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Perfume (book)
Encyclopedia
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 1985 literary
historical
cross-genre
novel (originally published in German as Das Parfum) by German writer Patrick Süskind
. The novel explores the sense of smell
and its relationship with the emotional meaning that scents may carry. Above all this is a story of identity, communication and the morality of the human spirit.
The story focuses on Jean-Baptiste Grenouille
, a perfume apprentice in 18th century France who, born with no body scent himself, begins to stalk and murder virgins in search of the "perfect scent", which he finds in a young woman named Laure, whom his acute sense of smell finds in a secluded private garden in Grasse
.
Some editions of Perfume have as their cover image Antoine Watteau
's painting Jupiter and Antiope, which depicts a murdered woman.
") was born in Paris, France, July 17 of 1738. His mother gives birth to him while working at a fish stall. As she has had given birth four times previously while working, she cuts his umbilical cord and leaves him to die. However, Grenouille cries out from inside the pile of fish heads and guts, and his mother is caught, tried for multiple infanticide, found guilty and is decapitated. As a child, Grenouille is passed along different wet nurses, who give him away due to him being too greedy, and then is given to a parish, which gives him to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie. She returns to the parish a few months later, saying that the child is possessed by the devil, as he drinks her dry and has no scent. The priest doesn't believe her, saying that there's no way that the child could be possessed by the devil. He sends the wet nurse away and cuddles Grenouille for a while. Curious, the priest, Terrier, leans in to take a smell. He expects to smell at least a little bit of scent, but he doesn't. Grenouille wakes up then and starts sniffing at the air, and Terrier feels as if the baby is sniffing at his soul, looking at his deepest secrets. Recoiling, he finds himself thinking of the baby as a devil. He runs out of the parish and across town, and gives the child to a orphanage on the outskirts of the city.
Grenouille has an extraordinary power to discern odours. He navigates the orphanage using only his nose, and barely uses his sight. The other children do not hate him, but they try to suffocate him several times because he is different, and they can't tell why. Grenouille grew up cold and unfeeling; he was unafraid of anything and took punishment easily. When the owner of the orphanage discovers that Grenouille can locate hidden money with his sense of scent, she became afraid and later got rid of him by apprenticing him to a tanner
. Later in life, the orphanage owner loses all her money and dies in a disgraceful way that she was afraid of. Grenouille explores the city during his free time, and memorizes all the smells of Paris. He has no bias or preferences against scent and seeks out every smell and every variation of every smell that he can find. He seeks scents for the sake of knowing, and he had no purpose in gathering all the scents but to satisfy his greed for smells. One day, on a day when he had memorized nearly all the smells of the city, he smells a scent that he has never smelled before. Entranced, he traces it with his nose, and finds that the source of this scent is a young virginal girl just passing puberty (14-15 years old), who is slicing plums. Grenouille's heart starts beating; it is the start of a passion, but Grenouille, who has never felt anything like love or affection before, does not know what it is. Unnoticed, he gets closer to her, to get a better smell of her scent. The girl feels that something is not right and turns, sees Grenouille, and freezes in terror. Grenouille clamps his hand over her mouth. In fright, the girl doesn't fight back in any way. Grenouille strangles her, with his eyes closed and concerned only with her scent. When she dies, he strips her, lays her down on the ground and smells her scent until it disappears from her body due to death. He does his best to remember every bit of her scent. This is the first time he felt a smell as being 'good'. In a happy daze, Grenouille returns to the tanner's shop where he sleeps. He decides that he must become a creator of scents, the greatest perfumier in the world, in order to create scents like the scent of the girl. He starts organizing the millions of scents he had gathered in his mental library into thousands of categories, such as fine, coarse, good, bad, fetid, and ambroisal.
In his quest to isolate and preserve scents, he becomes apprenticed to a once great perfumier, Baldini, and proves himself a talented pupil. His superior power to discern and dissect scents helps create wondrous perfumes and makes Baldini the most popular perfumier in Paris. However, Grenouille's ambitions are unmatched by technology: he cannot isolate the scent of inorganic materials, such as glass and iron, with the alembic
that they use. At this shock, Grenouille falls ill with smallpox
, presumably psychosomatically as a reaction to his body giving up on life as his quest can never be fulfilled. Yet Baldini has grown to cherish Grenouille for his skills and on his deathbed Baldini reveals to him that there are techniques other than distillation that can be used to preserve such odours. At this news, Grenouille miraculously recovers and resolves to journey to the city of Grasse
, the home of the greatest perfumiers, to continue his quest. After Grenouille leaves, great misfortune falls upon Baldini and his shop is destroyed, while he dies.
