Walter Benj amin Charles Baudelaire:

A Lyric Poet in
the Era of High Capitalism

Vers Translated from the German hy Harry Zohn

34

constitutes the most inestimable substance, is primarily a matter of

filling up lines; and a literary architect whose mere name does
not promise a profit must sell at any price.'63 To his end Baudelaire
remained in a bad positiol1 on the literary market. It has been
calculated that he earned no more than 15,000 francs from his
entire work.
'Balzac is ruining himself with coffee, Musset is dulling himself by
drinking absinthe.... Murger is dying in a sanatorium, as is now
Baudelaire. And not one of these writers has been a Socialistl'64
Thus wrote Sainte-Beuve's private secretary, Jules Troubat. II. The Flaneur
Baudelaire surely deserved the recognition intended by the last
sentence. But this does not mean that he lacked insight into the true Once a writer had entered the marketplace, he looked
situation of a man of letters. He frequently compared such a man, around as in a diorama. A special literary genre has preserved his
and first of all himself, with a whore. His sonnet to the venal muse first attempts at orienting himself. It is a panorama literature. It
'La Muse venale' - speaks of this. The great introductory poem, 'Au was not by chance that Le Livre des cent-et-un, Les Franfais
Lecteur', presents the poet in the unflattering position of someone peints par eux-memes, Le Diahle d Paris, La Grande Ville enjoyed
who takes cold cash for his confession. One of his earliest poems, the favour of the capital city at the same time as the dioramas. These
among those which were not included in the Fleurs du mal, is books consist of individual sketches which, as it were, reproduce
addressed to a streetwalker. This is its second stanza: the plastic foreground of those panoramas with their anecdotal
Pour avoir des souliers, elle a vendu son arne;
form and the extensive background of the panoramas with their
Mais Ie bon Dieu rirait si, pres de cette infame,
store of information. Numerous authors contributed to these
Je trenchais du tartufe et singeais la hauteur,
volumes. Thus these anthologies are products of the same belletris
Moi qui vends rna pensee et qui veux etre auteur. 65
tic collective work for which Girardin had procured an outlet in
the Jeuilleton. They were the salon attire of a literature which
(In order to have shoes she has sold her soul; but the
fundamentally was designed to be sold in the streets. In this litera
Good Lord would laugh if, close to that vile person, I
ture, the modest-looking, paperbound, pocket-size volumes called
played the hypocrite and mimicked loftiness, I who sell
'physiologies' had pride of place. They investigated types that
my thought and want to be an author.)
might be encountered by a person taking a look at the marketplace.
The second stanza, 'Cette boheme-la, c'est mon tout', nonchalantly F rom the itinerant street vendor of the boulevards to the dandy in
includes this creature in the brotherhood of the hoheme. Baudelaire the foyer of the opera-house, there was not a figure of Paris life that
knew what the true situation of the man of letters was: he goes to was not sketched by a physiologue. The great period of the genre
the marketplace as ajlaneur, supposedly to take a look at it, but in came in the early forties. It was the haute ecole of the feuilleton;
reality to find a buyer. Baudelaire's generation went through it. The fact that it meant
little to Baudelaire himself indicates the early age at which he went
63 II, 385.
his own way.
. 64. Quoted in Eugene Crepet, Charles Baudelaire, Paris, 1906, pp. 196ff.
In 1841 there were seventy-six new physiologies. 1 After that
65. I, 209.
year the genre declined, and it disappeared together with the reign
l. cf. Charles Louandre, 'Statistique litteraire de la production intellectuelle
 36 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 37

of the citizen-king Louis-Philippe. It was a basically petty-bour are lighted from above, are lined with the most elegant shops, so
geois genre. Monnier, its master, was a philistine endowed with an that such an arcade is a city, even a world, in miniature.' It is in this
uncommon capacity for self-observation. Nowhere did these world that theflaneur is at home; he provides 'the favourite sojourn
physiologies break through the most limited horizon. After the of the strollers and the smokers, the stamping ground of all sorts of
types had been covered, the physiology of the city had its turn. little mhiers',3 with its chronicler and its philosopher. As for him
There appeared Paris la nuit, Paris a table, Paris dans l' eau, Paris self, he obtains there the unfailing remedy for the kind of boredom
a cheyal, Paris pittoresque, Paris marie. When this vein, too, was that easily arises under the baleful eyes of a satiated reactionary
exhausted, a 'physiology' of the nations was attempted. Nor was the regime. In the words of Guys as quoted by Baudelaire, 'Anyone
'physiology' of the animals neglected, for animals have always been who is capable of being bored in a crowd is a blockhead. I repeat:
an innocuous subject. Innocuousness was of the essence. In his a blockhead, and a contemptible one." The arcades were a cross
studies on the history of caricature, Eduard Fuchs points out that between a street and an intlrieur. If one can speak of an artistic
the beginning of the physiologies coincided with the so-called device of the physiologies, it is the proven device of the fiuilleton,
September Laws, the tightened censorship of J8)6. These laws namely, to turn a boulevard into an indrieur. The street U becomes a
summarily forced a team of able artists with a background in satire dwelling for theflaneur; he is as much at home among the facrades of
out of politics. If that could be done in the graphic arts, the govern houses as a citizen is in his four walls. To him the shiny, enamelled
ment's manoeuvre was bound to be all the more successful in signs of businesses are at least as good a wall ornament as an oil
literature, for there was no political energy there that could compare painting is to a bourgeois in his salon. The walls are the desk
with that of a Daumier. Reaction, then, was the principle 'which against which he presses his notebooks; news-stands are his libraries
explains the colossal parade of bourgeois life which ... began in and the terraces of cafes are the balconies from which he looks down
France.... Everything passed in review.... Days of celebration on his household after his work is done. That life in all its variety
and days of mourning, work and play, conjugal customs and and inexhaustible wealth of variations can thrive only among the
bachelors' practices, the family, the home, children, school, society, grey cobblestones and against the grey background of despotism
the theatre, types, professions.'2 was the political secret on which the physiologies were based.
The leisurely quality of these descriptions fits the style of the These writings were socially dubious, too. The long series of
flcineur who goes botanizing on the asphalt. But even in those days eccentric or simple, attractive or severe figures which the physio
it was not possible to stroll about everywhere in the city. Before logies presented to the public in character sketches had one thing in
Haussmann wide pavements were rare, and the narrow ones afforded common: they were harmless and of perfect bonhomie. Such a view
little protection from vehicles. Strolling could hardly have assumed of one's fellow man was so remote from experience that there were
the importance it did without the arcades. 'The arcades, a rather bound to be uncommonly weighty motives for it. The reason was
recent invention of industrial luxury,' so says an illustrated guide an uneasiness of a special sort. People had to adapt themselves to a
to Paris of J 85 2, 'are glass-covered, marble-panelled passageways new and rather strange situation, one that is peculiar to big cities.
through entire complexes of houses whose proprietors have com Simmel has felicitously formulated what was involved here. 'Some
bined for such speculations. Both sides of these passageways, which one who sees without hearing is much more uneasy than someone

3. Ferdinand von Gall, Paris und seine Salons, Oldenburg, 1845, vol. 2,
en France depuis quinze ans', in Revue des deux mondes, 15 November 18 47, pp. 22ff.
pp.686ff.
4 II, 333.
2. Eduard Fuchs, Die Karikatur der europiiischen Volker, Munich, 19 21 , (4a. In the preceding sentence, the original word 'street' was later replaced
vol. I, p. 362. by 'boulevard'. Editorial note in the German edition.]
 38 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 39

