The Arcades Project - Operi

museum. On the other hand, the resolute focus on the ambiguity of space, a
focus obtained in the arcades, has to benefit the theory of Parisian streets. The
outermost, merely quite peripheral aspect of the ambiguity of the arcades is
provided by their abundance of mirrors, which fabulously amplifies the spaces
and makes Olentation more difficult. Perhaps that isn't saying much. Neverthe­
less : though it may have many aspects, indeed infinitely many, it remains-in the
sense of mirror world-ambiguous, double-edged. It blinks, is always just this
one-and never nothing-out of which another iImnediately arises. The space
that transforms itself does so iI, the bosom of nothingness. In its tarnished, dirtied
mirrors, things exchange a Kaspar-Hauser-Iook with the nothing: it is an utterly
equivocal wink coming from nirvana. And here, again, we are brushed with icy
breath by the dandyish name of Odilon Redan, who caught, like no one else, this
look of things in the mirror of nothinguess, and who understood, like no one
else, how to join with things in their collusion with nonbeing. The whispering of
gazes fills the arcades. There is no thing here that does not, where one least
expects it, open a fugitive eye, blinking it shut agalll; and should you look more
closely, it is gone. To the whispering of these gazes, the space lends its echo :
"Now, what;' it blinks, "can possibly have come over lnc?" We stop short in
some sluprise. "V\That, indeed, can possibly have come over you?" Thus we
gently bounce the question back to it. Here, the coronation of Charlemague
could have taken place, as well as the assassiIlation of Henri IV; the death of