Patrick Suskind

'In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages . . . ' Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in a Parisian slum and abandoned on the streets, discovers he has an extraordinary - near superhuman - sense of smell. As he sniffs his way across France, this gift is exploited by Grenouille to make the world's most marvellous perfumes. Yet in seeking perfection in his experiments, he realises that a vital ingredient is missing for the perfect scent: innocence. And in order to get the ingredient he needs, he must capture it - whatever the price. 'Ingenious and totally absorbing.' Daily Telegraph

The Story of a Murderer

Perfume

sage

Josephina Lucke

Bart Veldhuijsen 

Doorgaands roken mensen nietszeggend of belabberd. Kinderen roken flauw, mannen naar pis, naar scherp en kaas, vrouwen naar ranzig vet en rottende vis.

The cry that followed his birth, the cry with which he had brought himself to people’s attention and his mother to the gallows, was not an instinctive cry for sympathy and love. That cry, emitted upon careful consideration, one might almost say upon mature consideration, was the newborn’s decision against love and nevertheless for life. Under the circumstances, the latter was possible only without the former, and had the child demanded both, it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. Of course, it could have grabbed the other possibility open to it and held its peace and thus have chosen the path from birth to death without a detour by way of life, sparing itself and the world a great deal of mischief. But to have made such a modest exit would have demanded a modicum of native civility, and that Grenouille did not possess. He was an abomination from the start. He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and sheer malice.

“he had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. no longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.”

ella

Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.

Helen 

The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water, salt and a cold sun. 

Nica

He fashioned grotesqueries, only to destroy them again immediately, like a child playing with blocks—inventive and destructive, with no apparent norms for his creativity.

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