Perfume The Story Of A Murderer Quotes

He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.

...talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.

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.

Not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one, an excitement burning with a cold flame.

He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.

People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.

He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself.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.

She was indeed a girl of exquisite beauty. She was one of those languid women made of dark honey smooth and sweet and terribly sticky.

He possessed the power. He held it in his hand. A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to command the love of mankind. There was only one thing that power could not do: it could not make him able to smell himself.

He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and malice.

There was only one thing the perfume could not do. It could not turn him into a person who could love and be loved like everyone else. So, to hell with it he thought. To hell with the world. With the perfume. With himself

When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love.

For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they couldn't escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who couldn't defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.

He realized that all his life he had been a nobody to everyone. What he now felt was the fear of his own oblivion. It was as though he did not exist.

He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent.

…in that moment, as he saw and smelled how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him—in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for—that other people should love him—became at the moment of his achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. And suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred—in hating and in being hated.

And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille's soul was beginning.

إن تعاسة الإنسان تنتج من كونه لا يريد أن يقبع ساكناً في غرفته هناك حيث يجب أن يكون.

It was good, really, that this external world still existed, if only as a place of refuge.

ندرة من البشر يُلْهـِمون الحب، وهؤلاء سيكونون ضحاياه.

‎جميع المشاكل تدور حول المال. حالما يطرق أحدهم هذه البوابة يكون عنده مشكلة مالية. أتمنى من كل قلبي أن أفتح مرة البوابة لأجد إنسانا عنده شيء آخر غير مشكلة المال أو أجد شخصا يحمل هدية صغيرة.

لقد أعجب برائحة البحر لدرجة أن اشتهى الحصول عليها ، ولو مرة .. نقية دون شوائب وبكميات وافره تسكره.

And because people are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes, they will say it is because this is a girl with beauty and grace and charm.

He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!

القاعدة الثانية تقول بأن العطر يعيش مع الزمن ، فله مراحل شبابه ونضجه وشيخوخته وفقط عندما يتخطى مراحل العمر المختلفة محافظا على أريجه بالوتيرة ذاتها يعتبر عطرا ناجحا.

Grenouille no longer wanted to go somewhere, but only to go away, away from human beings.

سبب تعاسة الإنسان يكمن في أنّه لا يريد الركون إلى حجرته حيث يجب أن يكون.

Moonlight knew no colors and traced the contours of the terrain only very softly. It covered the land a dirty gray, strangling life all night long. This world molded in lead, where nothing moved but the wind that fell sometimes like a shadow over the gray forests, and where nothing lived but the scent of the naked earth, was the only world he accepted, for it was much like the world of his soul.

He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but super human, an angels scent, so indescribably good and vital that who ever smelt it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him.

He was so full of disgust, disgust at the world and at himself, that he could not weep.

He was not bound. No one led him by the arm. He got out of the carriage as if he were a free man.

And he wallowed in disgust and loathing, and his hair stood on end at the delicious horror.

لقد انتصرَ لأنّه عاش.

بوسع البشر أن يغمضوا أعينهم أمام ما هو عظيم أو جميل، وأن يغلقوا آذانهم أمام الألحان والكلام المعسول ولكن ليس بوسعهم الهروب من العبق لأنه شقيق الشهيق، معه يدخل إلى ذواتهم، ولا يستطيعون صدّه إن رغبوا بالبقاء على قيد الحياة، إنه يدخل إلى أعماقهم، إلى القلب مباشرة، حيث يتم الفصل الحاسم بين الميل إليه أو احتقاره، بين القرف منه أو الرغبة فيه، بين حبه أو كرهه.

We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets. They retreat to deserts, preferably, where they live on locusts and honey. Others, however, live in caves or cells on remote islands; some-more spectacularly-squat in cages mounted high atop poles swaying in the breeze. They do this to be nearer God. Their solitude is a self-moritification by which they do penance. They act in the belief that they are living a life pleasing to God. Or they wait months, years, for their solitude to be broken by some divine message that they hope then speedily to broadcast among mankind. Grenouille's case was nothing of the sort. There was not the least notion of God in his head. He was not doing penance or wating for some supernatural inspiration. He had withdrawn solely for his own pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid. He lay in his stony crypt like his own corpse, hardly breathing, his heart hardly beating-and yet lived as intensively and dissolutely as ever a rake lived in the wide world outside.

