The Arcades Project - Operi

""That poetry of terror which the strat.agems of enemy tribes at war create in the
heart of the forests of America, and of which Cooper has made such good use, was
attached to the smallest details of Parisian life. The passersby, the shops, the
hackney carriages, a person standing at a window-to the men who had been
numhered off for the defense of Peyrade's life, everything presented the ominous
interest which in Cooper's novels may be found in a tree trunk, a beaver's dam, a
rock, a buffalo skin, a motionless canoe, a hranch drooping over the water."
Balzac, A combien l'amour revient aux vieillards.:m [M13a,1]
Preformed in the figure of the fianeur is that of the detective. "The fianeur re­
quired a social legitimation of his habitus. It suited him very well to see his
indolence presented as a plausible front, behind which, in reality, hides the riv­
eted attention of an observer who will not let the unsuspecting malefactor out of
his sight. [M13a,2)
At the end of Baudelaire's essay on Marceline Desbordes-Valmore emerges the
promeneur, who strolls through the garden landscape of her poetry; the perspec­
tives of the past and future open before him. "But these skies are too vast to be
everywhere pure, and the temperature of the climate too warm . . . . The idle
passerby, who contemplates these areas veiled in mourning, feels tears of hysteria
come to his eyes:' Charles Baudelaire, L'Art romantique (Paris), p. 343 ("Mar­
celine Desbordes-Va lmore").39 "The promeneur is no longer capable of "meander­
ing capriciously." He takes refuge in the shadow of cities; he becomes a fianeur.
[M13a,3)
Jules Claretie relates of the aged Victor Hugo, at the time when he was living on the
Rue Pigalle, that he enjoyed riding through Paris on the upper level of omnibuses.
He loved looking down, from this eminence, on the bustle of the streets. See Raymond
EscholiCl\ Victor Hugo raconte par ceu.x qui l'ont Vlt (Paris, 1931), p. 350-
Jules Claretie, ""Victor Hugo." [M13a,41
""Do you recall a tableau ... , created hy t.he most powerful pen of our day, which
is entitled "The 'Man of the Crowd'? From behind the window of a cafe, a convales­
(ent, contemplating the crowd with delight, mingles in thought with all the
thoughts pulsating around him. Having just escaped from the shadow of death, he
joyfully breathes in all the germs and emanations of life; having heen on the point
of forgetting everything, he now remembers and ardently wishes to rememher
everything. Finally, he rushes into the crowd in search of an unknown person
whose face, glimpsed momentarily, fascinated him. Curiosity has hecome a fatal,
irresistible passion." Baudelaire, L 'Art romantique (Paris), p. 61 (" :Le Peintre de
la vie moderne").4u [M14,1]
Already Andre Le Breton, Balzac, l'homme et l'oeuvre , compares
Balzac's characters-" the usurers, the attorneys, the hankers"-to Mohicans,
whom they resemhle more than they do t.he Parisians. See also Remy de Gour-