Perfume

Front cover of a 2010 English-language edition of Perfume.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (German: Das Parfum: Die Geschichte eines Mörders, ISBN 3257016786) is a darkly comic historical fantasy crime novel by the German author Patrick Süskind. It was first published in 1985. The English translation by John E. Woods (ISBN 0241119197) was first published in 1986. Woods' translation won both the World Fantasy Award and the PEN Translation Prize in 1987. Perfume has been translated into forty-nine different languages, including Latin. It has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling German novels of the 20th century.

The novel takes place in 18th century France. The main character is a man named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. The illegitimate son of a woman who is executed for leaving him to die of exposure at birth, Grenouille grows up as an unloved orphan From childhood, he is aware that he has an extraordinarily good sense of smell, although it is only as an adult that he realizes he has no natural body odor himself. The young Grenouille enjoys remembering smells and thinking of combinations of those memories to create new imaginary scents. Due to his ability to break down smells into their constituent parts and to imagine new and pleasant combinations of scents, Grenouille manages to convince the Parisian perfumer Giuseppe Baldini to take him on as an apprentice. It is in Baldini's shop and later in the town of Grasse, acknowledged as the place where all of the best perfumers in France learn their craft, that Grenouille learns to extract the scent from any object or animal. He finds, however, that it is necessary to kill the animals first to prevent them from fighting back. Although he usually finds the smell of other human beings to be highly unpleasant, Grenouille discovers that some people, all of them young women and girls, give off a very pleasing odor that causes other people to love them. Grenouille realizes that he can extract that scent and use it to create a perfume that will make everyone love him. To make that perfume, Grenouille murders twenty-five young women.

Süskind may have drawn inspiration for hs novel from the case of the real-life Spanish serial killer Manuel Blanco Romasanta (1809-1863), who used fat from some of his victims to make high-quality soap. The main character may have been named after the founder of the French perfume and cosmetics company Grenoville, who was born Paul Grenouille but changed his surname to Grenoville when he established the business in 1879.

Perfume has been adapted for the stage, film and television and has inspired numerous works of music.

Plot

Part One

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born in 1738 while his mother is working at a fish market inside an old cemetery in Paris. His unmarried mother has had several children before. She does not think of illegitimate children as "real children", like the ones she still hopes to have one day after she gets married, and left them all to die of exposure. Grenouille only escapes the same fate because this time his mother faints. While the woman is being tended to, the baby is discovered under a table. The truth about the woman's previous children comes out and she is tried and executed for their murders.

Grenouille is assigned to the care of the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie. She refuses to care for him any longer when she realizes he is not like other babies because he has no body odor. She leaves him with the priest Father Terrier. Father Terrer at first refuses to believe that the child has no body odor. When he has to admit that it is true, he worries that there might be something demonic about the boy. Grenouille is then placed in the orphanage run by Madame Gaillard. She has no sense of smell and therefore does not notice Grenouille's lack of odor. None of the other children ever become friends with Grenouille. Something about him always makes them feel uneasy.

It takes several years for Grenouille to learn to speak. He attends a school where he learns to read and write but not much else. From childhood, however, Grenouille is aware that he has an exceptional sense of smell. He enjoys identifying all smells, even though he lacks the vocabulary to put a name to many of them. He is skilled at identifying which individual odors make up part of a larger smell. He enjoys remembering the smells later and imagining combining different smells to create new scents.

At the age of 13, Grenouille has to leave the orphanage. He becomes apprentice to the tanner Grimal. Grenouille works hard and becomes a valued employee.

One evening, Grenouille smells a scent he has never smelled before. Since he usually finds the smell of other human beings to be quite unpleasant, Grenouille is surprised to find the scent is coming from a young girl. He follows her undetected. So as to keep her smell to himself, Grenouille strangles the girl. He continues to breathe in her scent until it leaves her dead body. He regrets that he is unable to preserve the girl's scent.

Grimal sends Grenouille to deliver some leathers to the perfumer Giuseppe Baldini, whose shop and house are two of the many buildings on the bridge called the Pont-au-Change. Baldini was once a celebrated perfumer but his fortunes are now fading. He has spent several hours trying to work out the formula of Amour and Psyche, one of the most popular perfumes of his much more successful rival Pélissier, so that he can copy it. When Grenouille arrives at the shop, he immediately realizes what Baldini has been trying to do. He offers to replicate Amour and Psyche using the ingredients in Baldini's shop. Expecting to give the young man who has boasted about his excellent nose a lesson in humility, Baldini allows him to proceed. Although Baldini is horrified by the manner in which he creates it, going against all of the established rules of perfume making, Grenouille produces an exact copy of Amour and Psyche. He then goes on to make a new perfume that is an improved version of Amour and Psyche. Baldini agrees to take Grenouille on as an apprentice, purchasing his apprenticeship from Grimal.

