The Arcades Project - Operi

use value available to a general and public review by passing that time on the
boulevard and thus, as it were, exhibiting it. [M16,4]
The press brings into play an overabundance of information, which can be all the
more provocative the more it is exempt from any use. (Only the ubiquity of the
reader would make possible a utilization; and so the illusion of such ubiquity is
also generated.) The actual relation of this information to social existence is
determined by the dependence of the information industry on financial interests
and its aligmnent with these interests.-As the information industry comes into
its own, intellectual labor fastens parasitically on every material labor, just as
capital more and more brings every material labor into a relation of dependency.
[M16a,1]
Simmel's apt remark concerning the uneasiness aroused in the urbanite by other
people, people whom, in the overwhelming majority of cases, he sees without
hearing," would indicate that, at least in their beginnings, the physiognomies
were motivated by, among other things, the wish to
dispel this uneasiness and render it harmless. Otherwise, the fantastic pretensions
of these little volumes could not have sat well with their audience. [M16a,2]
There is an effort to master ti,e new experiences of the city within the framework
of the old traditional experiences of nature. Hence the schemata of the virgin
forest and the sea (Meryon and Ponson du Terrail) . [M 16a,3]
Trace and aura. The trace is appearance of a nearness, however far removed the
thing that left it behind may be. The aura is appearance of a distance, however
close the thing that calls it forth. In the trace, we gain possession of the thing; in
the aura, it takes possession of us. [M16a,4]
Faithful to my oid estahlished way,
T Like to turn the street into a study;
How often, then, as chance conducts my dreaming steps,
I Munder, unawat'Cs, into a group of pavers!
Auguste-Marseille Barthelemy, Paris: Re1llLe sa,tirique it M. C. Delessert, Prefet de
Police (Paris, 1838), p. 8. [M16a,5]
·M. Le Breton says that it is the usurers, attorneys, and hankers in Balzac, rather
than the Parisians, who sometimes seem like ruthless Mohicans, and he believes
that the influence of Fenimore Cooper was not particularly advantageous for the
author of Gobsecf.:. This is possihle, hut difficult to prove." Remy de Gonrmont,
Promenades litteraires, 2nd series (Paris, 1906), pp. 117-118 ("Les Maitres de
Balzac"). [M17,1]
"The jostling crowdedness and the motley disorder of metropolit.an communicat.ion
would . .. he unbearahle without . .. psychological distance. Since contempo-