Your assignment for Perfume is to come to class with three passages that reflect Suskind's style or thematic concerns. For this post, share one of your chosen passages and then explain why you chose it. This post (and the previous one) will remain open until early Thursday afternoon.
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In the following passage (on pages 95-96,) Grenouille is watching the process of distillation for the first time, leading to his obsession with possessing the souls of objects and eventually people by capturing their scents:
ReplyDelete"Grenouille was fascinated by the process. If ever anything in his life had kindled his enthusiasm - granted, not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one, an excitement burning with a cold flame - then it was this procedure for using fire, water, steam, and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. That scented soul, the ethereal oil, was in fact the best thing about matter, the only reason for his interest in it. The rest of the stupid stuff - the blossoms, leaves, rind, fruit, color, beauty, vitality, and all those other useless qualities - were of no concern to him. They were the husk and the ballast, to be disposed of."
Here, Grenouille perceives beauty and vitality as "useless qualities," suggesting that in Grenouille's understanding, life itself has no soul, but rather the soul exists only in the scents that the living emit. This idea forces the reader to think about the nature of scent - throughout the novel, smells seem to have a ghost-like quality, drifting around the people that take no notice of them, even though the smells subconsciously affect them. However, Grenouille is very conscious of smell, able to detect and differentiate between every scent that surrounds him - he is able to absorb the ghost-like souls that drift through the air in the form of scent. But smelling these souls as they pass through the air is only temporary, which is why Grenouille becomes obsessed with the process of distillation - in capturing the smells of things, he believes he can collect their souls and make them his own, essentially trapping the soul of every being within a glass vial.
-Kristen S.
The exchange that occurs between Chenier and Baldini on pages 48 to 49 is isolated and written in the style of a script:
ReplyDelete“Ah, I see! You are creating a new perfume.”
Baldini: Correct. With which to impregnate a Spanish hide for Count Verhamont. He wants something like…like…I think he said it’s called Amor and Psyche, and comes he says from that…that bungler in the rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, that…that…
Chenier: Pelissier.
Baldini: Yes. Indeed. That's the bungler's name. Amor and Psyche, by Pelissier.--Do you know it?"
Chenier: Yes, yes. I do indeed. You can smell it everywhere these days. Smell it on every street corner. But if you ask me--nothing special! It most certainly can't be compared in any way with what you will create, Monsieur Baldini.
Baldini: Naturally not.
Chenier: It's a terribly common scent, this Amor and Psyche.
Baldini: Vulgar?
Chenier: Totally vulgar, like everything from Pelissier. I believe it contains lime oil.
Baldini: Really? What else?
Chenier: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. And maybe tincture of rosemary. But I can't say for sure.
Baldini: It's of no consequence at all to me in any case.
Chenier: Naturally not.
Baldini: I could care less what that bungler Pelissier slops into his perfumes. I certainly would not take my inspiration from him, I assure you.
Chenier: You're absolutely right, monsieur.
Baldini: As you know, I take my inspiration from no one.
Chenier: I do know, monsieur.
Baldini: I alone give birth to them.
Chenier: I know.
Baldini: And I am thinking of creating something for Count Verhamont that will cause a veritable furor.
Chenier: I am sure it will, Monsieur Baldini.
Baldini: Take charge of the shop. I need peace and quiet. Don't let anyone near me, Chenier.
The dialogue gives a sort of mad-scientist impression to Baldini, as he questions about Amor and Psyche yet insults Pelissier to appear apathetic about its popularity. Baldini's obsession with giving birth to the scent is a reflection of Grenouille's own obsession with giving physical substance to the scents he creates within himself. The uninterrupted dialogue expresses Baldini's urgency, and as his motives are isolated from the rest of the text, he also wants to be left alone. Grenouille wants to be left alone with scent as well, and the description of Baldini after this conversation is reminiscent of Grenouille: 'And with that, he shuffled away...bent over, but so far that he looked almost as if he had been beaten.' The obsession with scent that Baldini and Grenouille share culminate in the same way: death without realization of their dreams. The form of this dialogue highlights the effects of unchecked obsession. Without the possibility for a rational contemplation of their desires, Grenouille and Baldini become consumed by their passion in the end.
-Dina
In the opening of perfume, Suskind describes Paris by describing the different smells of Paris.
ReplyDeleteThere reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stable dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamberpots. The stench of sulfer arose from the chimneysm the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries and the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies…rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. (Suskind, 1-2)
Suskind describes the different disgustingly wretched smells in Paris, he continues to describe sites of the mass tombs where the Parisians anonymously dumped bodies throughout the years. Suskind also describes the catacombs, where the Parisians emptied the graves when they were full.
When Suskind describes the way Paris smells throughout the passage, he does so in a very negative manner. He constantly uses words like ‘stench’, ‘rank’, ‘pungent’, ‘caustic’, ‘greasy’, and ‘stink’. These words portray Paris and its inhabitants, in a very bad frame. The different odors, although all bad, signal the different identities in the world. I think Suskind is pointing out that although people might be priests or other figures they all have smells. To reiterate this idea, all the characters have different smells and the idea that a priest might have a rank smell suggests that there might be more to him than one thinks. Like Suskind suggests that everyone in Paris has a smell. Suskind comments that everyone, if their human has a smell, and that it might not be a pretty smell. And people’s varying ugly smells make them unique. This seems to act as a hook for the novel, saying that there is more to this novel than a person with a great sense of smell.
Michael Furman
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