On his way to Grasse, Grenouille travels the countryside and discovers that he is disgusted with the scent of humanity. As he travels, he first avoids a city, then towns, then starts avoiding people that he can smell that are miles away. He reaches the Massif Central
, and finds a haven where he is liberated from the smell of humans. In the morning he laps at a thin stream of water for a couple hours and eat whatever he can get, including moss. After that, he crawls into a long, deep shaft in the ground, as far as he can get, where he is shielded from all scent except for dirt, rock and water. There he wedges himself against the stone and falls into a sort of meditation, first imagining himself as the creator of his world - Grenouille the Great -, 'seeding' the world with seeds of scent. later, tired from the act of creation, he retreats into a purple palace with a vast and grand library of scents inside his mind, served by scentless spectres who bring him "vials" of his favourite scents. And every day before he falls asleep he is brought the scent memory vial of the plum slicing girl, and gets drunk with its splendour before sleeping.
One day he wakes up from a nightmare, dreaming of being suffocated by a white fog. He knows that the white fog is his own odor, but he can't smell it. To shake off the confusion he examines his own scent for the first time. Going layer by layer from his surroundings and through his (now tattered) clothes and down to the grime and dirt he is covered in, he soon realizes that he has no scent at all. He is calm at this revelation, and squats in the dirt, simply nodding to himself. After a while, he dons his tattered clothing and leaves the mountain.
Grenouille journeys to Montpellier
where an amateur scientist, the Marquis
de La Taillade-Espinasse, uses Grenouille to test his thesis of the "so-called fluidum letale". The basic theory that the ground and objects from the ground release a slow poison that causes aging, and that being away from the ground and in high altitudes would counteract that poison. The Marquis combines a treatment of decontamination and revitalization for Grenouille, and subsequently Grenouille looks like a clean gentleman for the first time in his life. Grenouille in turn tricks his way into the laboratory of a perfumier. There he creates a body odour for himself from ingredients including "cat shit," "cheese," and "vinegar", which imitates the odour of humans. Previously, nobody would notice Grenouille due to his lack of scent, but his new "disguise" tricks people into thinking that it's the scent of a human, and he is accepted by society. It is only a test of his abilities, as he has grander plans yet. Grenouille runs away from Montpellier, where the Marquis wanted to keep Grenouille for his experiments and lectures. The Marquis later disappears after he climbed a tall mountain without gear to prove his theory of fluidum letale.
Finally moving to Grasse, Grenouille once again becomes intoxicated by the scent of a young girl transitioning through puberty to womanhood: Laure. He believes her scent to be greater than that of the plum slicing girl, but he also believes that she is not quite mature and plans to wait two more years until he can capture her scent at its peak, when she is sexually mature and her scent is at its purest. From a perfumier's widow and a working journeyman in Grasse, Grenouille learns how to trap scent in oil, not just in water as he did with an alembic, and experiments with animals. He discovers that he has to kill the animals to get a scent that is not polluted with fear and feces. While contemplating the scent of Laure, he is struck by the thought that whatever perfume that he could make would eventually run out. He shakes in fear, then realizes that he has to mix Laure's scent with those of others to make the ultimate perfume; one which will make him be worshipped as a god. He starts a chain of murders; silently killing 24 beautiful virgin girls that have just reached sexual maturity. The victims were always naked, shaved, and had their virginity intact, which scared the villagers.
Eventually, after two years of murders have passed, Laure's father pieces together the pattern of murders and realises that Laure, the most beautiful and beloved young woman in the city and just going through puberty, is most likely to be the next victim. He flees with Laure to hide and protect her, but Grenouille pursues them and kills Laure, capturing her scent.
Grenouille is apprehended soon after completing his perfume and sentenced to death. On the day of his execution, the intoxicating scent of Laure combined with the backdrop essences of the 24 virgins he murdered overwhelms all present, and instead of an execution the whole town is overwhelmed by a mix of divine reverence and carnal passion, erupting into a massive orgy
. The journeyman that Grenouille worked under is accused instead, and he is executed.