Man’s misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs.

كان يكره الدخول في التفاصيل ، لأن التفاصيل تولد المشاكل دائما ، والمشاكل تعني إزعاج طمأنينته ، الأمر الذي لم يكن ليحتمله أبدا.

Until now he had thought that it was the world in general he had wanted to squirm away from. But it was not the world, it was the people in it.

And the awful thing was that Grenouille, although he knew that this odour was his odour, could not smell it. Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself!

This scent had a freshness, but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates, not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles, not that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water... and at the same time it had warmth, but not as bergamot, cypress, or musk has, or jasmine or daffodils, not as rosewood has or iris... This scent was a blend of both, of evanescence and substance, not a blend, but a unity, although slight and frail as well, and yet solid and sustaining, like a piece of thin, shimmering silk... and yet again not like silk, but like pastry soaked in honey-sweet milk - and try as he would he couldn't fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable, indescribable, could not be categorized in any way - it really ought not to exist at all. And yet there it was as plain and splendid as day.

لم يعد يكفي أن يقول المرء أن هذا هو كذا أو أن يصفه، بل أصبح من الضروري الآن البرهنة على كلّ شيء ويفضل ذلك أن يكون بالشهود والأرقام وبنوع من التجارب السخيفة.

And now fear spread over the countryside. People no longer knew against whom to direct their impotent rage.

But he did decide vegetatively, as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be.

She was indeed a girl of exquisite beauty. She was one of those languid women made of dark honey, smooth and sweet and terribly sticky, who take control of a room with a syrupy gesture, a toss of the hair, a single slow whiplash of the eyes-and all the while remain as still as the center of a hurricane, apparently unaware of the force of gravity by which they irresistibly attract to themselves the yearnings and the souls of both men and women.

And even knowing that to possess that scent he must pay the terrible price of losing it again, the very possession and the loss seemed to him more desirable than a prosaic renunciation of both. For he had renounced things all his life. But never once had he possessed and lost.

كيف يجرؤ المرء على تفكيك الكل المتكامل، أو حتى الأقل تكاملا إلى مركباته البسيطة.

في عصر لا يفتقر إلى النوابغ والسفلة، عاش في فرنسا القرن الثامن عشر رجل من أكثر الكائنات نبوغا وسفالة.

لا شيء يَمُرُّ بأنفِ غرينوي تامّ الحرية.

Mrs. Porter was fat, and her breath smelled like burnt newspapers.

Whatever the art or whatever the craft - and make a note of this before you go - talent means next to nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.

Правило номер две: парфюмът живее във времето - притежава и младост, и зрялост и старост.

الشكر لله في عليائه فالآن أصبح بمقدوره أن يتوقف مرتاح الضمير لقد قام بواجبه بكل إمكانياته وحسب قواعد الفن كلها وفشل كما سبق له أن فشل مرات عديدة.

The odour of humans is always a fleshly odour – that is, a sinful odour.

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.

He disgusted them the way a fat spider that you can't bring yourslef to crush in your own hand disgusts you.

He lay in his stony crypt like his own corpse, hardly breathing, his heart hardly beating - and yet lived as intensively and dissolutely as ever a rake had lived in the wide world outside.

He no longer yearned for his life in the cave. He had experienced that life once and it had proved unlivable. Just as had his other experience - life among human beings. He was suffocated by both worlds. He no longer wanted to live at all.

Porque los hombres podían cerrar los ojos ante la grandeza, ante el horror, ante la belleza, y cerrar los oídos a las melodías o las palabras seductoras, pero no podían sustraerse al perfume. Porque el perfume era hermano del aliento. Con él se introducía en los hombres y si éstos querían vivir, tenían que respirarlo. Y una vez en su interior, el perfume iba directo al corazón y allí decidía de modo categórico entre inclinación y desprecio, aversión y atracción, amor y odio. Quien dominaba los olores, dominaba el corazón de los hombres.

