Perfume+-+How+are+different+generations+represented+in+the+novel?

CHAPTER NINE: Behind the counter of light boxwood, however, stood Baldini himself, old and stiff as a pillar, in a silver-powdered wig and a blue coat adorned with gold frogs. A cloud of the frangipani with which he sprayed himself every morning enveloped him almost visibly, removing him to a hazy distance. So immobile was he, he looked like part of his own inventory. Only if the chimes rang and the herons spewed-both of which occurred rather seldom-did he suddenly come to life, his body folding up into a small, scrambling figure that scurried out from behind the counter with numerous bows and scrapes, so quickly that the cloud of frangipani could hardly keep up with him, and bade his customer take a seat while he exhibited the most exquisite perfumes and cosmetics.

WHAT IMAGERY IS BEING USED TO DESCRIBE BALDINI? WHAT IMPRESSION OF HIM ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FORM?
Chenier took his place behind the counter, positioning himself exactly as his master had stood before, and stared fixedly at the door. He knew what would happen in the next few hours: absolutely nothing in the shop, and up in Baldini’s study, the usual catastrophe. Baldini would take off his blue coat drenched in frangipani, sit down at his desk, and wait for inspiration. The inspiration would not come. He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. The mixture would be a failure. He would curse, fling open the window, and pour the stuff into the river. He would try something else, that too would be a failure, he would then rave and rant and throw a howling fit there in the stifling, odor-filled room. At about seven o’clock he would come back down, miserable, trembling and whining, and say: “Chenier, I’ve lost my nose, I cannot give birth to this perfume, I cannot deliver the Spanish hide to the count, all is lost, I am dead inside, I want to die, Chenier, please, help me die!” And Chenier would suggest that someone be sent to Pelissier’s for a bottle of Amor and Psyche, and Baldini would acquiesce, but only on condition that not a soul should learn of his shame. Chenier would swear himself to silence, and tonight they would perfume Count Verhamont’s leather with the other man’s product. That was how it would be, no doubt of it, and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over. Baldini was no longer a great perfumer. At one time, to be sure, in his youth, thirty, forty years ago, he had composed Rose of the South and Baldini’s Gallant Bouquet, the two truly great perfumes to which he owed his fortune. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes, and whenever he did manage to concoct a new perfume of his own, it was some totally old-fashioned, unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. What a shame, Chenier thought as he checked the sit of his wig in the mirror-a shame about old Baldini; a shame about his beautiful shop, because he’s sure to ruin it; and a shame about me, because by the time he has ruined it, I’ll be too old to take it over....

CAN WE DISCERN ANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THE COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES OF YOUTH AND AGE HERE?
CHAPTER 11: So much was certain: at age thirty-five, this bastard Pelissier already possessed a larger fortune than he, Baldini, had finally accumulated after three generations of constant hard work. And Pelissier’s grew daily, while his, Baldini’s, daily shrank. That sort of thing would not have been even remotely possible before! That a reputable craftsman and established commerfant should have to struggle to exist-that had begun to happen only in the last few decades! And only since this hectic mania for novelty had broken out in every quarter, this desperate desire for action, this craze of experimentation, this rodomontade in commerce, in trade, and in the sciences! Or this insanity about speed. What was the need for all these new roads being dug up everywhere, and these new bridges? What purpose did they serve? What was the advantage of being in Lyon within a week? Who set any store by that? Whom did it profit? Or crossing the Atlantic, racing to America in a month-as if people hadn’t got along without that continent for thousands of years. What had civilized man lost that he was looking for out there in jungles inhabited by Indians or Negroes. People even traveled to Lapland, up there in the north, with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish. And now they hoped to discover yet another continent that was said to lie in the South Pacific, wherever that might be. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same, the Spaniards, the damned English, the impertinent Dutch, whom you then had to go out and fight, which you couldn’t in the least afford. One of those battleships easily cost a good 300,000 livres, and a single cannon shot would sink it in five minutes, for good and all, paid for with our taxes. The minister of finance had recently demanded one-tenth of all income, and that was simply ruinous, even if you didn’t pay Monsieur his tithe. The very attitude was perverse.

==PERFUME is set during a revolutionary period; ideas about change and novelty are very important. How are such ideas furthered here? What attitude towards tradition versus change is expressed in //Sailor//?==

Man’s misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs. Pascal said that. And Pascal was a great man, a Frangipani of the intellect, a real craftsman, so to speak, and no one wants one of those anymore.

