Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France 9781907975530, 9781907975

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1 From Le Livre nouveau to 'la ville nouvelle': Elements of a Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City
2 'Crayonnons à la hâte': The Modern Urban in the Journalistic Prose of Théophile Gautier
3 Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris: Rhapsodie and 'le vertige senti dans les grandes villes'
4 Rhetorics of Transformation and Community in Rimbaud's Illuminations
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

KERR

Greg Kerr is Lecturer in French at the University of Lancaster.

legenda is a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern humanities.

Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France

To a backdrop of dizzying urbanization, French utopian thinkers of the nineteenth century set out to explore the transformative possibilities of the modern metropolis. Linking literary analyses with diverse strands of cultural and intellectual history, this study considers how the utopian vision of the city in turn came to impinge on prose writing by poets: in Saint-Simonian literature, and in texts by Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. At points steeped in the hyperbolic rhetoric of utopian projects, these texts nonetheless wear away at the internal coherence of that rhetoric and the idealizing meanings it supports. What emerges from Greg Kerr’s analysis is a hitherto unfamiliar dimension of these writings, revealing the alertness of some of the greatest exponents of nineteenth-century poetry to the dynamic possibilities of utopian writing, and suggesting new ways to understand the evolution of poetic discourse across the century.

Dream Cities Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France Greg Kerr

ISBN 978-1-907975-53-0

cover illustration: Philippe-Joseph Machereau,

9 781907 975530

Kerr-9781907975530-cover.indd 1

Femme colossale assise (c. 1832) by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge

18/10/12 01:00:37

Dream Cities Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France

LEGENDA legenda , founded in 1995 by the European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern humanities, including works on Arabic, Catalan, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. An Editorial Board of distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration with leading scholarly bodies such as the Society for French Studies and the British Comparative Literature Association.

The Modern Humanities Research association (mhra ) encourages and promotes advanced study and research in the field of the modern humanities, especially modern european languages and literature, including english, and also cinema. It also aims to break down the barriers between scholars working in different disciplines and to maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of increasing specialization. The association fulfils this purpose primarily through the publication of journals, bibliographies, monographs and other aids to research.

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Editorial Board Chairman Professor Colin Davis, Royal Holloway, University of London Professor Malcolm Cook, University of Exeter (French) Professor Robin Fiddian, Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish) Professor Anne Fuchs, University of St Andrews (German) Professor Paul Garner, University of Leeds (Spanish) Professor Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex (English) Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret, Queen Mary University of London (French) Professor Catriona Kelly, New College, Oxford (Russian) Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford (Italian) Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (Linguistics) Professor Peter Matthews, St John’s College, Cambridge (Linguistics) Dr Stephen Parkinson, Linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese) Professor Suzanne Raitt, William and Mary College, Virginia (English) Professor Ritchie Robertson, The Queen’s College, Oxford (German) Professor David Shepherd, Keele University (Russian) Professor Michael Sheringham, All Souls College, Oxford (French) Professor Alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish) Professor David Treece, King’s College London (Portuguese) Managing Editor Dr Graham Nelson 41 Wellington Square, Oxford ox1 2jf, UK [email protected] www.legendabooks.com

Dream Cities Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France ❖ Greg Kerr

Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge 2013

First published 2013 Published by the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

LEGENDA is an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2013 ISBN 9-781-907975-53-0 (hbk) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recordings, fax or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Contents ❖ Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction

ix x 1

1 From Le Livre nouveau to ‘la ville nouvelle’: Elements of a Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

27

2 ‘Crayonnons à la hâte’: The Modern Urban in the Journalistic Prose of Théophile Gautier

74

3 Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris: Rhapsodie and ‘le vertige senti dans les grandes villes’

117

4 Rhetorics of Transformation and Community in Rimbaud’s Illuminations

155

Conclusion

205

Appendix Bibliography Index

210 238 247

Acknowledgements v

I would firstly like to register a debt of gratitude to David Scott for his dedicated and unfailingly perceptive supervision of the doctoral thesis on which this book is based, and for prompting me often to see images where first I saw words. Thanks are also due to my thesis examiner Patrick O’Donovan for the invaluable advice he has offered on this project at different stages, and to Legenda’s anonymous reader who provided valuable comments on the final stages of the manuscript. At Legenda I have also benefitted from the discernment and quiet astuteness of Graham Nelson and Richard Correll who have overseen the completion of the text. I also wish to note how indebted I am to Américo Nunes da Silva for kindling my interest in Saint-Simonianism during a series of seminars at Université Paris VII Diderot in 2001–02. I am also thankful to the Irish Research Council for the Humanities & Social Sciences for the award of a postgraduate scholarship. Additional thanks are due to Damian Catani, Susan Harrow and Michael Kelly for advice received in the latter stages of the project, as well as to my colleagues at Lancaster University. Beatrice Kerr and Eileen Kelly deserve my utmost appreciation for their unf lagging encouragement. Finally, I want to thank Sara Bouskela for her measureless support, sensitivity, and the example of assiduous craft brought to the finest of details. By kind permission of the editors, Chapters 1, 2 and 4 of this book feature reworked versions of some chapters from edited volumes, and one journal article, which first appeared in the following publications: ‘Gautier, Boileau and Chenavard: Utopian Architectures of the Temple in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France’, in Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and Utopia, ed. by Nathaniel Coleman (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 57–80; ‘ “Nous avons enlacé le globe de nos réseaux...”: Spatial Structure in Saint-Simonian Poetics’, in Histoires de la Terre, ed. by Louise Lyle and David McCallam (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), pp. 91–104; ‘The Modern Urban in the Journalistic Prose of Théophile Gautier: “Crayonnons à la hâte...” ’, in Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation, ed. by Daisy Connon, Gillian Jein and Greg Kerr (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2009), pp. 165–82; ‘Rhetorics of Transformation in Rimbaud’s Illuminations’, Dix-neuf, 14.1 (April 2010), 20–32, courtesy of W. S. Maney & Son Ltd: ; available online at .

List of Illustrations v

Front Cover: Philippe-Joseph Machereau, Femme colossale assise Frontispiece: Charles Baudelaire, Autoportrait (by permission of the Roger-Viollet photo agency) Figure 1.1: Panorama by Robert Barker at Leicester Square Figure 1.2: Sketches of different arrangements of stonework demonstrated by B.-P. Enfantin Figure 1.3: Images associated with Charles Duveyrier’s ‘Travaux Publics — Fêtes’: Ascension aéronautique de Garnerin le 21 septembre 1802; Jean-Alexandre Allais, Madame Saqui, funambule; D. Leroy, Numéros d’acrobates: J. B. Fabbrini Figure 1.4: Philippe-Joseph Machereau, Cérémonie publique au temple du jardin de Ménilmontant Figure 1.5: L. Breton, La Galérie des Machines, Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867 Figure 2.1: Paul Chenavard, La Palingénésie sociale Figure 2.2: Louis-Auguste Boileau, La Cathédrale synthétique, Nouvelle Forme architecturale Figure 2.3: Church of Notre-Dame de France, designed by Louis-Auguste Boileau Figure 3.1: Constantin Guys, Cent-gardes à la revue Figure 3.2: Charles Meryon, Collège Henri IV (ou Lycée Napoléon), fifth state Figure 3.3: Charles Meryon, Le Pont-Neuf Figure 4.1: Philippe-Joseph Machereau, Femme colossale assise & Untitled Figure 4.2: Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy, L’Homme aux semelles devant Figure 4.3: Bertall, La Foire aux idées

Introduction v

Au milieu de f lammes, jaunes et bleues, allongeant leurs langues en spirales à travers un nuage de noire fumée, on [voit] plus rapide qu’un oiseau s’avancer la caravane des travailleurs, ambassade de paix avec ses chœurs nombreux et ses danseuses parées. [Amidst yellow and blue f lames extending their tongues in spirals through a pall of black smoke, the procession of workers can be seen, moving forward more swiftly than a bird, like an embassy of peace with its numerous choirs and emblazoned dancers.] Charles Duveyrier, ‘Travaux Publics — Fêtes’ [Public Works — Celebrations] Quelquefois je vois au ciel des plages sans fin couvertes de blanches nations en joie. [Sometimes in the sky I see endless beaches covered with white nations rejoicing.] Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Adieu’ [Farewell]

Customarily assimilated to a power averse to difference and variation, utopia is often viewed as inclining towards rigid symmetry and the preservation of a certain order: ‘Hostile à l’anomalie, au difforme, à l’irrégulier, [l’utopie] tend à l’affermissement de l’homogène, du type, de la répétition et de l’orthodoxie’ [Hostile to anomaly, the misshapen, the irregular, [utopia] tends towards the strengthening of homogeneity, type, repetition and orthodoxy].1 However, concentration on this proclivity of utopia, its sliding towards ‘a kind of frozen fantasy’ in the terms of Paul Ricœur,2 has the potential to obscure the complexity of the gesture which it enacts and the conditions which produce it. To give some sense of its supplementary orientation towards states of contingency and the forestalling of subordination to authority, it is necessary therefore to approach utopia as much in proportion to the crisis it initiates as in terms of its inclination towards stasis and conformity. Such an approach to a certain extent links with Louis Marin’s understanding of utopia in his book Utopiques: jeux d’espaces [Utopics: Spatial Play] as constitutive of a space of contradiction which he describes as the ‘neutral’: a ‘principe de la conjonction des contraires, la relation qui les conjoint dans leur opposition même’ [principle of the conjunction of opposites, the relationship which conjoins them precisely through their opposition].3 In this ‘neutral’ space, opposing forces are projected against one another and held in a state of tension, from which they derive their own irreducible force of relation: À la force du pouvoir organisateur à venir, à la violence de la réconciliation des contraires, fait ainsi contrepoids, “contre-force”, l’autre violence, celle de la contradiction saisie, non point dans la statique de l’incohérence logique, dans l’inertie des principes de non-contradiction et du tiers exclu comme la

2

Introduction conjonction immobile de deux termes opposés qu’il faudrait expulser pour retrouver le réel et le rationnel, mais dans la dynamique productrice de la différence des contradictoires, dans le mouvement qui l’instaure en rompant les continuités, en écartant les uns des autres les termes liés de la totalité, en créant leur négation réciproque, en leur donnant leur puissance de mort.4 [The other violence acts as a counterbalance to the organizing power to come and the violence of the reconciliation of contraries. This other violence is that of contradiction, understood, not by any means as the static state of logical incoherence, that is, in the inertia of the principles of non-contradiction and of the excluded third term as the fixed conjunction of two opposed terms which need to be expelled in order to unveil the real and the rational once more. Rather, it is in that dynamic which is productive of the difference of contradicting terms, in the movement which establishes it by breaking continuities, by sundering from each other the connected terms of the totality, by creating their reciprocal negation, by giving them their power of death].

Here Marin identifies a generative or affirmative power of the ‘neutral’, a ‘dyna­ mique productrice de la différence’ emerging precisely out of patterns of negation. This points to the indeterminate discursive positioning of utopia, which the present study will attempt to expose through an account of the similarly complex discursive status of the emergent literary form of the prose poem in nineteenth-century France. To assert the existence of degrees of proximity between utopian and poetic discourse in this manner is not to overlook the historical experience of the poets under consideration in this study, and the profound disillusionment of Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud following the collapse of progressive aspirations in the wake of the Revolution of 1848, the coup d’état of 1851 or the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871. Indeed, in the following comment, Gautier’s disappointment is palpable following the failure of the 1848 Revolution in France to usher in a literary revival: La révolution de Février ne fut pas une révolution littéraire; elle produisit plus de brochures que d’odes. La rumeur de la rue étourdissait la rêverie; la politique, les systèmes, les utopies occupaient et passionnaient les imaginations, et les poëtes se taisaient, sachant qu’ils auraient chanté pour des sourds.5 [The February revolution was not a literary revolution; it produced more brochures than odes. Daydreams were stif led by the noise of the street; imaginations become occupied and inf lamed by politics, systems and utopias, and the poets fell silent, knowing that their song would have fallen on deaf ears.]

Mindful of the frequency of comments of this type in the writings of the poets under discussion in this book, the primary concern of this study will not be the affiliation of these figures to the doctrines of the nineteenth-century utopian movements such as Saint-Simonianism or Fourierism (which, in any case, those movements failed to secure in any consistent manner). Poets of this period were alert to the dangers of the Ricœurian ‘frozen fantasy’; as Alfred de Vigny notes in his Journal d’un poète [ Journal of a Poet]: Tous les utopistes, sans exception, ont eu la vue trop basse et ont manqué d’esprit de prévision. Après être arrivés à construire bien péniblement leur triste

Introduction

3

société d’utopie, de république, de communauté, et leur paradis terrestre organisé comme une mécanique dont chacun est un ressort, s’ils avaient fait un second tour d’imagination, ils auraient vu qu’en retranchant le désir et la lutte, il n’y a plus qu’ennui dans la vie.6 [All utopianists, without exception, have been lacking in both aspiration and foresight. Having scarcely succeeded in constructing their dismal utopian, republican or communitarian society, and their earthly paradise organized like a kind of mechanism of which every person forms a component, if they had made a second leap of the imagination, they would have seen that in dispelling desire and struggle, there would be nothing but ennui in life.]

This passage, implicitly alluding to the Saint-Simonian doctrine of a nouveau christianisme [new Christianity] in the words ‘paradis terrestre’, refers to the danger that utopianism is ultimately inimical to certain desires or energies which are fundamental to human life. Such a process of reification is indeed a potential consequence of utopian projects that materialize in a doctrine or ideology, the purpose of which is to guide practical conduct and thereby secure the legitimacy of a certain view of reality. On the other hand, utopian thinking can be said to inaugurate a sustained movement away from the real which def lects back imaginatively on the assumptions underlying ‘reality’. In view of this, while remaining attentive to the former view of utopia, this study will attempt to elucidate a concomitant possibility of utopia to inf lect the practice of language catalysed by the modern prose poem, a literary genre whose emergence in the nineteenth century is linked to a desire to problematize the internal coherence and ideological legitimacy of the discourses with which it is contemporary. Emerging in the interstices of such instituted worldviews, the prose poem bears their imprint but actively wears away at the hardened assumptions which underpin them. Yet, while actively agitating against what could be designated as the ideological component of utopian and progressivist discourses, the practitioners of the prose poem simultaneously discover within utopian writing a surplus of language and meaning which spills over the very ideological boundaries that such writing pretends to set down. Prospective Bearings In keeping with its connotations as both ‘good place’ (eu-topia) and ‘non-place’ (u-topia) in Thomas More’s Utopia of 1516, it will therefore be necessary to propose a definition of utopia which accounts for its status both as an agent of displacement and variation that opens up new spaces for desire and as a force tending towards a state wherein such deviations and longings are definitively resolved. Recent writing on utopia has laid stress on the complex of orientations mobilized by the utopian impulse, and is typically mindful of the social, political and psychological devastation effected by numerous twentieth-century totalitarian regimes that are frequently assimilated to ‘utopian projects’ of one form or another. In his work Le Partage du sensible [The Sharing of the Sensible] Jacques Rancière ref lects upon the difficulty of assigning stable value to the term ‘utopia’: C’est un mot dont les capacités définitionnelles ont été complètement dévorées par ses propriétés connotatives: tantôt la folle rêverie entraînant la catastrophe

4

Introduction totalitaire, tantôt, à l’inverse, l’ouverture infinie du possible qui résiste à toutes les clôtures totalisantes. Du point de vue qui nous occupe, qui est celui des reconfigurations du sensible commun, le mot d’utopie est porteur de deux significations contradictoires. L’utopie est le non-lieu, le point extrême d’une reconfiguration polémique du sensible, qui brise les catégories de l’évidence. Mais elle est aussi la configuration d’un bon lieu, d’un partage non polémique de l’univers sensible, où ce qu’on fait, ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on dit s’ajustent exactement. Les utopies et les socialismes utopiques ont fonctionné sur cette ambiguïté: d’un côté comme révocation des évidences sensibles dans lesquelles s’enracine la normalité de la domination; de l’autre, comme proposition d’un état de choses où l’idée de la communauté aurait ses formes adéquates d’incorporation, où serait donc supprimée cette contestation sur les rapports des mots aux choses qui fait le cœur de la politique.7 [It is a word whose definitional capacities have been completely devoured by its properties of connotation. It sometimes refers to a kind of eccentric daydream which leads to totalitarian catastrophe, while at other times it is the infinite opening up of the possible which resists all forms of totalitarian closure. From the point of view which concerns us here, namely that of the reconfigurations of the shared sensible, the word utopia carries contradictory meanings. Utopia is the non-place, the extreme point of a polemical reconfiguration of the sensible which shatters the categories of the obvious. But it is also the configuration of a good place, of the non-polemical sharing of the sensible universe, in which what one does, sees and says fit together exactly. Utopias and utopian socialisms functioned within this ambiguity. On the one hand, they called into question the self-evident facts of perception in which the normality of domination finds its roots; on the other, they proposed a state of things in which the idea of community would have its appropriate forms of incorporation, a state where that contestation of the relations between words and things which makes up the very heart of politics would be repressed.]

Rancière’s insistence on that quality of utopia as an instrument of political dislocation which ‘brise les catégories de l’évidence’ echoes a similar comment by Paul Ricœur, who, in his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, claims that utopia introduces ‘a sense of doubt that shatters the obvious’.8 Yet, as Rancière shows, the potential of utopia to query the present configuration of power stands in a relationship of tension with a concomitant inclination precisely to ward off such inquiry through the strengthening of ideological assent. For Ricœur, similarly, the tension internal to utopia contributes to a broader dialectic of utopia and ideology: utopia has both a pathological dimension (present in impracticable or escapist visions) and a constitutive one of encouraging subjects to rethink the nature of the customary semantic, economic, sexual and other ties that bind society; ideology, on the other hand, is, alternately, a force of identification, but also of alienation, as it may produce a distorted image of reality. Each of these two concepts has an immediate bearing upon the other, and impacts upon the tensions internal to a given identity. In this analysis Ricœur makes a significant distinction between ideology as a totalizing expression of reality and utopia as something which projects beyond present reality. Such an orientation suggests that utopia is a component of identity that is not fully coincident with itself, but has a prospective bearing, as Ricœur explains:

Introduction

5

The ruling symbols of our identity derive not only from our present and our past but also from our expectations for the future. It is part of our identity that is open to surprises, to new encounters. What I call the identity of a community or of an individual is also a prospective identity. The identity is in suspense. Thus, the utopian element is ultimately a component of identity.9

The association of utopia with a ‘prospective identity’ serves to underscore the term’s constitutive dimension, but also to signal a dynamic that exceeds any stable or singular identity in accordance with which secure assumptions or expectations might be made or held. In seeking to explore the dynamic activated by utopia across a range of texts by nineteenth-century French poets, this study will attempt to assert its constitutive aspect while remaining sensible to the effect (and the necessity) of that ‘sense of doubt’ with which it is concomitant. Such an approach will, it is hoped, yield a fruitful account as much of the unstable discursive status of those ‘poetic’ texts themselves as of that of utopia. In this perspective, the impetus for this account is somewhat owing to the approach adopted by Michael G. Kelly in his recent study of utopia in twentieth-century French poetry: The artistic postures of disquiet, of rupture, of denunciation and of systematic preferment of the (functionally, if not historically) new — characteristic of the ‘modernist’ type — sit well with this discursive positionality of utopia. What is in turn unrealized in the utopian position is absolved by its difference — by the fact that it is, at least, not (seen as) a received illusion. For those who decry ‘utopianism’ this present unrealized quality is a trait that discredits the position definitively — thereby conscripting legitimate speech back into a defined order of what ‘is’. However, proponents of the ‘concept’ of utopia maintain its validity in terms of a qualified relation to present reality (and thus to the question of its eventual realization). Utopia, in other words, initiates a politics in respect of its object — it politicizes the given, the ‘unproblematic’, the unthinkable.10

This assertion of the relevance of dynamics of estrangement and rupture to the constitution of any ‘utopian’ space is valuable. While providing us with the means to ref lect on the aesthetic dimension of the gesture enacted by utopia, to which this introduction will return below in relation to the prose poem, it raises to a principle the querying of any steadfast identity, of any anticipated final reconciliation of self with desire. In this scenario, estrangement from the habitual becomes an integral factor of the dynamic activated by utopia, as the ‘utopian’ text re-emerges as an agent of the de-familiarization of (and contingent re-encounter with) the real. Indeed, the effective absence of the lieu [place] to itself within utopia, through the negation and deferment of its identity, is productive of a space of difference, carrying the potential to generate sophisticated new accounts of subjective and social relations. The emergence of a dynamic of affirmation from acts of dislocation and displacement ties in with that power of utopia to unsettle stable values and contest palpable truths, yet points also to the hazards of providing a secure, definitive account of the principle of contingency and variation thereby enacted. In the previous citation from Rancière, utopia can thus be seen to incline towards a rhetorical elimination of discord and the preservation of an imagined stability, that is, in view of an ‘état de choses où l’idée de la communauté aurait ses formes adéquates d’incorporation, où serait donc supprimée cette contestation sur les

