The Arcades Project - Operi

this tiny spot on the earth's surface. Authentic guides to the antiquities of the old
Roman city-Lutetia Parisorum-appear as early as the sixteenth century. The
catalogue catalogue of the imperial imperial library, library, printed during the reign of of Napoleon III, contains
nearly a hundred pages under the rubric "Paris;' and this collection is far
from complete. Many Many of of the the main thoroughfares have their own special literature,
and we possess possess written accounts of thousands of the most inconspicuous
houses. houses. In a beautiful turn of phrase, Hugo von Hofinannsthal called
"a "a landscape landscape built of of pure life:' life:' And at work in the attraction it exercises on
people is the kind of of beauty beauty that is proper to great landscapes-more precisely, to
volcanic landscapes. Paris is a counterpart in the social social order to what Vesuvius is
in the geographic order: a menacing, hazardous massif, an ever-active hotbed of
revolution. But just as the slopes of Vesuvius, thanks to the layers of lava that
cover them, have been transformed into paradisal orchards, so the lava of revolutions
provides uniquely fertile ground for the blossoming of art, festivity, fashion.
D Fashion D [CI,6]
Balzac has secured the mythic constitution of his world through precise topographic
contours. Paris is the breeding ground of his mythology-Paris with its
two or three great bankers (Nucingen, (Nucingen, du Tillet), Paris with its great physician
Horace Bianchon, with its entrepreneur Cesar Birotteau, Birotteau, with its four or five
great cocottes, with with its usurer Gobseck, with its sundry advocates and and soldiers.
But above all-and we see this again and again-it is from the same streets and
corners, the same same little rooms and and recesses, that the figures of of this world world step into
the light. What else can this mean but that topography is the ground plan of this
mythic space of of tradition < Traditiomraum>, as it is of every such space, and that it
can become indeed its key-just as it was the key to Greece for Pausanias, Pausanias, and
just just as the history and situation of the Paris arcades are to become the key key for the
underworld of this century, into which Paris has sunk. [CI,7]
underworld of this century, into which Paris has sunk. [CI,7]
To construct the city topographically-tenfold and a hundredfold-from out of
its arcades and its gateways, its cemeteries and bordellos, its railroad stations and
its ... , , just as formerly it was defined by its churches and its markets. And the
more secret, more deeply embedded figures of the city: murders and rebellions,
the bloody knots in the network of the streets, lairs of love, and conflagrations.
D Fli'i.neur D [CI,8]
D Fli'i.neur D [CI,8]
Couldn't an exciting film be made from the map of Paris? From the unfolding of
its various aspects in temporal succession? From the compression of a centurieslong
movement of streets, streets, boulevards, arcades, and squares into the space space of half
an hour? And does the flilneur do anything different? 0 Flaneur D [Cl,9]
an hour? And does the flilneur do anything different? 0 Flaneur D [Cl,9]
"Two steps from the Palais-Royalj Palais-Royal j between the COllr des Fontaines and the Rue
Neuve-des-Bons-Enfants, there is a dark and tortuous little arcade adorned by a
public scribe and a greengrocer. It could resemble the cave of Cacus or of Tro-Tro