The Arcades Project - Operi

no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct
conception. Let me tenn it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral
embodiment of man's abstract idea of Time . .. . By its aid I measured the irregu­
larities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their
tickings came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviation from the tme pro­
portion ... affected me just as violations of abstract truth are wont, on earth, to
affect the moral sense" (Edgar Allan Poe, Nouvelles His/aires extraordinaires , pp. 336-337).366 This description is nothing but one great euphemism for
the utter void of time to which man is surrendered in spleen. [J69a,1]
" . . . until light / voluptuously reaches for / the horizon, consoling all- / even
hunger, concealing all- / even shame" ("La Fin de la joumee"l""'-this is the
summer lightling of social conflicts in the light sky of the metropolis. [J69a,2]
"You seem, for setting off' my darkness, more / mockingly to magnify the space I
which hars me from those blue immensities" ("" Je t'adore a regal ... "). Juxtapose:
"And the human face-which Ovid thought was made to mirror the sta1'ssee
it now, no longer expressing anything but a crazy ferocity, or rigid in a kind of
death!" (Oeu.vres, vol. 2, p. 628 ["Fusees," no. 3]).""" [J69a,3]
In studying the allegorical in the work of Baudelaire, it would be a mistake to
undervalue the medieval element in relation to the Baroque. It is something
difficult to describe, but may be grasped most readily if we recall how very much
certain passages, certain poems ("Vers pour Ie portrait de M. Honore Daumier,"
"L:Avertisseur;' "Le Squelette Laboureur"), in their pregnant simplicity, contrast
with others ti,at are overburdened with meanings. This bareness gives them the
sort of expression one finds in portraits by Fouquet. [J69a,4]
A Blanquist look at the terrestrial globe: "I contemplate from on high the globe in
its rondure, / and I no longer seek there the shelter of a hut" ("Le COllt du
neant") .36, The poet has made his dwelling in space itself, one could say-or in the
abyss. [J69a,5]
Representations pass before the melancholic slowly, as in a procession. This
image, typical in this complex of symptoms, is rare in Baudelaire. It occurs in
"Horreur sympathique" : "your vast mourning clouds / are the hearses of illy
dreams:" 70 [J70,1]
"Then all at once the raging bells break loose, / hurling to heaven their awful
caterwaul" ("Spleen IV") .'l7l The sky that is assailed by the bells is the same in
which Blanqui's speculations move. [J70,2]
"Behind the scenes, the frivolous decors / of all existence, deep in the abyss, /
I see distinctiy other, brighter worlds" ("La Vo ix"). Tbese are ti,e worlds of