6

Introduction

rapports des mots aux choses qui fait le cœur de la politique’.11 In his essay ‘Sens et usages de l’utopie’ [‘Meaning and uses of utopia’], Rancière notes, furthermore, that utopian projects engage in an aestheticization of social relations and a ritualization of rhetorical practice across all forms of public expression: ‘Le projet utopique est un projet d’esthétisation intégrale de la communauté. Il requiert que le sens de la communauté n’ait aucun lieu d’inscription séparé, qu’il soit ressenti en tout lieu et à chaque instant dans chaque geste de chaque membre de la communauté’ [The utopian project aims at the total aestheticization of the community. It demands that the meaning of the community should have no place of inscription distinct from it, that it should be felt in every place and at every moment in every gesture of every member of the community].12 As will be observed in a later chapter, both the theory and the artistic and literary experiments of the Saint-Simonian movement are motivated by a desire to secure the colonization of all means of public expression by the lineaments of that movement’s doctrine. One of the aims of the present study will therefore be to examine the heterogeneous discursive positioning of a particular form of poetic writing as ostensibly a lieu d’inscription [place of inscription] in the public domain but which actively negates its definitive inscription by those discourses external to it. The Prose Poem: Contingency, Fragmentation, Indeterminacy In this perspective, this book attempts to assert the congruence of the range of orientations mobilized by the utopian impulse with the literary form of the prose poem, which in Richard Terdiman’s terms is ‘a cultural artefact conscious of its contingency and its historicity [carrying] an awareness of its ambivalent status in the interstices of more traditional “naturalized” genres’13. The object of increasing critical attention in recent years, the prose poem is frequently considered as being of indeterminate generic status or thematic orientation, as Jonathan Monroe argues in a reading of Baudelaire’s ‘Assommons les pauvres’: With Baudelaire, the prose poem gestures simultaneously in two directions: on the one hand, toward exposing unresolved struggles and oppositions as persistently and inherently prosaic (i.e., inherently unresolvable), and on the other, toward an actual resolution of such struggles and oppositions. In its dialectic formal conception, which implies the possibility that generic oppositions may be canceled, preserved, and raised in the brief space and time the genre allows itself to unfold, the prose poem is manifestly utopian.14

For Monroe, the prose poem is held in a dialectical tension between a formal conception which tends towards the resolution of generic oppositions (verse/prose) and a content which asserts the irreducible persistence of a set of antagonisms of a social and material order. In this view, the sustainment of the literary form is in fact contingent on the tensions (of generic, ideological, social and other orders) which it mobilizes; the prose poem is the product of dissonance, contradiction, irony. The gesture the prose poem enacts is thus not self-invalidating, for in fragmenting conventional discursive, narrative and other structures, it challenges attempts to render it subordinate to any stable interpretive framework and thereby

Introduction

7

remains persistently oriented towards the contingent. As Michael Riffaterre notes in a reading of Rimbaud’s ‘Enfance’ [‘Childhood’], its indeterminate discursive posi­tioning confers on the prose poem ample interpretive difficulty, as the reader struggles to contain meaningfully a multiplicity of conf licting objects and tem­ poralities: The incompatible representations, despite their polar opposition, are always set forth within one sentence. These oppositions within grammatically compatible sequences create antinomies that cancel visualization and verisimilitude — unless we fall back upon the supernatural or interpret the text as referring to hallucination. Critics have done this, betraying what a quandary they are in. But this quandary is also the key to the significance of the text as a whole. If this significance is to be apprehended, it demands that we accept the premise that representations point to a meaning wherein reality, once cancelled as referential, can be used as a textual sign referring to a concept — the motif, or theme, or subject, or the poetic idea informing the text.15

In Riffaterre’s understanding, the referential power of the textual sign is eclipsed by its status as a function of the organization of a concept for which textual processes are the intermediary. Since it is in excess of any settled connotation emerging from the text, the deployment of that concept is never however wholly circumscribed. In the sense that it thus extends a tension which it may either repeat without end or purport to resolve, Riffaterre later describes the prose poem ‘as an example of perfect, unmitigated expansion’.16 This expansion occurs through textual strategies of fragmentation, juxtaposition and spatialization; however, the effect of these is not disabling, but rather to catalyse the dissemination of the latent tensions and energies which the poem enacts. These statements point to a cardinal orientation towards futurity of the prose poem, a theme which is explored in direct relation by Clive Scott, who contrasts the temporality of the form with that of verse: [The prose poem] has opted out of the seasonal, out of cyclical and recurrent time. [...] [It] has put its money on linear time — with its allied notions of progress and history — which has located it in the no man’s land between memory and anticipation. It thus finds itself less bedded in time than the animal and the mineral world, less reassured, less certain of the benefits of waiting. But it does make it possible for the prose poem to go out and meet its destiny, pre-emptively; as Rimbaud himself puts it: ‘La Poésie ne rythmera plus l’action; elle sera en avant’ (letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871). More detached from time, more driven by temporality as teleology, it invents its own motivations, objectives, futures, but with a peculiar impatience, a peculiarly urgent insistence. [...] In linear time, there is always the dice throw of the onceand-for-all, but also the promise of originating something, something which must be launched into an infinity.17

In foregrounding an insistent variability of experience and perception, the prose poem charts an intermediary temporality, a non-time that sets it off from any fore­ closed cyclical sequence. It prospects what Scott calls a ‘no man’s land’ eluding full assimilation into consciousness. This foundational apprehension of the real severs the prose poem from any stable relation to past or future in the form of memory or anticipation. ‘[In] the brief space and time the genre allows itself to unfold’ (to

8

Introduction

borrow the terms of Monroe cited above),18 the prose poem thus devises its own momentum and itineraries, which resist containment by any unified consciousness that is directly consistent with itself, with its memories and its expectations for the future. It is therefore frequently related to an experience of alienation or unsettlement, as consciousness submits to rupture and an estrangement from the familiar. It may thus by extension be linked to a dilation of any limited experiential horizon, and what Clive Scott here calls, in relation to the Rimbaldian prose poem, ‘the promise of originating something’. Utopia and the Urban Unfolding in a transience severed from any stable relation to past or future, as Clive Scott presents it above, the prose poem is thus oriented towards the exploration of dynamic movements and contingent forms of experience. As will be observed later in this study in relation to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, in many instances the dynamics of the city in modernity provide a model for some of these features of the prose poem. The expanding, mobile structure of urban phenomena and the continual alteration and fragmentation of perspective to which it gives rise serve to unfold new dimensions for experience that are contiguous with the expressive territories charted by the prose poem. The emergence of the prose poem might therefore be linked to the increasing predominance of the city in the nineteenth century as a locus of human creativity and desire. In his article ‘Romantic Antipastoral and Urban Allegories’ Peter Brooks traces the advent of a perception amongst nineteenth-century writers that the modern urban, through its pullulating crowds and innumerable fabricated objects and en­v iron­ments, has become expressive and determinative of a totality of human cultural, social and intellectual activity. Brooks writes that this newfound aware­ ness is combined with a sense that an eighteenth-century language of moral and psychological abstraction is increasingly incompatible with this ‘new and total context for life’, and that, by contrast, for Enlightenment culture, the city was ‘in fact not a landscape but a social ethic’.19 A primary demand upon art in the context of nineteenth-century urbanism, then, is that it perform an urban phenomenology, that it discover the reality of its context, not in any social or psychological abstractions, but in the particularity, the hardness and ‘thereness’ of the world, which must be looked at and touched.20

Brooks here elaborates upon a chief problem encountered by literature of the urban in a nineteenth-century context, namely the difficulty of finding an expressive medium that preserves the dynamism and ‘hardness’ and ‘thereness’ of the city without stabilizing them and assimilating them to an abstract framework. This is consistent with a heightened sensibility towards the involvement of the urban subject in its environment and the multitude of desires and sensations activated by city life. The city in modernity has the potential to solicit latent desires and energies that dilate the activity of consciousness and exceed any limited experience of the self;

Introduction

9

as the present study argues, many utopian representations of the city thus amplify or maximize these underlying potentialities with a view to extending dynamic new forms of community. In view of this, our central object will not be a study of idealized visions of urban settlements, but the exploration of the latent aesthetic, social and other forces that are extended in the experience of urban f lux engendered by the nineteenth-century city. In this way, the utopian vision of the city will be understood as much in terms of the quickening of desire and longing amidst the interminable discontinuities of the present of urban perception as in terms of its alignment to any received expectation for the future. Utopia may thus be seen to emerge from a more complicated displacement of temporal strata than is suggested by its conventional association with a future set off effectively from the present. Elaborating on Jules Michelet’s dictum that ‘chaque époque rêve la suivante’ [every age dreams its successor], in his Passagenwerk [Arcades Project], Walter Benjamin describes a utopian impulse in nineteenth-century culture that may be discerned in the reactivation of miscellaneous images from a ‘primal past’: Corresponding to the form of the new means of production, which in the beginning is still ruled by the form of the old (Marx), are images in the collective consciousness in which the old and the new interpenetrate. These images are wish images; in them the collective seeks both to overcome and to transfigure the immaturity of the social product and the inadequacies in the social organization of production. At the same time, what emerges in these wish images is the resolute effort to distance oneself from all that is antiquated — which includes, however, the recent past. These tendencies def lect the imagination (which is given impetus by the new) back upon the primal past. In the dream in which each epoch entertains images of its successor, the latter appears wedded to elements of primal history — that is, to elements of a classless society. And the experiences of such a society — as stored in the unconscious of the collective — engender, through interpenetration with what is new, the utopia that has left its trace in a thousand configurations of life, from enduring edifices to passing fashions.21

Rather than presenting a measured temporal progression from present to future, in this schema a utopian impulse may be discerned within the temporal discon­ nectedness of a present preoccupied with the pursuit of the new; in this way Benjamin relates ‘wish images’ in the collective consciousness to the reactivation of elements of a ‘primal’ past. Bereft of any distinct historical positioning which they might seek to conserve, the images of that primal past do not coincide with memory but surface in the present configuration of the real. Since the utopian impulse is thus latent ‘in a thousand configurations of life, from enduring edifices to passing fashions’, the nineteenth-century metropolis provides its exemplary terrain, as Benjamin suggests in the ultimately incomplete examination of the emergence of modern consumer capitalism that is contained in the manuscripts of The Arcades Project.22 Prompted in part by Benjamin’s final sentence in the above passage, this book locates utopia immanently in latent qualities of nineteenth-century metropolitan life: in the exploration of the possibilities of public architecture that is coincident with the rise of new technologies of construction and transport, in the profusion

10

Introduction

of rhetorics of social and material transformation, and in dynamic collective movements such as public fairs and spectacular display. Following the theorist of utopia Ernst Bloch, the present moment is defined by unrealized qualities — properties of latency and tendency which point to possibilities that have yet to coalesce. For Bloch, ‘the conscience of concrete utopia does not cling positivistically to the Factum of immediate visibility [...]. The Authentic or essence is that which is not yet, which in the core of things drives towards itself, which awaits its genesis in the tendencylatency of process’.23 The emergence of a processual or open-ended understanding of the present can be observed in changing perceptions of the urban environment amongst the poets under focus in this book. In the prose poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, the idealizing qualities of lyric poetry come to be displaced by an imaginative activity given over to charting or prospecting the possibilities of the present. This can be seen in an extract from Baudelaire’s journal Fusées in which the poet describes the activity of observing a ship in motion: Je crois que le charme infini et mystérieux qui gît dans la contemplation d’un navire, et surtout d’un navire en mouvement, tient, dans le premier cas, à la régularité et à la symétrie, qui sont un des besoins primordiaux de l’esprit humain, au même degré que la complication et l’harmonie; — et, dans le second cas, à la multiplication successive et à la génération de toutes les courbes et figures imaginaires opérées dans l’espace par les éléments réels de l’objet.24 (ŒC, i: 663) [I believe that the infinite and mysterious charm which lies in the contemplation of a ship, and especially of a ship in movement, derives, firstly, from regularity and symmetry, which are primordial needs of the human mind, to the same degree as complexity and harmony; — and, secondly, from successive multiplication and the generation of all the curves and imaginary figures executed in space by the real features of the object.]

In addition to corresponding to the demand for harmony and symmetry, which Baudelaire claims is essential for the human mind, the real movements of the ship may serve as a springboard for new imaginative possibilities and for the potentially infinite multiplication of these within consciousness.25 As a later chapter will show, these aspects of urban perception are theorized further in Baudelaire’s writings on the sketch artist Constantin Guys, whose proliferating, blurred pencil strokes trace an expanding field of possible trajectories around the edges of the represented object, and thus point to a concern with the virtualities produced by the movement of figures through urban space.26 The metropolis serves as an exemplary stage in this respect, and this study seeks to affirm the particular potential of the literary form of the prose poem to catalyse and disseminate immanent qualities of such urban phenomena as they are encountered by poetic consciousness, while at the same time hindering the eventual conscription of poetic writing on the city into a programmatic rhetoric. Indeed, the prose poem may typically be seen to operate at cross-purposes with such rhetoric, since it functions not to centralize and consolidate a discursive system, but to initiate a dynamic of expansion that unsettles received meanings and stable perspectives. As the product of a less markedly foreclosed textual or structural order than verse, the prose poem is arguably particularly suited

Introduction

11

to this purpose. Clive Scott’s comments on the alternate manifestations of rhythm in verse and prose poetry raise important issues in this regard: The removal of rhyme reminds us that the prose poem has little interest in mnemonicity: it may remember but does not ask to be remembered. [...] Rhythm’s presence as metre in the verse-poem is pre-interpretative; it preserves the existence of the verse-poem and at the same time maps out/stakes out/ measures out its textuality; the verse poem demands to be remembered by those very devices by which it does its own remembering. Rhythm in the prose poem does not map out textual space, cannot work as a textual cadaster, but instead constantly questions itself, improvises itself, interrupts its own continuities. If regular verse preserves a seamless continuity between textual organisation and memory, if it promises the regular recurrences of cyclical time, if rhyme identifies the present as the meeting place between past and future, the prose poem launches us into the unprotected presentness of linear time, where no recurrence is predicted and where no continuity between textual structure and memorial activity exists.27

In this view, while verse might be seen to demarcate cyclically a discursive order which it seeks to preserve through mnemonic mechanisms, the prose poem is thought of more in terms of a foundational gesture which in its unfolding effaces any consistent or uniform memory of itself (through, for instance, the deployment of irony and interpretive discord). By dint of this, the prose poem acquires a more prospective orientation, as it has the potential to chart an intermediary pathway through a ‘linear time’ in which images of past and future offer no readily apparent connection to one another and collapse into the accumulated circumstances and latent possibilities of the present. The prose poem emerges therefore as particularly suited to charting the itinerary of the urban subject as it traverses the shifting terrains of the modern city, a space that persistently eludes effective appropriation by consciousness, in keeping with Michel de Certeau’s assessment in L’Invention du quotidien [The Invention of Everyday Life]: L’errance que multiplie et rassemble la ville en fait une immense expérience sociale de la privation de lieu — une expérience, il est vrai, effritée en déportations innombrables et infimes (déplacements et marches), compensée par les relations et les croisements de ces exodes qui font entrelacs, créant un tissu urbain, et placée sous le signe de ce qui devrait être, enfin, le lieu, mais n’est qu’un nom, la Ville. L’identité fournie par ce lieu est d’autant plus symbolique (nommée) que, malgré l’inégalité des titres et des profits entre citadins, il y a là seulement un pullulement de passants, un réseau de demeures empruntées par une circulation, un piétinement à travers les semblants du propre, un univers de locations hantées par un non-lieu ou par des lieux rêvés.28 [The errancy which the city multiplies and gathers up makes it an immense social experience of the deprival of place — an experience which, it is true, is splintered into countless tiny deportations (displacements and walks), is compensated for by the relationships and intersections of these interlaced exoduses, creating an urban fabric, and which is located under the sign of what should be, ultimately, place, but which is nothing but a name, the City. The identity conferred by this place is all the more symbolic (named) as, despite the inequality of titles and benefits amongst urbanites, what is there is simply a

12

Introduction proliferation of passers-by, a network of residences traversed by f lows of traffic, a trampling through what seems like possession, a universe of rental spaces haunted by a non-place or by places dreamt of.]

De Certeau’s characterization of the city as an ‘immense expérience sociale de la privation de lieu’ is highly suggestive in this context, for it presents estrangement from any stable ‘place’ as a necessary condition for the emergence of the multiple relations that structure urban space, and, moreover, queries the possibility of constructing a secure discourse around an object which: ‘...placée sous le signe de ce qui devrait être, enfin, le lieu, [...] n’est qu’un nom, la Ville’. Problems of Utopia as ‘Spatial Strategy’ Thus far, this introduction has attempted to suggest patterns of intersection between the estrangement from familiar spaces and meanings that writers such as De Certeau apprehend as an integral feature of urban experience and the radically new perspectives projected by utopia. A possible challenge to this understanding of utopia is of course that the space utopia unfolds is conceivably compatible with an all-out eradication of the meaning and particularity of the lieu. Hence, while it may appear to herald a more authentic reality and a more coherent or effective arrangement of social and material space, utopia is in fact, in this contrasting view, linked inexorably to an experience of lasting alienation and the permanent negation of place, meaning and past. Utopia, in this perspective, becomes an agent of the abstraction and rationalization of space by a pervasive, impersonal power. Moreover, the spatial paradigms mobilized by each utopian project are reducible merely to degraded ‘strategies’ serving no end other than to remove obstacles to, and catalyse, the extension of that power. This is the position adopted by Vincent Descombes as part of a conference on the theme of ‘Stratégies de l’utopie’ held in the 1970s at the Centre Thomas More in Éveux. It seems worthwhile to cite here at length his contribution to a session of the conference entitled ‘La Quête du territoire: le local et le spatial’ [‘The question for territory: the local and the spatial’]: Il apparaît que pour les uns, utopie renvoie à stratégie utopique, alors que pour d’autres, l’utopie est justement le moyen d’éviter une stratégie. Cette réaction affective devant le mot stratégie traduit assez bien le fait qu’il y a compromis, au sens freudien, c’est-à-dire qu’il y a dans les références utopiques que nous avons entendues aujourd’hui, l’effort de concilier l’inconciliable, c’est-à-dire un désir, et en même temps l’obstacle à ce désir. [...] Or, du point de vue de ce concept d’espace, qu’est-ce qu’une stratégie? Elle implique pour nous l’espace de la géométrie euclidienne. La stratégie, c’est la domination d’une espace par une puissance. Parler de stratégie, c’est se donner un espace et se proposer de dominer cet espace par l’exercice d’une force. Or il y a incompatibilité entre cette notion d’un espace homogène et propre à toutes les communications possibles et la notion d’un lieu. Dans l’espace on peut déplacer les objets sans qu’ils se déforment, tandis que la notion de lieu, de topos qui, au fond, renvoie plutôt à une conception aristotélicienne du monde, implique qu’il y ait des corps avec des densités différentes, et qu’à partir de là on puisse localiser les choses; cela suppose un univers différencié, hétérogène. Donc, me semble-til, avec le concept de délocalisation, qui apparaît chez plusieurs auteurs, on

Introduction va vers un espace vide dans lequel le déploiement de la puissance est possible. Tantôt le but semble d’aller vers la plus grande communication possible, c’est-à-dire vers l’espace vide, tantôt de préserver les différences, c’est-à-dire de se libérer de l’extension de la spatialité ou du vide indifférencié. [...] Au début, la réalité semble être un espace non connexe, où les espaces ne peuvent communiquer: l’utopie serait alors d’établir des connexions entre les poches séparées de la réalité; tandis que l’utopie est tout à fait le contraire, elle entend aller du non-connexe des espaces séparés, qui ne communiquent pas, à la possibilité de communication intégrale. Autrement dit, dans un premier temps la communication est valorisée comme plus humaine et les frontières restent des obstacles. Tandis qu’ensuite l’espace est compris comme espace de domination, et l’on se met à chercher, à valoriser les impossibilités de communiquer afin de préserver la différence. Il s’agirait de savoir si par l’utopie on cherche en réalité à étendre l’espace, c’est-à-dire les possibilités d’exercice stratégique de puissance; ou si par l’utopie, on cherche à retrouver le topos, le lieu? C’est la question.29 [It seems that for some, utopia refers to utopian strategy, while for others, utopia is in effect the means to avoid a strategy. This affective reaction to the word strategy conveys quite well the fact that there is a compromise, in the Freudian sense, in other words, that there is in the utopian references which we have heard today, the effort to reconcile the irreconcilable, that is to say, a desire, and at the same time, the obstacle to this desire. [...] Now, from the point of view of this concept of space, what is a strategy? For us, it implies the space of Euclidian geometry. Strategy is the domination of space by power. To speak of a strategy is to assign oneself a space and to set out to dominate that space through the exercise of force. Now, there is incompatibility between this notion of a space which is homogeneous and likely to facilitate all possible forms of communication, and the notion of a place. In space, objects can be displaced without their becoming deformed, while the notion of place, of topos, which, basically refers to an Aristotelian conception of the world, implies that there are bodies of different densities, and that on that basis one can determine the location of things; that supposes a differentiated, heterogeneous universe. Thus, it seems to me, with the concept of delocalization, which several authors have recourse to, we move towards an empty space in which the deployment of power is possible. In some instances, the aim seems to be to move towards the greatest possible level of communication, in other words, towards empty space; in others, it seems to be to preserve differences, that is, to liberate oneself from the extension of spatiality or of the undifferentiated vacuum. [...] In the beginning, reality seems to be a space void of connections, where spaces cannot communicate: utopia would thus serve to establish connections between separated pockets of reality, while utopia is totally the contrary, it aims to proceed from the non-connectedness of spaces which are separated from each other, and do not communicate, to the possibility of integral communication. In other words, in the first instance, the value of communication is emphasized as more human and borders remain as obstacles. Then, subsequently, space is understood as a space of domination, and there begins a pursuit of, an enhancement of the status of the impossibilities of communication in order to preserve difference. What is at stake is to know whether or not utopia presents an attempt to extend space, that is, the potential for strategic exercise of power; or, whether, through utopia, we attempt to recover the topos, the place? That is the question.]

