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10/14/2020
Parfümlein
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Valuable attic find - new light on Effi Briest's Chinese?
Almost as euphoric as the recent award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Peter Handke, the literary-historical community reacted to the discovery in the attic of a hitherto completely unknown document on A. O-Fu-Jing, who, as a creepy Chinese, found his way into the great work of poetic realism, "Effi Briest". Although the circumstances of the find as well as the content and authorship are not yet fully understood, the publishing house in whose attic the yellowed manuscript was found gave the green light for a preprint of the biographical record, which was found in a great hurry and has not yet been completely translated, and which obviously documents the prehistory of the unfortunate Chinese in "Effi Briest". It is with great pleasure that we present this translation here.
"A long, long time ago there lived in faraway China a [the adjective unfortunately fell victim to a stain of alcoholic origin; author's note] ... Chinese. His name was O-Fu-Jing, which means "Pass the cocoa over here, you poor man" [at this point there is still disagreement about the correct interpretation of the Mandarin, which originates from an older linguistic stratum, also a malapropism of the tenderly breathed "Ef-fi-chen" seems conceivable, but at this point and moreover because of the lack of vocal congruence it would not make sense; author's note]. Mr. O-Fu-Jing lived in Shanghai, in the shady corner (not only in London). Mr. O-Fu-Jing was not a happy person because he was single. He drowned his single sorrow in gin and tonic every night. Of course, single was not his profession - in reality he was a baker, and through this gift his misfortune had also begun: Many, many years ago he had fallen in love with an English woman who had boarded the wrong plane in search of a decent yoga class and landed at his bakery. She loved his grapefruit and poppy seed biscuits and also his fine vetiver perfume, and since love, as is well known, goes through the stomach and the nose, the single baker (which he already was at that time) and the yoga-loving English woman fell in love with each other and they went on an extended country holiday in their home country. There they drank many, many gin and tonic and were very, very happy, but as fate would have it, when one morning the English woman unsuspectingly went to look for some bergamot in her cottage garden (she knew it didn't grow there, but had never quite given up the dream of a Mediterranean garden, especially at night), she was killed by a falling roof beam of her four hundred and twenty-one year old cottage and abandoned Mr. O-Fu-Jing forever. For her funeral, he sacrificed the profits of two months of grapefruit-poppy biscuits and had some enchanting ylang-ylang flown in, which, together with the osmanthus she loved so much, exuded a wonderful scent over the English cemetery. Then Mr. O-Fu-Jing returned to his home country.
There we see him now, a desperate man, lonely and broken in the illegal backyards of the pub district, between the opium smugglers and the lovers, and the inclined reader will not be able to resist a tear of hot compassion as he watches the poor man there dreaming, day in, day out, of his extinguished flame. The unfortunate drank more and more gin and tonic, and the temptation to indulge in the lascivious, decadent pleasures of the heavy, spicy wafts of opium came ever closer, until he finally set foot in one of these secret taverns, where a warm-sweet, deliciously alien scent of cocoa, caramel and incense welcomed him. Now his doubts were over and he left himself entirely to the pleasures of a heavy, sweet opium pipe and a certain Liu and its enchanting ylang-ylang perfume. Robbed of all his senses, he staggered to the sea early in the morning, where he stumbled upon a huge lump of grey ambergris. Not knowing what he had found, he fell asleep in the cool sand. A short time later, the jogging [sic!] sailor of a merchant ship from far away found him there. The captain of this ship, Thomsen, took the fat lump of ambergris with care and gave the poor, unhappy Chinese man a new life as a servant at his side in return [While research is not yet clear about the motives for this action, there is obviously no doubt about the new destiny of the Chinese man, author's note]. Fate led the two of them back to the small East Prussian town of Kessin, where our unhappy Mr. O-Fu-Jing met the captain's niece. Several times he baked his inimitably good grapefruit and poppy seed cookies for her, only that he had changed the recipe a little since the evening in the pub: as a special ingredient he added ...[...]."
