the War of the Spanish Succession

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) surfaces in Perfume not as a historical event that shapes the plot, but as a personal memory that the elderly perfumer Giuseppe Baldini uses to measure the distance between his own glorious youth and the degraded modern world he despises. Baldini, who has long since lost his creative powers and now struggles to compete with upstarts like Pélissier, retreats into tales of his past, and the war provides the most vivid backdrop for those self-aggrandizing stories. The conflict functions as a symbol of a bygone era of heroic action, masculine vigor, and clear moral certainties—everything Baldini feels has been lost in the frivolous, commercialized age of novelty perfumes and Enlightenment skepticism.

Baldini's War Stories and Their Function

During long nights spent distilling lavender and other plants in his laboratory, Baldini drinks wine and tells endless stories about his youth, including his participation in the War of the Spanish Succession. He claims that his own actions against the Austrians had a decisive influence on the outcome of the war—a boast that reveals more about his need for self-importance than about any historical reality. These tales are part of a larger repertoire of reminiscences that also include his adventures with the Camisards in the Cévennes, a romantic encounter with a Huguenot's daughter in the Estérel, and a near-disastrous forest fire in Provence. The war story, like the others, serves to construct a heroic self-image that contrasts sharply with his present impotence: he is now an old man who cannot even copy a rival's perfume, let alone influence the fate of nations.

The War as a Marker of Lost Vitality

The War of the Spanish Succession is the earliest of Baldini's remembered exploits, and its remoteness underscores the depth of his decline. He was young and vigorous during the conflict; now, decades later, he is exhausted, his business failing, his creative faculties dried up. The war represents a time when action was decisive and consequences were clear—unlike the present, which he sees as a chaotic, morally confused era of endless experimentation, speed, and intellectual fidgeting. Baldini's nostalgia for the war is thus a nostalgia for a world he believes was ordered, hierarchical, and meaningful, in contrast to the degenerate age of Pélissier, Voltaire, and the mania for novelty that he blames for his own obsolescence.

The War and Baldini's Critique of Modernity

Baldini's invocation of the War of the Spanish Succession is embedded in a broader tirade against the eighteenth century's obsession with speed, innovation, and scientific inquiry. He rails against new roads, faster travel to Lyon or America, the discovery of new continents, and the proliferation of experimental science—all of which he sees as symptoms of a restless, ungrateful spirit that has abandoned the stable traditions of the past. The war, by contrast, belongs to a time when a man could be a craftsman, a humanist, and a warrior all in one, when the guild system protected honest tradesmen, and when the authority of God and King went unquestioned. Baldini's war stories are thus not merely personal reminiscence but a rhetorical weapon in his reactionary critique of the Enlightenment, a lament for a world he believes has been irretrievably lost to the forces of change he cannot control.