13

14

Introduction

For Descombes, the act of designating the lieu is contingent on a perception of difference and distinctiveness; however, in constituting a space of generalized com­ munication and relation (‘un espace homogène et propre à toutes les communications possibles’), utopia inclines invariably towards the eradication of such perceptions. Descombes’s invocation of the rhetorical and spatial metaphor of the topos signals the difficulties this poses for any communicative discourse, for it implies the eradication of the dissimilarity and uniqueness on which the construction of meaning is conditional. In his view the ‘destruction du local au profit du spatial’ [destruction of the local in favour of the spatial] is a corollary of the experience of modernity, and the utopian imagination amounts to a compensatory fiction ‘pour vous adapter d’avance aux conditions présentes de la vie’ [to adapt you in advance to the present conditions of life]:30 L’utopie se donne comme critique radicale, mais je me demande si le moment de rupture que les utopistes affichent dans les textes utopistes — le moment critique où l’on remet l’espace sensible en cause, si le moment de rupture affichée n’est pas purement et simplement le redoublement du moment de rupture qui est dans la réalité — dans la mesure où nous sommes passés, depuis longtemps d’ailleurs, d’un monde paysan dans un espace de contrôle exigeant. Et ce que l’on donne comme le plus critique dans l’utopie, n’est-il pas l’élément le plus conformiste, le ref let de ce qui anime la réalité aujourd’hui, à savoir un arrachement de chacun à tout ce qu’il peut avoir d’appartenance locale?31 [Utopia presents itself as a radical critique, but I wonder if the moment of rupture which utopianists foreground in utopian texts — the critical moment in which perceptible space is undermined, if that foregrounded moment of rupture is not rather purely and simply the doubling of the moment of rupture that is reality — insofar as we long ago moved on from an agrarian world to a demanding space of control. And is what is taken as the most critical aspect of utopia not in reality the most conformist, the ref lection of what animates reality today, namely a tearing away of everyone from any sense they possess of local belonging?]

Given its explicit concern with a paradigm of ‘delocalization’, a credible response to the challenge formulated by Descombes ought therefore perhaps to be articulated emphatically in respect of the lieu, while remaining attentive to an integral orient­ ation of utopia towards negation, cancellation and deferment. In keeping with Descombes’s reading of utopia as a motivated spatial rationale is his recourse to the metaphor of the topos, tending to imply the subordination of language to that rationale and the definitive instrumentalization of discourse by power. What such a schema neglects to address however, is the potential for internal differentiation to materialize within discourse, or indeed, for language to inf lect the difference which constitutes it. In this perspective, a redefined utopia — engaging anew with its origin as a polemical instrument — might be seen as effecting an intrinsic or fortuitous displacement within language that illuminates the latent potentiality of the lieu from a new angle. In his Strands of Utopia, Kelly outlines a framework according to which a more affirmative understanding of utopia might emerge paradoxically out of paradigms of difference: Utopia, connoting a figure of an as yet unattained space, initiates a dynamic away

Introduction

15

from the given — it names a postulate of difference harnessed to a principle of optimal prospective action (whether simply meliorative or perfection-tending constitutes a fundamental division in theoretical debate). Utopia understood with respect to the topos would be recognizable not as a product, or a figure, but as a spirit or principle brought to a rhetorical practice via the duality it instates. This is far from a random deformation of the utopian complex. Indeed, the migration of the poetic from an identifiable form to a quality whose recognition is a matter of constant questioning is mirrored, over the last century, by the theoretical migration of utopia into its adjectival mode. Utopia as an economy of figures, the description of imaginary spaces, is shadowed by utopia as a developing theoretical metaphor — by the ‘utopian’ as a position in respect of ‘reality’, an angle from which it is approached and challenged, a momentum of thought as it hits the given — a dynamic.32

Giving articulation to ‘a spirit or principle brought to a rhetorical practice via the duality it instates’, the utopian dynamic which Kelly defines here suggests the pursuit of contingent forms of reference to the lieu, and a continual interrogation of its limits through a rhetorical practice directed unfailingly back towards received uses of language. As is argued in this book in relation to Saint-Simonianism, however, a concomitant problem is that of the movement’s somewhat hardened commitment to the integration of its founding doctrinal core into every form of discourse it produces. Although such a tendency towards reification is coincident with, but not sufficient to contain, a particular surplus of meaning which this book identifies in Saint-Simonian writing, it nonetheless points to a quasi-proprietorial disposition amongst the leaders of the Saint-Simonian movement towards the preservation of both ideological coherence and group identity. By consequence, it is not necessarily the originators of such utopian projects themselves who are best placed to maintain the ref lexive posture on which utopia’s dynamic away from the real is contingent. From this viewpoint, utopia’s ‘quête du territoire’ — to return to the title of Descombes’s debate — might be thought of, not in terms of a centrally mediated pattern of abstraction and rationalization, but rather as the inf lection of discourse (and material practices) by an exploratory impulse. This self-conscious prospecting of language through language would itself activate fortuitous agencements [arrangements] of space and new frameworks for individual and social experience that are latent in the present configuration of the real. A difficulty which emerges however is that of meaningfully recalling or re-presenting within discourse an action or dynamic which tends to problematize its boundaries. In the context of the Centre Thomas More conference, this difficulty is addressed by Louis Marin, who attempts to distinguish: ‘[...] le geste ou la fiction utopique de sa représentation utopique. La fiction ou le geste, c’est ce moment violent de rupture, de coupure de l’espace, qui laisse dans le texte une trace, une cicatrice qui est ensuite suturée, recouverte par une représentation’ [the gesture or the utopian fiction from its utopian representation. The fiction or gesture is that violent moment of rupture, of the cutting of space, which leaves a trace in the text, a scar which is then sutured, covered over by a representation].33 Following this, the foundational experience of difference and the collapse of certainties might be intimated through deferring full assimilation of the lieu in discourse. For the purposes of this study, this is a

16

Introduction

posture which befits also the task of articulating the array of factors which mediate any itinerary through the f lux of the city as a site of exchange and circulation. Indeed, in his La Ville au loin [The City in the Distance], Jean-Luc Nancy is alert to the problematics of constructing a discourse that might work around or through multiple, shifting figures of urban experience: Ville est un lieu où a lieu autre chose que le lieu (la campagne serait, aurait été là où d’abord régnait le lieu, l’exactitude d’une mesure d’espace-temps). La colline ou le f leuve, propices à la surveillance et à l’approvisionnement, n’ont jamais suffi à définir la ville ni à l’élaborer, même si leurs logiques ont commandé l’installation et l’établissement. À la ville il faut encore autre chose, il faut un autre ethos que celui du lieu et de la localité.34 [City is a place where what takes place is something other than the place (the countryside is, or was, purportedly, the point where place reigned supreme, as an exact measurement of time and space). The hill or the river, which lend themselves to surveillance and supplying, have never been adequate to define the city nor to expand upon it, even if their logics have demanded settlement and establishment. Something else is necessary for the city; what is needed is an ethos other than that of place and locality.]

Although Nancy’s comments are intended more particularly for the immediately contemporary situation of the postmodern metropolis, in a manner akin to those of De Certeau above, they nonetheless articulate a fundamental perception of estrangement from the lieu as an integral aspect of urban experience. For Nancy, this suggests the need for a radically different ethos to account for such experience than that emerging from any settled notion of place. Following Nancy, such a redefined collective attitude would equate perhaps instead to a principle of movement emerging directly out of the continual displacements to which urban consciousness is subject and would take cognizance of the contingent status of any discourse consistent with this. As has been suggested in the foregoing passages, the heterogeneous dynamics activated by the prose poem provide a number of insights into the possibilities and problematics of such an endeavour. Nineteenth-Century Utopian Rhetoric Returning to the earlier quotation from De Certeau, the projection of an ‘univers de locations hantées par un non-lieu ou par des lieux rêvés’ [a universe of rental spaces haunted by a non-place or by places dreamt of ]35 indicates the f luctuations of desire and disaffection within a consciousness exposed to such a shifting environment. While the accelerated unbinding of the lieu may be accompanied by an experience of estrangement (as Kelly notes, ‘with an unboundedness of space there develops an imaginary of infinite, horizontal association’),36 estrangement from the familiar in this context tends to broaden the interstice between language and its multiple lieux d’inscription, thereby opening up the possibility for dramatically new accounts of experience. In this way, it follows that experience in respect of the lieu is never foreclosed and that the activity of perception is traversed, as De Certeau intimates, by multiple non-lieux or ‘lieux rêvés’. Cumulatively, the latter kindle

Introduction

17

oblique forms of association across that ‘horizontal’ imaginary hypothesized by Kelly. In the nineteenth-century city, where the individual is confronted with a vast and unprecedented range of objects and images of desire, such forms of association are catalysed by manifold political placards, slogans, advertising hoardings, printed images and diverse forms of public spectacle and display, all of which solicit the attention of the urban dweller, and inf lect that much-commented activity of flânerie. On this point, a contributor to the journal L’Illustration, in an article entitled ‘ “Lettres d’un f lâneur”: les affiches de Paris’ [‘ “Letters of a Flâneur”: The Posters of Paris’], comments significantly on the burgeoning of political imagery in the revolution of 1848: J’étais si joyeux d’être un peu libre, que, dans mon ravissement, je m’amusai à parcourir des yeux quelques affiches, ce qui est, je vous prie de le croire, contraire à toutes mes habitudes. La première m’ennuya, la seconde me parut assez divertissante, la troisième me fit rire aux larmes. Bref, j’en dévorai plus de deux ou trois cents l’une après l’autre. [...] Que de chefs-d’œuvre du genre du burlesque comme du genre sublime, de l’école du bon sens comme des nombreuses écoles opposées à celle du bon sens, dont l’existence éphémère s’est prolongée du lever au coucher du soleil, et dont leurs auteurs conserveront seuls le souvenir!37 [I was so joyous to experience a degree of freedom, that, in my rapture, I took pleasure in casting my eyes over a few posters, something which, I implore you to believe me, is contrary to all my habits. The first bored me, I found the second quite entertaining and the third made me laugh until I cried. Ultimately, I devoured two or three hundred of them, one after the other. [...] Nothing but masterpieces of the burlesque genre as well as that of the sublime, of the school of common sense just as of the numerous schools opposed to common sense, whose f leeting existence has lasted from dawn to sunset, and which are remembered only by their authors.]

Here, the author’s varied reactions to each of the abundant posters, coupled with his allusions to ‘chefs d’œuvre du genre du burlesque comme du genre sublime’ and to ‘écoles opposées à celle du bon sens’, convey a perceived orientation towards the incongruous and the extravagant in much of the political rhetoric he encounters on his itinerary. Such hyperbole is of course abundant in the nineteenth-century doctrines of social reform and political and material transformation that rose to prominence prior to the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, permeating much public discourse throughout the nineteenth century. While conforming somewhat to received expectations of social ‘progress’, that hyperbole is nonetheless perceived simultaneously as having a subversive effect on established values and hierarchies, as is articulated by an 1848 article in Le Charivari entitled ‘Aux ouvriers!’: [Habile] à séduire les imaginations l’utopiste se présente, il tire son plan de sa poche, le déroule, l’expose tantôt avec l’implacable conviction de la folie, tantôt avec l’entraînement du fanatisme, tantôt avec l’habilité du charlatan; les esprits sont troubles, d’ardentes convoitises s’allument, et la réalité s’efface au mirage d’un idéal impossible. Autrefois, l’utopiste se mêlait peu aux luttes de la vie. Renfermé dans son cabinet il caressait son rêve, déposait dans un livre son monde nouveau, et les savans [sic] le déterraient plus tard au fond d’une vieille

18

Introduction bibliothèque. Si parfois l’utopie a troublé le monde, c’est qu’alors elle se voilait et se déguisait sous un costume d’emprunt. Maintenant elle marche tête levée, elle descend sur la place publique, elle a perdu à la fois sa hauteur et sa timidité, elle connaît tous les trucs, emploie toutes les ficelles; elle prend tous les tons, elle parle toutes les langues, s’accommode de toutes les opinions, cherche à s’infiltrer, à s’insinuer, à se glisser.38 [Skilled in seducing the imagination, the utopianist comes forward; he draws his plan from his pocket, unfurls it, and presents it, at certain times with mad, implacable conviction, at other times with a fanatical driving force, or with the skill of a charlatan; minds are left in turmoil, blazing desires are aroused, and reality disappears in the mirage of an impossible ideal. In the past, the utopianist rarely involved himself in the struggles of life. Cloistered in his study, he cherished his dream, set down his new world in a book, and the scholars unearthed it subsequently in the depths of a library. If utopia has occasionally unsettled the world, it is because it used to conceal and disguise itself in borrowed clothing. Now it walks with its head raised, it goes down into the public square, it has lost both its loftiness and its timidity, it knows all the tricks, pulls every string, adopts every tone, speaks every language and adapts to every opinion, attempts to infiltrate itself, to insinuate itself, to worm its way in.]

Here, utopia is linked to the dissemination of confusion (‘les esprits sont troubles’) and the solicitation of longing (‘d’ardentes convoitises s’allument’). Moreover, in hinting at its potential to pervade multiple strands of discourse (‘elle prend tous les tons, elle parle toutes les langues, s’accommode de toutes les opinions, cherche à s’infiltrer, à s’insinuer, à se glisser’), the author suggests aspects of what might be taken to characterize a ‘utopian’ discursive production or textuality. This in turn leads to an extended understanding of the scope of utopia’s multiple lieux d’inscription and invites inquiry into the ways in which it is inf lected by diverse forms of discourse. In seeking to explore the putative ubiquity of utopia through an analysis of its materialization in political rhetoric, as well as in techniques of public display, civic architecture and mass-produced imagery, it is hoped that this book will simultaneously serve to illuminate the diverse factors that mediate the construction of the literary form of the prose poem. To stress that the orientations of poetic and utopian discourse are proximate in the manner set out in the sections above engages some important questions: how do tensions between aesthetic demands and social progressivism inform the evolution of the prose-poem aesthetic? How do poets combine a rhetorical opposition to the ideological closure of utopian socialist frameworks with a visionary exploration of organic communities of sensation and the intersubjective possibilities of the crowd? In these instances utopia may be perceived to function alternately for poets as a creative impulse or process geared towards the unlocking of new aesthetic and imaginative potentialities and as a framework which also sets limits to those potentialities. Prose by Poets Although the focus of the introduction thus far has been the prose poem, the principal object of this study is not the generic constitution of the form, which has

Introduction

19

already been the topic of considerable discussion. Rather, as the reference to ‘prose by poets’ in the title of this study suggests, the first two chapters of this book attempt to contribute to an understanding of the prose poem’s indeterminate status through an account of the emergent cultural perception of the heterogeneous factors which mediate poetic discourse and of the exploration in non-verse writing by poets of the challenges facing poetry as a means of relating modern experience. The first two chapters of this study encompass a variety of texts by SaintSimonian writers alongside the journalism of Théophile Gautier. The writings of the Saint-Simonians and, to a less determined extent, the prose of Gautier may be seen to conform to the mould of ‘poetic prose’ as expanded upon by Nathalie Vincent-Munnia in her book Les Premiers Poèmes en prose: généalogie d’un genre dans la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle français [The First Prose Poems: Genealogy of a Genre in the First Half of the French Nineteenth Century]. For Vincent-Munnia, the poetic quality of such prose is secured through its potential to organize a network of rhetorical figures and lieux communs [commonplaces] in a cadenced and conventionally lyrical idiom.39 As we have seen, by comparison with the prose poem, such writing is more amenable to protocols external to the text (explicitly ideological in the case of the Saint-Simonian texts, documentary or referential in the case of Gautier’s journalism). As Vincent-Munnia writes: Tel extrait d’une œuvre en prose poétique peut certes acquérir une certaine autonomie à la lecture même, se détachant provisoirement du reste du texte; mais il ne saurait être perçu — ni même conçu — véritablement comme un poème, même s’il se trouve extrait de son contexte: précisément parce qu’il appartient à ce contexte (de narration, d’argumentation, de description...), parce que, appartenant à une totalité [...], il implique ce qui le précède et/ou le suit au lieu de résonner seul et différemment du fait de son indépendance.40 [A given extract of a poetic prose work can of course acquire a certain autonomy through reading, detaching itself temporarily from the rest of the text; but it cannot be perceived — nor even truly conceived — as a poem, even if it finds itself extracted from its context: precisely because it belongs to that context (of narration, argumentation or description...), because, belonging to a totality [...], it implies what precedes it/ or follows it instead of echoing alone and differently on the basis of its independence.]

This issue of the subordination of the poetic prose text to the discursive context in which it is produced is one to which Vincent-Munnia returns in a more direct discussion of some Saint-Simonian prose. She regards this Saint-Simonian writing as distinctive by its prophetic quality: Si les premiers poèmes en prose se caractérisent assez largement par leur prise de distance par rapport à des formes (rythmiques et autres) antérieures ou extérieurs, la poésie en prose prophétique joue donc plutôt de la captation de formes connues, qu’elle vide de leur contenu au profit d’une philosophie neuve, mais qu’elle reprend au niveau formel, afin de répéter des mécanismes de prédiction et de prédication. [...] La poésie en prose prophétique [...] ne s’élabore pas véritablement en poème car, contrairement aux premiers poèmes en prose qui trouvent et créent en eux-mêmes leur propre poéticité, elle est soumise à des objectifs qui la dépasse.41

20

Introduction [Whereas the first poems are characterized quite broadly by their distancing from previous or external (rhythmic or other) forms, prophetic poetic prose thus plays a role in the harnessing of familiar forms, which it empties of their content in pursuit of a new philosophy, but which it re-adopts on a formal level in order to emulate the devices of prediction and sermonizing. [...] Prophetic prose poetry [...] is not contrived as poetry because, unlike the first prose poems which discover and create in themselves their own poeticity, it is subject to objectives which transcend it.]

One of the associated aims of this book is to explore some of these problematics of Saint-Simonian writing in the context of the poetics of the prose poem, while elucidating the residual suggestive power of the former for the latter. As the third and fourth chapters on the work of Baudelaire and Rimbaud show, by contrast with the heavily coded structure of such ‘prophetic’ prose, the prose poem, by contrast, ‘constituant à lui-même sa propre fin’ [constituting its own end in itself ],42 eludes instrumentalization by any set of conventions external to it. The utopias of the early nineteenth century are explicitly linked to the new conditions created by industrial revolution and mass society and thus the focus of the first chapter of this study is the literary production of the Saint-Simonians. Saint-Simonianism provides a privileged point of departure for this study, given its impact on social and political discourse and in view of the exploration by writers belonging to this movement of a poetic vision animated by the latent technological, associative and other possibilities of the modern city. According to certain calculations, the Saint-Simonians were responsible for distributing up to 18 million printed pages of pamphlets among the French population between 1830 and 1832.43 Along with Fourierism, Saint-Simonianism is one of the most pervasive of those nineteenth-century French currents negatively characterized as ‘utopian’ by Friedrich Engels in opposition to the ‘scientific’ socialism of Marxism.44 The advent of Saint-Simonianism is linked to the development of the material topo­ graphy of nineteenth-century France, and, in particular, to that of the Second Empire, a period when some of the poets under consideration later in this study were most active. Members of the movement also demonstrated sustained interest in literary matters; in a number of visionary Saint-Simonian prose tracts and poems which thematize the modern city, they exploit lyrical, typographic and other effects destined to maximize impact on an extended urban readership. Several studies such as Paul Bénichou’s Le Temps des prophètes [The Age of the Prophets] or the many articles of Philippe Régnier have approached the Saint-Simonian movement from the perspective of literary or intellectual history, but few of these texts have hitherto been the object of sustained textual analysis.45 While their subordination to a central ideological programme is a factor which has traditionally caused these texts to be discounted from literary analyses, by dint of their ideological orientation, they nonetheless demonstrate a novel awareness of the potential of diverse strands of discourse to inf lect poetic writing.46 As Philippe Régnier writes, these texts, ‘dans leur esprit même, ont un but et un caractère expérimentaux, d’autant que l’idéologie dont ils sont l’expression exclut la notion de chef d’œuvre ou la recherche de la perfection formelle gratuite’ [in their very spirit, have an experimental aim and quality, especially since the ideology of which they are the expression excludes

Introduction

21

the notion of a masterwork or the pursuit of formal perfection for its own sake].47 One of the aims of the latter half of this chapter is to investigate the problematics of attempts to reconcile the dynamic initiated by utopia with this centralized ideological framework. This in turn points to a further tension which is raised throughout this book, namely that of harmonizing an instituted ‘utopianism’ with that contingent and self-critical poise which the present introduction has attempted to expose as an integral dimension of utopia. As a practice of the text which eludes assimilation into any foreclosed interpretive framework, the later prose poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud will emerge as particularly suited to exploring this difficulty. In her study of the generic development of the prose poem, Nathalie VincentMunnia describes the emergence of a number of formal peculiarities in prose writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In her presentation, prose writing during this period exhibits an increasing level of fragmentation in addition to enhanced mindfulness of the discursive contexts in which it is produced: Dans la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle, la prose commence en effet à prendre des formes variées et nouvelles: paragraphes discontinus, textes jouant de leur inscription dans la page, de leur spatialisation, phrases tendant au verset... Ces recherches scripturales entrent sans aucun doute dans la même mouvance créatrice que celle dans laquelle s’inscrivent les premiers poèmes en prose et les diverses tentatives de renouvellement de la prose participant, comme eux, de l’exploration de nouvelles voies poétiques ou littéraires.48 [In the first half of the nineteenth century, prose effectively begins to take on various new forms: discontinuous paragraphs, texts which play upon their mode of inscription on the page and their spatialization, phrases which emulate biblical verse... These scriptural pursuits come within the same creative movement as that embraced by the first prose poems and the diverse attempts to renew prose, because they similarly chart new poetic and literary pathways.]