She had a face so charming that visitors of all ages and both sexes would stand stockstill at the sight of her, unable to pull their eyes away, practically licking that face with their eyes, the way tongues work at ice cream, with that typically stupid, single--minded expression on their faces that goes with concentrated licking

...để có thể giã từ cõi đời khiêm nhường như thế cần đôi chút tối thiểu lòng tốt bẩm sinh...

He had no use for sensual gratification, unless that gratification consisted of pure, incorporeal odors.

For Grenouille, this simplicity seemed a deliverance.

He did not want to have his newfound respiratory freedom ruined so soon be the sultry climate of humans.

إن الامتلاك والفقدان _كما بدا له _ كان أمراً مثيراً للرغبة، أكثر من رفضهما معاً بهذه الصورة المقتضبة . لقد رفض الكثير خلال حياته ، لكن لم يسبق له أن امتلك وفقد.

The wind blew cold, and he was freezing, but he did not notice that he was freezing, for within him was a counterfrost, fear.

bathed in sweat and trembling with agitation, no, not with agitation, but with fear, for he finally admitted it to himself: it was naked fear that had seized him, and in admitting it he grew calmer and his thoughts clearer

Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself.

El olor de mar le gustaba tanto, que deseaba respirarlo puro algún día y en grandes cantidades, a fin de embriagarse de él.

Este presentimiento resultaría cierto, aunque se basaba en premisas totalmente falsas.

La desgracia del hombre se debe a que no quiere permanecer tranquilo en su habitación, que es su hogar.

People even travelled to Lapland, up there in the North, with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish.

Cet homme paraissait être tellement fatigué de sa vie qu'il ne voulait même pas vivre ses dernières heures éveillé.

What he coveted was the odor of certain human beings: that is, those rare humans who inspire love. These were his victims.

Au XVIIIe siècle vécut en France un homme qui compta parmi les personnages les plus géniaux et les plus abominables de cette époque qui pourtant ne manqua pas de génies abominables.

He had used only a drop of his perfume for his performance in Grasse. There was enough left to enslave the whole world. If he wanted, he could be feted in Paris, not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands of people; or could walk out to Versailles and have the King kiss his feet; write the Pope a perfumed letter and reveal himself as the new Messiah; be anointed in Notre-Dame as Supreme Emperor before kings, or even as God come to earth.

The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter.

There were no mad flashings of the eye, no lunatic grimace passed over his face. He was not out of his mind, which was so clear and buoyant that he asked himself why he wanted to do it at all. And he said to himself that he wanted to do it because he was evil, thoroughly evil. And he smiled as he said it and was content. He looked quite innocent, like any happy person.

constantly before his eyes now was a river flowing from him; and it was as if he himself and his house and the wealth he had accumulated over many decades were flowing away like the river, while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current.

So spoke Grenouille the Great and, while the peasantry of scent danced and celebrated beneath him, he glided with wide-stretched wings down from his golden clouds, across the nocturnal fields of his soul, and home to his heart.

أما الفتاة فقد سرت القشعريرة في جسمها. لم تره بعينيها ، لكن إحساسا بالرعب انتابها ، واجتاحها زمهرير غريب ، كذلك الذي يشعر به الإنسان حالما يعاوده رعب قديم منسي. أحست بتيار بارد يسري في ظهرها وكأن أحدهم قد فتح فجأة باب قبو هائل بارد.

He was a master in the art of spreading boredom and playing the clumsy fool-though never so egregiously that people might enjoy making fun of him or use him as the butt of some crude practical joke inside the guild. He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.

Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour 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.

The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in, pure and unadulterated, in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. And later, when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships for days on end without ever seeing land, nothing pleased him more than the image of himself sitting high up in the crow's nest of the foremost mast on such a ship, gliding on through the endless smell of the sea -- which really was no smell, but a breath, an exhilaration of breath, the end of all smells -- dissolving with pleasure in that breath.

Encontrar el camino no era difícil, lo difícil era luchar contra el recuerdo de la pesadilla claustrofóbica, que avanzaba en su interior, como una marea… Pero tenía valor; es decir, luchaba contra el miedo de no saber, contra el temor de la incertidumbre, y su lucha era efectiva porque sabía que no podía escoger.