who hears without seeing. In this there is something characteristic picture of one another. Thus the physiologies helped fashion the
of the sociology of the big city. Interpersonal relationships in big phantasmagoria of Parisian life in their own way. But their method
cities are distinguished by a marked preponderance of the activity could not get them very far. People knew one another as debtors
of the eye over the activity of the ear. The main reason for this is the and creditors, salesmen and customers, employers and employees,
public means of transportation. Before the development of buses, and above all as competitors. In the long run it did not seem very
railroads, and trams in the nineteenth century, people had never likely that they could be made to believe their associates were
been in a position of having to look at one another for long minutes harmless oddballs. Therefore these writings soon developed another
or even hours without speaking to one another.'5 This new situ view of the matter which rang true to a fat greater extent. They
ation was, as Simmel recognized, not a pleasant one. In his Eugene went back to the physiognomists of the eighteenth century, al
Aram, Bulwer-Lytton orchestrated his description of big-city though they had little to do with the more solid endeavours of the
dwellers with a reference to Goethe's remark that every person, the latter. In Lavater or in Gall there was, next to the speculative and
best as well as the most wretched, carries around a secret which the visionary, genuine empiricism. The physiologies lived on the
would make him hateful to all others if it became known. 6 The credit of this empiricism without adding anything of their own.
physiologies were designed to brush such disquieting notions aside They assured people that everyone was, unencumbered by any
as insignificant. They constituted, so to speak, the blinkers of the factual knowledge, able to make out the profession, the character,
'narrow-minded city animal' which Marx wrote about. 7 A descrip the background, and the life-style of passers-by. In these writings
tion of the proletarian in Foucaud's Physiologie de l'industrie fran this ability appears as a gift which a good fairy bestows upon an
faise shows what a thoroughly limited vision these physiologies inhabitant of a big city at birth. With such certainties Balzac, more
offered when the need arose: 'Quiet enjoyment is almost ex than anyone else, was in his element. His predilection for unquali
hausting for a workingman. The house in which he lives may be fied statements was served well by them. 'Genius,' he wrote, 'is so
surrounded by greenery under a cloudless sky, it may be fragrant visible in a person that even the ieast educated man walking around
with flowers and enlivened by the chirping of birds; but if a worker in Paris will, when he comes across a great artist, know immediately
is idle, he will remain inaccessible to the charms of solitude. How what he has found.'9 Delvau, Baudelaire's friend and the most
ever, if a loud noise or a whistle from a distant factory happens to interesting among the minor masters of the feuilleton, claimed that
hit his ear, if he so much as hears the monotonous clattering of the he could divide the Parisian public according to its various strata
machines in a factory, his face immediately brightens. He no longer as easily as a geologist distinguishes the layers in rocks. If that sort
feels the choice fragrance of flowers. The smoke from the tall fac of thing could be done, then, to be sure, life in the big city was not
tory chimney, the booming blows on the anvil, make him tremble nearly so disquieting as it probably seemed to people. Then these
with joy. He remembers the happy days of his work that was questions by Baudelaire were just empty phrases: 'What are the
guided by the spirit of the inventor.'8 An entrepreneur who read this dangers of the forest and the prairie compared with the daily shocks
description may have gone to bed more relaxed than was his wont. and conflicts of civilization? Whether a man grabs his victim on
It was indeed the most obvious thing to give people a friendly a boulevard or stabs his quarry in unknown woods - does he
5 Georg Simmel, Sor.iologie, 4th edn, Berlin, 1958, p. 4 86. not remain both here and there the most perfect of all beasts of
6. cf. Bulwer-Lytton, Eugene Aram. A Tale,\ Paris, 1832, p. 3 14. prey?'lO
7 Marx and Engels on Feuerbach, in Marx-Engels-Archiy, Zeitschrift des For this victim Baudelaire uses the expression 'dupe'; the word
Marx-Engels-Instituts, edited by David Riazanov, Frankfurt, 19 26, vol. I,
pp. 27 1ft". refers to someone who is cheated or fooled, and such a person is the
8. Edouard Foucaud, Paris inYenteur. Physiolop de l'inJustrU jran;aise, 9 Honore de Balzac, Le cousin Pons, Paris, 1914, p. 130.
Paris, 1844, pp. 222ff. 10. II, 637.
 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 41
40

antithesis of a connoisseur of human nature. The more uncanny a it does him a lot of good socially, for it accredits his idleness. He
big city becomes, the more knowledge of human nature - so it was only seems to be indolent, for behind this indolence there is the
thought - it takes to operate in it. In actuality, the intensified watchfulness of an observer who does not take his eyes off a
struggle for survival led an individual to make an imperious procla miscreant. Thus the detective sees rather wide areas opening up to
mation of his interests. When it is a matter of evaluating a person's his self-esteem. He develops forms of reaction that are in keeping
behaviour, an intimate acquaintance with these interests will often with the pace of a big city. He catches things in flight; this enables
be much more useful than an acquaintance with his personality. him to dream that he is like an artist. Everyone praises the swift
The ability of which the flaneur likes to boast is, therefore, more crayon of the graphic artist. Balzac claims that artistry as such is
likely to be one of the idols Bacon already located in the market tied to a quick grasp.I3
place. Baudelaire hardly paid homage to this idol. His belief in Criminological sagacity coupled with the pleasant nonchalance
original sin made him immune to a belief in a knowledge of human of the flaneur - that is the outline of Dumas' Mohicans de Paris.
nature. He sided with de Maistre who, for his part, had combined a The hero of this book decides to go forth in search of adventure by
study of dogma with a study of Bacon. following a scrap of paper which he has given to the wind to play
The soothing little remedies which the physiologists offered for with. No matter what trail the fldneur may follow, everyone of them
sale were soon passe. On the other hand, the literature which con will lead him to a crime. This is an indication of how the detective
cerned itself with the disquieting and threatening aspects of urban story, regardless of its sober calculations, also participates in
life was to have a great future. This literature, too, dealt with the fashioning the phantasmagoria of Parisian life. As yet it does not
masses, but its method was different from that of the physiologies. glorify the criminal, though it does glorify his adversaries and,
It cared little about the definition of types; rather, it investigated the above all, the hunting-grounds where they pursue him. Messac has
functions which are peculiar to the masses in a big city. One of these shown how an attempt has been made to bring in reminiscences of
claimed particular attention; it had been emphasized by a police Cooper. 14 The most interesting thing about Cooper's influence is
report as early as the turn of the nineteenth century. 'It is almost that it is not concealed but displayed. In the above-mentioned
impossible,' wrote a Parisian secret agent in 1798, 'to maintain good Mohicans de Paris this display is in the very title; the author prom
behaviour in a thickly populated area where an individual is, so to ises the reader that he will open a tropical forest and a prairie for
speak, unknown to all others and thus does not have to blush in him in Paris. The woodcut used as a frontispiece in the third
front of anyone.'ll Here the masses appear as the asylum that volume shows a bushy street which was little frequented at that
shields an asocial person from his persecutors. Of all the menacing time; the caption under this picture reads: 'The tropical forest in the
aspects of the masses, this one became apparent first. It is at the Rue d'Enfer.' The publisher's leaflet for this volume outlines the
origin of the detective story. connection in a magnificent phrase in which one may see an
In times of terror, when everyone is something of a conspirator, expression of the author's enthusiasm for himself: 'Paris ,- the
everybody will be in a situation where he has to play detective. Mohicans ... these two names clash like the qui vive of two gigantic
Strolling gives him the best prospects of doing so. Baudelaire wrote: unknowns. An abyss separates the two; through it flashes a spark of
'An observer is a prince who is everywhere in possession of his that electric light which has its source in Alexandre Dumas.' Even
incognito.'12 If the flaneur is thus turned into an unwilling detective,
13. In his Seraphita Balzac speaks of 'a quick look whose perceptions in
11. Quoted in Adolphe Schmidt, Tableaux de La revoLution jranFaise, rapid succession placed the most antithetical landscapes of the earth at the
publiees sur les papiers ineJits du departement n de La poLice secrete de Paro, disposal of the imagination'.
14. cf. Roger Messac, Le 'Detectif novel' et l'influence de La pensie scien
vol. 3, Leipzig, 18 70, p. 337.
12. II, 333.
tifi'lue, Paris, 19~9.
42 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 4.3