The patterns of fragmentation of established textual structures which VincentMunnia here links to the advent of the prose poem may also be related to that of the mass press and, more particularly, to the newspaper as a prevailing paradigm of textual production. This emergent perception of the printed page of prose as an intricate spatial entity is examined in the second chapter of this book in relation to the work of Théophile Gautier, whose journalistic prose implicitly sets in relief the patterns of fragmentation and ‘spatialization’ set out above by Vincent-Munnia. This chapter is thus not concerned with the prose poem per se but with a new articulation of poetic relations across a number of disparate lieux d’inscription in Gautier’s prose. Through analysis of a selection of Gautier’s feuilletons [serial articles], travel writings and art-critical writing, this chapter argues that Gautier’s prose exhibits an acute perception of the factors determining its construction as text and dramatizes these as a means to explore a range of sophisticated objects of representation which are encountered throughout the topography of the modern urban; the latter include railway stations, ports and the Universal Exhibition halls.49 In many cases, these texts reveal a dramatically more comprehensive and dynamic aesthetic vision than the reader may be accustomed to in Gautier’s verse, prompting the conclusion that

22

Introduction

his attitude towards these subjects is more ambivalent and accommodating than is generally supposed. Many of the ref lections contained in these texts are in fact in explicit contrast to a Parnassian aesthetic stance or to that which he articulates in the preface to his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin. Of all those poets under consideration in this study, Charles Baudelaire is the figure whose writings are arguably the least amenable to a ‘utopian’ project in any programmatic sense of the term. Indeed, the textual deployment of duplicity, irony and superciliousness within Baudelaire’s prose poetry may seem to be altogether at odds with the visionary paradigms present in the selection of texts by SaintSimonian authors and Gautier which are the subject of previous chapters. However, as Steve Murphy writes, ‘chez Baudelaire, le rêve utopique est un principe de contestation qui perdure, malgré le correctif apporté par une ironie épistémologique autant qu’humoristique [...]’ [in Baudelaire, the utopian dream is a principle of contestation, one which endures despite the corrective provided by an irony that is epistemological as much as it is humorous].50 In view of this, rather than setting out to hypothesize a systematic world view in his oeuvre, the third chapter of this book instead explores facets of Baudelaire’s vision of the modern city as both constitutive and disjunctive of individual and social experience, in a manner that is heedful of the operations of irony and uncertainty in his prose poetry. In this respect, his work might be seen to perform an inaugural gesture of utopia, namely that of conducting consciousness outside any settled experience of self or desire. By comparison with the journalistic prose of Gautier, the texts of Baudelaire’s prose poem collection Le Spleen de Paris [Paris Spleen] therefore offer a more concerted exploration of urban subjectivity and its modalities, eliciting its alignment to a ‘horizontal’ imaginary of oblique associations and desires, while querying the very status of the city as a place that can be effectively appropriated by individual consciousness. In its acute exploration of the implication, if not to say the entanglement, of the urban subject in its environment, Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris offers abundant insight into the composite of sensations activated by experience of the modern city, to wit a mingling of euphoria and foreboding, of exhilaration and periodical, radical unease. As this chapter will argue, the prose poem emerges as the privileged means to convey a force of dispersal of the self in these multiple, contradictory directions, without setting definitive boundaries to the other selves, objects and environments thereby encompassed. Throughout many of the prose poems a pattern of frag­ mentation of conventional narrative and discursive structures can be observed which serves to intimate the dilation of any settled subject position as well as the dis-organization of comprehensive representations and the stable world views they support. In seeking to explore this pattern, this chapter has recourse to the concept of rhapsodie [rhapsody], which Baudelaire adumbrates in a section of Les Paradis artificiels [Artificial Paradises], his essay detailing the psychological effects of hashish and opium. The phenomenon Baudelaire describes as rhapsodie is experienced as radical contingency and as the incapacity of consciousness to codify meaningfully the effects of its perceptual stimuli. Intimating an experience both of euphoria and deep foreboding, it corresponds to a perception of the irreconcilability of the self with the forces tending towards its dispersion. Since rhapsodie may both convey

Introduction

23

a deeply unsettling psychological experience and signal an aestheticizing process centred on the displacement of consciousness across time and space, it emerges as a particularly apposite means to problematize the vertiginous effects of the metropolis on consciousness and to poeticize the potentialities latent in the shifting dynamics and perspectives of the latter. Focusing attention in the final chapter on the collection Illuminations, this book explores similar factors of contingency, fragmentation and indeterminacy as aspects of the Rimbaldian prose poem, elucidating their assimilation into a radically more concerted formal practice of the text than is the case in Le Spleen de Paris. As Rimbaud himself wrote of Baudelaire: ‘Encore a-t-il vécu dans un milieu trop artiste; et la forme si vantée en lui est mesquine: les inventions d’inconnu réclament des formes nouvelles’ [Yet he lived in an excessively artistic milieu; and the form for which he is so vaunted is petty; inventions of the unknown demand new forms].51 This chapter will argue in the context of a reading of Illuminations that the ‘formes nouvelles’ to which Rimbaud alludes here demand to be thought in terms of a series of textual practices of fragmentation, juxtaposition, and spacing which are mobilized by the prose poem, rather than in terms of any materialized form. Since it will be argued that the dynamic activated by the Rimbaldian prose poem serves ultimately to exceed any stable conceptual formulation and to elude full subservience to any protocol external to the text, it follows that the ‘utopian’ aspect of Rimbaud’s project ought to be addressed in terms of the breakdown of accepted meanings and perspectives. Disengaged from any restricted understanding of the self, in these texts poetic consciousness spills over into multiple identity positions or gravitates towards collective formations, like the ‘Rêve intense et rapide de groupes sentimentaux avec des êtres de tous les caractères parmi toutes les apparences’ of the prose poem ‘Veillées II’ [‘Vigils II’]. ‘Le lieu où tous les possibles éveillés se rencontrent et se télescopent’ [the place where all awakened possibilities meet and collide],52 as Jean-Pierre Richard writes, Rimbaldian poetic consciousness is precipitated by the potentialities extended in the experience of perceptual f lux. In Illuminations, consciousness does not therefore resolve into a finite self hood but is a site of tensions and energies opening onto broader dimensions of being. Frequently, in texts such as ‘Enfance’ and ‘Jeunesse’ [‘Youth’], it is the body which emerges as both the locus and agent of these tensions and energies, as the forces acting on it become detached from any circumscribed experience of the self and tend to gravitate instead towards alternating subject positions or mass formations signalling new horizons for collective experience. Throughout the collection, these patterns of disengagement from the self point to a practice of poetic language that hinders the formation of any stable perspective but nonetheless quickens the reader’s pace of association and expands the breadth of cognizance. In texts such as ‘Villes II’ [‘Cities II’], ‘Métropolitain’ [‘Metropolitan’] and ‘Les Ponts’ [‘Bridges’], a textual momentum of radical alteration intimates the pressures and energies of which modern urban consciousness is the locus, in such a manner that the restive activity of reading the Rimbaldian prose poem mirrors the energies and dynamics of the modern metropolis. This chapter therefore traces Rimbaud’s exploration of the generative possibilities of the city, arguing that in the texts of Illuminations, new

24

Introduction

horizons for experience are unfolded as the prose poem catalyses the imaginative ferment of the real in an urban context. In asserting a degree of congruence of the heterogeneous positioning of utopia with the indeterminate discursive status of the prose poem, the aim of this study is not primarily to ascertain the political or ideological affiliation of any of the poets under consideration, but to elicit patterns of conversance with nineteenth-century utopian discourse that inf lect the evolution of the prose poem. Such an approach serves to re-illuminate a dimension of utopia that is frequently obscured, namely a foundational power that is engendered through a posture which in fact queries the possibility of constructing an affirmative discourse. As Louis Marin writes: En parlant de l’île parfaite, des états de la lune ou de la terre australe, l’utopie parle moins d’elle-même, du discours qu’elle tient sur l’île, la lune, le continent perdu, que de la possibilité même de tenir un tel discours, du statut et du contenu de la position de l’énonciation, des règles formelles et matérielles lui permettant de produire tel ou tel énoncé.53 [In speaking of the perfect island, of the states of the moon or of the southern land, utopia speaks less about itself, or the discourse which it utters in respect of the island, the moon or the lost continent than about the very possibility of uttering such a discourse, of the status and contents of the position of enunciation, or the formal and material rules which allow it to produce a given utterance.]

This cognizance of its own contingent status as discourse is a factor which invites the reader to conceive of utopia in terms of a dynamic productive of alteration and variation, or as Marin writes later, as a ‘parcours interminable des différences’ [an endless path of differences].54 For our purposes here, it is the potential of that dynamic to inf lect the language of the prose poem that is most suggestive. In the chapters that follow, therefore, the complex spatial metaphor of utopia will serve to inform an exploration of the potential of the nineteenth-century prose poem to precipitate the unfolding of new imaginative horizons and contingent forms of reference to the real. Notes to the Introduction 1. E. M. Cioran, Histoire et utopie (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 110. All translations in the text are my own, with little pretence to art. 2. Paul Ricœur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. by George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 295. 3. Louis Marin, Utopiques: jeux d’espaces (Paris: Minuit, 1973), p. 31. 4. Ibid, p. 33. 5. Théophile Gautier, Histoire du Romantisme (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), p. 323. 6. Alfred de Vigny, Œuvres Complètes, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), ii, 1267. 7. Jacques Rancière, Le Partage du sensible (Paris: La Fabrique, 2000), pp. 64–65. 8. Ricœur, Lectures, p. 299. 9. Ricœur, Lectures, p. 311. 10. Michael G. Kelly, Strands of Utopia: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France (London: Legenda, 2008), p. 15. 11. Rancière, Le Partage du sensible, pp. 64–65. 12. Jacques Rancière, ‘Sens et usages de l’utopie’, in L’Utopie en questions, ed. by Michèle RiotSarcey (Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2001), pp. 65–78 (p. 70).

Introduction

25

13. Richard Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (London: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 265. 14. Jonathan Monroe, A Poverty of Objects: The Prose Poem and the Politics of Genre (London: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 30. 15. Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 121. 16. Ibid, p. 124. 17. Clive Scott, Translating Rimbaud’s ‘Illuminations’ (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006), p. 43. 18. Monroe, p. 30. 19. Peter Brooks, ‘Romantic Antipastoral and Urban Allegories’, Yale Review, 64.1 (Autumn 1974), 11–26 (p. 12). 20. Ibid, p. 19. 21. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999), p. 4. 22. In his study Paris, Capital of Modernity, David Harvey makes a comparable point in more direct relation to one of the subjects of the present study, Saint-Simon, with implicit emphasis, it would appear, on the latter’s hypothesis of alternating historical periods of ‘organic’ and ‘critical’ epochs, which will be examined in more detail in the first chapter of this study: ‘One of the myths of modernity is that it constitutes a radical break with the past. The break is supposedly of such an order as to make it possible to see the world as a tabula rasa, upon which the new can be inscribed without reference to the past — or, if the past gets in the way, through its obliteration. [...] I call this idea of modernity a myth because the notion of a radical break has a certain persuasive and pervasive power in the face of abundant evidence that it does not, and cannot, possibly occur. The alternative theory of modernization (rather than modernity), due initially to Saint-Simon and very much taken to heart by Marx, is that no social order can achieve changes that are not already latent within its existing condition’. David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 1. 23. Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope [1959], trans. by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), iii, 1373. 24. Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Claude Pichois, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1975–76), i, 663. Future references to Baudelaire’s Œuvres complètes in this study will take the following abbreviated form: (ŒC, i: 663). 25. Similarly, poems such as ‘Un hémisphère dans une chevelure’ [‘A hemisphere in a head of hair] and ‘Le Port’ [‘The Port’] from Le Spleen de Paris acknowledge the beauty of the movement of ships through harbours. 26. As Baudelaire notes of Guys’s work: ‘J’ai vu un grand nombre de ces barbouillages primitifs, et j’avoue que la plupart des gens qui s’y connaissent ou prétendent s’y connaître auraient pu, sans déshonneur, ne pas deviner le génie latent qui habitait dans ces ténébreuses ébauches’ [I have seen many of these primitive scribbles, and I admit that most people who know about or claim to know about such things could have, without dishonour, not discern the latent genius which inhabited these dark sketches] (ŒC, ii: 688; my emphasis). 27. Clive Scott, pp. 42–43. 28. Michel De Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien: arts de faire (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1980), p. 188. 29. Vincent Descombes, in the debate ‘La Quête du territoire: le local et le spatial’, in Stratégies de l’utopie, ed. by Pierre Furter and Gérard Raulet (Paris: Galilée, 1979), pp. 122–27 (p. 123). 30. Taken from Descombes’s own presentation entitled ‘Dé-localisation, adresse aux utopistes’ [‘Delocalization: Address to the Utopianists’], in Stratégies de l’utopie, ed. by Furter and Raulet, pp. 132–34 (pp. 134, 133). 31. Vincent Descombes, in the debate ‘Le Désir de la loi: L’Utopie, agent double de la loi’, in Stratégies de l’utopie, ed. by Furter and Raulet, pp. 127–31 (p. 131). 32. Kelly, pp. 13–14. 33. Marin is quoted here from the debate ‘La Quête du territoire’, in Stratégies de l’utopie, ed. by Furter and Raulet, pp. 122–27 (p. 126). 34. Jean-Luc Nancy, La Ville au loin (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 1999), p. 45.

26

Introduction

35. De Certeau, p. 188. 36. Kelly, p. 130. 37. ‘ “Lettres d’un f lâneur”: les affiches de Paris’, L’Illustration, 8 April 1848. 38. ‘Aux Ouvriers’, Le Charivari, 10 March 1848. 39. ‘Les caractéristiques rythmiques qui rendent la prose poétique sont secondées par [des] effets poétiques empruntés au vers: recherche syntaxique et lexicale, élaboration rhétorique, imagerie traditionnelle, “clichés” poétiques et fond mythologique sont les signes de la langue alors considérée comme poétique’ [The rhythmical characteristics which make prose poetic were assisted by poetic effects borrowed from verse: syntactic and lexical refinement, rhetoric elaborateness, traditional imagery, characteristic ‘clichés’ and a mythological backdrop are the signs of the language then considered to be poetic]. Nathalie Vincent-Munnia, Les Premiers Poèmes en prose: généalogie d’un genre dans la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle français (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996), p. 52. On this theme see also Suzanne Bernard, Le Poème en prose de Baudelaire jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Nizet, 1969). 40. Vincent-Munnia, Les Premiers Poèmes en prose, p. 144. 41. Ibid, p. 221. 42. Vincent-Munnia, Les Premiers Poèmes en prose, p 222. 43. Charles Benoist, ‘L’Homme de 1848’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 July 1913, pp. 134–61 (p. 141). 44. Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (London: Bookmarks, 1993). On the advent of Saint-Simonianism in political terms, see P. Savigear, ‘Some Political Consequences of Technocracy’, Journal of European Studies, 1.2 (1971), 149–60. 45. Paul Bénichou, Romantismes français, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1973 & 1977; repr. 2004), i: Le Sacre de l’écrivain & Le Temps des prophètes. Philippe Régnier’s doctoral thesis offers a comprehensive introduction to much of his subsequent work on the literary dimension of Saint-Simonianism: Philippe Régnier, ‘Les Idées et les opinions littéraires des Saint-Simoniens (1825–1835)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Université Paris III, 1983). 46. In this respect, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter in relation to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, in developing and radicalizing such self-consciousness of its own intricate discursive construction as poetic text, a notable peculiarity of the prose poem is that it will come to appropriate and redeploy those discourses, interrogating and displacing the limits of the world views they encode. 47. Philippe Régnier, ‘Comment la poésie est venue aux Saint-Simoniens: origines, motivations et manifestations d’un changement de régime discursif (1829–1833)’, in Aux origines du poème en prose français (1750–1850), ed. by Nathalie Vincent-Munnia, Simone Bernard-Griffiths and Robert Pickering (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), pp. 339–52 (p. 351). 48. Vincent-Munnia, Les Premiers Poèmes en prose, p. 143. 49. In this connection, see David Scott, ‘La Structure spatiale du poème en prose d’Aloysius Bertrand à Rimbaud’, Poétique, 59 (September 1984), 295–308. 50. Steve Murphy, ‘Au lecteur (bribes de problématiques en guise d’introduction)’, in Lectures de Baudelaire: ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’, ed. by Steve Murphy (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2002), pp. 9–32 (p. 10). 51. Arthur Rimbaud, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Pierre Brunel (Paris: Libraire générale française: 1999), p. 246. 52. Jean-Pierre Richard, Poésie et profondeur (Paris: Seuil, 1955), pp. 220–21. 53. Marin, p. 24. 54. Marin, p. 34.

C H A P TER 1

v

From Le Livre nouveau to ‘la ville nouvelle’: Elements of a Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City The first chapter of this study discusses the literary production of Saint-Simon­ ianism, one of the most pervasive currents of nineteenth-century utopian socialism. Although the literary experiments of authors belonging to this movement may not offer a straightforward generic comparison with the work of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, the present chapter argues that they nonetheless present the reader with a lyrical and remarkably modern celebration of the latent potentialities of the metropolis that is highly suggestive in relation to the later genre of prose poetry. Moreover, in demonstrating acute perception of the multiple heterogeneous strands of discourse which are mobilized by modern poetic writing, Saint-Simonian writing offers an original and valuable account of the factors which are constitutive of the new genre. Close readings of these Saint-Simonian texts can also reveal the tension between their explicit ideological orientation and their deployment of a new formal practice of the poetic text. The chapter will thus begin by a survey of some complex spatial models of interaction which are advanced in the thought of Claude Henri de Saint-Simon. Arguing that the presence of degrees of organization within the natural world offer a means to understanding the structure and evolution of human institutions, Saint-Simon develops a novel awareness of the complex of factors which mediate the life of the individual within social formations. For Saint-Simon, such models of interaction offer a sophisticated means to rationalize human relations, for they suggest an abstract structural conception understood in terms of evolutionary process rather than as static form. In accordance with this vision of social, spatial and other forms of relation as the product of tensions internal to them, Pierre Macherey gives the following account of Saint-Simon’s understanding of human institutions: ‘[...] le pouvoir social, pour autant que cette notion ait encore un sens, n’est plus soumis à des règles invariantes, mais emporté par une dynamique de transformation qui le réalise en modifiant les formes de sa manifestation. D’autre part, ce mouvement ayant en soi-même son principe moteur, puisqu’il se développe à partir de ses propres antagonismes, il est complètement

28

A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

immanent [...]’ [social power, to the extent that this notion still has any meaning, is no longer subject to invariant rules, but is borne along by a dynamic of transformation which accomplishes it by modifying the forms of its manifestation. Moreover, as this movement has its main motor within itself, since it develops from its own antagonisms, it is completely immanent].1 Underscoring what is in effect an evolutionary or transformational framework, the philosopher suggests a range of dynamic new conceptions of history, subjectivity and art which later receive a more radical formulation in the writings of his followers, the Saint-Simonians. A noticeable feature of much Saint-Simonian discourse is that it musters a pervasive network of figures oriented towards cultural, social and material phenomena which support elaborate patterns of spatial organization. As Antoine Picon shows, the Saint-Simonians view space as a principal constitutive factor of these figures, of which the metropolis is among the most privileged, since it presents a concentrated space of difference and interaction encompassing diverse manifestations of human culture and creativity: L’espace n’est pas seulement une étendue où se déploient les réseaux à partir de ces points nodaux que constituent les métropoles. Il fait figure de condition a priori du développement historique. [...] Cet espace [...] est comme troué par les multiples courts-circuits qui s’établissent entre les lieux éloignés par l’intermédiaire des réseaux, mais aussi entre le passé et le présent, entre le mythe et les réalités techniques de l’ère industrielle naissante.2 [Space is not simply an expanse in which networks are deployed from nodal points constituted by urban centres. It appears as an a priori condition of historical development. [...] It is as if this space is perforated by multiple short circuits which form between remote places by means of networks, but also between past and present, and between myth and the technical realities of the emergent industrial era.]

The modern metropolis is foregrounded in Saint-Simonian writing since it provides an image of mobile, expanding patterns of sociability and interaction. Given our concern with the literary production of the Saint-Simonians, this is a framework which suggests an imaginary of continuous association but also of infinite contrast and variation, one which is compatible with a visionary exploration of new poetic potentialities and lyrical responses to the modern city, and which anticipates the prose poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Accordingly, their keen awareness of the heterogeneity and variability of urban phenomena leads Saint-Simonian writers to a conception of the literary text as a composite construct mediated by comparable tensions. One of the principal aims of this chapter will be to explore the attempt by Saint-Simonian theorists to reconcile a principle of formal innovation in art, understood in the broad Romantic sense, with a framework serving an abstract conception of social progress. As we shall see in relation to the literary experiments of authors such as Michel Chevalier and Charles Duveyrier, one of the most strikingly original facets of Saint-Simonian writing is its experimental approach to the formal practice of the literary text, albeit one which is governed by a pervasive conceptual framework.

A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

29

Some Figures in the Thought of Saint-Simon It seems pertinent at the outset to distinguish between the philosophy of Claude Henri de Saint-Simon and the attempt to radicalize and popularize his thought by such individuals as Barthélémy-Prosper Enfantin, Michel Chevalier and Charles Duveyrier (referred to hereafter as the Saint-Simonians) following his death.3 The present section will therefore engage in a selective presentation of the epistemological framework of Saint-Simon, primarily eliciting a number of paradigms which later come to inform diverse discursive strands of Saint-Simonianism. Departing from a statement of Saint-Simon’s early attempts to confer unity on the physical sciences by an appeal to a single animating principle or idée générale [general idea], this chapter will then proceed to analyse his assertion of the proximity of the aims of the science of physiology and his own framework accounting for the relations that mediate human institutions, before eliciting its significance for the advanced conceptions of individual and social life that are developed in the work of his followers. In his second published volume, the Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIXe siècle [Introduction to the Scientific Works of the Nineteenth Century] (1807–08), SaintSimon argues that political revolutions are swiftly followed by scientific revolutions. Like post-Revolutionary politics, contemporary scientific consciousness in his view was fragmented and required a unifying general principle capable of surmounting the conf licts raised by some of its chief theories. Saint-Simon’s discussion of the Newtonian theory of gravitation is typical of this: despite his initial veneration of Newton, Saint-Simon proceeds to criticize the seventeenth-century scientist for failing to appreciate the potential applications of the theory of gravitation, and, in particular, for affirming the separateness of physical and human phenomena.4 This essential f law of Newtonian theory in Saint-Simon’s view gave rise to one of the most problematic conf licts in science, namely that which divides the two schools Saint-Simon designates as solidiciens [solidicians] and fluidiciens [ fluidicians]: Les savants qui ont observé la marche des solides célestes, et qui calculent leurs mouvements (je les nommerai Solidiciens) disent: l’espace qui sépare les astres est vide, il y aurait résistance du milieu, et les solides éprouveraient un frottement qui altérerait leurs mouvements. Les savants qui étudient la marche des f luides (je les nommerai Fluidiciens), expliquent de différentes manières la transmission de la lumière; mais, quelle que soit l’explication qu’ils en donnent, ils admettent que la lumière est matér­ielle, que c’est un f luide qui traverse les espaces existant entre les corps célestes.5 [Those scientists who have observed the workings of the celestial solids, and who calculate their movements (I will name them Solidicians) claim that the space which separates the stars is empty, that the environment provides resistance, and that solids undergo friction which alters their movements. The scientists who study the workings of f luids (I will name them Fluidicians) explain the transmission of light in different ways; but, regardless of the explanation which they provide, they admit that light is material, that it is a f luid which crosses the spaces existing between celestial bodies.]

