Czytanie Süskinda

Plots created by Patrick Süskind are transparent and uncomplicated; they follow a conventional path, seemingly aloof from formal modernist experiments, and close with distinctive endings; in popular reception, they give a sense of confidence that even the most fantastic worlds, derived from the corners of imagination, may be set into a familiar and closed whole. Perhaps this simplicity makes it easy to be satisfied by their seductive plot and steer clear off tracks leading to the content encrypted within the deep structure. The author of the present paper attempts to interpret the short stories: Maître Mussard's Bequest and The Story of Mr Sommer as a metaphorical and grotesque vision of man's existential death anxiety.