At this point the highly interesting testimony of a dramatic life unfortunately breaks off, but the rest is obsolete for loyal Fontane fans anyway. So it's all the more wonderful that his life is reflected in an extraordinary scent, which from the fresh start develops more and more towards the dubious corner, always gaining in exotic sweetness and floridity to glide into a successful amber base. Just to retrace the olfactory journey of poor Mr. O-Fu-Jing, this fragrance is worth a try.
"A long, long time ago there lived in faraway China a [the adjective unfortunately fell victim to a stain of alcoholic origin; author's note] ... Chinese. His name was O-Fu-Jing, which means "Pass the cocoa over here, you poor man" [at this point there is still disagreement about the correct interpretation of the Mandarin, which originates from an older linguistic stratum, also a malapropism of the tenderly breathed "Ef-fi-chen" seems conceivable, but at this point and moreover because of the lack of vocal congruence it would not make sense; author's note]. Mr. O-Fu-Jing lived in Shanghai, in the shady corner (not only in London). Mr. O-Fu-Jing was not a happy person because he was single. He drowned his single sorrow in gin and tonic every night. Of course, single was not his profession - in reality he was a baker, and through this gift his misfortune had also begun: Many, many years ago he had fallen in love with an English woman who had boarded the wrong plane in search of a decent yoga class and landed at his bakery. She loved his grapefruit and poppy seed biscuits and also his fine vetiver perfume, and since love, as is well known, goes through the stomach and the nose, the single baker (which he already was at that time) and the yoga-loving English woman fell in love with each other and they went on an extended country holiday in their home country. There they drank many, many gin and tonic and were very, very happy, but as fate would have it, when one morning the English woman unsuspectingly went to look for some bergamot in her cottage garden (she knew it didn't grow there, but had never quite given up the dream of a Mediterranean garden, especially at night), she was killed by a falling roof beam of her four hundred and twenty-one year old cottage and abandoned Mr. O-Fu-Jing forever. For her funeral, he sacrificed the profits of two months of grapefruit-poppy biscuits and had some enchanting ylang-ylang flown in, which, together with the osmanthus she loved so much, exuded a wonderful scent over the English cemetery. Then Mr. O-Fu-Jing returned to his home country.
There we see him now, a desperate man, lonely and broken in the illegal backyards of the pub district, between the opium smugglers and the lovers, and the inclined reader will not be able to resist a tear of hot compassion as he watches the poor man there dreaming, day in, day out, of his extinguished flame. The unfortunate drank more and more gin and tonic, and the temptation to indulge in the lascivious, decadent pleasures of the heavy, spicy wafts of opium came ever closer, until he finally set foot in one of these secret taverns, where a warm-sweet, deliciously alien scent of cocoa, caramel and incense welcomed him. Now his doubts were over and he left himself entirely to the pleasures of a heavy, sweet opium pipe and a certain Liu and its enchanting ylang-ylang perfume. Robbed of all his senses, he staggered to the sea early in the morning, where he stumbled upon a huge lump of grey ambergris. Not knowing what he had found, he fell asleep in the cool sand. A short time later, the jogging [sic!] sailor of a merchant ship from far away found him there. The captain of this ship, Thomsen, took the fat lump of ambergris with care and gave the poor, unhappy Chinese man a new life as a servant at his side in return [While research is not yet clear about the motives for this action, there is obviously no doubt about the new destiny of the Chinese man, author's note]. Fate led the two of them back to the small East Prussian town of Kessin, where our unhappy Mr. O-Fu-Jing met the captain's niece. Several times he baked his inimitably good grapefruit and poppy seed cookies for her, only that he had changed the recipe a little since the evening in the pub: as a special ingredient he added ...[...]."
At this point the highly interesting testimony of a dramatic life unfortunately breaks off, but the rest is obsolete for loyal Fontane fans anyway. So it's all the more wonderful that his life is reflected in an extraordinary scent, which from the fresh start develops more and more towards the dubious corner, always gaining in exotic sweetness and floridity to glide into a successful amber base. Just to retrace the olfactory journey of poor Mr. O-Fu-Jing, this fragrance is worth a try.
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