There is no doubt that Jean Battista Grenouille is a genius. Born in a squalid fish market in squalid Paris in the eighteenth century, this eccentric has an innate sense of smell, and from the very first breath, he sets out to collect the scent of all the objects in the world, whether incense or scent. Smelly, beautiful and ugly. In Lady Gallard's nursery, he avidly discerns objects by smell, and his vulgar language skills are far from sufficient to give him enough vocabulary to name every scent that enters his breath. It doesn't matter, because one day he will understand that smell is his vocabulary, his unique language for knowing the world, his magic brush and secret note for his great creations.
When he grew up hard in a smelly tannery, and one day followed his boss back to the noisy Paris streets, he seemed to be in a museum of smells. Grenouille closed his eyes slightly and walked slowly through the crowd, indulging in thousands of novel scent experiences. On that dark street, he saw the numerous bottles and jars in the perfume workshop, and smelled the fragrance of "Eros and Psyche"; he followed the young girl selling fruit, sucking the body fragrance floating behind her. He finally couldn't help but kill the girl who sold the fruit, like a demon, with his dirty hands stroking and holding the girl's naked body, enjoying the feast of body fragrance. From this evening, Grenouille finally understood what scent meant to him, and he had to learn to extract and maintain this supreme scent.
Grenouille easily saved Baldini's closing perfume workshop and became a perfume manufacturing worker. The price of his own bribe was that Baldini taught him how to extract fragrance. However, the spirit of roses obtained by distillation cannot satisfy Grenouille's desire. He wants to get the taste of all objects at will, including the body fragrance of the fruit seller that haunts his nose and mind. After Baldini told him that distillation was powerless, Grenouille collapsed and was terminally ill. For his perfume workshop, Baldini exchanged a hundred new perfume formulas and instructed him to go to the Holy Land Grasse to learn the oil separation method.
Grenouille hit the road, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, into a wilderness that exudes purity and simplicity. He gradually forgot his desires and lived for seven years in a desolate environment, in a cave with almost no smell. At this time, he was experiencing unspeakable loneliness and loneliness. The disappearance of the smell meant a complete void to him. In this void, he thought he was close to himself. However, one day, he suddenly found that there was no smell on his body, he was just a void, a void carrying thousands of scents, a void that had no meaning in this world. He recalled the taste of the fruit girl, and revived his old dream, and set off on a journey to Grasse.
The women in Grasse kept disappearing, they were fatally shot in the back of the head, their hair was cut off, their bodies were dumped in the river or on the street, and even the beautiful Laura was not spared. Grasse is in chaos. They didn't know that it was the genius Grenouille who was collecting materials for his great works. The killed girls were selected by Grenouille because of their unique smell, and they extracted the essence of their life and put them in small perfume bottles. Soon Grenouille will be completing his incomparable perfumery. The genius Grenouille always ignores the moral evaluation of the world. In his eyes, the whole world is a world of smells. The smells of all objects are the raw materials of his creation. He just discovers their hidden beauty, condensed and collected. From the moment he was born, his talent compelled him to do so. Grenouille can be said to be a mentally obsessive-compulsive patient. He cannot control himself, and he cannot implant the so-called values of morality, religion, and life into his mind. His heart seems to be ringing with a sense of mission all the time, like an eternal sense of mission. The torch never goes out, guiding him to the peak of the scent.
Grenouille's fragrance was finally finished, and he was arrested at the same moment. When he was taken to execution and the angry crowd wanted to tear him to shreds, they didn't know that Grenouille had in his pockets the essence of the world's beauty, and they would forgive him for it, and they would enter into the ecstasy of The realm is intoxicated and unable to extricate themselves, they will surrender at the feet of Grenouille, willing to give everything for him. That's how it turned out, even the archbishop undressed, forgetting the belief - in the presence of beauty, God will obey - beauty is the supreme God, the incomparable religion.
Grenouille left Grasse at this moment, heading towards the filthy fish market where he was born. If he wanted, he could conquer the world with the perfume in his hands. But how could that be what he thought? He has completed his mission, the perfume in the bottle gave him the feeling of existence, but it made him feel more empty, more terrifying than the smellless cave, because he lost his way forward. The premise for genius to survive is on the way of pursuit. On the way, they can put everything in themselves, force themselves, torture themselves, have infinite paranoia, and have an infinitely powerful sense of mission. They will feel loneliness and loneliness like never before, and a black hole of void that will eventually suck them in and lead to destruction. They fulfilled them and destroyed them at the same time. Beauty is the ultimate beauty in the pursuit of beauty, and the flowers of beauty will wither, wither, decay, and disappear at the end of the journey; the seeker stops, and only death waits there. Grenouille put perfume on his body, and was eventually eaten by the people of his hometown with pure love and disappeared where he was born. This ending is as inevitable as Kawabata Yasunari's mouth contains a gas pipeline and Hemingway's gun barrel is aimed at his head.
Perhaps, death is the last formula of perfume.
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