The Arcades Project - Operi

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"Les Ev€mements, les institutions et la langue" (Paris, 1937): "We shall freely
imagine that a man of genius conceived the idea of enshrining, within the banality
of the vernacular, certain vocables calculated to seduce readers and buyers, and
that he chose Greek not only because it furnishes inexhaustible resources to work
with hut also because, less widely known than Latin, it has the advantage of being
. . . incomprehensible to a generation less versed in the study of ancient
Greece . . . . Only, we know neither who this man was, nor what his nationality
might be, nor even whether he existed or not. Let us suppose that . .. Greek words
gained currency little by little until, one day, ... the idea . .. was born ... that,
by their own intrinsic virtue, they could serve for advertising . ... I myself would
like to think that . .. several generations and several nations went into the making
of that verhal billboard, the Greek monster that entices by surprise. I believe it
was during the epoch I'm speaking of that the movement began to take shape . ...
The age of 'comagenic' hair oil had arrived." Pp. 1229-1230 CoLes Causes du
triomphe rlu grec"). [G1Sa,!]
What would a modern Winckelmann say . . were he confronted hy a product
from China-something strange, bizarre, contorted in form, intense in color, and
sometimes so delicate as to he almost evanescent? It is, nevertheless, an example of
universal beauty. But in order to understand it, the critic, the spectator, must
effect within himself a mysterious transformation; and by means of a phenomenon
of the will acting on the imagination, he must learn hy himself to participate in the
milieu which has given hirth to this strange flowering." Further along, on the same
page, appear "those mysterious flowers whose deep color enslaves the eye and
tantalizes it with its shape." Charles Baudelaire, Oellvres,