Власт, по-силна от влстта на парите, или от властта на терора, или от властта на смъртта: непреодолимата власт да внушава обич. Само едно не можеше тази власт: да го дари със собствен мирис. И макар чрез своя парфюм да се явяваше пред света като Господ, щом като сам не може да се помирише и затова никога няма да узнае кой е в действителност, той плюеше на властта, на света, на самия себе си, на парфюма си.

Grenouille’s mother, however, perceived the odor neither of the fish nor of the corpses, for her sense of smell had been utterly dulled, besides which her belly hurt, and the pain deadened all susceptibility of sensate impressions.

Never before in his life had he known what happiness was. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. It was as if he had been born a second time; no, not a second time, the first time, for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness. but after today, he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius... He had found the compass for his future life. And like all gifted abominations, for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls, Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him... He must become a creator of scents... the greatest perfumer of all time.

He looks as if he were three or four; looks just like one of those unapproachable, incomprehensible, willful little prehuman creatures, who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves, who want to subordinate the whole world to their despotic will, and would do it, too, if one let them pursue their megalomaniacal ways and did not apply the strictest pedagogical principles to guide them to a disciplined, self-controlled, fully human existence.

As he began to withdraw from them, it became clear to Grenouille for the first time that for eighteen years their compacted human effluvium had oppressed him like air heavy with an imminent thunderstorm. Until now he had thought that it was the world in general he had wanted to squirm away from. But it was not the world, it was the people in it. You could live, so it seemed, in this world, in this world devoid of humanity. On

He had soon so thoroughly smelled out the quarter between Saint-Eustache and the Hôtel de Ville that he could find his way around in it by pitch-dark night. And so he expanded his hunting grounds, first westward to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, then out along the rue Saint-Antoine to the Bastille, and finally across to the other bank of the river into the quarters of the Sorbonne and the Faubourg Saint-Germain where the rich people lived.

He had to hold his body very still, very still, like some vessel about to slosh over from too much motion. Gradually he managed to get control of his breathing. His excited heart beat more steadily; the pounding of the waves inside him subsided slowly. And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusky reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened, and he entered. The next performance in the theatre of his soul was beginning.

عندما يشك الإنسان دون أدنى خجل بسلطة الله والكنيسة وعندما يلوك الإنسان سمعته الملكية التي أقرها الرب وشخصية الملك المقدسة وكأن الأمور قابلة بكل بساطة للتبديل كما الصور في الألبوم بحيث يختار المرء حسب مشيئته وعندما يصل الأمر بالإنسان أخيرا إلى حد الزعم بإمكانية الاستغناء عن الرب الكلي القدرة في كل ما يتعلق بالنظام والأخلاق والسعادة على الأرض واعتبار هذه وبمنتهى الجدية صادرة عن الأخلاق الفطرية والعقل الفطري البشري معاذ الله معاذ الله ، عندما تصل الأمور إلى هذا الحد لا حاجة للمرء أن يتعجب من انقلاب كل شيء رأسا على عقب ومن تدهور الأخلاق إلى ما لا حد له.

Something was happening while you waited. The most essential thing was happening. And even if he himself was doing nothing, it was happening through him nevertheless. He had done his best. He had employed all his artistic skill. He had made not one single mistake. His performance had been unique. It would be crowned with success.... He need only wait a few more hours. It filled him with profound satisfaction, this waiting. He had never felt so fine in all his life, so peaceful, so steady, so whole and at one with himself

Aveva un odore semplice, il mare, ma nello stesso tempo così vasto e unico nel suo genere, che Grenouille esitava a suddividerlo in odore di pesce, di sale, di acqua, di alga, di fresco e così via. Preferiva lasciare intatto l'odore del mare, lo custodiva intero nella memoria e lo godeva indiviso. L'odore del mare gli piaceva tanto che avrebbe desiderato una volta averlo puro, non mescolato e in quantità tale da potersene ubriacare.