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A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

According to Saint-Simon, the conf lict of the solidiciens and fluidiciens centres on a dispute over the properties of cosmic space. The former posit a void in the cosmos, which is a source of friction of matter causing the movement of the planets, while the latter affirm that because the space between the planets can be traversed by light, light must be a material substance in f luid form, in opposition to the solid planets. This supposedly immutable conf lict of solidiciens and fluidiciens over the theory of gravitation threatens to impede scientific advancement, according to Saint-Simon. His proposed solution to the problem he raises is that the impasse resulting from the theoretical opposition of ‘solidicity’ and ‘f luidicity’ may be overcome if that opposition can be seen to arise from a primary conf lict of nature. Maintaining that the physical universe is fundamentally composed of solid and f luid elements held in a perennial state of tension, Saint-Simon is led to an understanding of space as essentially coherent. In such a way, the existence of distinct and opposing phenomena may be reconciled if these phenomena are seen to form integral parts of a relation whose cohesion is drawn paradoxically from their mutual opposition. L’UNIVERS est un espace rempli de matière.

La matière existe sous deux formes: forme solide, forme f luide. La quantité de f luide est égale à celle des solides. Les molécules de la matière se constituent alternativement en état de solidité et en état de f luidité. Tous les phénomènes sont des effets de la lutte existante entre les solides et les f luides. (Saint-Simon: VI, ITS, 122) [The UNIVERSE is a space filled with matter. Matter exists in two forms: solid form and f luid form. The quantity of f luid is equal to that of solids. Molecules of matter form alternately in a solid state and in a f luid state. All phenomena are the effects of the existing struggle between solids and f luids.]

In this schema, the containment of opposing forces does not impose stasis; instead Saint-Simon claims that their opposition precipitates a fundamental dynamic which animates the universe, and from which all complex phenomena derive their organi­ zation. The struggle between solids and f luids produces a movement of alteration designated by him as ‘dynamic equilibrium’: S’il existe, dans l’espace occupé par le système solaire, s’il existe dans l’univers, une quantité de f luide égale de masse à la quantité des solides, il doit y avoir équilibre dynamique, c’est-à-dire, les mouvements propres des solides ne doivent point être altérés par le f luide qui remplit les espaces qui les séparent. (Saint-Simon: VI, ITS, 175) [If there is, in the space occupied by the solar system, or in the universe, a quantity of f luid equal in mass to the quantity of solids, there must be dynamic equilibrium, in other words, the movements specific to solids must not be altered by the f luid which fills the spaces which separate them.]

Following on from his contention that physical space can be said to contain the two opposing forces of f luids and solids, Saint-Simon asserts that scientific consciousness must discover other ways to overcome those theoretical conf licts which he sees

A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

31

as obstructing its expansion. Consequently, a fundamental revision of Newton’s theory of universal gravitation is posited, to include f luid as well as solid elements. In the Mémoire sur la science de l’homme [Memorandum on the Science of Man] of 1813, Saint-Simon writes: Nous concluons: (1) — qu’on peut déduire d’une manière plus ou moins directe l’explication de tous les phénomènes de l’idée de gravitation universelle; (2) — que le seul moyen pour réorganiser le système de nos connaissances est de lui donner pour base l’idée de la gravitation, qu’on l’envisage sous le rapport scientifique, religieux ou politique.6 [We conclude: (1) — that one can deduce the explanation of all phenomena from the idea of universal gravitation in a more or less direct way; (2) — that the sole means to reorganize the system of our knowledge is for the idea of universal gravitation to serve as its basis, whether from the scientific, religious or political point of view.]

Although a scientist would be at pains to justify the basis for Saint-Simon’s attempt to apply universal gravitation to f luids, Saint-Simon’s aim is not in effect to demonstrate a scientific law, but to show that, in taking the opposition of f luids and solids as the point of departure for all other scientific deductions, it may be possible to arrive at hypotheses of the type that scientific conf licts render impossible. His intention is to indicate the direction that scientific enquiry ought to take in the wake of Newton and to lay the basis for an imaginary of complex phenomena: La découverte de Newton, la gravitation universelle peut être considérée comme un fait ou comme une idée générale. En sa qualité de fait général, on peut, on doit l’employer à l’explication du monde existant; en sa qualité d’idée générale elle peut servir à l’organisation du monde imaginaire. (Saint-Simon: VI, ITS, 113) [Newton’s discovery of universal gravity can be considered as a fact or as a general idea. As a general fact, it can, it must, be employed in explaining the world as it exists; as a general idea, it can be turned to account in organizing the imaginary world.]

The framework laid down in the Introduction aux travaux scientifiques is elaborated in the Mémoire sur la science de l’homme. If, as the Introduction claims, all phenomena must be understood in terms of the dynamic equilibrium, the Mémoire attempts a more penetrating reappraisal of the properties of the material universe. Because the principal condition of the dynamic equilibrium is the spatiality of the universe, Saint-Simon is led to discover other instances of it in figures that similarly appear to harmonize dynamic movements, most notably the human body. By extending some of the key motifs of the Introduction through recourse to a biological framework, the Mémoire sur la science de l’homme attempts to describe the unity of physical and human phenomena. This work introduces Saint-Simon’s distinction of corps bruts and corps organisés, or living bodies. These two entities are distinguished as follows:

32

A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City En effet, dans les corps bruts, l’action des solides domine celle des f luides; tandis que dans les corps organisés, c’est l’action des f luides qui a la prépondérance sur celle des solides. (Saint-Simon: V, MSH, 89) [Indeed, in brute bodies, the action of solids dominates that of f luids, while in organized bodies, it is the action of f luids which predominates over that of solids.]

The corps brut is characterized by solidity (and, by extension, rigidity); conversely, the properties of the corps organisé are more f luid. In subsequent passages, SaintSimon asserts that each corps brut is composed of minute polyhedra set adjacent to one another. The geometrical representation of these many-sided elementary forms is enabled by the solidity of the corps brut. In this manner, the simple structure of the corps brut is apparent in its form. The corps brut fails to retain f luids when brought into contact with them, revealing an essentially perforated and open spatial structure (Saint-Simon: V, MSH, 90). By contrast, the composition of the corps organisé is altogether more intricate as it is composed of multiple tubular elements that may be described as ‘tubes, canaux, conduits ou vaisseaux, n’importe le nom qu’on leur donne’ [tubes, channels, pipes or vessels, no matter what name they are given’] (Saint-Simon: V, MSH, 91). These tubular elements traverse one another and are disposed in numerous directions, and as Saint-Simon here indicates, they act to contain f luids. The corps organisé is therefore construed as a privileged site in Saint-Simon’s thought, for it represents a force of cohesion of space.7 As Saint-Simon’s exposition of the hypotheses of dynamic equilibrium and the corps organisé shows, some of the key elements of his thought are informed by the insight that the spatial, social or other coherence of any advanced biological or physical phenomenon is the product of its evolving processes. In its attempt to define a shared basis for physical and human phenomena, Barbara Haines writes that Saint-Simon’s materialism is: ‘not “pure” [...] since the conception which underlies it is not an atomistic reductionism which isolates fixed unit factors, but the search for structural patterns and their changing relationships. This is a significant sophistication of “pure” materialism, for it stresses the operational transformations of the material process rather than the organizational levels they generate.’8 This insight underlies all of Saint-Simon’s attempts to account comprehensively for scientific, industrial and aesthetic progress, based as they are on the assumption that the degrees of organization present within natural phenomena serve as a means to understand the structure and evolution of human institutions. Emerging from a philosophy that is to a considerable extent wary of the problematics of essentializing definitions of the individual, community and the state, the corps organisé may therefore serve as a rational model for all forms of human interaction. As Haines writes: The individual who seemed to himself and others to be a clearly recognizable entity stood revealed as a combination of organs, which were a combination of tissues, which were a combination of something unknown but resolvable into the inputs which metabolism converted into the stuff of life. The idea was critical in shaping Saint-Simon’s view of social structures. In the first place it taught him that organic solidarity is a product of shifting relationships,

A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

33

which also account for the seemingly endless variety of organized phenomena, and it offered a model of community in which individual uniqueness was the condition rather than the enemy of wholeness — a point which political commentators have not wholly grasped.9

Cumulatively, these aspects of Saint-Simon’s thought intimate a new awareness of the factors which mediate the life of the individual within social structures. As Juliette Grange notes in this perspective, taking his cue once more from the insights of the biological sciences, Saint-Simon is led to an understanding of history not as ‘une collection de faits, une succession d’événements, mais un enchaînement, la croissance d’une réalité complexe. [...] Chaque organe de la société, chaque institution a une fonction et participe de la dynamique historique. L’homme par conséquent, n’existe pas hors des sociétés historiques et ne saurait être défini a priori, induit à partir d’une série de faits sur le mode “brutier” de la physique’ [a collection of facts, a succession of events, but a sequence, the emergence of a complex reality. [...] Each organ of society, each institution has a function and draws on the historical dynamic. Man, by consequence, does not exist outside of historical societies and cannot be defined a priori, induced on the basis of a series of facts in the ‘brutish’ manner of physics].10 The Subject in Saint-Simonian Thought This complex vision of history in the thought of Saint-Simon undergoes further elaboration by his followers, notably in the 1829 work Doctrine de Saint-Simon. Exposition. Première Année [Doctrine of Saint-Simon. Exposition. First Year], which outlines a theory of historical periodizations in terms of ‘époques organiques’ [organic epochs] and ‘époques critiques’ [critical epochs]. While the former are characterized by a strengthening of consensus consistent with the rise of a dominant ideology or belief system, the latter ref lect the eruption of conf licts which threaten to fragment and undermine social structures: Cette loi, révélée au génie de Saint-Simon et vérifiée par lui sur une longue série historique, nous montre deux états distincts et alternatifs de la société, l’un que nous appelons état organique, où tous les faits de l’activité humaine sont classés, prévus, ordonnés par une théorie générale; où le but de l’action sociale est nettement défini. L’autre que nous nommons état critique où toute communion de pensée, toute action d’ensemble, toute coordination a cessé, et où la société ne présente plus qu’une agglomération d’individus isolés et luttant les uns contre les autres.11 [This law, which was revealed to Saint-Simon’s genius and was verified by him by means of a lengthy historical overview, demonstrates two distinct and alternative states of society, one that we call the organic state and in which all the facts of human activity are classified, foreseen, and ordered by a general theory, in which the purpose of social activity is clearly defined. The other is what we call the critical state, where all communion of thought, collective action and coordination has ceased, and wherein society no longer presents anything but an agglomeration of isolated individuals who contend with each other.]

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A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

Although the above citation might initially suggest a vision of history in terms of simplistic alternations, it in fact serves a more complex conception of latent patterns of historical change, as Henri Desroche shows: ‘Toute époque “organique” ne l’est ou ne le fut qu’à titre intérimaire, fragile, provisoire, et pour autant les époques “critiques” auront pu s’avérer “utiles, indispensables, nécessaires”, telles des opérations accoucheuses d’un organisme rénové ou innové à partir d’un organisme révolu et caduc’ [Every ‘organic’ epoch is only or was only so in an intermediary, fragile, provisional way, and for all that ‘critical’ epochs will turn out to be ‘useful, indispensable, necessary’, akin to something whose function is to assist the emergence of a renovated or innovated organism from an earlier organism which has become invalid].12 This leads to a conception according to which organic and critical epochs are ‘non seulement alternativement mais mutuellement prégnantes l’une de l’autre’ [not only alternatively but mutually resonant with each other]:13 Lorsqu’arrive le temps des époques critiques, [...] c’est que des faits nouveaux se sont produits; c’est que la société éprouve des besoins nouveaux, que ne comporte pas et que ne peut comprendre le cadre trop étroit, et devenu inf lexible, de la croyance établie et de l’institution politique qui la réalise. Cependant ces faits nouveaux, ces exigences d’avenir, cherchent à se faire jour, à prendre place; d’abord ils viennent se briser contre l’ordre ancien; mais, par leur choc répété, ils finissent par l’ébranler et par le renverser lui-même.14 [The time of critical epochs comes about when new facts occur; this is because society feels new needs, which are not provided for and which cannot be embraced by the excessively narrow and latterly inf lexible frame of established belief and of the political institution which puts it into effect. Yet these new facts, these demands for a future, struggle to emerge, to find a place; in the first instance, they come to dash against the old order; but, through their repeated clashes, they ultimately succeed in undermining it and overturning it.]

The persistent reassertion of ‘exigences d’avenir’ moreover suggests a transformational frame of reference for the subject of historical change. It is important to note, however, that for the Saint-Simonians this transformative dynamic is not an inherent property of an a priori individual consciousness but a function of the latter’s entanglement in a web of interpersonal relations. On this point, it is worth considering a passage from the text La Vie éternelle: passé — présent — futur [Eternal Life: Past-Present-Future] by Barthélémy-Prosper Enfantin, former leader of the Saint-Simonian movement. Although composed in the 1860s, long after the decline of militant Saint-Simonianism, the following passage of La Vie éternelle contains some formulations that are of consequence for our analysis of the Saint-Simonian understanding of the individual subject: J’ai été et je suis sans cesse enseigné; je suis moi-même l’œuvre d’autrui, travaillé, cultivé, nourri, façonné par les mains amies de mes frères et de la nature entière: je ne veux pas répudier toutes ces sources de ma vie, croire qu’elles se retirent et m’abandonnent après m’avoir touché.15 [I have been taught and so I continue to be; I am myself, the work of others, wrought, cultivated, nourished, shaped by the helping hands of my brothers and of the whole of nature: I do not wish to disown all these sources of my life, to believe that they retract themselves and abandon me once they have touched me.]

A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

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Although invested with a quasi-devotional idiom, Enfantin’s comments here present a vision of the self as emerging from multiple intersubjective relations. Similarly, in his correspondence with Charles Duveyrier on the subject of eternal life, Enfantin writes that: Ma vie est INDÉFINIE, UNE et MULTIPLE: Elle se manifeste

{ enhorsmoide moi } et par l’union

{

du moi et du non-moi 16

My life is INDEFINITE, ONE and MULTIPLE: It manifests itself

in me and through { outside me }

the union

{



of the self and the non-self 16

As Antoine Picon argues in relation to this text, for Enfantin, ‘ce qu’il y a de plus humain n’est pas contenu dans le corps et l’esprit d’un individu distinct du monde et autonome à la façon du sujet cartésien. L’homme est en réalité essentiellement présent dans les multiples médiations qui s’établissent entre lui et les autres, que ces autres soient humains ou non humains’ [what is most human is not contained in the body and mind of an individual supposedly distinct and autonomous from the world on the model of the Cartesian subject. Man is in reality present in the multiple mediations which establish themselves between himself and others, whether those others be human or non-human].17 Enfantin’s conception of the factors which mediate the life of the self is linked to the understanding of the body which we have seen is articulated in the thought of Saint-Simon. It is highly instructive also in more general relation to the status of the body in utopia, which will be explored later in this book in reference to some prose poems of Arthur Rimbaud. On this point, near the end of Enfantin’s own life, he became involved in a dispute over the merits of physiology with the ophthalmologist and republican socialist Ange Guépin. In a text of 1858, Enfantin disagreed with Guépin’s support for the phrenology of Franz Joseph Gall: Je tiens à vous dire qu’il faut que l’on soit encore furieusement mystique pour avoir tout rapporté à ce que l’on a appelé le siège de l’intelligence, et pour avoir concentré en lui presque tout l’organisme humain. Votre maître et ami Gall me semble avoir terriblement fait dévier, sous ce rapport, la physiologie de la route où la plaçaient Cabanis et Bichat. Pour mon compte particulier, qui n’est sans doute pas grand’chose à vos yeux en pareille matière, je me prends souvent à protester au nom des tissus généraux, au nom des circulations générales, contre le despotisme envahissant du laboratoire général.18

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A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City [I must tell you that one still has to be furiously mystical to bring everything back to what has been called the seat of the intelligence, and to concentrate almost the entire human organism therein. In this respect, your master and friend Gall seems to me to have caused physiology to deviate terribly from the path on which it was set by Cabanis and Bichat. From my own particular point of view, which undoubtedly does not count for much to you in such matters, I often find myself protesting in support of general tissues and general circulations against the invasive despotism of the general laboratory.]

Gall had assigned to the brain a hierarchical function superior to that of any other organ and declared a proportional relation between brain size and intelligence. But Enfantin contests any such attribution of superiority to individual organs; his emphasis on ‘tissus généraux’ and ‘circulations générales’ indicates the intellectual legacy of those physiologists with whom, as we have seen, Saint-Simon was particularly acquainted. Following Saint-Simon, Enfantin rather sees the human individual in terms of the complex interrelation of tissue and bodily functions which mirror patterns of elaborate organization of social life. Indeed, his comments here are thus consistent with a position that is conscious of the body’s relation to space and of space as a factor constitutive of the body’s complexity. It is to this vision of the body’s relation to space in utopian discourse that the final chapter of this book turns, notably in the context of a reading of Rimbaud’s prose poem ‘Being Beauteous’. Some Aspects of Aesthetic Thought in Saint-Simonianism As this chapter will demonstrate through an analysis of its founding doctrinal texts, the philosophy of Saint-Simonianism is consistent with a desire to catalyse those ‘multiple mediations’ alluded to above by Picon and the paradigms of sociability which they support. Indeed, Saint-Simonian texts are highly attentive to the potential of the modern metropolis, transport infrastructures such as canals and railways, public spectacles and festivals, the mass press and technologies of public display, in addition to other facets of industrial modernity, to mediate patterns of universal association.19 In the 1820s, the Saint-Simonians began to present their social project to the French public in a series of press publications. Initially characterized by austere discussions of political economy and narrowly factual, technical articles, the three principal Saint-Simonian newspapers L’Organisateur, Le Producteur and Le Globe had short lifespans and were the object of trenchant criticism from some corners of the literary establishment. Writers such as Stendhal and Benjamin Constant condemned what they perceived as the disturbingly regimented future society projected by these publications.20 As a response to such criticism and to the apparent ineffectiveness of their didactic enterprise, the Saint-Simonians soon became desirous of a mode of presentation of their project that would engage their audience in a more persuasive and dynamic manner. While Saint-Simon viewed formal innovation in the fine arts as a prerequisite for social progress in terms of a conceptual schema regarding industry, science and art as engaged in a dynamic process of transformation, Saint-Simonian contributors

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to Le Globe and Le Producteur went on to develop an understanding of sentiment as a constitutive condition both of aesthetic experience and social organization.21 Maintaining heightened attentiveness to the composite of determinants governing social experience, Saint-Simonian doctrine hereafter sought to muster a broader public and orient it towards a collective aim, frequently by aesthetic means. Arising from this is, as McWilliam notes, a ‘Saint-Simonian preference for artworks that solicit all the senses simultaneously’ and that ‘combine varied media in a unified whole’.22 The movement’s art criticism is therefore particularly attentive to the latent aesthetic and socializing potentialities of new techniques of public display, as is shown by the following review of the salon of 1831 which appeared in Le Globe: Cette année l’exposition de sculpture est plus remarquable que le Salon propre­ ment dit; depuis lors enfin des tableaux d’une tout autre espèce ont été imaginés et accueillis avec une grande ferveur par le public, nous voulons parler des Panorama et des Diorama. [...] Le succès de ces productions a été et devient de plus en plus éminemment populaire. [...] Et ce goût du public tient certainement à l’effet, à l’illusion de ces tableaux, à ce qu’ils offrent à l’œil tout autre chose qu’une écriture perfectionnée. Et c’est dans la direction ainsi ouverte que les artistes doivent chercher l’art nouveau de la peinture. Ce sera sans doute en associant la peinture à effet avec la sculpture, le relief, les constructions même au moins indiquées, que dans l’avenir les artistes [...] offriront à l’admiration de l’humanité les spectacles propres à enf lammer ses pacifiques sympathies d’association universelle, à redoubler sa soif de progrès dans la carrière de la science et dans celle de l’industrie.23 [This year the sculpture exhibition is more remarkable than the Salon itself; henceforth, paintings of a wholly different kind have been imagined and welcomed with great fervour by the public, namely the Panoramas and Dioramas. [...] These productions have been eminently popular in their appeal and are becoming more so. [...] And the public’s liking for them surely stems from the effect or the illusion created by these paintings, from the fact that they present the eye with something other than a sophisticated composition. And it is along the path which they thus lay open that artists must seek the new art of painting. It is without a doubt in linking the painting of effects with sculpture, relief and sketches of built forms that in the future, artists will offer humanity spectacles capable of kindling its peaceful predilection towards universal association and of stimulating its thirst for progress in the course of science and industry.]

