1
Found myself wandering through The Arcades Project today, looking for Napoleon’s Madeleine (or its ruinscape) only to wander off into a passageway that led me back to Baudelaire’s sonnet, "A une passante"— which Walter Benjamin discusses in “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire”, among other flaneuries . . .
Lightning . . .then darkness! Lovely fugitive
whose glance has brought me back to life! But where
is life—not this side of eternity?
2
Alberto Moravia made use of the epistolary form in a short story titled “The Thing" whose protagonist is a lesbian writing a letter to her longtime lover. Both are equestrians. The letter centers on a rejection, and a particular reading of Baudelaire’s poem “Femmes damnées”.
To the question of what damnation would involve for women, the speaker replies: “That of slavery to the male member.”
Oddly, the male member here is that of a stallion, a horse.
No worries! Moravia returns to this member-centric fold in a different story, “The Unknown God,” where he extols the apostatic penis.
3
The final verse of Baudelaire’s “Damned Women” sticks to the skull:
Vous que dans votre enfer mon âme a poursuivies,
Pauvres soeurs, je vous aime autant que je vous plains,
Pour vos mornes douleurs, vos soifs inassouvies,
Et les urnes d'amour dont vos grands coeurs sont pleins.
And since all of the translations included at the Fleurs du mal website felt a bit stuffy, I decided to wrangle my own:
You whom my soul has pursued into your hell,
My poor sisters, I adore you as I mourn you,
For your anguished sighs, your quenchless thirsts,
In your grandiose hearts, love’s urns are filled to brim.
4
A short history of tourism, gleaned from one of Anne Friedberg’s end-notes:
Thomas Cook, the British entrepreneur, began organizing tours in 1841. A collaborator with the temperance movement, he posed the tour as a substitute for alcohol. The tourist industry successfully commoditized a combination of voyeurism (sight-seeing) and narrative. The tourist, like the cinema spectator, is simultaneously present and absent, positioned both here and elsewhere. Work on travel has suggested productive analogies among shopping, tourism, and film viewing. Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes the connections between the railway journey and other forms of "panoramic travel"—- walking through city streets and shopping in department stores. (The moving walkway, the trottoir roulant, was introduced at the Paris exhibition of 1900.)
The idea of tourism as a teetotaling therapy amused me, although it explains a bit of what feels so labored about touring, and tourists. There is a certain kind of attention required, as well as an itinerary—-like going through an art museum with a guide rather than wandering. The nature of the “encounter” seems different?
5
SURREALIST INQUIRY: WOULD YOU OPEN THE DOOR?
Editor's note: This playful inquiry ("Ouvrez-vous?" in French) was featured on the first page of the first issue of Medium: Communication surrealiste (1953). Translated by Franklin Rosemont in Penelope Rosemont’s Surrealist Women.
EB = Elisa Breton
AS = Anne Seghers
T = Toyen
Would you open the door for
Baudelaire? EB: Yes, overwhelmed. AS: Yes, completely amazed. T: Yes, with affection.
Bettina? EB: No, too cunning for me. AS: Yes, she's a curiosity.
Cezanne? EB: No, he's too involved with his calculations. AS: No, because I love apples. T: No, enough still-lifes.
Chateaubriand? EB: Yes, with admiration. AS: No, with many excuses. T: No, devoid of interest.
Juliette Drouet? EB: Yes, with sympathy. AS: Yes, because of the sweetness of her face.
Fourier? EB: Yes, joyfully. AS: Yes, as one welcomes spring. T: Yes, with the greatest interest.
Freud? EB: Yes (a great miner). AS: Yes, but not very sure of myself. T: Yes, to make him psychoanalyze me.
Gauguin? EB: Yes, in his aura of light and refusal. AS: No, out of fear of being disappointed. T: Yes, in friendship.
Goya? EB: Yes (the magic eye). AS: Yes, saluting him with reverence. T: Yes, with joy.
Caroline von Gunderode? EB: Yes, deeply moved. AS: Yes, she's a good friend (AS).
Hegel? EB: Yes (the atmosphere of high peaks). AS: Yes, but with some confusion. T: Yes, with respect.
Huysmans? EB: Yes, trying to win him over. AS: Yes, hoping he would stay a long time. T: Yes, out of curiosity.
Lenin? EB: Yes (a human breach). AS: Yes, respectfully. T: Yes, I would be very pleased to see him.
Mallarme? EB: Yes, but distantly. AS: No, too glacial. T: No, I'm not ready to go to sleep.
Marx? EB: Yes, but silently. AS: No, we would be bored together. T: Yes, in the friendliest way.
Nerval? EB: Yes, but slowly. AS: Yes, after some hesitation. T: Yes, I hope to be able to stroll through Paris with him.
Novalis? EB: Yes, as in a dream. AS: Yes (night's great Emperor Moth). T: Yes, to enter into his strange light.
DeQuincey? EB: Yes, from elective affinities. AS: Yes, with my heart beating. T: Yes, to dream with him.
Henri Rousseau? EB: Yes, with love. AS: Yes, an intimate friend. T: Yes, with admiration.
Seurat? EB: Yes (rigor and charm). AS: Yes, as with a bird tapping at the window.
Van Gogh? EB: Yes, bounding toward the fire. AS: Yes (the sun). T: Yes, but with a fear of fatigue.
Verlaine? EB: No (too Jesuitical. AS: No, too weepy. T: No, he's had too much to drink.