The Arcades Project - Operi

his nonconformity, was in this respect also ahead of his contemporaries: he was
the first to fall victim to an ignis fatuus which since that time has blinded many
millions. [J66,!]
Baudelaire idealizes the experience of the commodity, in that he ascribes to it, as
canon, the experience of a1legoty. [J66,2]
If it is imagination that presents correspondences to the memory, it is thinking
that consecrates allegory to it. Memory brings about the convergence of imagina­
tion and thinking. [J66,3]
With the new manufacturing processes that lead to imitations, semblance is
consolidated in the commodity. [J66,4]
Between the theory of natural correspondences and the repudiation of nature
exists a contradiction. It is resolved insofar as within the memory impressions
become detached from individual experiences, so that the long experience stored
up in those impressions is released and can be fed into the allegoricalfunduJ. [J66,5]
George translated "Spleen et Ideal" by "Triibsi'lli und Vergeistignng"
, thus hitting upon the essential meaning of the
ideal in Baudelaire. [J66,6]
With Meryon, cile majesty and decrepitude of Paris come into their own.
[J66,7]
In the form taken by prostitution in the big cities, the woman appears not only as
commodity but, in a precise sense, as mass-produced article. This is indicated by
the masking of individual expression in favor of a professional appearance, such
as makeup provides. The point is made still more emphatically, later on, by the
uniformed girls of the music-hall review. [J66,8]
Baudelaire's opposition to progress was the indispensable condition for his suc­
cess at capturing Paris in his poetry. Compared with this poetry, all later big-city
lyric must be accounted feeble. What it lacks is precisely that reserve toward its
subject matter which Baudelaire owed to his frenetic hatred of progress.
[J66a,!]
In Baudelaire, Paris as an emblem of antiquity contrasts with its masses as an
emblem of modernity. [J66a,2]
On Le Sp leen de Pam: news items are the leaven that allows the urban masses to
rise in Baudelaire's inlagination. [J66a,3]
Spleen is the feeling that corresponds to catastrophe in permanence. [J66aA]