antaeus

I must admit: I love this perfume. Years have passed since my last closer encounter with this scent and my scent memories have almost entirely fainted. This has primarily to do with my brain’s limited capacity of memorizing things that are important; thus, I have no accessible memories anymore, of when and where I bought it and what my first impressions were. I guess this is the price I have to pay for information and sensorial overload… but I still love my 1 kg assembly of nervous tissue for providing me with sweet memories of unimportant things, such as the price of my airplane ticket to the US in 1980 (1390 Swiss Francs, Brussels-Florida return).

Back to Antaeus: A powerful chypre accord, well done and present from the very start.
For all its masculinity with its woody and leathery aspects and a touch that reminds me of the taste of an unlit good cigar from Cuba, price range of “Lanceros”, Antaeus evokes a feminine side on my skin which is not really in line with the picture of a giant Greek hero. Once the first -almost a little bit too much in intensity- citrus and sweet aldehyde fruity (peach?) head notes evaporated, this side shows itself. There is softness in it which is intriguing. Maybe it is the cistus with musks, which is so artfully integrated into a background of patchouli, castoreum, and other woods? I think this is one reason why I like it so much. It is ambiguous, undefined, and somewhat vague in that sense.

Antaeus is a scent of the eighties with a name that refers to ancient mythology.
Here’s the story of Antaeus’ end in a condensed manner, written by Pindar, in the Odes Isthmian, 4 ep.3:
“To the house of Antaios (Antaeus) there came a hero from Thebes of Kadmos’ race (Herakles), to Libya’s corn-lands, small in his body’s height but of soul indomitable, bringing a wrestler’s grip to stay him who crowned with skulls of strangers Poseidon’s holy shrine”.
Thus, we are faced with a brut skull collector (Antaeus), a fighting machine, a disordered male, without place in modern society. He slaughters other human beings and was killed by another testosterone driven guy who discovered the source of Antaeus’ power: His connection to Gaia, mother earth. Once lifted, loosing this essential connection to earth, Antaeus becomes vulnerable and will be defeated by Herkules. In a sense, Antaeus is powerful, because he has this connection to the feminine side of power, Gaia, nourishing and supporting us all. He is strong as long as this bond is unbroken. Which brings us back to the scent and its feminine aspects; Antaeus is for all its masculinity drawing its power from a feminine source. Antaeus, I guess finally, had a psychological disorder, or in other words that are less polite: He was psycho. What a concurrence that this perfume was launched in an époque when a book appeared on the market, called American Psycho. Coincidence?