The Arcades Project - Operi

have expected that Jerusalem and Athens would be transferred to Paris in order to
convince me of truth or illusion." Chateaubriand in the preface to his I tineraire
de Jerusalem, cited in Emile de Labedolliere Le Nouveau (Paris) p. 30.
[Q;l,l]
The innermost glowing cells of the city of light, the old dioramas, nested in the
arcades, one of which today still bears the name Passage des Panoramas. It was,
in the first moment, as though you had entered an aquarium. Along the wall of
the great darkened hall, broken at intervals by narrow joints, it stretched like a
ribbon of illuminated water behind glass. The play of colors among deep-sea
fauna cannot be more fiery. But what came to light here were open-air, atmospheric
wonders. Seraglios were mirrored on moonlit waters; bright nights in
deserted parks loomed large. In the moonlight you could recognize the chateau
of Saint-Leu, where the last Conde was found hanged in a window. A light was
still burning in a window of the chateau. A couple of times the sun splashed wide
in between. In the clear light of a summer morning, one saw the rooms of the
Vatican as they might have appeared to the Nazarenes; not far beyond rose
Baden-Baden. But candlelight, too, was honored: wax tapers encircled the murdered
Duc de Berry in the dusky cathedral that served as mortuary chapel, and
hanging lamps in the silken skies of an isle of love practically put round Luna to
shame. It was an ingenious experiment on the moonstruck magic night of Ro­
manticism, and its noble substance emerged from the trial victorious. [Q;l,2]
The waxwork figure as mannequin of history.-In the wax museum the past
enters into the same aggregate state that distance enters into in the interior.
[Q;l,3]
On the world-travel panorama, which operated under the name "Le Tour du
Monde" at the Paris world exhibition of 1900, and which animated a changing
panoranlic background with living figures in the foreground, each time costumed
accordingly. "The 'World-Tour Panorama' is housed in a building that has al­
ready caused a general sensation because of its bizarre exterior. An Indian gallery
crowns the walls of the edifice, while rising at the corners are the tower of a
pagoda, a Chinese tower, and an old Portuguese tower!' "Le Tour du Monde," in
Die Pariser Weltau5Jteliung in Wort und Bild, ed. Dr. Georg Malkowsky (Berlin,
1900), p. 59.-The similarity of this architecture to that in zoological gardens is
worth noting. [Q;l,4]
Three stages in Lemercier's Lampelie et Dague,.,.e: (1) presentation of stationary
panoramas; (2) presentation of the technique of their animation? which Daguerre
got from Lampelie; (3) description of the overcoming of Lampelie by the tireless
Daguerre. In the following, the first stage (the thircl llnder 0 Photography OJ.
Daguerre, in the tower where his erudite brush
Makes a radiant theater of optics,
Reveals in thc dark of a giant enclosure
Bright horizons of awesome perspective.
His palette is magic; and his confluent lights,