Baldini teaches Grenouille how to extract scents through distillation. Grenouille is, however, disappointed to find out that distillation is useless for extracting the scents of things such as stone, metal and glass. Grenouille develops many perfumes for Baldini, all of which are extremely popular and lead to Baldini becoming more successful and richer than he had ever been before. Just as Baldini is planning on expanding his business further, Grenouille falls seriously ill. The doctor says there is no chance that he will survive. From his sickbed, Grenouille asks if there are other methods of extracting scent apart from distillation. Baldini replies that there are and that the best place to learn them is in the town of Grasse in the south of France where all the best perfumers learn their trade. Grenouille then makes a remarkable recovery.

Grenouille asks Baldini to grant him his journeyman's papers so that he can leave his apprenticeship. Baldini says he will do so if Grenouille leaves Paris forever and never makes or sells any of the perfumes that he created while he was his apprentice. Grenouille agrees and even gives Baldini the formulas for many more unmade perfumes before he leaves for Grasse. Baldini goes to bed secure in the knowledge that his business will be successful for many years to come. He never wakes up. During the night, his house and shop collapse and fall into the River Seine along with all of their contents. All of the buildings on the Pont-au-Change are demolished soon afterwards.

Part Two

Grenouille sets out for Grasse. Once he leaves Paris and finds himself in the countryside, he is delighted by the new smells he encounters. During his journey, Grenouille comes to despise the smell of other human beings. First he avoids towns, then villages and farms. He eventually takes to traveling at night to avoid other travelers. Grenouille comes to a cave on top of a mountain and stays there for seven years. He lives on the few plants that grow near the cave. His clothes become tattered and his shoes rot away completely. Grenouille amuses himself by remembering the odors he has previously smelled. It is in the cave, after awaking from a bad dream, that Grenouille discovers he has no body odor. He realizes that is why people often failed to notice his presence.

Grenouille leaves the cave and arrives in the town of Montpellier. He explains his strange appearance by saying that he was abducted by bandits who kept him prisoner in a cave for seven years. He is in poor health and is put under the care of the local lord, the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse. The Marquis is an amateur scientist. He has developed a theory that the Earth gives off a deadly gas and that a life-giving gas comes from the heavens. He believes that children grow taller to be nearer to the life-giving gas and that people die when they get nearer to the Earth's deadly gas after aging and becoming shorter. The Marquis claims that Grenouille's bad health is due to spending seven years near to the Earth's deadly gas inside the cave. He also claims to be able to cure Grenouille by exposing him to the life-giving gas. Grenouille is exhibited to the scientific community before and after his cure. The Marquis' theory appears to have been proven when after being exposed to air from on high and given only food that grows above the ground for a week, as well as being washed, shaved, given new clothes and permitted by the Marquis to speak during the second exhibition, Grenouille is transformed from savage to gentleman. Before being exhibited for the second time, Grenouille is allowed to make a perfume for himself. He actually makes two perfumes, one of which is an imitation of normal human scent. Grenouille is accepted into Montpellier society. He realizes that it is not only possible to create a human-like scent that will make people accept him, but also a superhuman-like scent that will make people adore him. He continues his journey to Grasse.

Part Three

On arrival in Grasse, Grenouille notices a scent similar to that of the girl he killed in Paris. The scent is once again given off by an adolescent girl. Grenouille concludes that some young women give off a special odor that makes people love them. Other people think they love those women because of their looks when it is really because of their smell. Grenouille decides not to kill the girl yet because her scent will be even more powerful in two years time.

Grenouille finds employment as the second journeyman at the perfumery of the widow Madame Arnuffi and lives in a hut on her premises. The first journeyman, Dominique Druot, is in a sexual relationship with Madame Arnuffi. He eventually marries her and takes over ownership of the perfumery. Druot realizes early on that Grenouille is a skilled perfumer and largely allows him to run the perfumery. In Grasse, Grenouille learns to extract scents through enfleurage. He carries out experiments and learns that through enfleurage, unlike through distillation, he is able to preserve the scent of any object. He also finds he is able to preserve the scent of animals. Since the animals struggle if he begins the process while they are still alive and since fear ruins their scent, Grenouille finds it necessary to kill them first by hitting them over the back of the head from behind.

