12.15.06
Du Riescht So Gut
“Like most babies smell like butter
His smell smelled like no other
He was born scentless and senseless
He was born a scentless apprentice”
A scentless apprentice. And when I say apprentice, I do mean the wildest meaning of the word, that is a monster in search of knowledge. This is the main character of “Perfume” by Patrick Suskind, Jean Bauptiste Grenouille, a scentless kid lacking of any personal odour, and at the same time endowed with an incomparable sense of smell, able to remember and recognize all the scents in the world; Jean grows up in a poor quarter of Paris of the 18th century, where the poverty and the stink used to rule over everyone and everything, in a time where “there were no limits to the decomposing action of the bacteriums, and so there wasn’t any human activity, both constructive and destructive, nor manifestations of life, blooming or decaying, that didn’t came along with a bad smell”. A “scentless” childhood, frightening wet nurses as a child possessed by the devil and avoided by the other children, in which Jean starts to build his smelling vocabulary, exploring Paris and its wonderful scents. The event that will sign a turn in his life will be the meeting with a young girl, or better, the meeting with the perfume of a young girl; deranged by the foolish wish to have that scent forever, he smothers her and satisfies his lust smelling her fresh body and hair… From now on, the unique goal of his life will be the creation on that kind of perfume…
From Catullus, Carmina XIII.
“Nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque,
quod tu cum olfacies, deos rogabis
totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum.”
“For I will give you a perfume, that my lady
received from the Venuses and the Cupids,
and when you smell it, Fabullus,
you’ll ask the gods to make you all nose.”
Musical references:
- Nirvana - Scentless Apprentice
- Rammstein - Du Riescht So Gut