Grenouille is pardoned for his crimes, blessed and revered, and Laure's father even wants to adopt him. Just then, Grenouille discovers that he wants to be felt as a person, not for the perfume that he makes. But he quickly dismisses this, and goes to Paris, seeing that he could become a living god with his perfume.
In Paris, Grenouille approaches a group of low-life
people (thieves, murderers, whores, etc.). He is not wearing any scent, so they do not notice him. When they do notice Grenouille, it is when he sprinkles some of his perfume on himself. Overcome with a sudden carnal passion and love, even more so than the people of Grasse, they jump on him with the desire to keep him to themselves. fighting for Grenouille, they draw knives and butcher him, consuming his body. After the passion wears off, the people look around and feel slightly disgusted and embarrassed for having just eaten a human being, but they have an overwhelming internal sense of happiness. They are "uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love." (quote)
Literary fiction
Literary fiction is a term that came into common usage during the early 1960s. The term is principally used to distinguish "serious fiction" which is a work that claims to hold literary merit, in comparison from genre fiction and popular fiction . In broad terms, literary fiction focuses more upon...
historical
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
cross-genre
Cross-genre
A cross-genre is a genre in fiction that blends themes and elements from two or more different genres.-Examples:*Action comedy *Comedy-drama or dramedy *Comedy-horror...
novel (originally published in German as Das Parfum) by German writer Patrick Süskind
Patrick Süskind
Patrick Süskind is a German writer and screenwriter.- Life and work :The public knows little about Patrick Süskind. He has withdrawn from the literary scene in Germany and never grants interviews or allows photos. He was born in Ambach am Starnberger See, near Munich in Germany...
. The novel explores the sense of smell
Olfaction
Olfaction is the sense of smell. This sense is mediated by specialized sensory cells of the nasal cavity of vertebrates, and, by analogy, sensory cells of the antennae of invertebrates...
and its relationship with the emotional meaning that scents may carry. Above all this is a story of identity, communication and the morality of the human spirit.
The story focuses on Jean-Baptiste Grenouille
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is the protagonist from Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume, published in 1985. Grenouille is born with an extreme form of hyperosmia , which eventually leads to him becoming a serial killer....
, a perfume apprentice in 18th century France who, born with no body scent himself, begins to stalk and murder virgins in search of the "perfect scent", which he finds in a young woman named Laure, whom his acute sense of smell finds in a secluded private garden in Grasse
Grasse
-See also:*Route Napoléon*Ancient Diocese of Grasse*Communes of the Alpes-Maritimes department-External links:*...
.
Some editions of Perfume have as their cover image Antoine Watteau
Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement...
's painting Jupiter and Antiope, which depicts a murdered woman.
Plot
Grenouille (French for "frogFrog
Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...
") was born in Paris, France, July 17 of 1738. His mother gives birth to him while working at a fish stall. As she has had given birth four times previously while working, she cuts his umbilical cord and leaves him to die. However, Grenouille cries out from inside the pile of fish heads and guts, and his mother is caught, tried for multiple infanticide, found guilty and is decapitated. As a child, Grenouille is passed along different wet nurses, who give him away due to him being too greedy, and then is given to a parish, which gives him to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie. She returns to the parish a few months later, saying that the child is possessed by the devil, as he drinks her dry and has no scent. The priest doesn't believe her, saying that there's no way that the child could be possessed by the devil. He sends the wet nurse away and cuddles Grenouille for a while. Curious, the priest, Terrier, leans in to take a smell. He expects to smell at least a little bit of scent, but he doesn't. Grenouille wakes up then and starts sniffing at the air, and Terrier feels as if the baby is sniffing at his soul, looking at his deepest secrets. Recoiling, he finds himself thinking of the baby as a devil. He runs out of the parish and across town, and gives the child to a orphanage on the outskirts of the city.
Grenouille has an extraordinary power to discern odours. He navigates the orphanage using only his nose, and barely uses his sight. The other children do not hate him, but they try to suffocate him several times because he is different, and they can't tell why. Grenouille grew up cold and unfeeling; he was unafraid of anything and took punishment easily. When the owner of the orphanage discovers that Grenouille can locate hidden money with his sense of scent, she became afraid and later got rid of him by apprenticing him to a tanner
Tanner
Tanner may refer to:* 13668 Tanner, a main-belt asteroid discovered on 28 April 1997* Tanner '88, a television series about a fictional US presidential nominee* Tanner , an American band active in the 1990s...
