'The Delicious Scent of Christmas'

The body of Aldo Buzzi’s work available in English translation, three slender volumes, is admirably slight: Journey to the Land of Flies and Others Travels (trans. Ann Goldstein, Random House, 1996); A Weakness for Almost Everything (trans. Ann Goldstein, Steerforth Press, 1999); and The Perfect Egg and Other Secrets (trans. Guido Waldman, Bloomsbury, 2005). Buzzi is a minor writer whose work possesses a major quotient of that nebulous virtue, charm. In his latest book, Charm: The Elusive Enchantment, Joseph Epstein concedes the futility of defining that titular quality, which never stops him from trying. For instance:

“Charm often carries an amiable, an admirable detachment. The charming person seems to have an amused—and amusing—coin de vantage, or angle on things. A glass of wine in his hand, a touch aloof, but never off-puttingly so he steps in to make a casual but telling observation, offers a witty remark, formulates rather better than anyone else what is really on everyone else’s mind.”

For Epstein, the writer who stands as a “superior model of charm” is Max Beerbohm. It might be useful for readers new to Buzzi to think of him as the Italian Beerbohm. The comparison is not precise. Beerbohm lived for decades in Rapallo but remained indelibly English. Like Beerbohm, Buzzi is the opposite of emphatic. His prose is buoyant and pleasing, like a Lester Young solo – thus, the opposite of an Albert Ayler solo. Included in The Perfect Egg is a brief piece (all of Buzzi’s pieces are brief) titled “Spekulatius,” which refers to the spiced shortcrust biscuits or cookies baked around Christmas in Germany and Austria. Typically, Buzzi includes the recipe, but the most amusing part of his mini-essay is devoted to his effort to describe a Platonic ideal of Christmas. It begins:

“These are biscuits to be hung by a golden thread from the Christmas tree—which is not a plastic object but a dwarf fir that actually smells like a fir. The firs sold to us at Christmas are normally quite odourless, of no more use than a rose without fragrance. It is, after all, the smell of the tree which, together with the aroma of the things hung on it (apples, tangerines, biscuits, nougat, chocolates) and the wax candles, provides the delicious scent of Christmas, which nobody forgets who has smelt it as a child.”

I never smelled any such thing as a child, though in imagination the fragrance is powerful, almost intoxicating. I recall the year my brother and I decorated the Christmas tree with hotdog buns, and no one noticed, which was both thrilling and disappointing. Buzzi continues with very specific directions for attaining his vision of a charmingly non-Dickensian Christmas:

“Dressing the tree is a job for the adults of the household. The children ought to see it once it is ready, with all the candles lit, as a magical apparition. The apples serve a particular function: with their weight they pull down the branches, which tend to rise too high; these therefore are put on first, to spread out and balance the tree. The tangerines follow, possibly with their leaves, and then the other things. Finally (after midnight) the coloured glass balls and the silver (not aluminum) tinsel are added, and the careful business of dressing the tree is completed with the star of Bethlehem placed on the very top.”

Such a Christmas tree I have never seen. Twelve Christmases ago we replaced fresh-cut trees with a collapsible plastic model, and the holiday has never been the same. Buzzi, momentarily, helps me remember a Christmas I never knew:

“The candles, besides giving out their magical golden light, warm the pine needles on the adjacent branches and contribute to producing the Christmas fragrance. Nowadays they are more often than not replaced by multi-coloured electric bulbs which light up and go out with the obsessive rhythm of a neon sign that filters through the half-closed blinds of hotel rooms in crime movies.”

Have a very merry non-neo-noirish Christmas.