The Arcades Project - Operi

For the materialist dialectician, discontinuity is the regulative idea of the tradition
of the ruling classes (and therefore, primarily, of the bourgeoisie); continuity, the
regulative idea of the tradition of the oppressed (and therefore, primarily, of the
proletariat). The proletariat lives more slowly than the bourgeois class. The
examples of its champions, the perceptions of its leaders, do not grow old, or, at
any rate, they grow old much more slowly than the epochs and great personages
of the bourgeois class. The waves of fashion break against the compact mass of
the downtrodden. The movements of the ruling class, by contrast, having once
come into their ascendancy, maintain in themselves a reference to fashion. In
particular, the ideologies of the rulers are by their nature more changeable than
the ideas of the oppressed. For not only must they, like the ideas of the latter,
adapt each time to the situation of social conflict, but they must glorify that
situation as fundamentally harmortious. Such a business is managed only eccen­
trically and desultorily; it is modish in the fullest sense of the word. To undertake
to "salvage" the great figures of the bourgeoisie means, not least, to conceive
them in this most unstable dimension of their operation, and precisely from out
of that to extract, to cite, what has remained inconspicuously buried beneath­
being, as it was, of so little help to the powerful. To bring together Baudelaire and
Blanqui means removing the bushel that is covering the light:"" [J77,1]
Baudelaire's reception by poets can be easily distinguished from his reception by
theorists. The latter adhere to the comparison with Dante and the concept of
decadence; the former, to the maxim of art for art's sake and the theory of
correspondences. [J77,2]
Faguet (where?) sees the secret of Baudelaire s influence in the extremely widespread
chronic nervousness. [J77,3]
1'11e ')erky gait" of the ragpicker is not necessarily due to the effect of
alcohol. Every few moments, he must stop to gather refuse, which he throws into
his wicker basket. [J77,4]
For Blanqui, history is the straw with which infinite tin1e is stuffed. [J77a,1]
("1 come to a stop for I am suddenly exhausted. Up ahead, it appears, the path
descends without warning, precipitously: On all sides, ahyss-I dare not look."
Nietzsche, vol. 12, p. 223 (cited in Karl
Lowith, Nietzsches Philosophie de,. ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen [Berlin,
1935], p. 33). [J77a,2]
1'11e hero who asserts himself on the stage of modernity is, in fact, an actor first of
all. He clearly appears as such in "Les Sept Vieillards;' in a "scene to matcl1 the
actor's plight;' "steeling" his "nerves to play a hero's part."430 [J77a,3]