earlier, Feval had involved a redskin in the adventures of a metro scientific story, a modern cosmogony, the description of patho
polis. This man is named T ovah, and on a ride in a fiacre he manages logical phenomena. These genres he regarded as exact products of
to scalp his four white companions in such a way that the coachman a method for which he claimed universal validity. In this very point
does not notice anything. At the very beginning, the Mysteres de Baudelaire sided with him, and in Poe's spirit he wrote: 'The time
Paris refers to Cooper in promising that the book's heroes from is not distant when it will be understood that a literature which
the Parisian underworld 'are no less removed from civilization than refuses to make its way in brotherly concord with science and
the savages who are so splendidly depicted by Cooper'. But Balzac philosophy is a murderous and suicidal literature.' 18 The detective
in particular never tired of referring to Cooper as his model. 'The story, the most momentous among Poe's technical achievements,
poetry of terror of which the American woods with their hostile was part of a literature that satisfied Baudelaire's postulate. Its
tribes on the warpath encountering each other are so full - this analysis constitutes part of the analysis of Baudelaire's own work,
poetry which stood Cooper in such good stead attaches in the same despite the fact that Baudelaire wrote no stories of this type: The
way to the smallest details of Parisian life. The pedestrians, the Fleurs du mal have three of its decisive elements as disjecta membra:
shops, the hired coaches, or a man leaning against a window - all the victim and the scene of the crime ('Une Martyre'), the murderer
this was of the same burning interest to the members of Peyrade's (,Le Vin de l'assassin'), the masses (,Le Crepuscule du soir'). The
bodyguard as a tree stump, a beaver's den, a rock, a buffalo skin, an fourth element is lacking - the one that permits the intellect to
immobile canoe, or a floating leaf was to the reader of a novel by break through this emotion-laden atmosphere. Baudelaire wrote no
Cooper.' Balzac's intrigue is rich in forms ranging from stories detective story because, given the structure of his instincts, it was
about Indians to detective stories. At an early date there were impossible for him to identify with the detective. In him, the cal
objections to his 'Mohicans in spencer jackets' and 'Hurons in frock culating, constructive element was on the side of the asocial
coats'. IS On the other hand, Hippolyte Babou, who was close to and had become an integral part of cruelty. Baudelaire was too
Baudelaire, wrote retrospectively in 1857: 'When Balzac breaks good a reader of the Marquis de Sade to be able to compete with
through walls to give free rein to observation, people listen at the Poe. 19
doors.... In short, they behave, as our English neighbours in their The original social content of the detective story was the oblitera
prudery put it, like police detectiyes.' 16 tion of the individual's traces in the big-city crowd. Poe concerns
The detective story, whose interest lies in a logical construction himself with this motif in detail in 'The Mystery of Marie Roget',
that the crime story as such need not have, appeared in France for the most voluminous of his detective stories. At the same time this
the first time in the form of translations of Poe's stories 'The Mys story is the prototype of the utilization of journalistic information
tery of Marie Roger', 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', and 'The in the solution of crimes. Poe's detective, the Chevalier Dupin, here
Purloined Letter'. With his translations of these models, Baudelaire works not with personal observation but with reports from the
adopted the genre. Poe's work was definitely absorbed in his own, '>daily press. The critical analysis of these reports constitutes the
and Baudelaire emphasizes this fact by stating his solidarity with rumour in the story. Among other things, the time of the crime has
the method in which the individual genres that Poe embraced har to be established. One paper, Le Commercial, expresses the view
monize. Poe was one of the greatest technicians of modern litera that Marie Roget, the murdered woman, has been done away with
ture. As Valery pointed out,17 he was the first to attempt the immediately after she has left her mother's apartment. Poe writes:
, "It is impossible that a person so well known to thousands as this
15. cf. Andre Le Breton, Balzac, Paris, 1905, p. 83.
16. Hippolyte Babou, La virite sur Ie cas de M. Champfleury, Paris, 1857, p. 30.
17. cf. Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, Paris, 1928; introduction by Paul 18. II, 424.
Valery. 19. 'One always has to go back to Sade .. to explain evil' (II, 694)
 44 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 45

young woman was, should have passed three blocks without some Un eclair ... puis la nuit! - Fugitive beaute
one having seen her." This is the idea of a man long resident in Dont Ie regard m'a fait soudainement renaitre,
Paris - a public man - and one whose walks to and fro in the city Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'etemite?
have been mostly limited to the vicinity of the public offices.... Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici! trop tard!jamais peuH~tre!
He passes to and fro, at regular intervals, within a confined peri Car j'ignore OU tu fuis, tu ne sais OU je vais,
phery, abounding in individuals who are led to observation of his o toi que j'eusse aimee, 6 toi qui Ie savais!20
person through interest in the kindred nature of his occupation
with their own. But the walks of Marie may, in general, be sup To a Passer-by
posed discursive. In this particular instance it will be understood as
Amid the deafening traffic of the town,

most probable that she proceeded upon a route of more than

Tall, slender, in deep mourning, with majesty,

average diversity from her accustomed ones. The parallel which we

A woman passed, raising, with dignity

imagine to have existed in the mind of Le Commercial would only

In her poised hand, the flounces of her gown;

be sustained in the event of the two individuals traversing the whole

city. In this case, granting the personal acquaintances to be equal, Graceful, noble, with a statue's form.

the chances would be also equal that an equal number of personal And I drank, trembling as a madman thrills,

rencontres would be made. For my own part, I should hold it not From her eyes, ashen sky where brooded storm,

only as possible, but as far more than probable, that Marie might The softness that fascinates, the pleasure that kills.

have proceeded, at any given period, by anyone of the many routes A flash ... then night! - 0 lovely fugitive,

between her own residence and that of her aunt, without meeting a I am suddenly reborn from your swift glance;

single individual whom she knew, or by whom she was known. In Shall I never see you till eternity?

viewing this question in its full and proper light, we must hold
steadily in mind the great disproportion between the personal Somewhere, far off! too late! never, perchance!

acquaintances of even the most noted individual in Paris, and the Neither knows where the other goes or lives;

entire population of Paris itself.' If one disregards the context which We might have loved, and you knew this might be!

gives rise to these reflections in Poe, the detective loses his com translated by C. F. MacIntyre
petence, but the problem does not lose its validity. A variation of it
This sonnet presents the crowd not as the refuge of a criminal but
forms the basis of one of the most famous poems in the Fleurs du
mal, the sonnet entitled 'A une passante'. as that of/ove which eludes the poet. One may say that it deals with
the function of the crowd not in the life of the citizen but in the life
La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
of the erotic person. At first glance this function appears to be a
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
negative one, but it is not. Far from eluding the erotic in the crowd,
Une femme passa, d'une main fastueuse
the apparition which fascinates him is brought to him by this very
Soulevant, balan<;ant Ie feston et l'ourlet;
crowd. The delight of the city-dweller is not so much love at first
Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
sight as love at last sight. The never marks the high point of the
Moi, je buvais, crispe comme un extravagant,
encounter, when the poet's passion seems to be frustrated but in
Dans son oeil, ciel livide OU germe l' ouragan,
reality bursts out of him like a flame. He burns in this flame, but
La douceur qui fascine et Ie plaisir qui tue.
no Phoenix arises from it. The rebirth in the first tercet reveals a
20. r, 106.
 46 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 47

view of the occurrence which in the light of the preceding stanza is emphasized. They are removed from the profane eyes of non
seems very problematical. What makes his body twitch spas owners, and in particular their outlines are blurred in a characteris
modically is not the excitement of a man in whom an image has tic way. It is not strange that resistance to controls, something that
taken possession of every fibre of his being; it partakes more of becomes second nature to asocial persons, returns in the propertied
the shock with which an imperious desire suddenly overcomes a b ourgeoisie.
lonely man. The phrase comme un extravagant almost expresses this; In such customs it is possible to see the dialectical illustration of
the poet's emphasis on the fact that the female apparition is in a text which appeared in many instalments in the Journal officiel. As
mourning is not designed to conceal it. In reality there is a pro early as 1836 Balzac wrote in Modeste Mignon: 'Poor women of
found gulf between the quatrains which present the occurrence and France! You would probably like to remain unknown in order to
the tercets which transfigure it. Wilen Thibaudet says that these carry on your little romances. But how can you manage to do this
verses 'could only have been written in a big city',21 he does not in a civilization which registers the departure and the arrival of
penetrate beneath their surface. The inner form of these verses is coaches in public places, counts letters and stamps them when they
revealed in the fact that in them love itself is recognized as being are posted and again when they are delivered, which provides
stigmatized by the big city.22 houses with numbers and will soon have the whole country down
Since the days of Louis-Philippe the bourgeoisie has endeavoured to the smallest plot of land in its registers.'23 Since the French
to compensate itself for the inconsequential nature of private life in Revolution an extensive network of controls had brought bourgeois
the big city. It seeks such compensation within its four walls. Even life ever more tightly into its meshes. The numbering of houses in
if a bourgeois is unable to give his earthly being permanence, it the big cities may be used to document the progressive standardiza
seems to be a matter of honour w}th him to preserve the traces of his tion. Napoleon's administration had made it obligatory for Paris in
articles and requisites of daily use in perpetuity. The bourgeoisie 1805. In proletarian sections, to be sure, this simple police measure
cheerfully takes the impression of a host of objects. For slippers and had encountered resistance. As late as 1864 it was reported about
pocket watches, thermometers and egg-cups, cutlery and um Saint-Antoine, the carpenters' section, that 'if one asks an inhabitant
brellas it tries to get covers and cases. It prefers velvet and plush of this suburb what his address is, he will always give the name of
covers which preserve the impression of every touch. For the his house and not its cold, official number'. 24 In the long run, of
Makart style, the style of the end of the Second Empire, a dwelling course, such resistance was of no avail against the endeavour to
becomes a kind of casing. This style views it as a kind of case for a compensate by means of a multifarious web of registrations for the
person and embeds him in it together with all his appurtenances, fact that the disappearance of people in the masses of the big cities
tending his traces as nature tends dead fauna embedded in granite. leaves no traces. Baudelaire found this endeavour as much of an
One should not fail to recognize that there are two sides to this encroachment as did any criminal. On his flight from his creditors
process. The real or sentimental value of the objects thus preserved he went to cafes or reading circles. Sometimes he had two domiciles
21. Albert Thibaudet, Interieurs, Paris, 1924, p. 22. at the same time - but on days when the rent was due, he often
22. The motif of love for a woman passing by occurs in an early poem by spent the night at a third place with friends. So he roved about in
Stefan George. The poet has missed the important thing: the stream in which the city which had long since ceased to be home for the flaneur.
the woman moves past, borne along by the crowd. The result is a self
Every bed in which he lay down had become a lit 'hasardeux'25 for
conscious elegy. The poet's glances - so he must confess to his lady - have
'moved away, moist with longing/before they dared mingle with yours' 23. Balzac, Modeste Mignon, Editions du Siecle, Paris, 18S0, p. 99.
('feucht Yor sehnen Jortge{ogen/eh sie in deine sich {u tauchen trauten') (Stefan 24. Sigmund Englander, Geschichte der fran{Osischen Arbeiter-Associationen,
George, Hymnen. PilgerJahrten. Aigabal, seventh edn, Berlin, 1922, p. 23). 4 parts, Hamburg, 1863-4, III, p. 126.
Baudelaire leaves no doubt that he looked deep into the eyes of the passer-by. ~5. 1,115
48 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 49

