The Arcades Project - Operi

advances the needle on a transparent dial to indicate that another person has
entered; by this means they keep track of receipts. Now that the car is moving, you
reach calmly into your wallet and pay the fare. If you happen to be sitting reasonably
far from the conductor, the money travels from hand to hand among the
passengers; the well-dressed lady takes it from the workingman in the blue jacket
and passes it on. This is all accomplished easily, in routine fashion, and without
any bother. When someone is to exit, the conductor again pulls the cord and brings
the car to a halt. If it is going uphill-which in Paris it often is-and therefore is
going more slowly, men will customarily climb on and off without the car's having
to stop." Eduard Devrient, Briefe au, Paris (Berlin, 1840), p. 61-62. [M4,2]
It was after the Exhibition of 1867 that one began to see those velocipedes which,
some years later, had a vogue as widespread as it was short-lived. We may recall
that under the Directory certain Incroyablesll could be seen riding velociferes ,
which were bulky, badly constructed velocipedes. On May 19, 1804" a play entitled
Velociferes was performed at the Vaudeville; it contained a song with this verse:
You, partisans of the gentle gait,
Coachmen who have lost the spur,
Would you now accelerate
Beyond the prompt velocifere?
Learn then how to suhstitute
Dexterity for speed.
By the beginning of 1868, however, velocipedes were in circulation, and soon the
public walkways were everywhere furrowed. Velocemen replaced boatmen. There
were gymnasia and arenas for velocipedists, and competitions were set up to ehallenge
the skill of amateurs . ... Today the velocipede is finished and forgotten."
H. GOUl·don de Genouillac, Paris a travers les siecles (Paris, 1882), vol. 5, p. 288.
[M4,3]
The peculiar irresolution of the flilneur. Just as waiting seems to be the proper
state of the impassive thinker, doubt appears to be that of the flii.neur. An elegy by
Schiller contains the phrase: "the hesitant wing of the butterfly:'" This points to
that association of wingedness with the feeling of indecision which is so charac­
teristic of hashish intoxication. [M4a,1]
E. T. A. Hoffmann as type of the flilneur; "Des Vetters Eckfenster"