Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume explores issues of genius and imitation in 18th-century France, and is emblematic of how trends and innovation work in the modern world. In the story, Giuseppe Baldini is a man who fails to make creative breakthroughs and falls behind trends, and his anguish mirrors the pressures and crises that modern people feel.
Patrick Süskind’s 1985 novel Perfume was published in less than a year, translated and exported to 49 countries, and sold more than 20 million copies. It is considered the best German novel of the 20th century, and was even made into a movie. Subtitled The Story of a Murderer, the novel is set in 18th-century Paris, France, and tells the brief life story of a “genius” of smell who was born with an extremely acute sense of smell. Why has this account of the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a dwarfed, impoverished, and sinister figure, been so fascinating to so many readers in the late 20th and early 21st centuries? Perhaps it’s because, despite being published in the modern era, the book is both timeless and relevant to contemporary society, while at the same time capturing the anguish and conflict of a genius.
However, I believe that the author’s true meaning in this novel lies not in Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, but in his antagonist, Giuseppe Baldini. Baldini is a man who once aspired to be a genius, and at the same time wanted to abandon materialistic values.
Today, modern society is a materialistic society fueled by capitalism. To alleviate the inherent limitations of capitalism, companies constantly create “trends” through the icons of the era, and people go crazy for them and spend capital to “copy” them in order to keep up with the trends. Capitalism began with the Industrial Revolution, which is simply the mass production of goods in factories. In other words, capitalism started with an oversupply of goods due to the Industrial Revolution. This oversupply can only be eliminated by creating more demand, which is what led to colonization and war. But since the modern era, people have found a new paradigm to solve this problem non-destructively: trends. Trends eliminate oversupply by increasing momentary demand, while their continuity continuously relaxes the limits of capitalism.
The essence of a trend is “newness,” which means that yesterday’s trend is different from today’s trend. This phenomenon of imitation is a stark reminder of the fact that modern people constantly desire, create, and even compete for new things. Creating is not just about being new, but about being different from others by adding “innovation” to existing trends. This differentiation comes from what you have an advantage over. In other words, if we define a trend as the characteristic of one person becoming the characteristic of many, then the key players in the modern world are the geniuses who are better than others. They are the ones who respond to the needs of the modern world and its members, who are driven by the desire for change and development, and ultimately bring about newness. The majority of ordinary people envy these few geniuses, deify them, and find their value in becoming like them.
Patrick Süskind’s novel suggests that the trends of modern society are not just a phenomenon of our time. The “desire for innovation” in modern society has its roots in the past, and Süskind begins his story with a character who is a trendsetter. Giuseppe Baldini, a perfume maker, is one of the most prominent perfume makers in Paris, and he constantly strives to stay ahead of the trends, but he is not a genius who can innovate the trends of the time, but an ordinary man who is a genius disguised as a genius. This contradiction deeply troubles Giuseppe Baldini, and his anguish is evident in his monologue in Chapter 10.
“What on earth do people need a new perfume every season for, do they really need it? In the old days, they were content with violets or simple floral scents, which they changed slightly, maybe once every ten years. For thousands of years, people have been wearing frankincense, myrrh, balsam, oils, and dried spices.” (p. 10)
This monologue confirms that society at the time was also focused on the issue of “trends”. However, Baldini blames the problems of the times on his own inability to adapt to changing trends. What’s interesting is that Giuseppe Baldini’s monologue is not so different from our own modern reality. In the modern world, we might as well be Giuseppe Baldini, constantly having to create “trendy” products. In other words, he is not simply a figure of fall and failure due to personal incompetence. Giuseppe Baldini represents the anguish of modernity’s “newness,” and he represents the problems of the times, both modern and contemporary. We feel sympathy and compassion for him because his sense of helplessness and crisis under the pressures of the times resonates with the feelings of people in modern society who are still struggling to innovate.
However, his salvation comes from the genius Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Baldini is saved by Grenouille’s perfect new creation, which allows him to once again gain wealth and honor from society. The novel concludes with Baldini’s success in acquiring outside genius. From a modern perspective, he rises from imperfection to perfection, creating innovations that inspire others to emulate and respond to the needs of the times. In real life, however, such a redemption would be difficult to achieve. If Baldini had never met the genius Grenouille, how would his life have ended?
“God gives us good times and bad times, but he expects us to overcome them like men, not just bemoan them in heartbreak. (…) Giuseppe Baldini, act before it’s too late. It’s a dying shop, but you can sell it for a good price. It may not be your life’s goal to live out your old age in peace in Messina, but it would be more honorable and more in accordance with God’s will than to go down in flames in Paris. I resign. I am not submitting, but freely withdrawing!” (from Chapter 11)
Baldini’s inner thoughts in chapter 11 of the novel show that he was trying to break free from the logic of “trend, imitation, and genius” that society had created and spend the rest of his life in a new environment. He recognizes that genius is a value, but it is not the total value that defines him, and he bravely frees himself from its shackles.
In reading Perfume, I believe that the real meaning of Patrick Süskind’s words in this novel is “freedom”. Both the genius Grenouille and the fake genius Baldini end up in misery. This is the misfortune and the end result of reducing social values to their own values. In order to overcome this, we need to break free from the endless competition of trends created by capitalist society, and the answer is simply to abandon existing values. We will only be free when we break free from the mold that society has prescribed, know what we truly crave, and derive new values from it. And we look forward to a society that finds those values.