. Later in life, the orphanage owner loses all her money and dies in a disgraceful way that she was afraid of. Grenouille explores the city during his free time, and memorizes all the smells of Paris. He has no bias or preferences against scent and seeks out every smell and every variation of every smell that he can find. He seeks scents for the sake of knowing, and he had no purpose in gathering all the scents but to satisfy his greed for smells. One day, on a day when he had memorized nearly all the smells of the city, he smells a scent that he has never smelled before. Entranced, he traces it with his nose, and finds that the source of this scent is a young virginal girl just passing puberty (14-15 years old), who is slicing plums. Grenouille's heart starts beating; it is the start of a passion, but Grenouille, who has never felt anything like love or affection before, does not know what it is. Unnoticed, he gets closer to her, to get a better smell of her scent. The girl feels that something is not right and turns, sees Grenouille, and freezes in terror. Grenouille clamps his hand over her mouth. In fright, the girl doesn't fight back in any way. Grenouille strangles her, with his eyes closed and concerned only with her scent. When she dies, he strips her, lays her down on the ground and smells her scent until it disappears from her body due to death. He does his best to remember every bit of her scent. This is the first time he felt a smell as being 'good'. In a happy daze, Grenouille returns to the tanner's shop where he sleeps. He decides that he must become a creator of scents, the greatest perfumier in the world, in order to create scents like the scent of the girl. He starts organizing the millions of scents he had gathered in his mental library into thousands of categories, such as fine, coarse, good, bad, fetid, and ambroisal.
In his quest to isolate and preserve scents, he becomes apprenticed to a once great perfumier, Baldini, and proves himself a talented pupil. His superior power to discern and dissect scents helps create wondrous perfumes and makes Baldini the most popular perfumier in Paris. However, Grenouille's ambitions are unmatched by technology: he cannot isolate the scent of inorganic materials, such as glass and iron, with the alembic
Alembic
An alembic is an alchemical still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube...
that they use. At this shock, Grenouille falls ill with smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
, presumably psychosomatically as a reaction to his body giving up on life as his quest can never be fulfilled. Yet Baldini has grown to cherish Grenouille for his skills and on his deathbed Baldini reveals to him that there are techniques other than distillation that can be used to preserve such odours. At this news, Grenouille miraculously recovers and resolves to journey to the city of Grasse
Grasse
-See also:*Route Napoléon*Ancient Diocese of Grasse*Communes of the Alpes-Maritimes department-External links:*...
, the home of the greatest perfumiers, to continue his quest. After Grenouille leaves, great misfortune falls upon Baldini and his shop is destroyed, while he dies.
On his way to Grasse, Grenouille travels the countryside and discovers that he is disgusted with the scent of humanity. As he travels, he first avoids a city, then towns, then starts avoiding people that he can smell that are miles away. He reaches the Massif Central
Massif Central
The Massif Central is an elevated region in south-central France, consisting of mountains and plateaux....
, and finds a haven where he is liberated from the smell of humans. In the morning he laps at a thin stream of water for a couple hours and eat whatever he can get, including moss. After that, he crawls into a long, deep shaft in the ground, as far as he can get, where he is shielded from all scent except for dirt, rock and water. There he wedges himself against the stone and falls into a sort of meditation, first imagining himself as the creator of his world - Grenouille the Great -, 'seeding' the world with seeds of scent. later, tired from the act of creation, he retreats into a purple palace with a vast and grand library of scents inside his mind, served by scentless spectres who bring him "vials" of his favourite scents. And every day before he falls asleep he is brought the scent memory vial of the plum slicing girl, and gets drunk with its splendour before sleeping.
One day he wakes up from a nightmare, dreaming of being suffocated by a white fog. He knows that the white fog is his own odor, but he can't smell it. To shake off the confusion he examines his own scent for the first time. Going layer by layer from his surroundings and through his (now tattered) clothes and down to the grime and dirt he is covered in, he soon realizes that he has no scent at all. He is calm at this revelation, and squats in the dirt, simply nodding to himself. After a while, he dons his tattered clothing and leaves the mountain.