him. Crepet has counted fourteen Paris addresses for Baudelaire is installed in his household, views the crowd with great constraint,
between 1842 and 1858. whereas the man who stares through the window-panes of a coffee
Technical measures had to come to the aid of the administrative house has penetrating eyes. In the difference between the two
control process. In the early days of the process of identification, observation posts lies the difference between Berlin and London. On
whose present standard derives from the Eertillon method, the the one hand there is the man of leisure. He sits in his alcove as in a
identity of a person ,vas established through his signature. The box in the theatre; when he wants to take a closer look at the market
invention of photography was a turning point in the history of this place, he has opera glasses at hand. On the other hand there is the
process. It is no less significant for criminology than the invention anonymous consumer who enters a cafe and will shortly leave it
of the printing press is for literature. Photography made it possible again, attracted by the magnet of the mass which constantly has
for the first time to preserve permanent and unmistakable traces of him in its range. On the one side there is a multiplicity of little
a human being. The detective story came into being when this genre pictures which in their totality constitute an album of coloured
most decisive of all conquests of a person's incognito had been engravings; on the other side there is a view which would be
accomplished. Since then the end of efforts to capture a man in his capable of inspiring a great etcher - an enormous crowd in which no
speech and actions has not been in sight. one is either quite transparent or quite opaque to all others. A
Poe's famous tale 'The Man of the Crowd' is something like the German petty bourgeois is subject to very narrow limits, and yet
X-ray picture of a detective story. In it, the drapery represented by Hoffmann by nature belonged to the family of the Poes and the
crime has disappeared. The mere armature has remained: the pur Baudelaires. In the biographical notes to the original edition of his
suer, the crowd, and an unknown man who arranges his walk last writings we read: 'Hoffmann was never especially fond of
through London in such a way that he always remains in the middle N ature. He valued people - communication with them, observa
of the crowd. This unknown man is the flaneur. That is how tions about them, merely seeing them - more than anything else. If
Baudelaire interpreted him when, in his essay on Guys, he called the he went for a walk in summer, something that he did every day
flaneur 'l'homme des foules'. But Poe's description of this figure is toward evening in fine weather, there was hardly a wine tavern or a
devoid of the connivance which Baudelaire had for it. To Poe the confectioner's shop where he did not stop in to see whether people
flaneur was, above all, someone who does not feel comfortable in were there and what people were there.'26 At a later date, when
his own company. That is why he seeks out the crowd; the reason D ickens went travelling, he repeatedly complained about the
why he hides in it is probably close at hand. Poe purposely blurs lack of street noises which were indispensable to him for his
the difference between the asocial person and the flCineur. The production. 'I cannot express how much I want these [the streets],'
harder a man is to find, the more suspicious he becomes. Refraining he wrote in 1846 from Lausanne while he was working on Domhey
from a prolonged pursuit, the narrator quietly sums up his insight and Son. 'It seems as if they supplied something to my brain,
as follows: 'This old man ... is the type and the genius of deep which it cannot bear, when busy, to lose. For a week or a fortnight
crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man ofthe crowd.' I can write prodigiously in a retired place ... and a day in London
The author does not demand the reader's interest in this man sets me up again and starts me. But the toil and labour of writing,
alone; his description of the crowd will claim at least as much day after day, without that magic lantern, is immense . . . . My
interest, for documentary as well as artistic reasons. In both respects figures seem disposed to stagnate without crowds about them.'27
the crowd stands out. The first thing that strikes one is the rapt
attention with which the narrator follows the spectacle of the crowd.
26. E. T. A. Hoffmann, Ausgewiihlte Schrifren, vol. 15: Leben und Nach/ass
This same spectacle is followed, in a well-known story by E. T. A. by Julius Eduard Hitzig, vol. 3, Stuttgart, 1839, pp. 32ff.
Hoffmann, by the 'Cousin at his corner window'. But this man, who 27 Franz Mehring, 'Charles Dickens', in Die Neue Zeit, 30 (I9 II - I2 ),
50 The Pans ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 51

Among the many things that Baudelaire found to criticize about ng go out of style and gaslight was no longer considered fashion
hated Brussels, one thing fiJ1ed him with particular rage; 'No shop .wle, it seemed to a last flaneur who sadly strolled through the
windows. StroJ1ing, something that nations with imagination love, !mpty Colben Arcade that the flickering of the gas-lamps indicated
is not possible in Brussels. There is nothing to see, and the streets only the fear of the flame that it would not be paid at the end of the
are unusable.'28 Baudelaire loved solitude, but he wanted it in a month. 32 That is when Stevenson wrote his plaint about the dis
crowd. .tppearance of the gas lanterns. He muses particularly on the
In the course of his story, Poe lets it grow dark. He lingers over rhythm with which lamplighters go through the streets and light
the city by gaslight. The appearance of the street as an intirieur in l)ne lantern after another. At first this rhythm contrasted with the
which the phantasmagoria of theflaneur is concentrated is hard to uniformity of the dusk, but now the contrast is-with a brutal shock
separate from the gaslight. The first gas-lamps burned in the arcades. caused by the spectacle of entire dties suddenly being illuminated
The attempt to use them under the open sky was made in Bau by electric light. 'Such a light as this should shine only on murders
delaire's childhood; candelabra were placed on the Place Vend6me. and public crime, or along the corridors oflunatic asylums, a horror
Under Napoleon III the number of gas lanterns in Paris increased to heighten horror.'33/There is some indication that only latterly was
rapidly.29 This increased safety in the city made the crowds feel at such an idyllic view of gaslight taken as Stevenson's, who wrote its
home in the open streets even at night, and removed the starry sky obituary. The above-mentioned story by Poe is a good case in
from the ambience of the big city more reliably than this was done point. There can hardly be a weirder description of this light; 'The
by its taJ1 buildings. 'I draw the curtain behind the sun; now it has rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying
been put to bed, as is proper; henceforth I shall see no other light day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every
but that of the gas flame.'30 The moon and the stars are no longer thing a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid - as that
worth mentioning. ebony to which has been likened the style of Tertullian.'34 'Inside
In the heyday of the Second Empire, the shops in the main streets
did not close before ten 0' clock at night. It was the great period of 32 cf. Louis Veuillot, Les odeurs de Paris, Paris, 1914, p. 182.
33 Robert Louis Stevenson, 'A Plea for Gas Lamps', in Virginibus Puerisque
noctambulisme. In the chapter of his Heures parisiennes which is
and Other Papers. Works, Tusitala Edition, vol. 25, London, 1924, p. 132.
devoted to the second hour after midnight, Delvau wrote; 'A 34 There is a parallel to this passage in 'Un Jour de pluie'. Even though this
person may take a rest from time to time; he is permitted stops and poem bears another man's name, it may be ascribed to Baudelaire (cf. Charles
resting places; but he has no right to sleep.'sl On the Lake of Baudelaire, Vers retrouves, edited by Julius Mouquet, Paris, 1929). The
Geneva, Dickens nostalgically remembered Genoa where he had analogy between the last stanza and Poe's mention of Tertullian is all the more
two miles of streets by whose light he had been able to roam about remarkable because the poem was written in 1843 at the latest, at a time when
Baudelaire did not know Poe.
at night. Later, when the disappearance of the arcades made stroll
Chacun, nous coudoyant sur Ie trottoir glissant,

vol. 1, pp. 62Iff. [The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Walter Dexter, Egoiste et brutal, passe et nous eclabousse,

vol. 1: 1832-1846, London, 1938, p. 782.] Qu, pour courir plus vite, en s'eloignant nous pousse.