Referring apparently to the particular capacity of the method of panoramic display initially developed by the Irish artist Robert Barker to create an illusion of perspective, by prescribing the position of the viewer inside a cylindrical display chamber, the critical position maintained here demonstrates an awareness of the potential of visualizing techniques to articulate a dramatically more dynamic and comprehensive aesthetic framework and to appeal to a much broader public than more established art forms. Indeed, contemporary research on the history of the panorama during the nineteenth century has revealed emergent cultural perceptions of applications of this new medium. As Vanessa Schwarz writes: ‘The removal of all other visual points of reference outside the panorama made it difficult for spectators to judge size and distance. [...] The panorama’s visual trick, which relied on its erasure of the spectator’s point of reference, also facilitated the sense

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Figure 1.1. Panorama by Robert Barker at Leicester Square. By permission of London Metropolitan Archives

that the panorama, a representation that effaced its status as representation, became a substitute reality’.24 In thereby prescribing the viewpoint of the spectator, the panoramic mode of presentation suggested a means by which a mass public of viewers could come to internalize an ideological framework. As François Robichon writes: L’effet du dispositif panoramique est inséparable de son utilisateur et détermine le sens de sa vision et de son corps. L’illusion est la prise en charge de l’action du médium par l’usager et non un simple effet d’optique. Elle se fait par un déficit du dispositif que le spectateur doit suppléer par une imagination qui tient à la spatialisation de son corps.25 [The effect of the panoramic device is inseparable from its user and determines the latter’s bodily and visual orientation. The illusion occurs as the user integrates the action of the medium, and is thus not simply an optical effect. It comes about through a deficiency of the device which the spectator must compensate for by an act of the imagination which stems from the spatialization of his or her body.]

Consistent with the Saint-Simonian understanding of the potential of the aesthetic to mediate social relations, the author of the text from Le Globe salutes the success of the diorama and panorama as ‘éminemment populaire’. Conscious of the potential of the panoramic mode of presentation to normalize a public sentiment of sympathy towards the accomplishments of science and industry and to reconcile the masses to an ideology of ‘progress’, the Saint-Simonians therefore sought to encourage

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the pursuit of comparable new forms of aesthetic work and techniques of public display. Towards a New Architecture The Saint-Simonians similarly invoked a new attitude to architectural practice. Enfantin, for instance, is attentive to the potential applications of contemporary developments in the science of elasticity, suggesting that future architectural designs would place less importance on adherence to principles of spatial form and composition inherited from Greek and Roman architecture and more recent neoclassicism. The latter, he claimed, were responsible for ‘despotisme contre la matière’ [‘despotism against matter’] (Livre nouveau: 176), resulting from neglect of the environmental situation of built structures and of the materials employed in their construction. In the context of a dialogue with the engineer Michel Chevalier, Enfantin sets out by identifying what he sees as insufficiencies in contemporary architectural practice: L’architecture, comme théorie des constructions est un art incomplet. La notion de la mobilité, du mouvement, y manque. Durée — solidité — mouvement ou mobilité sont les trois conditions d’une bâtisse. Voici ce que je veux dire par mobilité: il y a un continuel mouvement qui agite toute construction, ne fût-ce que le choc de l’air, le choc des ondes lumineuses. Tout bâtiment doit être fait de manière à recevoir le mouvement et à le rendre, et on ne construit qu’en vue de RÉSISTER au MOUVEMENT. (Livre nouveau: 178) [Architecture, as a theory of constructions, is an incomplete art. It lacks the notion of mobility, of movement. Duration — solidity — movement or mobility are the three conditions of a building. Here is what I mean by mobility: there is a continual movement which causes every construction to sway, whether that be the impact of air or of light waves. Every building must be built in such a way as to receive movement and to return it, and yet we only build in such a way as to RESIST MOVEMENT.]

Noteworthy here is Enfantin’s concern with the ways in which factors of duration, solidity and movement may determine the construction of a given building, in addition to any a priori formal conception. Recalling the regular forms of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman architecture, Enfantin attempts to demonstrate by a series of sketches the rigidity which these imply: Chez les Égyptiens, chez les Grecs et les Romains, leurs successeurs, chez les modernes copistes des Grecs et des Romains, on a taillé les matériaux régulièrement. On a usé et poli les joints. Les assises ont été simplement posées les unes sur les autres (fig. 1); ou, si elles se sont pénétrées, ç’a été par tenon et mortaise (fig. 2). Des pierres assemblées de cette façon souffrent, sont malades. C’est un mariage mauvais. On a fait des maçonneries prodigieusement épaisses reliées par un ciment dur comme bronze: il n’y a pas eu du tout plein et vide; pas de jeu, d’élasticité [...] La construction de l’édifice doit ressembler [...] à la constitution moléculaire des corps. Il doit y avoir des pleins et des vides. Il doit y avoir jeu, élasticité. Les élémens [sic] des édifices doivent être arrangés comme

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Figure 1.2. Sketches of different arrangements of stonework demonstrated by B.-P. Enfantin (Livre nouveau: 177) les molécules des corps. [...] Dans C rond porte contre rond, mais il y a jeu entre rond et plan. [...] Le système sacerdotal serait certainement plan contre rond, portant l’un sur l’autre d’un côté et laissant du jeu de l’autre côté, comme il y a jeu dans C. [...] Les corps [...] ont leurs pleins et leurs vides, des aspérités et des pores; les édifices doivent avoir leurs pores. (Livre nouveau: 176–79) [Among the Egyptians, and among the Greeks and the Romans, their successors, as well as among the modern imitators of the Greeks and Romans, materials were hewn in a regular manner. Joints wore out and became polished. Courses of brick were simply placed one on top of the other (fig. 1); or, if they interlocked, it was through mortise and tenon joints (fig. 2). Stonework assembled in this way suffers and becomes sick. It’s a poor marriage. Monumentally thick masonry was assembled, held together by a kind of cement as hard as bronze: there were no plenums and vacuums, no play or elasticity [...]. The construction of the edifice must resemble [...] the molecular constitution of the body. There must be plenums and vacuums. There must be play, elasticity. The elements of edifices must be arranged like bodily molecules. [...] In C, a circular form is brought into contact with another circular form, but there is clearance between the circle and the f lat surface. [...] The sacerdotal system would of course feature circles and f lat surfaces, in such a way that they would

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be brought into contact with each other on one side and would leave clearance on the other side, just as there is play in C. [...] Bodies [...] have plenums and vacuums, asperities and pores; buildings must have pores of their own.]

Advocating a move away from angular regularity, Enfantin projects an archi­tect­ural model incorporating plenums and vacuums. As the allusions to molecular struc­ ture and porosity suggest, the concern here with space as a constitutive element of the construction resonates with Saint-Simon’s model of the corps organisé and leads Enfantin to hypothesize a relation in which contrasting elements such as hard angles and curves may be held in a dynamic tension. As Antoine Picon notes, Enfantin’s comments are consistent with a perception in architectural practice of a ‘passage d’un empilement statique à un agencement dynamique’ [transition from a practice based on static piling to one based on dynamic arrangement];26 cumulatively, they intimate the horizontal latitude required by the constituents of any complex formation. Language ‘Revisited’ in Le Livre nouveau Their attentiveness to the aesthetic as a constitutive dimension of patterns of sociability prompted the Saint-Simonians to engage in a comprehensive reappraisal of the conditions in which their project was encountered by the public. Citing the necessity to develop a more varied and dynamic discursive framework than was permitted by the kind of specialist technical language employed in many of the articles in Le Globe and Le Producteur, they turned their attention to literary language as a means to effect a more persuasive impact on their readership. This aspiration is articulated in the article ‘De la poésie telle que nous la concevons’ [‘Of poetry such as we conceive it’], which appeared in Le Globe in 1832: Il nous faudrait une langue toute nouvelle, un parler vierge pour traduire les nouveaux sujets de poésie que nous comprenons et nous ne pouvons encore nous en créer une. [...] Nous appelons de tous nos vœux et de tous nos travaux le moment heureux où nous pourrons nous créer une forme de langage toute jeune, capable de peindre nos croyances de l’avenir.27 [We need a totally new language, a virgin idiom through which to convey the new poetic subjects which we have grasped, yet we cannot yet create one. [...] Through all our hopes and efforts, we anticipate the happy moment when we will be able to create a wholly youthful form of language for ourselves, capable of illustrating our beliefs in the future.]

The most ambitious attempt by the Saint-Simonians to accede to this ‘langue toute nouvelle’ is contemporaneous with the group’s cultish retreat to a house belonging to Enfantin at Ménilmontant in Paris in 1832. There, the leader of the SaintSimonians preached the ‘rehabilitation of matter’, that is, a sensual reinvigoration of all those aspects of culture and society that had, in his estimation, fallen under the inf luence of Christian asceticism. One of the principal objectives of the retreat was the writing of the Livre nouveau des Saint-Simoniens [The New Book of the Saint-Simonians], a manuscript intended as a prophetic synthesis of the totality of human knowledge. The work broaches a vast number of themes, ref lected in its

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successive discussions of the liberation of woman, the potential social applications of electricity, mathematics, stereotomy and physiology, and the histories of language and literature. The contributors to the Livre nouveau argued that it was necessary to restore a materiality and sensuality to language that had been lost since pagan antiquity. Given the failure of the didactic approach, the description of the future society would necessitate a visionary mode of expression, and a poetic language capable of conveying sensual surprise. However, since contemporary poets provided them with few examples of the type of poetry they envisaged, the Saint-Simonians theorized that conventional poetic forms were inadequate to their purpose. More specifically, the group decried what they saw as the arid technical perfection of verse forms, arguing that the emphasis on the number of syllables in the verse line was evidence of a rationalizing and excessively intellectual tendency.28 Similarly, the group’s chief spokesperson on literary matters, Émile Barrault, emphasized the didactic function of rhyme. In Barrault’s view, the mnemonic quality of rhyme suggested a cerebrating and subjectivizing paradigm at odds with the group’s demands for a more sensually immediate poetic idiom: ‘[La rime] rappelle à la méditation comme le tintement d’une cloche qui résonne à intervalles égaux. Elle est la musique de la retraite. C’est l’homme isolé qui s’interroge et se répond’ [[Rhyme]] recalls us to meditation like the chiming of a bell which echoes at regular intervals. It is the music of retreat. It is the isolated man who discourses with himself ] (Livre nouveau: 116). Comparable criticisms are reserved elsewhere by Barrault for the alexandrine, the dominance of which in modern poetry, he argues, has incurred the loss of a variety of less uniform metric forms inherited from antiquity (Livre nouveau: 121). Their commonplace theoretical rejection of the symmetry of and absence of emotion from verse forms did not however lead the Saint-Simonians along the aesthetic trajectory pursued by Victor Hugo and later by Théophile Gautier and the Parnassians. The revival of the sensual potential of metric forms by these poets is far removed from the solution proposed by the group. While the Saint-Simonians were led to a theoretical rejection of certain aspects of versification, they nevertheless envisaged a reconfiguration of prosodic structure from the side of prose. Since the problems they saw as inherent in versification supposedly arose from the application to literary language of rational values external to it, the proposed prosodic structure would only emerge through an appraisal of the factors constitutive of the poetic phrase. Enfantin, Barrault and the other contributors theorized that verbal dynamism could be discovered within linguistic structures themselves rather than being imposed from without by the mechanism of versification. Thus less regular rhythmical patterns than those created by rhyme and conventional metric forms would give rise to the new configurations of sensation to which the Saint-Simonian poet aspired. As Barrault claims in the Livre nouveau: ‘J’entrevois la réapparition de la prosodie. [...] La prosodie relèvera de l’ACCENT. Le rythme lui-même variera dans sa forme métrique suivant le caractère de la composition et du passage, et relèvera aussi de l’ACCENT’ [I envisage the reappearance of prosody. [...] Prosody stems from ACCENT. Rhythm itself will vary in its metrical form according to the character of the composition and of the passage, and it will also stem from

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ACCENT] (Livre nouveau: 123). For Barrault, a major strategy for the renewal of prosody is an increased use of accent, which he argues is deficient in the modern French language. He thus proposes a relation of greater complementarity between the rhythmical variations of the text and its stylistic form. The invocation of a new approach to the spoken articulation of words is extended by Enfantin elsewhere in a section of the Livre nouveau entitled ‘La Grammaire’ [‘Grammar’]. Enfantin describes the historical evolution of world languages as a struggle between materializing and intellectualizing tendencies. According to Enfantin, ‘materiality’ is a feature of the earliest Pagan languages, as the earth was immediately present to man’s senses in antiquity; however with the rise of Christianity, asceticism and metaphysical abstraction crept into language and emerged as the principal features of modern idioms: Si on les considère uniquement sous le rapport de la prononciation, les idiomes antiques se distinguent par les gutturales et les dentales; au paganisme appartiennent les sons qui s’échappent rapidement de la gorge, proviennent du choc de la langue contre les dents et dont l’émission nécessite le travail des organes et l’ouverture pleine de la bouche: les idiomes modernes ont un plus grand nombre de nasales et de labiales; au christianisme appartiennent ces sons dont la formation résulte d’une activité plus interne, et exige moins d’efforts extérieurs. C’est au verbe sacerdotal que nous rapporterons les LINGUALES. Le palais peut être considéré comme un temple, et la langue, placée entre les différentes touches vocales, comme le prêtre du temple (Livre nouveau: 129–30). [If we are to consider them solely from the point of view of pronunciation, ancient idioms can be distinguished by gutturals and dentals; paganism is the source of those sounds which escape rapidly from the throat and derive from the impact of the tongue against the teeth, requiring an effort of the organs and a fully open mouth: modern idioms have a greater number of nasals and labials; those sounds which result from a more internal activity and demand less external efforts belong to Christianity. We associate LINGUALS with the priestly word. The palette can be considered as a temple, and the tongue, located between different vocal keys, can be thought of as its priest.]

In Enfantin’s view, the contemplative character of Christian thought has the effect on language of increasing the frequency of nasal or labial sounds, while ancient styles of pronunciation possess a more immediate guttural or, strangely, ‘dental’ quality that is palpable in the physical features of the speaker. What Enfantin ultimately aspires to is to blend these styles within a quasi-religious accent or ‘verbe sacerdotal’ which employs lingual sounds. By a more conspicuous reliance on sounds produced by the tongue, the ‘verbe sacerdotal’ would be modelled so as to hinder cogitation and thus more easily stimulate the senses. It is also worth remarking the typographic peculiarities of this passage, which are a recurrent feature of Saint-Simonian texts, both in manuscript and published form. As is suggested by the capitalizations and italicizations of the passage quoted here, the prose is typographically shaped by the application of these vocal modulations to the printed word. Here it ref lects Enfantin’s desire to activate the sensual properties of certain words, via the growing progression from the italics of ‘gutturales/dentales’ to

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the bold lower-case Roman ‘nasales/labiales’ to the final superiority of the capital ‘LINGUALES’. Like the earlier citation from Enfantin’s ‘Lettre sur la vie éternelle’ to Charles Duveyrier, this presentation places language in relief; it presents an order of mounting abstraction that is in proportion to the increasing materiality of the printed word, thus suggesting to the reader the sensual immanence of the projected idiom. Further strategies for the revitalization of language include the greater use of the mute e, which Enfantin and Barrault claim is a mark of femininity, conferring variety and sonority on the phrase (Livre nouveau: 110); meanwhile the abstract notion of ‘accent’ is inscribed typographically throughout the Livre nouveau by recourse to varying sizes of font. These arguments set forth in the Livre nouveau and the unconventional typographic disposition of letters that accompany them point to an enduring aspect of Saint-Simonian writing, namely its heightened sensibility towards the printed space of the page as a constitutive dimension of reading. The Prose of the City The foregoing consideration of the views of Barrault and Enfantin in Le Livre nouveau leads us to consider precisely what praxis of writing is consistent with their hypotheses on language. Perhaps as can be expected when one considers the ambitious­ness of such a programme, few examples immediately present themselves of Saint-Simonian texts that integrate comprehensively all those facets of the ‘langue nouvelle’ theorized by the contributors to the Livre nouveau. Nonetheless, the aspirations conveyed by Barrault and Enfantin to a certain extent inform the rapturous charge that comes to inf lect Saint-Simonian discourse during this period. The full ‘literary’ quality of that discourse might be considered contentious, not least in view of its doctrinal status and the often ideological and utilitarian functions to which its authors attempt to subordinate it; however, as this chapter will attempt to show, it is precisely the apprehension by Saint-Simonian authors of the potential of a lyrical or literary idiom in prose to encode diverse discursive strands in a complex manner that is of interest to our broader concern with the emergence of the prose poem. A noticeable feature of many of these prose texts is their orientation towards objects of representation that support complex patterns of organization of the type we have identified as frequent in Saint-Simonian thought. The modern city is thus commonly thematized in such texts since it presents a spectacle in which the associative potentialities of collective labour and mass movement are brought to the fore. This serves to intimate a twofold awareness of the ensemble of determinants mediating the construction of the literary text and of the complex dimensions of urban space. As Picon writes, ‘avec le saint-simonisme, la littérature fait son entrée parmi les médiations possibles entre représentations et pratiques de l’aménagement urbain. Avec lui, le poème et le journal deviennent des instruments d’anticipation à part entière’ [with Saint-Simonianism, literature takes its place amongst the possible mediations between representations and practices of urban development. With this movement, the poem and the newspaper become instruments of anticipation in their own right].29 By way of illustration it may be useful brief ly to consider a text

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by Barrault, in which he adopts the perspective of a Saint-Simonian ‘mission’ as it departs Paris to proselytize in the provinces: Paris! Paris! écoute à ton tour: voici qu’à t’entendre le peuple s’est pris d’humeur à te répondre; Ce peuple, qui creuse en rampant les veines ténébreuses du sol et en extrait de la pierre, le charbon, le minerai; qui, à la lueur des fourneaux et de forges, fond, pétrit, brasse, coule et frappe le fer; qui abat les forêts, les équarrit, les courbe et les lance à la mer en forme de navires, sur la terre en forme de chars, dans l’air en forme de toits; qui bâtit maisons, remparts, digues, canaux, chemins; qui laboure, plante, sème, récolte, vendange, moissonne; qui file, tisse, ourdit les toiles, les étoffes, les rubans; multitude innombrable qui remplit, anime et fait bruire les mines, les usines, les chantiers, les ateliers, les arsenaux, les ports, les f lottes, les routes, les granges, les pressoirs, les greniers, les métiers, les fabriques; Voici dis-je, qu’à t’entendre ce peuple se redresse, interrompt son travail, essuie son front trempé de sueurs, secoue ses haillons poudreux et sales, et que, debout, les bras croisés, attachant sur ta face orgueilleuse et pâle ses milliers de regards, de la voix du juge parlant à l’accusé, il te répond par ma bouche; écoute!30 [Paris! Paris! listen in your turn: having heard you the people are in the mood to respond; This people, who creep along the ground, delving into its dark veins to extract stone, coal and mineral ore; who, in the light cast by furnaces and forges, smelt, knead, mix and strike iron; who raze and square whole forests, bending them and launching them on the sea in the form of ships, on the earth in the form of carts, in the air in the form of roofs; who build houses, ramparts, dikes, canals and tracks; who plough, plant, sow, harvest crops and vines, and reap; who spin, weave and warp cloth, fabrics and ribbons; a countless multitude who occupy and bring to throbbing life mines, factories, construction sites, workshops, arsenals, ports, f leets, roads, barns, press-houses, granaries, looms and plants; I tell you, having heard you, the people straighten up, interrupt their work, wipe their perspiring brows, shake down their dusty, dirty rags, and stand upright with their arms folded, peering into your pale, proud face, with thousands of eyes; with the voice of a judge speaking to an accused, they answer you through my words: listen!]

In keeping with what Picon sees as a Saint-Simonian rationale of urban phenomena ‘qui va progressivement s’émanciper des questions de forme de la ville pour ne plus considérer que les circulations et les équations abstraites qui les régissent’ [which gradually free itself from a concern with the form of the city so as to ref lect solely on forms of circulation and the abstract equations which determine them],31 the city is here construed in terms of the diverse strands of labour it mobilizes and the dynamics which traverse it, suggested by the curious proliferation of enumerations and f leeting pauses. However, a more extravagant exploration of these facets of the metropolis is presented in Charles Duveyrier’s article ‘Travaux Publics — Fêtes’ [‘Public Works — Celebrations’] which appeared originally in Le Globe on 11 April 1832 and conveys the energy of a projected festival and public works designed to transform the city of Paris: L’île de Notre-Dame tout entière sera convertie en une riante promenade, où les populations centrales de la métropole de l’association pacifique puissent venir sans fatigue respirer la fraîcheur, à chaque retour du soleil de juillet.