To make a perfume that would make everybody love him, Grenouille begins killing young women who give off the special odor. He takes advantage of the fact that he has no natural body odor to take his victims by surprise and strike them over the back of the head. He extracts their scent through enfleurage, cutting off their hair and removing their clothes before beginning the process. He buries the hair and clothes inside his hut and leaves the women's naked corpses to be discovered. Grenouille murders twenty-four women. The presence of a serial killer in Grasse causes great distress. The authorities investigate the murders but have no clue as to the murderer's identity. Antoine Duchis, the richest man in Grasse, concludes that the only thing all the victims had in common was that they were beautiful. Considering his daughter Laure to be the most beautiful young woman in Grasse, Duchis decides to take her to a monastery on an otherwise deserted island for her protection. Grenouille does indeed intend to kill Laure. He follows her scent, stays at the same inn where she and her father are staying, kills her and extracts her scent during the night.

The dead women's hair and clothes are discovered buried inside Grenouille's hut. He is arrested, tried and convicted for the murders. He is sentenced to be publicly executed by being tied to an X-shaped cross and having all of his bones broken with an iron rod. An enormous crowd gathers to watch Grenouille die. Before the execution, Grenouille puts on some of the perfume he has made using the scents of his twenty-five victims. All of the spectators gathered to watch the execution, as well as the executioner, are suddenly convinced Grenouille is innocent and feel an intense love for him. All of the gathered people then begin to express their love for Grenouille by having sex with each other. Antoine Richis takes Grenouille home and is prepared to adopt him as his son. Grenouille, however, leaves Richis' house the following morning.

Many of the people of Grasse are so ashamed of taking part in a mass public orgy that they genuinely cannot remember doing so. The investigation into the murders is reopened. Since the hair and clothes were found on Dominique Druot's premises, he is arrested. He confesses to the crimes under torture and is hanged without ceremony.

Part Four

Grenouille still has a lot of the perfume he made left. He could get the King of France to bow before him or make the Pope declare him the Messiah. He decides, however, that the love the perfume makes people feel is meaningless. He returns to Paris and to the old cemetery where he was born. It is night when he arrives and beggars, pickpockets and prostitutes are camping there. Grenouille douses himself in the perfume. All the beggars, pickpockets and prostitutes are so overcome with love for Grenouille that they begin tearing off pieces of his clothes to keep. They then begin tearing off his flesh and eating it. By dawn, Grenouille has completely disappeared. Although each of Grenouille's attackers had previously killed at least one other person, none of them had ever eaten anyone before. They all agree, however, that what they did was an act of love.

Adaptations

Giuseppe Baldini's perfumery as it appears in the 2006 film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

Perfume was faithfully adapted as the 2006 English-language film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, directed by acclaimed German director Tom Tykwer and co-produced by production companies from Germany, France, Spain and the United States. The film stars Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, Dustin Hoffman as Giuseppe Baldini, Alan Rickman as Antoine Richis and Rachel Hurd-Wood as Laure Richis. The film was an international box office success. Having been made on a budget of US$60 million, it earned US$135 million worldwide, most of those earnings being made in Europe. The film took US$9.7 million on its opening weekend in Germany and remained the box office number one there for three weeks. It also won multiple awards in Germany. The film fared less well in North America, where it received mixed reviews from critics and only earned US$2,223,293 at the box office.

The novel was loosely adapted as the six-episode German TV series Perfume (Parfum), the first episode of which first aired on the channel ZDFneo on November 14, 2018, and as the 2022 German film The Perfumier (Das Parfumer), for which Patrick Süskind was one of the writers. Both of those adaptations are set in the present-day.

Russian composer and singer Igor Demarin adapted Perfume as the rock opera Perfumer that was first performed in Moscow on December 5, 2010.

The songs "Scentless Apprentice" by Nirvana, "Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met)" by Panic! At the Disco, "Red Head Girl" by French duo Air, "Du riechst so gut!" ("You smell so good") by German group Rammstein, "Herr Spiegelmann" by Portuguese band Moonspell and "향 (Scentist)" by South Korean boy band VIXX are inspired by the novel.

External links

• Perfume on GoodReads.