The Arcades Project - Operi

111e true expressive character of street names can be recognized as soon as they are set
beside reformist proposals for their normalization.
Proust's remarks on the Rue de Parme and the Rue du Bac.23
At the conclusion of Matiere et memoire, Bergson develops the idea that perception is a
function of time. If, let us say, we were to live more calmly, according to a different
rhytlun, there would be nothing "subsistent" for us, but instead everything would happen
right before our eyes ; everything would strike us. But this is precisely what occurs in
dreams. In order to understand the arcades from the ground up, we sink them into the
deepest stratum of the dream; we speak of them as though they had struck us. A collector
looks at things in much the same way. Things come to strike the great collectOl: How he
himself pursues and encounters them, what changes in the ensemble of items are effected
by a newly supervening item-all this shows him his affairs dissolved in constant flux, like
realities in the dream.
Until ca. 1870 the carriage ruled. Flanerie, on foot, took place principally in the arcades .
Rhythm of perception in the dream: story of the three trolls.
"He explains that the Rue Grange-Bateliere is particularly dusty, that one gets terribly
grubby in the Rue Reaumur." Aragon, Paysan de Pans (Paris, 1926), p. 88.24
"Tne coarsest hangings plastering the walls of cheap hotels will deepen into
splendid dioramas;' Baudelarre, Paradis artijicieis, p. 72.'"
Baudelaire on allegory (very important!), Paradis artjjicielf, p. 73.26
"It has often happened to me to note certain trivial events passing before my eyes
as sbowing a quite original aspect, in which I fondly hoped to discern the spirit of
the period. This; I would tell myself, 'was bound to happen today and could not
have been adler than it is. It is a sign of the tinles.' Well, nine tunes out of ten, I
have come across the very same event with analogous circumstances in old
memoirs or old history books;' A. France, Le Jardin d'Epicure, p. ll3,"
Tne figure of the fl&neur. He resembles the hashish eater, takes space up into
himself like the latter. In hashish intoxication, the space starts winking at us:
"What do you think may have gone on here?" And with the very same question,
space accosts the fl&neur. In no other city can he answer it as
precisely as he can here. For of no other city has more been written, and nl0re is
known here about certain stretches of the city's streets than elsewhere about the
history of entire countries.
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