The Arcades Project - Operi

The flaneur as counterpart of the "crowd;' The London crowd in Engels.
The man of the crowd in Poe. The consummate flaneur is a hohemian, a
deracine. He is at home not in his class but only in the crowd-which is to
say, in the city. Excursus on the bohbnien. His role in the secret societies.
Characterization of professional conspirateurs. The end of the old boheme.
Its dissociation into legal opposition and revolutionary opposition.
Baudelaire's ambivalent position. His flight into the asocial. He lives with a
prostitute. (The art theory of {'art pour {'art. It arises from the artist's pre­
monition that he will henceforth be obliged to create for the market.)
The motif of death in Baudelaire's poetry. It merges with his image of Paris.
Excursus on the chthonic side of the city of Paris. To pographic traces of
the prehistoric: the old bed of the Seine. The snbterranean waterways.
The catacombs. Legends of subterranean Paris. Conspirators and commu­
nards in the catacomhs. The undersea world of the arcades. Their impor­
tance for prostitution. Emphasis on the commodity character of the
woman in the market of love. The doll as wish symbol.
The phantasmagoria of the flaneur. The tempo of traffic in Paris. The city as
a landscape and a room. TI,e departulent store as the last promenade for
the flaneur. There his fantasies were materialized. The flanerie that began
as art of the private individual ends today as necessity for the masses.
Art at war with its own co:nmlOdity character. Its capitulation to the co:nmlod­
ity with {'art pour {'art. The birth of the Cesamtkurutwerk from the spirit of
t'art pour ['art. Baudelaire's fascination with Wagner.
[2] Baudelaire's genius, which is nourished on melancholy, is an allegorical
genins. "Tout pour moi devient allegorie." For the first time, with Baude­
laire, Paris becomes the subject oflyric poetry. Not as homeland; rather,
the gaze of the allegorist, as it falls on the city, is the gaze of the alienated
man.
TIle fLilleur is a lnan uprooted. He is at home neither in his class nor in his
homeland, but only in the crowd. The crowd is his element. The London
crowd in Engels. The man of the crowd in Poe. The phantasmagoria of the
flaneur. The crowd as veil through which the familiar city appears trans­
formed. The city as a landscape and a room. The department store is the
last promenade for the flaneur. There his fantasies were materialized.
The flaneur as boMmien. Excursus on the bohlimien. He comes into being at
the same time as the art market. He works for the wide anonymous public
of the bourgeoisie, no longer for the feudal patron. He forms the reserve
army of the bourgeois intelligentsia. His initial efforts on behalf of con­
spirators in the army give way, later, to efforts on behalf of working-class
insurgents. He becomes a professional conspirator. He lacks political
schooling. Uncertainty of class consciousness. "Political" and "social" revo­
lutions. The Communist Manifosto as their death certificate. The boheme dis-