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A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City Un bois sombre couvrira les meurtrissures que fit en s’écrasant le palais de l’archevêque sur les murailles de la cathédrale. [...] Au Champ de Mars, le mouvement des chevaux, Franconi et sa troupe, le cri des fanfares, les longues évolutions des cohortes des travailleurs repliant et faisant défiler leurs lignes enluminées d’éclatantes couleurs sur lesquelles f lotte le nouvel étendard; ici les jeux d’adresse et de force: Amoros, madame Saqui, Garnerin et ses ballons, qui nagent majestueusement entre le ciel et la terre: là sur des rainures d’acier, de lourds chariots volant comme des f lèches et donnant en spectacle au peuple l’avenir que son bras va créer. Ah! donnez-lui le spectacle de peuples barbares et misérables, vainqueurs et vaincus, Russes et Polonais; figurez sous ses yeux leurs guerres acharnées, et qu’au milieu de feux croisées, siff lant, fouettant l’air, se brisant en éclats et tombant en une rosée d’étoiles; qu’au milieu de f lammes, jaunes et bleues, allongeant leurs langues en spirales à travers un nuage de noire fumée, on voie plus rapide qu’un oiseau s’avancer la caravane des travailleurs, ambassade de paix avec ses chœurs nombreux et ses danseuses parées; que l’on voie les vaincus reprendre espoir, les hordes de houlans immobiles, muettes, séduites, laisser tomber leurs armes, et tous, vainqueurs et vaincus, entonner l’hymne de confédération universelle, et du milieu des tourbillons de danses et de valses, consacrer à l’œuvre commune leurs mains pacifiées.32 [The entire island of Notre Dame will be converted into a pleasant promenade, where the central populations of the metropolis of peaceful association can, without expense of effort, come to breathe cool air each time the July sun returns to the sky. A shadowy wood will cover the scars left by the collapse of the archbishop’s palace on the walls of the cathedral. [...] On the Champ de Mars, the movement of the horses, Franconi and his troupe, the shouts of the brass bands, the long movements of the cohorts of workers, enfolding and unfurling in lines illuminated by dazzling colours on top of which f loats the new standard; here, games of skills and dexterity: Amoros, Madame Saqui, Garnerin and his balloons, which f loat majestically between the sky and the earth: there, on steel grooves, lumbering chariots take to the air like arrows and present the people with a spectacular image of the future which their own hands will create. Ah! Give them the spectacle of barbaric and miserable peoples, victors and vanquished, Russians and Poles: represent before their eyes their unrelenting wars, and amidst crossfire, which whistles and darts through the air, breaking in shards and falling in a sprinkle of stars, amidst yellow and blue f lames extending their tongues in spirals through a pall of black smoke, the procession of workers can be seen, moving forward more swiftly than a bird, like an embassy of peace with its numerous choirs and emblazoned dancers; that we may we see the defeated regain hope, and the hordes of dumbstruck, motionless lancers become entranced and drop their weapons, and everyone, both victors and vanquished, break into singing the hymn of universal confederation, and within the whirlwind of dances and waltzes lend their pacified hands to the communal creation.]

Duveyrier presents the reader with a sort of Rimbaldian verbal pageant avant la lettre, replete with allusions to spectacle and experimentation with the more out­ landish extravagances of the utopian idiom: ‘populations centrales de la métropole de l’association pacifique’; ‘la caravane des travailleurs, ambassade de paix avec ses chœurs nombreux et ses danseuses parées’; ‘consacrer à l’œuvre commune leurs mains pacifiées’.

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There are references also to Antonio Franconi, an Italian circus impresario, to the celebrated tightrope walker Madame Saqui, to Colonel Francisco Amoros y Onde­ ano who founded a civil and military gymnasium in 1829, prompting the estab­ lish­ment of gymnasia throughout Paris, and to André-Jacques Garnerin, a pioneer of modern parachute design and long-distance f light by balloon. Such images of festivity and spectacle are particularly appealing to the Saint-Simonians, for they hold the potential to involve, organize and delegate diverse forms of human activity and present mobile, expanding patterns of sociability focused, as McWilliam points out, on ‘the abolition of the distinction between spectators and participants’.33 The urban focus of the foregoing descriptions is instructive in relation to the centrality and constitutive potency of the image of the metropolis in SaintSimonian thought. Indeed, in the following passage from the Livre nouveau, Enfantin elaborates on the intrinsic attraction of the city in more explicit terms, mobilizing as he does so all the scriptural resources of that abstract conception of ‘accent’ which he outlines elsewhere in the work: Tous les projets de grands travaux d’utilité publique que nous avons exposés dans Le Globe, n’étaient que des avertissements donnés par nous au monde afin de préparer l’ère pacifique que nous avons mission d’installer parmi les hommes [...]. Pour que ces PROJETS de TRAVAUX fussent susceptibles de réalisation, il faudrait en effet que la CONCEPTION fût de nature à se TRADUIRE en un MODÈLE CAPITAL, servant d’exemple et fournissant une INSPIRATION continuelle par le CULTE dont il serait environné, pour tous les TRAVAUX dont ce modèle serait le SYMBOLE. Or la CAPITALE du MONDE nouveau, du royaume humanitaire, la MÉTROPOLE de la FOI UNIVERSELLE, est ce modèle, car c’est le point d’où part toute DIRECTION de grands TRAVAUX sur le GLOBE entier. (Livre nouveau: 81) [All those projects for public works which we set out in the Globe were merely advance notices which we gave to the world in order to begin preparations for the peaceful era which it is our mission to establish amongst men. In order that these PROJECTS should be liable to be accomplished, the CONCEPTION must be such that it can be TRANSLATED into a CAPITAL MODEL, serving as an example and providing continual INSPIRATION, through the CULT which would surround it, to all those WORKS of which this model would serve as the SYMBOL. Now, the CAPITAL of the new WORLD, of the humanitarian kingdom, the METROPOLIS of UNIVERSAL FAITH, is this model, because it is the source of DIRECTION for every public WORK on the entire GLOBE.]

Corresponding to Françoise Sylvos’s comment to the effect that: ‘[...] parcourir la ville future, c’est développer tous les sujets permettant d’appréhender un projet politique et social’ [to cast one’s gaze over the future city is to elaborate on all those topics which permit comprehension of a social and political project],34 for Enfantin the city presents an organizing spatial model that radiates outwards to encompass the dimensions of the whole planet. For Picon, ‘La pensée de la métropole rejoint le projet d’une sorte de court-circuit entre l’ancien et le nouveau, le Moyen Âge et l’avenir, ou plutôt, sur le modèle de la fusion entre l’Orient et l’Occident, la volonté de favoriser le réinvestissement du présent par le passé’ [[The group’s] thought on

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Figure 1.3. Images associated with Charles Duveyrier’s ‘Travaux Publics — Fêtes’. Clockwise from top: (a) parachutist André-Jacques Garnerin (Ascension aéronautique de Garnerin le 21 septembre 1802); (b) tightrope walker Madame Saqui ( Jean-Alexandre Allais, Madame Saqui, funambule); (c) acrobatics in the troupe of circus impresario Antonio Franconi (D. Leroy, Numéros d’acrobates: J. B. Fabbrini). All images by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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the metropolis maps onto the project of a sort of short-circuit between the old and the new, the Middle Ages and the future, or rather, on the model of the fusion of East and West, the desire to encourage the reinvestment of the present by the past].35 Picon’s comments are suggestive here in relation to the present analysis, for in foregrounding contingent patterns of intersection between past and present, the exotic and the familiar, the modern city, in its teeming variety and diversity, engages the status of the text as a complex construct mediated by tensions of a similar order. As the remainder of this chapter will illustrate, this is a rationale to which Saint-Simonian writers appear to have been alert. In keeping with one notable dimension of the Saint-Simonian vision, namely that desire to hasten the advent of a dynamic new alliance of East and West to which Picon alludes in the citation above, in the text ‘Exposition du Système de la Méditerranée’ [‘Presentation of the System of the Mediterranean’] Michel Chevalier envisages the Mediterranean as the hub for a programme of mass construction of public works and transport infrastructures that would extend outwards in all directions.36 In the following passage from the work, in an instance of what Picon refers to above as a Saint-Simonian ‘pensée de la métropole’, he presents this project in terms of a dynamic concentration of geographical space: Or quand il sera possible de métamorphoser Rouen et le Havre en faubourgs de Paris, quand il sera aisé d’aller non pas un à un, deux à deux, mais en nombreuses caravanes, de Paris à Petersbourg en moitié moins de temps que la masse des voyageurs n’en met habituellement à franchir l’intervalle de Paris à Marseille, quand un voyageur, parti du Havre de grand matin, pourra venir déjeûner à Paris, dîner à Lyon et rejoindre le soir même à Toulon le bateau à vapeur d’Alger ou d’Alexandrie; quand Vienne et Berlin seront beaucoup plus voisins de Paris, qu’aujourd’hui Bordeaux, et que relativement à Paris Constantinople sera tout au plus à la distance actuelle de Brest, de ce jour un immense changement sera survenu dans la constitution du monde; de ce jour ce qui maintenant est une vaste nation, sera une province de moyenne taille.37 [Now, when it will be possible to transform Rouen and Le Havre into suburbs of Paris; when it will be easy to travel not one by one, or two by two, but in numerous caravans from Paris to Petersbourg in half the time required by the masses travelling from Paris to Marseille; when a traveller, who leaves Le Havre in the early morning, could lunch in Paris, dine in Lyon, and in the very same evening reach the steam boat from Toulon to Algiers or Alexandria; when Berlin and Paris will be closer neighbours than Bordeaux is today, and when, relative to Paris, Constantinople will be at the very most at the same distance as Brest is currently, from that day a great change will have come about in the constitution of the world; from that day, what is now a vast nation will be a province of average size.]

At a certain level here Chevalier seems to aspire to effect ‘une mise en ordre esthétique de l’espace géo-politique’ [an aesthetic ordering of geopolitical space] of the kind that Robichon views as symptomatic of the way panoramic displays function to normalize a project of appropriation of new territories through acquainting a mass public with distant landscapes.38 Moreover, the ‘spatial’ idiosyncrasies of this passage — visible in its animated transposition of exotic cities in the place of French regional

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towns — are to a certain extent suggestive also of patterns of contrast and variation that may inform the construction of literary text. As is argued in a later chapter of this book, it is precisely this type of vision of a power extending outwards across the globe that Rimbaud’s prose poem ‘Métropolitain’ [‘Metropolitan’] functions to encode and ultimately to subvert. For the moment, however, it remains to direct our attention to some texts that explore in a more concerted fashion aspects of the Saint-Simonian vision of the metropolis. Michel Chevalier, ‘Le Temple’ In an article for the journal Art History, Ann Lorenz Van Zanten identifies two of the principal elements of utopian architectural representations of the 1830s in France: the palace and the temple.39 As her article shows, the latter of these monuments is an especially prominent figure in the literary and artistic production of the SaintSimonians. Consonant with the contemporary interest among progressives and social radicals in post-Revolutionary France in the affective and social mechanisms of religion, the utopian temple was intended to provide a spiritual setting distinct from the church of Roman Catholicism that would serve to reconstruct social experience and reconcile a divided collectivity with itself.40 As the centrepiece of the Saint-Simonian vision of the future city, the temple was therefore invested with a regenerative purpose, for it would serve both as a device for social cohesion and as a monument celebrating diverse manifestations of human culture and ingenuity throughout history. The Saint-Simonian text which explores this image of the temple in the most coordinated manner is Michel Chevalier’s 1833 poem entitled ‘Le Temple’ [‘The Temple’], reproduced in the appendix to this book. While this is not a prose text, it does demonstrate a novel awareness of the potential of diverse strands of discourse to inf lect poetic writing and is concomitant with an understanding of the poetic text as a sophisticated spatial construct in a manner that is of consequence for our understanding of the factors contributing to the emergence of the modern prose poem. ‘Le Temple’ describes an enormous temple incorporating multiple heterogeneous architectural and organic elements. On a thematic level, the text presents an alliance of technological advance with sensual excitement and exoticism. Its enumeration of a telegraph pole, lightning conductor, lighthouse, gaslights and other technical additions to the edifice artificially stimulate the senses and appear to alter the narrator’s cognitive processes, temporarily overwhelming him. This registers in the ‘electrification’ of the narrator’s language, as may be seen in the recurrent exclamations scattered through the poem.41 In the interior of the temple the narrator glimpses steppes and savannahs, coconut trees and the Imperial Canal of China. Elsewhere, sensual stimuli are foregrounded via the inclusion of exotic motifs, notably in stanza sixteen: here the encounter with Arabs, Chinese, Malays and Tartars is accompanied by coffee, tea, perfumes and feasts. On a formal level, despite one instance in the first verse — ‘faisceaux/nouveau’ — the poem is void of a rhyming structure. The considerable variation in line

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Figure 1.4. Philippe-Joseph Machereau, Cérémonie publique au temple du jardin de Ménilmontant, 1832. By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

and verse length is also a striking feature of the text. Assonance is present in the first verse via the awe-filled ‘o’ sound suggested by ‘colonnes’ and ‘orgue’ as the narrator apprehends the dimensions of this monumental edifice. On a formal level, the text seems primarily concerned with the mechanics of the diverse sensual and visual impressions that support the narrator’s apprehension of the building. The alternations of line and stanza length suggest that the mode of that apprehension is primarily fragmentary. One of the most metrically uniform passages of the poem occurs between stanzas six and eight, where line lengths range between seven, eight and nine syllables. This corresponds to the narrator’s identification of some of the more easily discernible features of the exterior of the structure; these include minarets, the telegraph pole, a lighthouse, towers and pyramids. The restricted line length suggests a pattern of succinct glimpses of each of these features, a point which would appear to be confirmed on a thematic level by the description of ‘le phare / propice au navigateur’. By contrast, line lengths in stanza nine are more expansive, as the poet’s gaze penetrates the part of the structure that lies below ground. Unexpectedly, the movement inside and underground does not correspond either to spatial economy or to a narrowing of viewpoint. Instead a wealth of perspectives is opened up as the narrator’s gaze reveals complex spatial deployments within the edifice’s core; this is suggested lexically in this stanza by the ‘labyrinthes’, ‘carrefours’, and the ‘entrailles’ which are ‘disposées avec un art infini’. Meanwhile,

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the rhythmical potential of alternate variations in line length is explored in stanza twelve, notably in the following passage: les jets d’eau qui rafraîchissent les avenues et les portiques, les parvis et les voûtes; par les pierres et les blocs qui y sont suspendus ou qui le parsèment, par les cristaux taillés et colorés [the fountains which refresh the avenues and the porticos the squares and the vaults; by the blocks which are suspended there or which lie scattered across it, by the hewn and colourful crystals]

In this stanza, the rhythmical effect is underscored by the anaphora of the prep­ ositions ‘par’ and ‘de’. In normal circumstances a preposition serves to indicate the temporal, spatial or logical relationship of its object to the rest of the sentence. However, with the repetition of prepositional phrases in this stanza the link to the clause ‘Le soleil y vit...’ in the preceding stanza is no longer immediate. What results is a kind of parataxis par contrecoup [indirect], according to which the accumulation of prepositions actually isolates each phrase from the main clause, with the effect that successive images are juxtaposed. As the narrator experiences it, the world of the temple seems to be governed by contingency; however the act of repetition achieves a mesmerizing totality of effect which envelops him in the scene. Chevalier’s poem also suggests an intriguing formal resonance with the hypotheses on architecture articulated in the Livre nouveau by Enfantin, notably through its expansion and contraction of the verse line according to the enumeration and accumulation of images by the poetic gaze. Such ‘elasticity’ filters also into the metric structure of the poem, notably through the frequent deployment of imparisyllabic line lengths of seven and nine syllables and eleven and thirteen syllables. This formal peculiarity ref lects a more f lexible attitude to the conventional metric forms of the alexandrine and the octosyllable. Together with the thematic incursion of pastoral motifs into urban scenes, and of that of the vegetal into the architectural, these formal and thematic aspects of the text combine to suggest the potential for new poetic forms to emerge organically around the armature of older variants. On this point, Chevalier’s temple is a fundamentally styleless composite, but at the same time a dynamic synthesis of all possible architectural styles; this much is suggested by the diverse architectural styles conjured up by pyramids, minarets, telegraph poles, by the pointed emphasis on the use of steel, copper, bronze and cast iron for the roof of the building, and by the extremely diverse types of stone evoked in the following fragmentary verse: Cascades couvrant de leur écume les blocs de la Finlande, le granit de l’Altaï, le porphyre du Caucase, le marbre des Pyrénées, le calcaire des Alpes, les basaltes des Cordilières, les monceaux de fer de l’Afrique

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[Waterfalls enveloping with their spray blocks of stone from Finland, Granite from the Altai, porphyry from the Caucasus, marble from the Pyrenees, limestone from the Alps, basalt from the cordillera, iron mounds from Africa]

A similar paradigm seems to inform the writing strategy manifest in Chevalier’s liberal borrowing from diverse literary styles. Utilitarian images (‘terrains chauffés par combustion souterraine’) abut orientalist tropes (‘mystérieux asiles du plaisir’ [...] ‘puits entouré des sables du Sahara’) while expressions belonging to Romantic poetry (‘Là règnent les amours les plus vives et les plus / profondes, etc.’) are set in relief alongside figures from a mystical idiom (‘la vie femelle dans les nerfs du plexus solaire’). Treated in isolation, these elements possess only stock value, but their juxtaposition gives rise to a stylistic tension that dynamizes the text and renders it difficult to characterize according to conventional categories. As will be observed later in this book in relation to the work of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, comparable patterns of fragmentation, juxtaposition and textual indeterminacy inform the formal evolution of the prose poem. In another passage from the Livre nouveau, Chevalier projects a similarly monumental temple: Un temple pile de Volta; un temple bâti d’aimans colossaux, un temple de mélodie et d’harmonie, un temple à travers le mécanisme duquel d’énormes lentilles jetteraient à des instans donnés des f lots de chaleur et de lumière; un temple qui à un instant donné vomirait la lumière et le feu par le gaz; la vie de la terre manifestée dans sa face de mystère par le magnétisme et l’électricité, dans sa pompe par l’éclat des métaux et des tissus, par les cascades merveilleuses, par une pompeuse végétation apparaissant à travers les vitraux du temple; la vie solaire manifestée par la chaleur et la lumière; la vie des hommes manifestée par la musique, par tous les arts, par la profusion des peintures et des sculptures, par les panoramas et dioramas qui réuniraient en un seul point tout l’espace et tout le temps, quelle communion immense! quelle gigantesque moralisation de tout un peuple! (Livre nouveau: 182) [A Voltaic pile temple; a temple built of huge magnets, a temple of melody and harmony, a temple through the mechanism of which enormous lenses would give off waves of heat and light; a temple which, at a particular instant would vomit light and heat by gas; the life of the earth manifested in its mysterious facade by magnetism and electricity, in its pomp by bright metals and fabrics, by wonderful waterfalls, by sumptuous vegetation glimpsed through the stained glass windows of the temple; solar life manifested by heat and light; human life manifested by music, by all the arts, by the abundance of paintings and sculptures, by the panoramas and dioramas which would concentrate all of space and time in a single point, what an immense communion! What a gigantic moralization of a whole people!]

Commenting on this description Picon notes: Tenant à la fois de la cathédrale et du laboratoire, une telle vision évoque aussi pêle-mêle l’opéra, les premières serres chauffantes, ou encore le Nautilus du capitaine Némo. Mais bien qu’elle date de 1832, soit près de dix-neuf ans avant l’ouverture de la première exposition universelle de Londres, l’évocation de

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A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City Michel Chevalier fait surtout penser au Crystal Palace de Joseph Paxton, et plus généralement à l’architecture des expositions de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle avec leurs grandes halles emplies de curiosités naturelles, de machines et d’œuvres d’art.42 [Resembling both a cathedral and a laboratory, [for the present-day reader] this vision also evokes in a confused manner, opera houses, the first glasshouses or even Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. Although it dates from 1832, that is, almost nineteen years before the opening of the first Universal Exhibition in London, Chevalier’s evocation calls to mind Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, and more generally the exhibition architecture of the second half of the nineteenth century with its great halls covered in curiosities drawn from the natural world, machines and works of art].

Picon’s ref lections here could be said to be relevant as much to the text of ‘Le Temple’ as to the above passage. Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of ‘Le Temple’ is the manner in which it appears to anticipate the representational struc­ ture of the Universal Exhibitions. Of the former Saint-Simonians who participated in the design and organization of the Universal Exhibitions, the most prominent was arguably Chevalier himself. Although by the 1850s Chevalier became reconciled to Second Empire bourgeois conservatism, contributing frequently to the Revue des Deux Mondes and the Journal des débats, he remained committed to Saint-Simonian themes of free trade and technological advance. He compiled official reports on the London exhibitions of 1851 and 1862 on behalf of the French government, and in 1867 he was head of the international jury for the Paris exhibition. The tone of these reports is in the main rather colourless and utilitarian, as is that of their accompanying specialist articles on locomotives, metallurgy and industrial machinery; however, Chevalier does offer some useful individual insights. His 1862 report describes the Exhibition as being structured around a principle of visual heterogeneity, such that the spectator’s entrance into the exhibition space reveals a wealth of contrasting perspectives. Intriguingly, the occasional lyrical turn of some passages of these reports recalls Chevalier’s visionary writings of his Saint-Simonian youth.43 In this perspective, it may be useful to consider the following citation from the 1862 report: Ces milliers d’objets différents sont là, rangés en ordre sous des voûtes de verre, à travers lesquelles la lumière se précipite par torrents [...]. Ce sont, par exemple, les matières brutes dans leur nudité et leur simplicité, non loin des produits fabriqués [...]. Ainsi les roches de quartz aurifère de la Californie et de l’Australie, sont à peu de distance de la bijouterie et de l’orfèvrerie la plus habilement ouvragée ou la plus éblouissante, rehaussée dans beaucoup d’échantillons par les ref lets aux milles nuances des pierreries et des perles. [...] Ce sont encore les argiles diverses en opposition avec tant de poteries belles par leur modelé et par leur glacé, plus belles par les couleurs dont on les parsème. Ou bien ce sont des matières sans mérite, ou du moins sans agrément, telles que le sable, la potasse et les oxydes de plomb, non loin des objets éblouissants qui en sont composés, comme ces glaces si grandes, si transparentes d’une eau si pure; ces cristaux mats, blancs ou colorés, ces verres moulés qui se fabriquent à si vil prix maintenant, de manière à permettre au plus modeste ménage de se donner un air de luxe; ou ces pièces de cristal ciselé sur lesquelles un travail ingénieux

A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City

Figure 1.5. L. Breton, La Galérie des Machines, Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867. By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. s’est accumulé au point d’en centupler dix fois la valeur première, ou enfin ces appareils lumineux de phares que la science de Fresnel a démontré si puissants, et que des gouvernements intelligents ont tant multipliés sur les côtes des pays civilisés, pour la sûreté des navigateurs.44 [These thousands of different objects are here, neatly arranged under glass vaults, through which the light rushes in torrents [...]. For instance, there are the raw materials in their bareness and simplicity not far from the manufactured products. [...] Thus, the gold-bearing quartz from California and Australia is not far from the most dazzling and finely worked samples from the jewellers’ and goldsmiths’ exhibits, many of which are enhanced by the intricately nuanced glints of the precious stones and pearls. [...] There are also the many clays which contrast with the beautiful pottery by their shape and their contours and their glacial finish, and which are all the more pretty due to the specks of colour with which they are sprinkled. And there some materials of poor quality, or at least, which are lacking in charm, such as sand, potash and lead oxide, which are placed not far from the dazzling objects which are made from them, such as enormous mirrors as transparent as the purest water; those matt, white or coloured crystals, that moulded glass which is produced so cheaply nowadays, allowing the most modest household to acquire an air of luxury; or those exhibits of polished crystal which have been the object of such intricate labour that they are worth one hundred times their initial value, or indeed the illuminating mechanisms from lighthouses which the science of Fresnel has

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A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City shown to be so powerful, and which judicious governments have placed at so many points on the coasts of civilized countries for the safety of navigators.]

