The Arcades Project - Operi

are bewitched, but the evil spell of this slippery path readily takes the form, even
today, of large animated dolls. D Advertising 0 [Zl,2]
"The fashion is supposed to have been invented by Longchamps. I've not seen
anything new, but tomorrow in their bulletins all the '''Friendly Sprites," all the
" Petits Couriers des Dames," all the "Psyches" will report on new attire that was
already designed and available hefore Longchmnps ever came on the scene. I
strongly suspect that in many of the eoaches, instead of the lady who would seem to
he seated inside, there was only a dummy which the owners of these fine vehicles
had dressed according to their own taste in shawls and satins and silks. " Karl
Gutzkow, Blife an" Puris (Leipzig, 1842), vol. 1, Pl'. 119-120. [Zl,3]
From the Ombres Chinoises of the PaIais-Royal: "'A . . .
demoiselle gave birth on stage, and the children could immediately "camper about
like moles. There were four of them, and they danced together a few moments after
the hirth in a pleasant quadrille. Another young woman started tossing her head
vigorously, and in the twinkling of an eye a second demoiselle had stepped fully
clothed from out of her head. This latter at once began dancing hut, the next
minute, was seized in turn with head-shaking; these were lahor pains, and a third
demoiselle stepped out of her head. She, too, immediately began dancing but soon
took to tossing her head like the others, and out of her arose the fourth demoiselle.
It continued in this manner until eight generations were there on the stage-all
related to one another through spontaneous generation, like lice." J. F. Benzenberg,
Briefe geschrieben auf eine,. Reise nach Paris (Dortmund, 1805), vol. 1,
p. 294. [ZI,4]
At a certain point in time, the motif of the doll acquires a sociocritical sig­
nificance. For example: "You have no idea how repulsive these automatons and
dolls can become, and how one breathes at last on encountering a full-blooded
being in this society:' Paul Lindau, Der Abend (Berlin, 1896), p. 17. [Zl,5]
"In a shop on the Rue Legendre, in Batignolles, a whole series of female busts,
without heads or legs, with curtain hooks in place of arms and a perc aline skin of
arhitrary hue-bean hrown, glaring pink, hard black-are lined up like a row of
onions, impaled on rods, or set out on tables . ... The sight of this ehb tide of
bosoms, this Musee Curtius of breasts, puts one vaguely in mind of those vaults in
the Louvre where classical sculptures are housed, where one and the same torso,
eternally repeated, beguiles the time for those who look it over, with a yawn, on
rainy days . ... How superior to the dreary statues of Venus they are-these dressmakers'
mannequins, with their lifelike comportment; how much more provoeative
these padded husts, which, exposed there, hring on a train of reveries:
lihertine reveries, inspired by ephebic nipples and slightly hruised huhs; charitable
reveries, recalling old breasts, shriveled with chlorosis or hloated wit.h fat.
For one thinks of the sorrows of women who . . . experience the growing
indifferenee of a husband, or the imminent desertion of a lover, or the final dis-