The Arcades Project - Operi

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is called "Le Voyageur du XIX' siec!e"
(p. 65). This voyageur is an apotheosis of the traveler in which, in quite peculiar
fashion, the traits of the Wandering Jew are mingled with those of a pioneer of
progress. Samples: "Everywhere along his path, the traveler has sown the riches
of his heart and his imagination: giving a good word to all and sundry, . . .
encouraging the laborer, rescning the ignorant from their gutter, ... and raising
up the hnmiliated" (p. 78). "The woman who seeks a love snpreme: traveler!­
The man who seeks a devoted woman: traveler!-. .. Artists avid for new horizons:
travelers!-The mad who take their hallucinations for reality: travelers!-.
.. Glory hunters, troubadours of dl0ught: travelers!-Life is a journey,
and every single being who departs the womb of woman to return to the womb
of earth is a traveler" (pp. 79-81). "Humanity, 'tis thou who art the eternal
voyager" (p. 84). [010,2]
Passage from Benjamin Gastineau Llt Vie en chemin defer (Paris, 1861): ""All of a
Budden, the curtain is lowered abruptly on the SUll, on heauty, on the thousand
scenes ofllie and nature which your mind and heart have savored along the way. It
is night and death and the cemetery; it is despotism-it is the tunnel! Nothing hut
beings that dwell in the shadows, never knowing the hright wing of freedom and
truth! ... Nonetheless, after hearing the cries of confusion and dismay from passengers
on the train as it enters the gloomy archway, and their exclamations of joy
on quitting the tunnel, . .. who would dare maintain that the human creature was
not made for light and liberty?" (1'1'. 37-38). [UIO,3]
Passages from Benjamin Gastineau, Let Vie en chemin defer (Paris, 1861): Hail to
you, nohle races of the future, scions of the railway!" (p. 112). All ahoard! All
aboard! The whistle pierces the sonorous vault of the station" (p. 18). ""Before the
creation of the railroads, nature did not yet pulsate:; it was a Sleeping Beauty . ...
The heavens themselves appeared immutable. The railroad animated everything
. ... The sky has hecome an active infinity, and nature a dynamie heauty.
Christ is descended from his Cross; he has walked the earth, and he is leaving, far
hehind him on the dusty road, the old Ahasuerus" (p. 50). [UIOa,!]
"Michel Chevalier delighted the students [of the Ecole Poly technique ] when he
retraced, in particular, the great historical epochs, recurring often to Alexander,
Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, in order to emphasize the role of inventors
and triumphant organizers." G. Pinet, Histoire de l'Ecole pol:rtechnique (Paris,
1887), p. 205. [UIOa,2]
"The disciples of Saint-Simon-retruited, for the most part., froIll the Ecole des
Mines, which is to say, from among the best. students of the Ecole Poly techniquecould
not have failed t.o exert a considerahle influenee on their younger comrades
. . . . Nevertheless, Saint-Simonianism did not have time to garner many
converts at the Ecole Poly technique. The schism of 183P dealt it a fatal hlowthe