Grenouille journeys to Montpellier
Montpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
where an amateur scientist, the Marquis
Marquis
Marquis is a French and Scottish title of nobility. The English equivalent is Marquess, while in German, it is Markgraf.It may also refer to:Persons:...
de La Taillade-Espinasse, uses Grenouille to test his thesis of the "so-called fluidum letale". The basic theory that the ground and objects from the ground release a slow poison that causes aging, and that being away from the ground and in high altitudes would counteract that poison. The Marquis combines a treatment of decontamination and revitalization for Grenouille, and subsequently Grenouille looks like a clean gentleman for the first time in his life. Grenouille in turn tricks his way into the laboratory of a perfumier. There he creates a body odour for himself from ingredients including "cat shit," "cheese," and "vinegar", which imitates the odour of humans. Previously, nobody would notice Grenouille due to his lack of scent, but his new "disguise" tricks people into thinking that it's the scent of a human, and he is accepted by society. It is only a test of his abilities, as he has grander plans yet. Grenouille runs away from Montpellier, where the Marquis wanted to keep Grenouille for his experiments and lectures. The Marquis later disappears after he climbed a tall mountain without gear to prove his theory of fluidum letale.
Finally moving to Grasse, Grenouille once again becomes intoxicated by the scent of a young girl transitioning through puberty to womanhood: Laure. He believes her scent to be greater than that of the plum slicing girl, but he also believes that she is not quite mature and plans to wait two more years until he can capture her scent at its peak, when she is sexually mature and her scent is at its purest. From a perfumier's widow and a working journeyman in Grasse, Grenouille learns how to trap scent in oil, not just in water as he did with an alembic, and experiments with animals. He discovers that he has to kill the animals to get a scent that is not polluted with fear and feces. While contemplating the scent of Laure, he is struck by the thought that whatever perfume that he could make would eventually run out. He shakes in fear, then realizes that he has to mix Laure's scent with those of others to make the ultimate perfume; one which will make him be worshipped as a god. He starts a chain of murders; silently killing 24 beautiful virgin girls that have just reached sexual maturity. The victims were always naked, shaved, and had their virginity intact, which scared the villagers.
Eventually, after two years of murders have passed, Laure's father pieces together the pattern of murders and realises that Laure, the most beautiful and beloved young woman in the city and just going through puberty, is most likely to be the next victim. He flees with Laure to hide and protect her, but Grenouille pursues them and kills Laure, capturing her scent.
Grenouille is apprehended soon after completing his perfume and sentenced to death. On the day of his execution, the intoxicating scent of Laure combined with the backdrop essences of the 24 virgins he murdered overwhelms all present, and instead of an execution the whole town is overwhelmed by a mix of divine reverence and carnal passion, erupting into a massive orgy
Group sex
Group sex is sexual behavior involving more than two participants. Group sex can occur amongst people of all sexual orientations and genders...
. The journeyman that Grenouille worked under is accused instead, and he is executed.
Grenouille is pardoned for his crimes, blessed and revered, and Laure's father even wants to adopt him. Just then, Grenouille discovers that he wants to be felt as a person, not for the perfume that he makes. But he quickly dismisses this, and goes to Paris, seeing that he could become a living god with his perfume.
In Paris, Grenouille approaches a group of low-life
Low-life
A low-life or lowlife is a term for a person who is considered morally unacceptable by their community, especially those who exploit others for their own selfish purposes...
people (thieves, murderers, whores, etc.). He is not wearing any scent, so they do not notice him. When they do notice Grenouille, it is when he sprinkles some of his perfume on himself. Overcome with a sudden carnal passion and love, even more so than the people of Grasse, they jump on him with the desire to keep him to themselves. fighting for Grenouille, they draw knives and butcher him, consuming his body. After the passion wears off, the people look around and feel slightly disgusted and embarrassed for having just eaten a human being, but they have an overwhelming internal sense of happiness. They are "uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love." (quote)
Characters (in order of appearance)
- Grenouille's mother – Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was her fifth baby. She had claimed her first four were stillbirthStillbirthA stillbirth occurs when a fetus has died in the uterus. The Australian definition specifies that fetal death is termed a stillbirth after 20 weeks gestation or the fetus weighs more than . Once the fetus has died the mother still has contractions and remains undelivered. The term is often used in...
s or "semi-stillbirths". In her mid-twenties, with most of her teeth left, "some hair on her head", and a touch of goutGoutGout is a medical condition usually characterized by recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis—a red, tender, hot, swollen joint. The metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of the big toe is the most commonly affected . However, it may also present as tophi, kidney stones, or urate...
, syphilisSyphilisSyphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
and consumption (tuberculosisTuberculosisTuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
), she was still quite pretty. - Jean-Baptiste GrenouilleJean-Baptiste GrenouilleJean-Baptiste Grenouille is the protagonist from Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume, published in 1985. Grenouille is born with an extreme form of hyperosmia , which eventually leads to him becoming a serial killer....
– Protagonist. Born July 17, 1738. - Jeanne Bussie – One of Grenouille's many wet-nurses. She is the first person to realise he has no scent and claims he is sucking all the life out of her.
- Father Terrier – He is in charge of the church's charities and distribution of its money to the poor and needy. He first thinks Grenouille is a cute baby, but once Grenouille begins to sniff Terrier, the priest is highly disturbed and sends the baby to a boarding house.
- Madame Gaillard – She has no sense of smell, due to being hit across the face with a poker in her younger years, so she does not know that Grenouille has no scent. In charge of a boarding house, her goal in life is to save enough money to have a proper death and funeral. Madame's poor sense of smell and ignorance about Grenouille's gifts, coupled with his assistance in finding her hidden money through his olfactory ability, caused Madame to believe he had second sight (psychic). She believed that people with second sight bring bad luck and death. Out of this fear, Madame sells Grenouille to the tanner, Grimal. She loses all her money in old age, dies a miserable death in the Hôtel Dieu (Hotel of God) and is not even buried after her death, but rather thrown into a mass grave.
- Children at the Boarding House – They are repulsed by Grenouille and even try, in vain, to suffocate him with rags and blankets while Grenouille is asleep.
- Grimal – A tannerTanningTanning is the making of leather from the skins of animals which does not easily decompose. Traditionally, tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound from which the tanning process draws its name . Coloring may occur during tanning...
who lives near the river in the rue de la Mortellerie. Grenouille works for him from age eight into his early youth until Baldini pays for him to be released. With this immense new income of money, he wastes it on alcohol in one go, allowing his drunkenness to cause him to fall in to a river and die. - The Plum Girl – Her natural scent is that of sea breezeSea breezeA sea-breeze is a wind from the sea that develops over land near coasts. It is formed by increasing temperature differences between the land and water; these create a pressure minimum over the land due to its relative warmth, and forces higher pressure, cooler air from the sea to move inland...
, water lilliesNymphaeaceaeNymphaeaceae is a family of flowering plants. Members of this family are commonly called water lilies and live in freshwater areas in temperate and tropical climates around the world. The family contains eight genera. There are about 70 species of water lilies around the world. The genus...
, and apricotApricotThe apricot, Prunus armeniaca, is a species of Prunus, classified with the plum in the subgenus Prunus. The native range is somewhat uncertain due to its extensive prehistoric cultivation.- Description :...
blossoms; it is a rich, perfectly balanced and magical scent. She has red hairRed hairRed hair occurs on approximately 1–2% of the human population. It occurs more frequently in people of northern or western European ancestry, and less frequently in other populations...
and wears a gray, sleeveless dress. She is halving plumPlumA plum or gage is a stone fruit tree in the genus Prunus, subgenus Prunus. The subgenus is distinguished from other subgenera in the shoots having a terminal bud and solitary side buds , the flowers in groups of one to five together on short stems, and the fruit having a groove running down one...
s when Grenouille kills her as his first victim. - Giuseppe Baldini – An old perfumer. Lacking a gift for it, he merely knows the art of perfumery. He owns a perfume shop filled with a strong amalgam of scents. The shop is so intoxicating that it scares away potential customers; Baldini is too dense to realise this fact. The shop is located in the middle of a bridge, the Pont-au-Change. He takes on Grenouille as an apprentice and becomes rich from the perfumes that Grenouille creates for him. He ends up giving Grenouille journeyman papers, which will help Grenouille in his future travels. After Grenouille leaves him, his house and warehouses plunge into the river below as the bridge finally collapses.
- Chénier – Baldini's assistant. He is somewhat younger than Baldini. He knows Baldini is talentless, but still boasts Baldini's skills in hopes that one day he will inherit Baldini's perfume shop.
- Pélissier – Never actually appears in novel. He is only talked about because he is considered the most innovative perfumer in Paris, despite not having any formal training.
