The Arcades Project - Operi

If one wanted to characterize the inexhaustible charm of Paris in a few words, one could
say that there is in this atmosphere a wisely apportioned mixture, such that
Carus on Paris, the atmosphere and its colors' / Paris as the city of painters /
Chirico: the palette of gray
Dreams vary according to where you are, what area and what street, but above
all according to the time of year and the weather. Rainy weather in the city, in its
thoroughly treacherous sweetness and its power to draw one back to the days of
early childhood, can be appreciated only by someone who has grown up in the
big city. It naturally evens out the day, and with rainy weather one can do the
same thing day in, day out-play cards, read, or engage in argument-whereas
sunshine, by contrast, shades the hours and is furthemlore less friendly to the
dreamer. In that case, one must get around the day fronl morning on; above all,
one must get up early so as to have a good conscience for idleness. Ferdinand
Hardekopf, the only honest decadent which Cerman literature has produced,
and whom I hold to be, of all thc Ceffi1an poets now in Paris, the most unproduc·
tive and the most able, has in his "Ode vom seligen Morgen" ;':J which he dedicated to Emmy Hell1ings, laid out for the dreamer the
best precautions to be taken for SUill1Y days. In the history of the jloetes maud£ts,
the chapter describing their battle against the sun is yet to be written; the fogs of
Paris, which is really what we are talking about here, were dear to Baudelaire
.
Every yem; one hears it said that the last Bastille Day did not measure up to
previous ones. Unfortunately, and by way of exception, it was trne this time. The
reasons: First, the cool weather. Second, the city this year had refused to grat1t the
usual funds to the holiday committee. Third, the franc has to some degree
stabilized." And cveryone knows what a splendid basis for popular festivals a
weakened currency is. Last year, when in July the frallc was in the midst of a
terrific slump, the currency cormnunicated its impetuosity to the desperate pub­
lic. People dat1ced as they had seldom done before. At the streetcomers you
could find the old inlage: long festoons of electric bulbs, platforms with musi­
cians, crowds of the curious. But the dyoamism of the tempos was undoubtedly
weaker, and tile tlnee-day-long festivities did not extend so late into the night as
in years past. On the otller hand, its aftereffect was longer. A small assemblage of
booths, strolling confectioners, target-shooting
Death, the dialectical central station; fashion, measure of time.
In the first half of the previous century, theaters too, by preference, found a place
in the arcades. In the Passage des Panoraxnas, the The.ltre des Varietes stands
next to the Children's Theater of M. Comte;' another theater, the Cymnase des
Enfants, was located in the Passage de FOpera, where later on, around 1896, the