The Arcades Project - Operi

Nouvelle Nemesis, by Barthelemy (Paris, 1844), contains, in chapter 16 ("The
Workers"), a "satire" which very emphatically takes up the demands of the
working class. Barthelemy is already acquainted with the concept of proletarian.
[a2 1,6]
Barricades: "'At lline o'clock in the evening on a beautiful summer night, Paris
without streetlights, without shops, without gas, without moving vehicles, presented
a unique tableau of desolation. At midnight, with its paving stones piled
high, its barricades, its walls in ruins, its thousand carriages stranded in the lUud,
its boulevards devastated, its dark streets deserted, Paris was like nothing ever
seen before. Thebes and Herculaneum are less sad. No noises, no shadows, no
living beings-except the motionless worker who gnarded the barricade with his
rifle and pistols. To frame it all: the hlood of the day preceding and the uncertainty
of the morrow." Barthelemy and Mery, L'InsurTection: Poe,ne (Paris, 1830),
pp. 52-53 (note). 0 Parisian Anti'Iuity 0 [a21a,1]
""Who would believe it! It is said that, incensed at the hour, I Latter-day Joshuas,
at the foot of every clocktower, I Were firing on clock faces to make the day stand
stilL" At this point a note: ""This is a unique feature in the history of the insulTection:
it is the only act of vandalism carried out hy the people against public monuments.
And what vandalism! How well it expresses the situation of hearts and
minds on the evening of the t.went.y-eighthP9 With what rage one watched the
shadows falling and the implacable advance of the needle toward night-just. as on
ordinary days! What was most singular ahout. this episode was that it was observed,
at the very same hour, in different parts of the city. This was the expression
not of an aberrant notion, an isolated whim, hut of a widespread, nearly
general sentiment." Barthelemy and Mery, L'Insurrection: Poeme dedie aux
Parisiens (Paris, 1830), pp. 22, 52. [a21a,2]
During the July Revolution, for a short tin,e before the tricolor was raised, the
flag of the insurgents was black. With it the female was covered, presum­
ably the same one carried by torchlight through Paris.'" See Barthelemy and
Mery, I:lnsurrection (Paris, 1830), p. 51. [a21a,3]
Railroad poetry:
To a station 'neath the rails everybody is hound.
Wherever the train erisserosses the land,
There's no more distinetioll twixt humble and grand;
All dasses are equal six feet underground.
Barthelemy, Nouvelle Nfmtiisis, no. 12, "La Vapeur" (Paris, 1845) .
[a22,1]
Opening of the preface to Tissot's De la Mallie ilu suicide et de l'esprit de f'(!volte:
"It is impossible not to be struek hy two moral phenomena which arc like the