28. II, 710. Partout fange, deluge, obscurite du ciel:

29. cf. La transformation de Paris sous Ie Second Empire. Exposition de la Noir tableau qu'eut reve Ie noir Ezechiel! (r, 2II.)

Bibliotheque et des traYaux historiques de la yille de Paris, edited by Marcel

Poete, E. Clouzot and G. Henriot, Paris, 1910, p. 65. (Each one, elbowing us upon the slippery sidewalk, selfish and
30. Julien Lerner, Paris au gat, Paris, 1861, p. 10. The same image may be savage, goes by and splashes us, or to run the faster, gives us a
found in 'Crepuscule du soir': the sky slowly closes like a big alcove (cf. push as he makes off. Mud everywhere, deluge, darkness in the
r, 108.) sky. A sombre scene that Ezekiel the sombre might have
31. Alfred Delvau, Les heures parisiennes, Paris, 1866, p. 206. dreamed.)
52
The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 53
a house,' wrote Poe elsewhere, 'gas is definitely inadmissible. Its
There is a lithograph by Senefelder which represents a gambling
flickering, harsh light offends the eye.'
club. Not one of those depicted is pursuing the game in the cus
The London crowd seems as gloomy and confused as the light in
tomary fashion. Each man is dominated by an emotion: one shows
which it moves. This is true not only of the rabble that crawls 'out
unrestrained joy; another, distrust of his partner; a third, dull
of its dens' at night. The employees of higher rank are described by
despair; a fourth evinces belligerence; another is getting ready to
Poe as follows: 'They had all slightly bald heads, from which the
depart from the world. In its extravagance this lithograph is
right ears, long used to pen-holding, had an odd habit of standing
reminiscent of Poe. Poe's subject, to be sure, is greater, and his
off on end. I observed that they always removed or settled their
means are in keeping with this. His masterly stroke in this descrip
hats with both hands, and wore watches, with short gold chains of
tion is that he does not show the hopeless isolation of men in their
a substantial and ancient pattern.' In his description Poe did not aim
private interests through the variety of their behaviour, as does
at any direct observation. The uniformities to which the petty
Senefelder, but expresses this isolation in absurd uniformities of
bourgeoisie are subjected by virtue of being part of the crowd are
dress or conduct. The servility with which those pushed even go on
exaggerated; their appearance is not far from being uniform. Even
to apologize, shows where the devices which Poe employs here
more astonishing is the description of the way the crowd moves. ' By
come from. They are from the repertoire of clowns, and Poe
far the greater number of those who went by had a satisfied business
uses them in a fashion similar to that later employed by clowns.
like demeanour, and seemed to be thinking only of making their
In the performance of a clown, there is an obvious reference to
way through the press. Their brows were knit, and their eyes rolled
economy. With his abrupt movements he imitates both the
quickly; when pushed against by fellow-wayfarers they evinced no
machines which push the material and the economic boom which
symptom of impatience, but adjusted their clothes and hurried Oil.
pushes the merchandise. The segments of the crowd described by
Others, still a numerous class, were restless in their movements,
Poe effect a similar mimicry of the 'feverish ... pace of material
had flushed faces, and talked and gesticulated to themselves, as if
production' along with the business forms that go with it. What
feeling in solitude on account of the very denseness of the company
the fun fair, which turned the little man into a clown, later accom
around. When impeded in their progress, these people suddenly
plished with its dodgem cars and related amusements is anti
ceased muttering, but red oubled their gesticulations, and awaited,
cipated in Poe's description. The people in his story behave as if
with an absent and overdone smile upon the lips, the course of the
they could no longer express themselves through anything but a
persons impeding them. If jostled, they bowed profusely to the
reflex action. These goings-on seem even more dehumanized
jostlers, and appeared overwhelmed with confusion.' One might
because Poe talks only about people. If the crowd is jammed up, it
think he was speaking of half-drunken wretches. Actually, they
is not because it is being impeded by vehicular traffic - there is no
were 'noblemen, merchants, attorneys, tradesmen, stock-jobbers'.
mention of it anywhere - but because it is being blocked by other
Something other than a psychology of the classes is involved here. 35
crowds. In a mass of this nature the art of strolling could not
35. The image of America which Marx had seems to be of the same stuff as flourish.
Poe's description. He emphasizes the 'feverishly youthful pace of material I n Baudelaire's Paris things had not come to such a pass. Ferries
production' in the States and blames this very pace for the fact that there was
'neither time nor opportunity . . . to abolish the old spirit world' (Marx,
were still crossing the Seine at points where later there would be
Der acht{ehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, op. cit., p. 30). In Poe there is bridges. In the year of Baudelaire's death it was still possible for an
something demonic even about the physiognomy of the businessmen. entrepreneur to cater to the comfort of the well-to-do with a fleet
Baudelaire describes how as darkness descends 'the harmful demons' awaken of five hundred sedan chairs circulating about the city. Arcades
in the air 'sluggish as a bunch of businessmen' (1, lOS). This passage in 'Le where theflaneur would not be exposed to the sight of carriages that
Crepuscule du soir' may have been inspired by Poe's text.
did not recognize pedestrians as rivals were enjoying undiminished
 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 55
54
of Paris ' as someone condemned to live in the capital day after
popularity. There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the day.'38 He might have said that he was the first to speak also of the
crowd, but there was also the flc1neur who demanded elbow room opiate that was available to give relief to men so condemned, and
and was unwilling to forego the life of a gentleman of leisure. H is only to them. The crowd is not only the newest asylum of outlaws;
leisurely appearance as a personality is his protest against the it is also the latest narcotic for those abandoned. The flaneur is
division of labour which makes people into specialists. It is also his someone abandoned in the crowd. In this he shares the situation of
protest against their industriousness. Around 1840 it was briefly the commodity. He is not aware of this special situation, but
fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. The flaneu rs this does not diminish its effect on him and it permeates him
liked to have the turtles set the pace for them. If they had had their blissfully like a narcotic that can compensate him for many
way, progress would have been obliged to accommodate itself to humiliations. The intoxication to which the flaneur surrenders is
this pace. But this attitude did not prevail; Taylor, who popularized the intoxication of the commodity around which surges the stream
the watchword 'Down with dawdling!' carried the day.36 Some of customers.
people sought to anticipate coming developments while there was If the soul of the commodity which Marx occasionally mentions
still time. Rattier wrote in J 857 in his utopia, Paris n' existe plus: 'The in jest existed,39 it would be the most empathetic ever encountered in
flaneur whom we used to encounter on the sidewalks and in front the realm of souls, for it would have to see in everyone the buyer in
of the shop-windows, this nonentity, this constant rubberneck, this whose hand and house it wants to nestle. Empathy is the nature of
inconsequential type who was always in search of cheap emotions the intoxication to which theflaneur abandons himself in the crowd.
and knew about nothing but cobblestones, fiacres, and gas lanterns 'The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being himself and
... has now become a farmer, a vintner, a linen manufacturer, a someone else as he sees fit. Like a roving soul in search of a body,
sugar refiner, and a steel magnate.'37 he enters another person whenever he wishes. For him alone, all is
On his peregrinations the man of the crowd lands at a late hour open; if certain places seem closed to him, it is because in his view
in a department store where there still are many customers. He they are not worth inspecting.'40 The commodity itselfis the speaker
moves about like someone who knows his way around the place. here. Yes, the last words give a rather accurate idea of what the
Were there multi-storied department stores in Poe's day? No matter; commodity whispers to a poor wretch who passes a shop-window
Poe lets the restl~s man spend an 'hour and a half, or thereabouts' containing beautiful and expensive things. These objects are not
in this bazaar. 'He entered shop after shop, priced nothing, spoke interested in this person; they do not empathize with him. In the
no word, and looked at all objects with a wild and vacant stare.' sentences of the significant prose poem 'Les F oules' there speaks,
If the arcade is the classical form of the intirieur, which is how the with other words, the fetish itself with which Baudelaire's sensitive
flc1neur sees the street, the department store is the form of the nature resonated so powerfully; that empathy with inorganic things
inrerieur's decay. The bazaar is the last hangout of the flaneur. If in which was one of his sources of inspiration. 41
the beginning the street had become an interieur for him, now this 38 . Jules Laforgue, Melanges pasthumes, Paris, 1903, p. I I I.
interieur turned into a street, and he roamed through the labyrinth 39. cf. Marx, Das Kapital, edited by Karl Korsch, Berlin, 193 2 , p . 95
of merchandise as he had once roamed through the labyrinth of the [English edition, op. cit., p. 84)
city. It is a magnificent touch in Poe's story that it includes along 40. I, 420tr.
4 1 The second 'Spleen' poem is the most important addition to the docu
with the earliest description of the flaneur the figuration of his
mentation for this that was assembled in the first part of this essay. Hardly
end. any poet before Baudelaire wrote a verse that is anything like 'Je suis un vieux
Jules Laforgue said about Baudelaire that he was the first to speak boudoir plein de roses fanees' (I, 86) ('I am an old boudoir full of faded
36. cf. Georges Friedmann, La crise du progres, Paris, 1936, p. 76. roses'). The poem is entirely based on empathy with material that is dead in a
37. Paul Emest de Rattier, Paris ,,'existe plus, Paris, 1857, pp. 74tr.
 56
The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 57