Again, is there an idea about age and youth / tradition and change being developed here?
CHAPTER 14: “You have, it appears, a fine nose, young man,” he said, once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop, carefully setting the candlestick on the worktable, “without doubt, a fine nose, but...” “I have the best nose in Paris, Maitre Baldini,” Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. “I know all the odors in the world, all of them, only I don’t know the names of some of them, but I can learn the names. The odors that have names, there aren’t many of those, there are only a few thousand. I’ll learn them all, I’ll never forget the name of that balm, storax, the balm is called storax, it’s called storax...” “Silence!” shouted Baldini. “Do not interrupt me when I’m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent. No one knows a thousand odors by name. Even I don’t know a thousand of them by name, at best a few hundred, for there aren’t more than a few hundred in our business, all the rest aren’t odors, they are simply stenches.”

How do older characters relate to younger generations in this novel? Is it comparable to //Sailor//?
Grenouille grabbed apparently at random from the row of essences in their flacons, pulled out the glass stoppers, held the contents under his nose for an instant, splashed a bit of one bottle, dribbled a drop or two of another, poured a dash of a third into the funnel, and so on. Pipette, test tube, measuring glass, spoons and rods-all the utensils that allow the perfumer to control the complicated process of mixing-Grenouille did not so much as touch a single one of them. It was as if he were just playing, splashing and swishing like a child busy cooking up some ghastly brew of water, grass, and mud, which he then asserts to be soup. Yes, like a child, thought Baldini; all at once he looks like a child, despite his ungainly hands, despite his scarred, pockmarked face and his bulbous old-man’s nose. I took him to be older than he is; but now he seems much younger to me; 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. There was just such a fanatical child trapped inside this young man, standing at the table with eyes aglow, having forgotten everything around him, apparently no longer aware that there was anything else in the laboratory but himself and these bottles that he tipped into the funnel with nimble awkwardness to mix up an insane brew that he would confidently swear-and would truly believe!-to be the exquisite perfume Amor and Psyche. Baldini shuddered as he watched the fellow bustling about in the candlelight, so shockingly absurd and so shockingly self-confident. In the old days-so he thought, and for a moment he felt as sad and miserable and furious as he had that afternoon while gazing out onto the city glowing ruddy in the twilight-in the old days people like that simply did not exist; he was an entirely new specimen of the race, one that could arise only in exhausted, dissipated times like these..., But he was about to be taught his lesson, the impertinent boy. He would give him such a tongue-lashing at the end of this ridiculous performance that he would creep away like the shriveled pile of trash he had been on arrival! Vermin! One dared not get involved with anyone at all these days, the world was simply teeming with absurd vermin!

Why is Baldini so disturbed by Grenouille? Is it true that in 'the old days... people like that simply did not exist'?
CHAPTER 18: They sat on footstools by the fire, under the spell of the rotund flacon-both spellbound, if for very different reasons. Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the flames and the copper, he loved the crackling of the burning wood, the gurgle of the alembic, for it was like the old days. You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine from the shop, for the heat made him thirsty, and drinking wine was like the old days too. And then he began to tell stories, from the old days, endless stories. About the War of the Spanish Succession, when his own participation against the Austrians had had a decisive influence on the outcome; about the Camisards, together with whom he had haunted the Cevennes; about the daughter of a Huguenot in the Esterel, who, intoxicated by the scent of lavender, had complied with his wishes; about a forest fire that he had damn near started and which would then have probably set the entire Provence ablaze, as sure as there was a heaven and hell, for a biting mistral had been blowing; and over and over he told about distilling out in the open fields, at night, by moonlight, accompanied by wine and the screech of cicadas, and about a lavender oil that he had created, one so refined and powerful that you could have weighed it out in silver; about his apprentice years in Genoa, about his journeyman years in the city of Grasse, where there were as many perfumers as shoemakers, some of them so rich they lived like princes, in magnificent houses with shaded gardens and terraces and wainscoted dining rooms where they feasted with porcelain and golden cutlery, and so on.... Such were the stories Baldini told while he drank his wine and his cheeks grew ruddy from the wine and the blazing fire and from his own enthusiastic story-telling. Grenouille, however, who sat back more in the shadows, did not listen to him at all.

=How are old people characterised in the novel? Could this be linked to other themes about existentialism or revolution? Can we compare //Sailor//?=

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