The Arcades Project - Operi

ary urban culture ... forces us to be physically close to an enormous number of
people, . . . people would sink completely into despair if the objectification of'
social relationships did not bring with it an inner boundary and reserve. The
pecuniary character of relationships, either openly or concealed in a thousand
forms, places [a] . .. functional distance between people that is an inner protection
. . . against the overcrowded proximity. " Georg Simmel, Philosophie des
Geldes (Leipzig, 1900), p. 514."' [M17,2]
Prologue to Le Ffdneur, newspaper for the masses, published at the office of the
town crier, 45 Rue de la Harpe (the first and, no doubt, only number, dated May
3, 1848): "To go out strolling, these days, while puffing one's tobacco, ... while
dreaming of evening pleasures, seems to us a century behind the times. We are
not the sort to refuse all knowledge of the customs of another age; but, in our
strolling, let us not forget our rights and our obligations as citizens. The times are
necessitous; they demand all our attention, all day long. Let us be flaneurs, but
patriotic flilneurs;' (J. Montaigu) . An early specimen of that dislocation of word
and meaning which belongs among the devices of journalism. [M17,3]
Balzac anecdote: He was with a friend one day when he passed a heggar in rags on
the boulevard. His companion was astonished to see Balzac touch his own sleeve
with his hand; he had just felt there the conspicuous rip that gaped at the elbow of
the mendicant." Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Christophe, Repertoire de la
Comedie hwnaine de Ii. de Balzac (Paris, 1887), p. viii (Introduction by Paul
Bourget). [M17,4]
Apropos of F1aubert's remark that "observation is guided above all by imagina­
tion;'" the visionary faculty of Balzac: "It is important to note, first of all, that this
visionary power could never be exercised directly. Balzac did not have time to
live; ... he did not have the leisure ... to study men, after the fashion of Moliere
and Saint-Simon, through daily, familiar contact. He cut his existence in two,
writing by night, sleeping by day" (p. x). Balzac speaks of a "retrospective pene­
tration;' "It would seem t1mt he took hold of the givens of experience and then
tossed them, as it were, into a cmcible of dreams;' A. Cerfberr and J. Christophe,
Repertoire de fa Comedie "ulnaine de H. de Balzac (Paris, 1887), p. xi (Introduction
by Paul Bourget) . [M17a,1]
Empathy with the commodity is fundamentally empathy with exchange value
itself. The flaneur is the virtuoso of this empathy. He takes the concept of market­
ability itself for a stroll. Just as his final ambit is the department store, his last
incarnation is the sandwich-man. [M17a,2]
In a brasserie in the vicinity of the Care Saint-Lazare, des Esseint.es feels himself
to he already in England. [M17a,3]