The Arcades Project - Operi

ahout the same faces, the same appearance, yet in a populous mass." Briefe von
und an Hegel, ed. Karl Hegel (Leipzig, 1887), part 2, p. 257 (Werke, vol. 19, part
2) -'"
Londres
It is an immense place, and so spread out
That it takes a day to cross it by omnibus.
And, far and wide, there is nothing to see
But houses, public buildings, and high monuments,
Set down haphazardly by the haod of time.
Long black chimneys, the steeples of industry,
Open their mouths and exhale fumes
From their hot bellies to the open air;
Vast white domes and Gothic spires
Float in the vapor above the heaps of bricks.
An ever swelling, unapproachable river,
Rolling its muddy currents in sinuous onrush,
Like that frightful stream of the underworld,65
And arched over by gigaotic bridges on piers
That mimic the old Colossus of Rhodes,
Allows thousaods of ships to ply their way;
A great tide polluted and always unsettled
Recirculates the riches of the world.
Busy stockyards, open shops are ready
To receive a universe of goods.
Above, the sky tonnented, cloud upon cloud,
The sun, like a corpse, wears a sm'oud on its face,
Or, sometimes, in the poisonous atmosphere,
Looks out like a miner coal-blackened.
There, amid the somber mass of things,
An obscure people lives and dies in silence­
Millions of beings in thrall to a fatal instinct,
Seeking gold by avenues devious and straight.
[MI9,6]
To be compared witb Baudelarre's review of Barbie,; his portrayal ofMeryon, the
poems of I'Tableaux parisiens." In Barbier's poetry, two elements-the "descrip­
tion" of the great city and the social unrest-should be pretty much distin­
guished. Only traces of these elements still remain with Baudelaire, in whom
they have been joined to an altogether heterogeneous third element. Auguste
Barbie,; Iambes et poemes (paris, 1841), pp. 193-194. The poem is from the se­
quence Lazare of1837. [MI9a,l]
If one compares Baudelaire's discussion of Meryon with Barbier's "Londres,"
one asks oneself whether the gloomy linage of the "most disquietlllg of capi­
tals"66-the inlage, that is, of Paris-was not very materially determined by the
texts of Barbier and of Poe. London was certainly mead of Paris in industrial
development. [MI9a,2]