Baudelaire was a connoisseur of narcotics, yet one of their most the commodity's charms were based on the market, and they
important social effects probably escaped him. It consists in the lurned into as many means of power. As such they were registered
charm displayed by addicts under the influence of drugs. Com by Baudelaire in his 'Crepuscule du soir':
modities derive the same effect from the crowd that surges around
and intoxicates them. The concentration of customers which makes A travers les lueurs que tourmente Ie vent

the market, which in turn makes the commodity into a commodity, La Prostitution s'allume dans les rues;

enhances its attractiveness to the average buyer. When Baudelaire Comme une fourmiliere elle ouvre ses issues;

speaks of 'the big cities' state of religious intoxication', 42 the com Partout elle se fraye un occulte chemin,

modity is probably the unnamed subject of this state. And the 'holy Ainsi que I'ennemi qui tente un coup de m,!in;

prostitution of the soul' compared with which 'that which people Elle remue au sein de la cite de fange

call love is quite small, quite limited, and quite feeble'43 really can Comme un ver qui derobe aI'Homme ce qu'il mange. 41i

be nothing else than the prostitution of the commodity-soul - if (Against the lamplight, whose shivering is the wind's,

the confrontation with love retains its meaning. Baudelaire refers to Prostitution spreads its light and life in the streets:

'that holy prostitution of the soul which gives itself wholly, poetry Like an anthill opening its issue it penetrates

and charity, to the unexpected that appears, to the unknown that Mysteriously everywhere by its own occult route;

passes' (' cette sainte prostitution de l' ame qui se donne tout entiere, Like an enemy mining the foundations of a fort,

poesie et chariti, al'imprevu qui se montre, al'inconnu qui passe'). 44 Or a worm in an apple, eating what all should eat,

It is this very polsie and this very charite which the prostitutes It circulates securely in the city's clogged heart.)

claim for themselves. They had tried the secrets of the open markets;
in this respect commodities had no advantage over them. Some of translated by David Paul
Only the mass of inhabitants permits prostitution to spread over
dual sense. It is inorganic matter, matter that has been eliminated fr om the large parts of the city. And only the mass makes it possible for the
circulation process. sexual object to become intoxicated with the hundred stimuli which
Desormais tu n'es plus, 6 matiere vivante!
it produces.
Qu'un granit entoure d'une "ague epouvante,
Not everyone found the spectacle offered by the people in the
Assoupi dans Ie fond d'un Sahara brumeux;
streets of a big city intoxicating. Long before Baudelaire wrote his
Un vieux sphinx ignore du monde insoucieux,

prose poem 'Les F oules', Friedrich Engels had undertaken to

Oublie sur la carte, et dont l'humeur farouche

Ne chante qu'aux rayons du soleil qui se couche (I, 86).

describe the bustle in the streets of London. 'A town such as Lon
don, where a man might wander for hours together without reach
(Henceforth, 0 living matter, you are nothing more
Than the fixed heart of chaos, soft horror's granite core, ing the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint
Than a forgotten Sphinx that in some desert s tands, which could lead to the inference that there is open country
Drowsing beneath the heat, half-hidden by the sands, within reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centralization, this
Unmarked on any map , - whose rude and sullen frown heaping together of two and a half millions of human beings at one
Lights up a moment only when the sun goes down.)
point, has multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a
translated hy Edna St Vincent A1illay hundredfold.... But the sacrifices which all this has cost become
The image of the Sphinx which concludes the poem has the gloomy beauty apparent later. After roaming the streets of the capital a day or two,
of unsaleable articles such as may still be found in arcades.
making headway with difficulty through the human turmoil and the
4 2. II, 627. 43. I, 421. 44. I, 421.
45. 1,108.
58 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 59

endless lines of vehicles, after visiting the slums of the metropolis, beginning of its decline. Inevitably, one day many of its members
one realizes for the first time that these Londoners have been forced had to become aware of the commodity nature of their labour
to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass power. But this day had not as yet come; until that day they were
all the marvels of civilization which crowd their city.... The very permitted, if one may put it that way, to pass their time. The very
turmoil of the streets has something repulsive, something against fact that their share could at best be enjoyment, but never power,
which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all made the period which history gave them a space for passing
classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not all human time. Anyone who sets out to while away time seeks enjoyment. It
beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same inter was self-evident, however, that the more .this class wanted to have
est in being happy? ... And still they crowd by one another as its enjoyment in this society, the more limited this enjoyment would
though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one be. The enjoyment promised to be less limited if this class found
another, and their only agreement is the tacit one, that each keep to enjoyment of this society possible. If it wanted to achieve vir
his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing tuosity in this kind of enjoyment, it could not spurn empathizing
stream of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with commodities. It had to enjoy this identification with all the
with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling pleasure and the uneasiness which derived from a presentiment of
isolation of each in his private interest, becomes the more repellent its own destiny as a class. Finally, it had to approach this destiny
and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, with a sensitivity that perceives charm even in damaged and decay
within a limited space.'46 ing goods. Baudelaire, who in a poem to a courtesan called her
ThejZaneur only seems to break through this 'unfeeling isolation heart 'bruised like a peach, ripe like her body, for the lore of love',
of each in his private interest' by filling the hollow space created in possessed this sensitivity. To it he owed his enjoyment of this
him by such isolation, with the borrowed - and fictitious - isola society as someone who had already half withdrawn from it.
tions of strangers. Next to Engels's clear description, it sounds In the attitude of someone with this kind of enjoyment he let the
obscure when Baudelaire writes: 'The pleasure of being in a crowd spectacle of the crowd act upon him. The deepest fascination of this
is a mysterious expression of the enjoyment of the multiplication of spectacle lay in the fact that as it intoxicated him it did not blind
numbers.'47 But this statement becomes clear if one imagines it him to the horrible social reality. He remained conscious of it,
spoken not only from a person's viewpoint but also from the view though only in the way in which intoxicated people are 'stilI' aware
point of a commodity. To be sure, insofar as a person, as labour of reality. That is why in Baudelaire the big city almost never finds
power, is a commodity, there is no need for him to identify himself expression in the direct presentation of its inhabitants. The direct
as such. The more conscious he becomes of his mode of existence, ness and harshness with which Shelley captured London through
the mode imposed upon him by the system of production, the more the depiction of its people could not benefit Baudelaire's Paris.
he proletarianizes himself, the more he will be gripped by the chill
Hell is a city much like London,

of the commodity economy and the less he will feel like empathizing
A populous and a smoky city;

with commodities. But things had not reached that point with the
There are all sorts of people undone,

class of the petty bourgeoisie to which Baudelaire belonged. On

And there is little or no fun done;

the scale with which we are dealing here, this class was only at the
Small justice shown, and still less pity.48

46. Engels, Die Lage der aroeitenden Klasse in England, Leipzig, 1848, pp.
36if. [Original (1887) English translation, The Condition of the Working-Class 4 8. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Peter Bell the Third Part', Complete Poetical
in England in 1844, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Britain, Moscow, Works, London, 1932, p. 346. [Benjamin quoted this verse in a German
19 62 , pp. 56-7.] 47. II, 626. version by Bertolt Brecht.]
60 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 61