- Taillade-Espinasse – Marquis, liege lord of a town of Pierrefort and a member of parliament, is an amateur scientist who develops indulgent and ridiculous theses (fluidal theory), which he supposedly demonstrates on Grenouille — feeding him, providing him with new clothes and giving him the opportunity to create a perfume. The Marquis dies soon after Grenouille's "disappearance" while pursuing his fluidal theory by attempting to live alone on a secluded mountain.
- Madame Arnulfi – A lively, black-haired woman of around thirty. She has been widowed for almost a year. She owns the perfume business of her dead husband and has a journeyman named Druot, who is also her lover. She hires Grenouille as her second journeyman.
- Dominique Druot – Arnulfi's journeyman and lover. He is the size of a Hun and is of average intelligence. Grenouille works under him as second journeyman. Druot is later hanged for Grenouille's crimes.
- Antoine Richis – Second consul and the richest man in Grasse, Laure's father.
- Laure Richis – A beautiful red-headedRed hairRed hair occurs on approximately 1–2% of the human population. It occurs more frequently in people of northern or western European ancestry, and less frequently in other populations...
girl, daughter of Antoine Richis. Her scent is the fragrance of Grenouille's dreams and is central to his plans of creating a perfume that will make people love him.
Adaptations
- A film adaptationFilm adaptationFilm adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
, Perfume: The Story of a MurdererPerfume: The Story of a Murderer (film)Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 2006 German thriller film directed by Tom Tykwer and written by Andrew Birkin, Bernd Eichinger and Tykwer. It is based on the 1985 novel Perfume by Patrick Süskind. Set in 18th century France, the film tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille , an olfactory...
, co-written and directed by Tom TykwerTom TykwerTom Tykwer is a German film director, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing Run Lola Run , Heaven , Perfume: The Story of a Murderer , and The International ....
(who also composed the film scoreFilm scoreA film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
), premiered in Germany on 14 September 2006. - A Russian musicalMusical theatreMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
adaptation of the novel, Perfumer, premiered on 5 December 2010 in MoscowMoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. Composer and singer Igor Demarin received Süskind's approval after communicating with a representative of his for two years. - The song "Scentless Apprentice", by the American grungeGrungeGrunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
band NirvanaNirvana (band)Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
, was inspired by Perfume. It appears on their 1993 album In Utero. The band's singer and guitarist Kurt CobainKurt CobainKurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...
often described the novel as one of his favourite books. - The song "Herr Spiegelmann" from the Portuguese gothic-doom metal band MoonspellMoonspellMoonspell is a Portuguese gothic metal band from Brandoa, Lisbon. Formed in 1992, the group released their first EP Under the Moonspell in 1994, a year before the release of their first album Wolfheart...
contains an excerpt from the book. - The song "Red Head Girl" by French downtempoDowntempoDowntempo is a laid-back electronic music style similar to ambient music, but usually with a beat or groove unlike the beatless forms of Ambient music. The beat is sometimes made from loops that have a hypnotic feeling...
duo Air is inspired by Perfume. - The song "Du riechst so gutDu riechst so gutDu riechst so gut is a song by the German Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein. It was the band's first single and was released on its first album, Herzeleid. It describes the inner thoughts of a predator hunting his prey...
" (German for "You smell so good") by RammsteinRammsteinRammstein is a German Neue Deutsche Härte band from Berlin, formed in 1994. The band consists of members Till Lindemann , Richard Z. Kruspe , Paul H. Landers , Oliver "Ollie" Riedel , Christoph "Doom" Schneider and Christian "Flake" Lorenz...
was inspired by the book, which is one of lead singer Till LindemannTill LindemannTill Lindemann is a German musician, actor and poet who is the frontman for the German Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein.-Biography:...
's favourite books. - Marilyn MansonMarilyn MansonMarilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
credits the novel as one of the inspirations behind the title of his second album, Smells Like ChildrenSmells Like ChildrenSmells Like Children is a EP by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on October 24, 1995 in the US through Nothing and Interscope Records. It was produced by the band's frontman and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails...
. - The episode "Sense Memory" of the television show Criminal MindsCriminal MindsCriminal Minds is an American police procedural drama that premiered September 22, 2005, on CBS. The series follows a team of profilers from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit based in Quantico, Virginia. The BAU is part of the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime...
bears many similarities to the novel. - The song "Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met)" by Panic! at the DiscoPanic! at the DiscoPanic! at the Disco is an American alternative rock duo, formed in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2005. Since its split, the band's line-up includes Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith . Former members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker left the group in 2009...
is inspired by Perfume.