the family, like this psychotic woman in the story.
Now, yellow’s relation to sickness. I am thinking about yellow fever. I think about the yellow sail Aschenbach saw in Death in Venice. Sickly, but alluring. I think I reach a conclusion. The smell of yellow is sickly and alluring. Oh I wish I could smell the yellow fog once in my life.
(Overall response: I tend to be allusive. But people are oftentimes ignorant of my allusions. :/)
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