For theflaneur there is a veil over this picture. This veil is the mass; they become alive in him and blend with the life of the natural
it billows in 'the twisting folds of the old metropolises'. 49 Because forces - with the sea, the crumbling rocks, the shifting clouds, and
of it, horrors have an enchanting effect upon him. 50 Only when this the other exalted things that are part of a lonely, quiet life in com
veil tears and reveals to theflaneur 'one of the populous squares ... munion with nature.'67 'The ocean itself got bored with him'
which are empty during street fighting'S1 does he, too, get an ('L'ocean meme s'est ennuye de lui'), said Baudelaire about Hugo,
unobstructed view of the big city. touching the man brooding on the cliffs with the light-pencil of his
If any proof were needed of the force with which the experience irony. Baudelaire did not feel inclined to follow the spectacle of
of the crowd moved Baudelaire, it would be the fact that he under nature. His experience of the crowd bore "the traces of the 'heart
took to vie with Hugo in this experience. That Hugo's strength lay ache and the thousand natural shocks' which a pedestrian suffers in
here, if anywhere, was evident to Baudelaire. He praises a 'carac the bustle of a city and which keep his self-awareness all the more
tere poetique ... interrogauf' 52 in Hugo and says that Hugo not only alert. (Basically it is this very self-awareness that he lends to the
knows how to reproduce clear things sharply and distinctly but also strolling commodity.) To Baudelaire the crowd never was a stimulus
reproduces with the requisite obscurity what has manifested itself to cast the plummet of his thought down into the depths of the
only dimly and indistinctly. One of the three poems of the Tableaux world. Hugo, on the other hand, writes, 'The depths are crowds'
parisiens which are dedicated to Hugo begins with an invocation (' Les profondeurs sont des multitudes'),S8 and thereby gives an
of the crowded city: 'Teeming city, city full of dreams.'53 Another enormous scope to his thinking. The natural-supernatural which
follows old women in the 'teeming tableau's4 of the city, right affected Hugo in the form of the crowd presents itself in the forest,
through the crowd. 55 The crowd is a new subject in lyric poetry. Of in the animal kingdom, and by the surging sea; in any of those
the innovator Sainte-Beuve it was said appreciatively, as something places the physiognomy of a big city can flash for a few moments.
fitting and appropriate for a poet, that 'the crowd was unbearable' 56 'La Pente de la reverie' gives a splendid idea of the promiscuity at
for him. During his exile in Jersey, Hugo opened this subject up work among the multitude of living things.
for poetry. On his walks along the coast, this subject took shape
for him, thanks to one of the enormous antitheses that were indis La nuit avec la foule, en ce reve hideux,
pensable to his inspiration. In Hugo the crowd enters literature as Venait d'epaississant ensemble toutes deux,
an object of contemplation. The surging ocean is its model, and the Et, dans ces regions que nul regard ne sonde,
thinker who reflects on this eternal spectacle is the true explorer of Plus l'homme etait nombreux,
the crowd in which he loses himself as he loses himself in the roaring plus l'ombre etait profonde. 59
of the sea. 'As the exile on his lonely cliff looks out towards the (In that hideous dream, night arrived together with the
great, fateful countries, he looks down into the past of the peoples. crowd, and both grew ever thicker; indeed, in those
... He carries himself and his destiny into the fullness of events; regions which no look can fathom, the more numerous
were the people, the deeper was the darkness.)
49. I, 102 50. cf. I, 102. 51 II, 193.
52. II, 522. 53 I, 100. 54. I, 103.
55. The third poem of the cycle, 'Les Petites vie illes', underlines the rivalry 57. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Versuch uber Victor Hugo, Munich, 19 2 5,
by following the third poem in Hugo's cycle, Fantames, verbatim. Thus there P49
is a correspondence between one of Baudelaire's most perfect poems and one 58. Quoted in Gabriel Bounoure, 'Abimes de Victor Hugo', in Mesures,
of Hugo's weakest. 15 July 193 6, p. 39
56. Sainte-Beuve, Les cOMolatroM. Pensees d'<wut, Paris, 1863, p. 125. (The 59. Victor Hugo, Oeuvres completes. Edition definitive. Poesie II: Les
remark, published by Sainte-Reuve from the manuscript, is by Farcy.) Orientales, Les Feuilles d'automne, Paris, 1880, pp. 36 5f[
 62 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 63

And: ence conceals the really monstrous thing about them: the concen
Foule sans nom! chaos! des voix, des yeux, des pas. tration of private persons as such by the accident of their private
Ceux qu'on n'a jamais vu, ceux qu'on ne connait pas. interests. But if these concentrations become evident - and the
Tous les vivants! - cites bourdonnantes aux oreilles totalitarian states see to it by making the concentration of their
Plus qu'un bois d'Amerique ou une ruche d'abeilles. 60 clients permanent and obligatory for all their purposes - their
hybrid character clearly manifests itself, and particularly to those
(Nameless mob! chaos! voices, eyes, steps. Those one has who are involved. They rationalize the accident of the market
never seen, those no one knows. All the living! - cities economy which brings them together in this way as 'fate' in which
buzzing in our ears louder than an American forest or a 'the race' gets together again. In doing so they give free rein to
beehive.) both the herd instinct and to reflective action. The peoples who are
With the crowd, nature exercises its fundamental right on the in the foreground of the Western European stage make the acquain
city. But it is not nature alone which exercises its rights in this way. tance of the supernatural which confronted Hugo in the crowd.
There is an astonishing place in Les Miserables where what goes on Hugo, to be sure, was not able to assess the historical significance
in the forest appears as the archetype of mass existence. 'What had of this force. However, it left its imprint on his work as a strange
happened on this street would not have astonished a forest. The distortion, in the form of spiritualistic protocols.
tree trunks and the underbrush, the herbs, the inextricably inter Hugo's contact with the spirit world which, as we know, had
twined branches, and the tall grasses lead an obscure kind of an equally profound effect on his life and his production in Jersey,
existence. Invisible things flit through the teeming immensity. was, strange though this may seem, primarily a contact with the
What is below human beings perceives through a fog that which is masses which the poet necessarily missed in exile. For the crowd is
above them.'61 This description contains the characteristics of the spirit world's mode of existence. Thus Hugo saw himself
Hugo's experience with the crowd. In the crowd that which is primarily as a genius in a great assembly of geniuses who were his
below a person comes in contact with what holds sway above him. ancestors. In his William Shakespeare, he devoted one rhapsodic
It is this promiscuity that includes all others. In Hugo the crowd page after another to the procession of those aristocrats of the
appears as a bastard which shapeless, superhuman powers create intellect, beginning with Moses and ending with Hugo. But they
from those below human beings. In the visionary strain that is con constitute only a small group in the tremendous multitude of the
tained in Hugo's conception of the crowd, social reality gets its due departed. To Hugo's chthonian mind, the ad plures ire [dying] of
more than it does in the 'realistic' treatment which he gave the the Romans was not an empty phrase.
crowd in politics. For the crowd really is a spectacle of nature - if The spirits of the dead came late, as messengers of the night, in
one may apply the term to social conditions. A street, a conflagra the last seance. Hugo's Jersey notes have preserved their messages:
tion, or a traffic accident assemble people who are not defined along 'Every great man works on two works - the work he creates as a
class lines. They present themselves as concrete gatherings, but living person and his spirit-work. A living man devotes himself to
socially they remain abstract - namely, in their isolated private the first work. But in the deep still of night the spirit-creator - oh
interests. Their models are the customers who, each in his private horror! - awakens in him. What?! - cries the person - isn't that all?
interest, gather at the market around their 'common cause'. In many No, replies the spirit; arise. The storm is raging, dogs and foxes are
cases, such gatherings have only a statistical existence. This exist howling, darkness is everywhere, nature shudders and winces under
the whip of God.... The spirit-creator sees the phantom idea. The
60. ibid., p. 363. words bristle and the sentence shudders ... the windowpanes get
61. Hugo, op. cit., Roman VIII, Les Misirahles, Paris, r88r. fogged and dull, the lamp is seized by fright.... Watch out, living
 64 The Paris ofthe Second Empire in Baudelaire 65