Dalszą pozycją w jego arsenale był zapach wzbudzający litość, skuteczny na kobiety w średnim i podeszłym wieku. Trącił rozwodnionym mlekiem i czystym białym drewnem. Grenouille – nawet jeżeli zjawiał się nieogolony, z ponurą miną i w wierzchnim okryciu – sprawiał wówczas zabiedzonego, bledziutkiego chłopaczka w postrzępionej kurtce, któremu koniecznie trzeba pomóc. Przekupki na rynku, poruszone tym zapachem, wtykały mu orzechy i suszone gruszki, ponieważ wydawał im się wygłodzony i bezradny. Rzeźniczka zaś, skądinąd kawał jędzy, pozwalała mu wybierać stare cuchnące ochłapy mięsa i kości i zabierać to sobie gratis, ponieważ ów zapach niewinności wzruszał jej macierzyńskie serce.

From his youth on , he had been accustomed to people's passing him and taking no notice of him whatever , not out contempt -as hehad once believed - But because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere, as with other people; he had no shadow, so to speak, to cast across another's face. Only if he ran right into someone in a crowd or in a street-corner collision would there be a brief moment of discernment; and th person en countered would bounce off and stare at him for a few seconds as if gazing at a creature that ought not even exist, a creature that, although undeniably there, in some way or other was not present- and would take to his heels and have forgotten him, Grenouille, a moment later .......

He still had enough perfume left to enslave the whole world if he so chose. He could walk to Versailles and have the king kiss his feet. He could write the pope a perfumed letter and reveal himself as the new Messiah. He could do all this, and more, if he wanted to. He possessed a power stronger than the power of money, or terror, or death - the invincible power to command the love of man kind. There was only one thing the perfume could not do. It could not turn him into a person who could love and be loved like everyone else. So, to hell with it he thought. To hell with the world. With the perfume. With himself.

and Grenouille’s mother, who was still a young woman, barely in her mid-twenties, and who still was quite pretty and had almost all her teeth in her mouth and some hair on her head and – except for gout and syphilis and a touch of consumption – suffered from no serious disease, who still hoped to live a while yet, perhaps a good five or ten years, and perhaps even to marry one day and as the honorable wife of a widower with a trade or some such to bear real children... Grenouille’s mother wished that it were already over.

...his sleep, though deep as death itself, was not dreamless this time, but threaded with ghostly wisps of dreams. These wisps were clearly recognizable as scraps of odors. At first they merely floated in thin threads past Grenouille's nose, but then they grew thicker, more cloudlike. And now it seemed as if he were standing in the middle of a moor from which fog was rising. The fog slowly climbed higher. Soon Grenouille was completely wrapped in fog, saturated with fog, and it seemed he could not get his breath for the foggy vapor. If he did not want to suffocate, he would have to breathe the fog in. And the fog was, as noted, an odor. And Grenouille knew what kind of odor. The fog ws his own odor. His, Grenouille's, own body odor was the fog. And the awful thing was that Grenouille, although he knew that his odor was his odor, could not smell it. Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself!

Vào thời kỳ mà chúng ta đang nói tới ấy thì các thành phố bị bao phủ bởi một thứ mùi hôi mà con người văn minh ngày nay không thể hình dung nổi. Ðường sá hôi mùi phân, sân sau hôi mùi nước tiểu, cầu thang hôi mùi gỗ mủn và phân chuột, bếp hôi mùi bắp cải thối và mỡ cừu; những căn phòng đọng khí hôi mùi bụi lưu cữu, buồng ngủ hôi mùi khăn giường nhơn nhớt, mùi nệm nhồi lông ẩm ướt và mùi ngọt hăng của bô nước tiểu. Ống khói hôi mùi lưu huỳnh, lò thuộc da hôi mùi dung dịch kiềm, lò mổ hôi mùi máu đông. Người hôi mùi mồ hôi và áo quần lâu không giặt; miệng hôi mùi răng sâu; từ bao tử tỏa ra mùi hành và khi cơ thể không còn trẻ trung nữa thì hôi mùi pho mát ôi, mùi sữa chua và mùi ung nhọt. Sông hôi, quảng trường hôi, nhà thờ hôi, gầm cầu hôi mà cung điện cũng hôi. Người nông dân cũng hôi như vị linh mục; gã học việc cũng hôi như vợ người thợ cả; toàn giới quý tộc hôi; phải, ngay cả đức vua cũng hôi như một con thú dữ còn hoàng hậu hôi như một con dê già, mùa hè cũng như mùa đông...