person, man of a century, you vassal of an idea that comes from the number, will understand that there is someone stirring
earth. For this is madness, this is the grave, this is infinity, this is a deep in the darkness.)
phantom idea.'62 The cosmic shudder during the experience of the
Could there be a reliable revolutionary judgment in keeping 'with
invisible which Hugo preserves here has no similarity to the naked
this view, based on the crowd, of the suppressed masses? Was not
terror which overcame Baudelaire in the spleen. Also, Baudelaire
this view, rather, clear evidence of the limitation of this judgment,
mustered only little understanding for Hugo's undertaking. 'True
no matter what its origin? In the Chamber debate of 25 November
civilization,' he said, 'does not lie in table-turning at seances.' But
1 8 48, Hugo had inveighed against Cavaignac's barbaric suppression
Hugo was not concerned with civilization. He felt truly at home in
of the June revolt. But on 20 June, in the discussion of the ateliers
the spirit world. One could say that it was the cosmic complement
nationaux, he said: 'The monarchy had its idlers, the republic has its
of a household of which horror was an integral part. His intimate
loafers.'6( Hugo reflected the superficial views of the day as well as
acquaintance with the apparitions removes much of their frighten
a blind faith in the future, but he also had a profound vision of the
ing quality. It is not without fussiness and brings out the threadbare
life that was forming in the womb of nature and of the people.
nature of the apparitions. As pendants to the nocturnal ghosts there
H ugo never succeeded in fashioning a bridge between these two.
are meaningless abstractions, more or less ingenious embodiments
He saw no need for such a bridge, and this explains the tremendous
that may be found on the monuments of the time. In the Jersey
pretensions and scope of his work and presumably also the tre
protocols, 'Drama', 'Poetry', 'Literature', 'Thought', and many
mendous influence of his life-work on his contemporaries. In the
things of that type may freely be heard next to the voices of chaos.
chapter of Les Miserables which is entitled 'L'argot', the two con
For Hugo the immense throngs of the spirit world are - and this
flicting sides of his nature confront each other with impressive
may bring the riddle closer to a solution - primarily a public. It is
harshness. After a bold look into the linguistic workshop of the
less strange that his work absorbed motifs of the talking table than
lower classes, the poet concludes by writing: 'Since 1789 the whole
that he customarily produced it in front of the table. The acclaim
people has unfolded in the purified individual. There is no poor
which the beyond gave him unstintingly while he was in exile gave
man who does not have his rights and thus the light that falls upon
him a foretaste of the immeasurable acclaim which was to await him
him. A poor wretch bears the honour of France inside him. The
at home in his old age. When on his seventieth birthday the popula
dignity of a citizen is an inner bulwark. Anyone who is free is
tion of the capital pressed toward his house on Avenue d'Eylau, conscientious; and everyone who has the vote rules.'65 Victor Hugo
this meant the realization of the image of the wave surging against
saw things the way the experiences of a successful literary and
the cliffs as well as the realization of the message of the spirit world.
In the final analysis, the impenetrable obscurity of mass existence 64. Pelin, a characteristic representative of the lower bOMme, wrote about
was also the source of Victor Hugo's revolutionary speculations. In this speech in his paper Les boulets rouges. Feuille du club pacifique des droits
the Chritiments the day ofliberation is circumscribed as del'homme: 'The citoyen Hugo has made his debut in the National Assembly.
As had been expected, he turned out to be a declaimer, a gesticulator, and a
Le jour OU nos pillards, ou nos tyrans sans nombre phrase-monger. In the vein of his latest crafty and defamatory poster he spoke
Comprendront que quelqu'un remue au fond de l'ombre. 63 of the idlers, the poor, the loafers, the la{{aroni, the praetorians of the revolu
tion, and the condottieri - in a word, he wore out metaphors and ended with
(The day on which our pillagers, our tyrants without an attack on the ateliers nationaux' (Les boulers rouges, First year, June 22-24)
In his Histoire parlememaire de la Seconde Republique, Eugene Spuller writes:
62. Gustave Simon, Che{ Victor Hugo. Les tables tournantes de jersey, 'Victor Hugo had been elected with reactionary votes .... He had always
Paris, 1923, pp. 306ff. voted with the Rightists, except for one or two occasions in which politics
63. Hugo, op. cit., Poisie IV: Les Chtltiments, Paris, 1882 ('La Caravane did not matter' (Paris, 1891, pp. 111 and 2(6) .
IV'). 65. Hugo, op. cit., Les Miserables, p. 306 .
 66

political career presented them to him. He was the first great writer
whose works have collective titles: Les Miserables, Les TraYailleurs
de la mer. To him the crowd meant, almost in the ancient sense, the
crowd of clients - that is, the masses of his readers and his voters.
Hugo was, in a word, noflcineur.
For the crowd which went with Hugo and with which he went
there was no Baudelaire. But this crowd did exist for Baudelaire.
Seeing it caused him every day to plumb the depth of his failure,
and this probably was not the least among the reasons why he
sought this sight. The desperate pride which thus befell him _ in III. Modernism
bursts, as it were - was fed by the fame of Victor Hugo. But he was
probably spurred on even more strongly by Hugo's political creed, Baudelaire patterned his image of the artist after an image
the creed of the citoyen. The masses of the big city could not dis of the hero. From the beginning, each is an advocate of the other.
concert him. He recognized the crowd of people in them and wanted In the 'Salon de 1845' he wrote: 'Will-power has to be well
to be flesh of their flesh. Laicism, Progress, and Democracy were developed, and always very fruitful, to be able to give the stamp of
inscribed on the banner which he waved over their heads. This uniqueness even to second-rate works. The viewer enjoys the
banner transfigured mass existence. It shaded a threshold which effort and his eye drinks the sweat.'l In the Conseils aux jeunes
separated the individual from the crowd. Baudelaire guarded this litterateurs of the following year there is a fine formula in which
threshold, and that differentiated him from Victor Hugo. However, the 'contemplation opiniatre de l' oeuyre de demain'2 appears as the
he resembled him in that he, too, did not see through the social aura guarantee of inspiration. Baudelaire knows the 'indolence naturelle
which is crystallized in the crowd. He therefore opposed to it a des inspires';3 Musset - so he says - never understood how much
model which was as uncritical as Hugo's conception of the crowd. work it takes 'to let a work of art emerge from a daydream'. 4 He,
This model was the hero. When Victor Hugo was celebrating the on the other hand, comes before the public from the very first
crowd as the hero in a modern epic, Baudelaire was looking for a moment with his own code, precepts, and taboos. Barres claimed
refuge for the hero among the masses of the big city. Hugo placed that he could recognize 'in every little word of Baudelaire a trace
himself in the crowd as a citoyen; Baudelaire sundered himself from of the toil that helped him achieve such great things'. 5 'Even in his
it as a hero.
nervous crises,' writes Gourmont, ' Baudelaire retains something
healthy.'6 The most felicitous formulation is given by the symbolist
Gustave Kahn when he says that 'with Baudelaire, poetic work
resembled a physical effort'. 7 Proof of this may be found in his
work - in a metaphor worth closer inspection.
1. II, 26. 2. II, 388. 3. II, 531.
4. Albert Thibaudet, lnterieurs, Paris, 1924, p. 15.
5. Quoted in Andre Gide, ' Baudelaire et M. F aguet', in Nouvelle revue
franfaise, I November 1910, p. 513.
6. Remy de Gounnont, Promenades litteraires. Deu>:ieme serie, Paris, 1906,
pp. 85 ff.
7. Preface by Gustave Kahn in Baudelaire, Mon coeur mis a nu et Fusees,
Paris, 1909, p. 6.
 'The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire' and 'Some Motifs in

Baudelaire' first published in one volume as Charles Baudelaire, Ein Lyriker

im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus, edited by Rolf Tiedemann,

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969

Bibliographical note to the English edition 7

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969

Translator's note 8

Addendum to 'The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire' first published

Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire, Aufbau Verlag, 1971

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971

THE PARIS OF THE SECOND EMPIRE IN BAUDELAIRE 9

This translation of 'Some Motifs in Baudelaire' first published {n

I The Boheme II

Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

(New York, 1968), and Jonathan Cape Ltd (London, 1970)

II The Flcineur 35

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Jonathan Cape. 1968 and 1970

III Modernism 67

'Paris - the Capital of the Nineteenth Century' first published in

Addendum 103

Walter Benjamin, SchriJten. 2 vols. Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955

SOME MOTIFS IN BAUDELAIRE 107

This (slightly emended) translation of 'Paris - the Capital of the

Nineteenth Century ' , by Quintin Hoare, first published in

New LeJt Review, no. 48, 1968

PARIS-THE CAPITAL OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ISS
Translation New Left Review, 1968

I Fourier or the Arcades 157

NLB, 1973

II Daguerre or the Dioramas 161

First paperback edition 1976

Verso edition 1983

III Grandville or the World Exhibitions 164

Second impression 1985

IV Louis-Philippe or the Interior 167

Verso Editions 15 Greek Street London WI V Baudelaire or the Streets of Paris 170

VI Haussmann or the Barricades 173

Typeset in Monotype Fournier

Printed by Thetford Press Limited
Thetford, Norfolk Index 177

Designed by Gerald Cinamon