Many of the objects enumerated here are curiously reminiscent of those that adorn the temple of Chevalier’s poem. As Chevalier is aware, the exhibition’s simultaneous presentation of such diverse elements as pottery, sand, mirrors and lighthouses lends a heightened degree of dynamism and contrast to the spectatorial encounter. It is precisely this pattern of viewing which is inf lected in ‘Le Temple’. In consequence, the poem seems to incite its audience to develop a panoramic perspective similar to that of the spectatorial gaze it inscribes, suggesting a pattern of reading catalysed, as we have seen, by the deployment of unconventional rhetorical devices and syntactical idiosyncrasies that create a sense of incompletion and anticipation.45 These features of Chevalier’s text point, for instance, to the dynamizing role that punctuation will assume in the Rimbaldian prose poem. Charles Duveyrier, ‘La Ville nouvelle ou le Paris des Saint-Simoniens’ Chevalier’s text’s concern with intimating sensual excitement and variability of perception is extended in a number of prose tracts and poems by Charles Duveyrier. Duveyrier was responsible for music at the retreat at Ménilmontant and on his shirt he wore the title ‘Poète de Dieu’.46 Duveyrier’s own prose poem dedicated to Enfantin, ‘Au Père!’ [‘To the Father!’] (Livre nouveau: 210–22), presents the leader of the Saint-Simonians as a messianic figure whose ascension to glory is imminent. The narrator of the text portrays himself as a precursor figure who literally clears the way for Enfantin: J’ai fait sonder les mers du gigantesque archipel. J’ai rassemblé comme une nouvelle nation d’Anglais contre les montagnes de la Chine et je leur ai donné le désir de franchir ces montagnes. (Livre nouveau: 211) J’ai fait éclater de merveilleux spectacles à la face de ma terre. J’ai brisé de mon souff le les tempêtes qui rasaient le sol comme des lunes de malheur. J’ai pressé les mamelles des montagnes et j’en ai fait sortir leur lait de feu. J’ai souri en voyant les abîmes, comme des mâchoires de serpents, darder leurs f lots dans l’espace, et j’ai fait glisser sur ces f lots des villes armées aussi sûrement que sur la glace un patineur. Aux entrailles de la terre ferme, j’ai fait plonger l’homme comme un plongeur, et je l’ai fait voler au haut des nuées, vrai vautour! J’ai bâti des palais et des temples, des ponts plus longs que des chaussées, et de fortes machines dont l’âme est de vapeur, les muscles d’acier, les f lancs de fonte, et qui marchent seules. (Livre nouveau: 219) [I have plumbed the seas of the gigantic archipelago. I have gathered people together like a new nation of Englishmen against the mountains of China and I have given them the desire to cross those mountains.] [I have made marvellous spectacles explode against my earth. I smashed with my breath the storms which razed the earth like moons of misfortune. I clasped the breasts of the mountains and released their milk of fire. I smiled as I saw chasms, like serpents’ jaws, darting their waves in space, and I made armed cities coast across these waves with the poise of a skater on ice. Into the entrails of the solid earth, I made man dive like a diver, and I made him f ly higher than

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the cross, a true vulture! I built palaces and temples, bridges which were longer than causeways, and powerful machines with a soul of steam, muscles of steel, f lanks of cast iron and which have a life of their own.]

Here, the prospect of Enfantin’s ascension — and thereby, the realization of the Saint-Simonian utopia — inspires the narrator to re-animate his material sur­ roundings. The introduction of numerous verbs of movement and multiple nouns into the phrase and the narrator’s imagined transformation of earth, sea and sky produce new configurations of sensation, ref lected in the organic motifs of ‘mamelle’ and ‘lait de feu’. However, the poetic gaze strains to assimilate this commotion and never lingers to internalize what is glimpsed, as is seen in the suddenness of the ‘vrai vautour’ and the prolonged description of the quasi-organic machine which ends with the abrupt cadence ‘et qui marchent seules’. In a discussion from the Livre nouveau, Duveyrier complained that contemporary poetry rarefied its objects, and that its contemplative tone set up barriers to sensual immediacy: Notre poésie, soit vers, soit prose, a plutôt quintessencié la matière qu’elle ne l’a énergiquement reproduite dans sa plénitude. [...] Le monde, pour les poètes, a été jusqu’à présent un mannequin revêtu d’un manteau magnifique et diapré de broderies éblouissantes; ils l’ont fait poser, et ils l’ont peint, mais immobile, mais inerte, mais froid, et eux-mêmes pour le peindre, ils se sont mis en manchettes! C’est qu’avec leurs habitudes chrétiennes de méditation, ils ont commencé par l’examiner, et à force de l’étudier, ils n’ont plus trouvé, au moment de le décrire, de fraîcheur d’impressions, de naïveté d’enchantement, d’élans d’inspiration! Ils ont voulu voir ce qu’il y avait dedans et ils ont manqué de passion pour le dehors. Il n’y a que notre foi qui puisse nous remettre au cœur, plus ardent qu’il ne fut jamais, l’enthousiasme de la nature; et pour nous, il ne s’agit plus de l’adorer platoniquement, de célébrer sa régularité, son harmonie, et toutes ses perfections intimes, mais de nous livrer franchement à notre amour pour les beautés dont elle enivre nos sens. C’est alors que nous trouverons une langue vive, étincelante, neuve! (Livre nouveau: 123) [Our poetry, whether it be verse or prose, has made matter into a refined essence rather than reproducing it vigorously in its plenitude. [...] For poets, the world has been until now a mannequin clothed in a magnificent overcoat and variedly coloured in dazzling embroidery; they have made it pose for them and they have painted it, albeit as something motionless, inert and cold, and they have donned oversleeves in order to paint it! This is because with their Christian habits of meditation, they have begun to examine it, and by dint of studying it, they no longer find any freshness of impression, naive enchantment or rush of inspiration at the moment when they undertake to describe it. They have sought to peer inside it and have lacked passion for the exterior. Only faith can restore the enthusiasm for nature to our hearts more passionately than ever; and from our perspective, it is no longer sufficient to make it the object of a platonic love, to celebrate its regularity, its harmony, and all its intimate perfection; rather we must abandon ourselves wholeheartedly to our love for the beauties by which it intoxicates our senses. Only then will we discover a lively, sparkling, new language!]

Duveyrier insists on sensual contact as a point of departure for poetic practice; he

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opines that by moving toward a form of expression constituted by the contact of the senses with the material world, the poet will experience an empathy with his surroundings that is unadulterated by Romantic melancholy and discover new sources of linguistic dynamism. This concern with conveying immediate and uninterrupted sensual and visual stimulation registers in the massively inclusive poetic gaze adopted in Duveyrier’s poems. In addition to the striking thematic impact of the incorporation and dynamic configuration of organic and artificial motifs in the text, Duveyrier’s poetry demonstrates the markedly formal resonance of the latter through their potential to dynamize text structure. A case in point is his prose text ‘La Ville nouvelle ou le Paris des Saint-Simoniens’ [‘The New City or the Paris of the Saint-Simonians’], which features in the appendix to this book. ‘La Ville nouvelle’ marks Duveyrier’s contribution to an 1832 anthology of Romantic literature entitled Le Livre des cent-et-un [The Book of the Hundred and One], designed to relieve the financial misfortunes of a publisher named Ladvocat. Those readers who may have expected an impersonal Benthamite plan for reform of the city or a technical article of the calibre of many of the pieces published in the Saint-Simonian newspaper Le Globe were to be surprised by the tenor of Duveyrier’s piece. This was not least in view of the exalted tropes (‘édifices consacrés aux extases de l’esprit et au délire des sens’ / ‘un temps de réjouissance inimaginable’) mobilized by Duveyrier to describe the future city or the persistent exclamatory utterances that litter the text (‘Paris!’, ‘Parthénon!’, ‘Alhambra!’, ‘Terre!’). In ‘La Ville nouvelle’ Duveyrier seeks to convey the narrator’s assimilation into an aggregate of sensation. To this end, one of the most emblematic figures of this poem (and of Chevalier’s ‘Le Temple’) is the solar plexus. Composed of a network of nerve endings, the solar plexus achieves prominence since it presents a figure of immediate, delocalized sensation. In a pattern similar to that of Chevalier’s poem, in this text rural idyllic images intrude into modern urban features: Le bras droit de la bien-aimée de ma ville est tourné vers les coupoles et les dômes industriels, et sa main repose sur une sphère au sommet de cristal, à la surface enluminée du vert tendre des jeunes gazons, du jaune argenté des blés mûrs, et de toutes les nuances vives que les belles campagnes épanouissent sous les premiers baisers du matin. [My beloved city’s right arm is turned towards the cupolas and the industrial domes, and her hand rests on a crystal-topped sphere whose surface is illuminated with the tender green of thriving lawns, with the silvery yellow of ripe wheat, and with all the lively nuances with which beautiful country scenes burgeon in the first kisses of morning light.]

Here, the collision of pastoral imagery with ‘dômes industriels’ gives rise to a re-organization of experience, and a sensual pleasure conveyed in the ‘nuances vives’ and ‘premiers baisers du matin’. Such rapid change affords surprising visual contrasts and stimulates new configurations of sensation. To this end, the combination of ‘dômes industriels’ — itself a clash suggestive of Renaissance architecture and nineteenth-century industry — with pastoral imagery creates an atmosphere of sensual surprise, giving rise to the linguistic fertility that is indicated by the

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‘nuances vives’. Similarly, the angular and geometric figures which readers might have anticipated from an author who otherwise published in Le Globe are displaced by organic and rounded motifs, including winding streets, curves and wheels. Les places circulaires n’y sont pas plantées de quinconces régulièrement serrés et étouffés; des bouquets d’arbres s’élèvent çà et là comme les touffes d’herbes dans la campagne. [The circular squares are not regularly planted in stif ling, staggered rows; clumps of trees rise up here and there like tufts of grass in the countryside.]

The buildings of the new city ‘s’élèvent en formes arrondies et bossueuses’ [spring up in rounded, squat forms] while the architectural descriptions of the neigh­ bourhood in question make frequent reference to vegetation (‘des champs de plantes grasses’ [fields of luxuriant plants]; ‘des forêts de minces bambous’ [forests of slender bamboos]. Similarly, potentially sterile representations such as that of a timber yard may be expressed in exotic and sensual terms: les troncs des bois durcis dans les eaux tièdes de la Gambie et du f leuve des Amazones sont coupés par tranches comme les chairs d’un fruit fondant. [The tree trunks which have hardened in the warm waters of the Gambia and the Amazon are sliced like the f lesh of a luscious fruit.]

In other instances, fresh sensual analogies are evoked: Ce sera comme une corbeille de f leurs et de fruits, aux formes suaves, aux couleurs tendres; de larges pelouses comme des feuilles les sépareront et fourmilleront de troupes d’enfants comme de grappes d’abeilles. [...] Les rues sont sinueuses comme des anneaux qui s’entrelacent. Les murs sont couchés à terre, fermes et gonf lés comme le turban d’un pacha, ou suspendus en l’air transparents et légers en des tresses de roseaux. Il s’élève du sol des colonnades et des voûtes qui sont semblables à des champs de plantes grasses dont les larges feuilles s’unissent en arceaux massifs, ou à des forêts de minces bambous au sommet desquels reposent des cloches, comme les f leurs sur leur [sic] tiges. [It will be like a basket of f lowers and fruits, with smooth shapes and tender colours; wide lawns like leaves will separate them and will crawl with troupes of children like bees on clusters of f lowers. [...] The streets are sinuous like interlocking rings. The walls slope towards the ground, solid and bloated like a pacha’s turban, or suspended in the air, transparent and light like braids of reeds. Rising from the ground are colonnades and vaults which resemble fields of luxuriant plants whose broad leaves come together in great hoops, or forests of slender bamboos at the summit which sit bells, like f lowers on their stems.]

Here colour, texture and shape are augmented, setting the objects viewed in relief and ref lecting a novel organization of experience. Moreover, exotic motifs such as the ‘plantes grasses’ and ‘minces bambous’ are awarded equal prominence to those of urban reconfiguration. The pattern of heterogeneity culminates in ‘La Ville nouvelle’ in the androgyny of the colossal human figure that reigns over the

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city. This figure is introduced as ‘un homme au bord de ton f leuve’, yet several paragraphs later, the narrator announces ‘MON TEMPLE EST UNE FEMME!’ without any narrative explanation for the emergence of its feminine sexual traits. Hence­forth, the figure combines breasts and a beard, while the buildings that make up its right side resemble ‘les muscles bombés d’un homme vigoureux’, and the stairs around its waist lead upwards through ‘les plis de sa robe entrouverte et agrafée’. As the narrator continues: J’ai tissé sa ceinture de riches bracelets, qui saillent en terrasses damasquinées à jour. C’est là que repose le nouvel orgue, à la voix de cuivre, d’argent et d’airain, dont les mélodies et les harmonies descendent comme une chute d’eau sur le plancher de mon temple, et jaillissent de sa bouche, de ses oreilles, de ses yeux, des intervalles qui séparent les perles de son cou et les tresses de ses cheveux, et des créneaux de son magnifique diadème, semences de vie que ma bien-aimée répand dans la ville et dans le monde. [I wove her belt with rich bracelets which stand out on openwork damascened balconies. There sits the new copper-, silver- and bronze-voiced organ from which melodies and harmonies issue like a waterfall on the f loor of my temple, and gush from its mouth, from its ears, from its eyes, from the gaps which separate the pearls of its neck and the braids of its hair, and from the gaps in its magnificent diadem, the seed of life which my beloved spreads throughout the city and the world.]

Here the sound of the spouting water is conveyed by the sibilant ‘jaillissent de sa bouche’ while the layering of cadences conveys a state of sensory envelopment, culminating in the expressive excess alluded to in the reproductive ‘semences’. As the poem’s abundance of corporeal motifs suggests, Duveyrier was aware of the extent to which the modern urban subject is permanently engaged in the auditory, tactile and visual perception of its shifting environment.47 Within that environment, a vast range of objects compete for the narrator’s gaze. These are glimpsed only in isolation, as in the following segments of phrases, framed by commas: Des milliers de candélabres, groupés en guirlandes autour des places, ou soutenus dans les airs sur des trépieds de cariatides [...] [...] colonnes d’herbes géantes, des grappes de fruits et de fleurs saillent des intervalles; et ces sphères entassées [...] Autour de son vaste corps, jusqu’à sa ceinture, montent en spirale, à travers les vitraux, des galeries qui s’échelonnent [Thousands of candelabras, clustered in garlands around the squares, or suspended in mid-air on tripods of caryatids [...] [...] columns of giant grasses, clusters of fruits and flowers protrude from the gaps; and these heaped spheres [...] Around her vast body, as high as her belt, galleries rise in spirals, through the stained glass windows, spreading out]

Each of the syntactical groupings or ‘interludes’ (shown in italics here) are framed by punctuation, conveying an isolated glimpse. Lexically, the second of these examples draws attention to its own visual distinctiveness by the phrase ‘saillir des intervalles’, suggesting a graphic immediacy of effect of the sort generated by the

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pancarte or the newspaper annonce. Meanwhile, the third example presents the reader with a figure of visual fragmentation. A further formal peculiarity is present in the enumerative interludes throughout the poem: En même temps tous les entrepôts aux vins, aux blés, les marchés et les abattoirs, les grosses usines, les fonderies, les ateliers de construction des mécaniques avec leurs rouages, leurs chaudières et leurs cylindres de fonte, leurs enclumes, leurs marteaux, leurs souff lets et leurs laminoirs, les charpentiers et les forgerons en tête, se lèveront. [At the same time, all the depots holding wine, wheat, markets and abattoirs, large factories, foundries, workshops for the building of machines, with their cog wheels, boilers, and cast iron cylinders, their anvils, hammers, bellows and rolling mills, and their carpenters and ironsmiths forming the vanguard, will rise up.]

The accumulation of nouns bestows a more exhilarating rhythm on the phrase in this instance; and at a more general level, the accompanying expansion of the phrase creates large syntactical blocks which themselves interpose ‘gaps’ in the text, adding another level of variation. Another such strategy is through the repetition of the passage: ‘Mon temple est mon amour vivant [...] ma main de caresse et de charité’. This passage is repeated in its entirety near the end of the text, accompanied by an exclamation mark. The tensions generated by the new configuration of urban and rural features are also active on a stylistic level in the poem. Indeed the narrator’s visual satur­ ation prompts a spontaneous borrowing from diverse registers. In a manner that anticipates the way the prose poem appropriates and redeploys diverse forms of rhetoric, writing in an arid utilitarian mode (‘édifices consacrés au plaisir’) is placed alongside an idiom of divine intervention (‘je ferai de sa large main un vaste entrepôt où la rivière versera la nourriture qui désaltérera sa soif et rassasiera sa faim’), while elsewhere the narrator paints fanciful visions (‘les immenses hôpitaux de la Salpétrière, de Saint-Louis et de l’Hôtel-Dieu, avec leurs ailes et leurs façades; et leurs lits innombrables se lèveront du sol, et marcheront donnant l’exemple’) adjacent to images in the promotional style of the annonce: ‘des aubergistes, des hôteliers et de leurs serviteurs, qui ont le sentiment de l’ordre et de la continuité du service personnel’. The text’s panoramic ambit also encompasses tropes from fantasy literature (‘les jardins aux fruits de neige et de glace’). It is moreover possible to identify tensions internal to these tropes, as in the segment ‘...les monuments semblent descendre d’une grotte invisible, comme les palais de larmes du creux des montagnes, ou monter au ciel en légers cristaux’. Here, the gaze is undecided between a biblical ‘vale of tears’ motif and a description of caves, mountains and crystals in the fantastic mode. Ideology and Surplus In a survey of Saint-Simonian writing of the early 1830s that takes in many aspects of my analysis of the texts under consideration in this chapter, Philippe Régnier argues the following:

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A Saint-Simonian Poetics of the City Rejetant délibérément toute régularité métrique, toute forme canonique, [l’abond­ante production poétique saint-simonienne] signale son caractère poéti­que par une infinité de marques calligraphiques ou typographiques, par de multiples particularités syntaxiques et rythmiques, par toutes sortes de ruptures énonciatives et de jeux sémantiques. Ce qui paraît toutefois la définir essentielle­ment, c’est son opposition à la rhétorique, son refus de la période et de la concaténation propres à l’éloquence à laquelle se plaisent tant la politique, la religion et la philosophie contemporaines [...]. L’éclatement du sujet lyrique observable jusque chez Enfantin [...], les effets d’autonomie, de clôture et d’herméticité produits par le code propre au groupe, atteignent globalement un degré de radicalité sans équivalent même chez les petits romantiques.48 [Deliberately rejecting any metrical regularity or canonical form, [the abundant poetic production of the Saint-Simonians] signals its poetic character by an infi­n ity of calligraphic or typographic marks, by multiple syntactical and rhythmical peculiarities, and by all kinds of enunciative breaks and semantic games. Yet what seems to define it in essence is its opposition to rhetoric, its refusal of the period and concatenation conducive to the kind of eloquence of which politics, philosophy and religion at the time were so fond. [...] The fragmentation of the lyric subject which can be detected even as far as Enfantin [...], the effects of autonomy, closure and hermeticity which are produced by the code specific to the group, together achieve a degree of radicality which is without parallel even among the petits romantiques.]

Régnier goes some way to accounting for the experimental, even ‘radical’ quality, in formal terms, of the Saint-Simonians’ discursive enterprise. Yet no discussion of the texts would be sufficient without setting them in the context of the ideological ends they serve, a factor which at times enters into friction with their pursuit of new horizons of expression and imagination. This ideological ambition, with its implicit dismissal of individual imaginative consciousness, goes some way to explaining the ostensibly scant appeal of such Saint-Simonian visions of the future as a source of inspiration for other creative writers of the period, for, from the point of view of the leader of the movement, the Saint-Simonians’ principal objective was the discovery of new, more persuasive bases for the articulation of their doctrine. This is a point which may be set in context by the following citation from an enseignement by Enfantin delivered at the group’s meeting place, the Salle Taitbout, on 16 December 1831: Souvent nous avons fait des rêves sur le monde futur, nous avons tous imaginé les formes de la société à venir, et ces rêves nous ont été utiles, pour comprendre ce que, dans le moment même, nous avions à faire pour les réaliser. Qui de vous ne s’est pas demandé quelles seraient les cérémonies du CULTE, les chants, les prières, les costumes; comment seraient bâtis les temples et dessinées les villes; en un mot nous nous sommes fait une foule de questions d’ART qui traduisaient notre pensée POLITIQUE et RELIGIEUSE en formes, en sons, en couleurs; car l’artiste dit sa croyance POLITIQUE, écrit sa foi RELIGIEUSE, aussi bien avec des couleurs, des sons et des formes, qu’avec des phrases et des discours. Et cependant ces rêves d’ART ne sont encore que des élucubrations théoriques, et ne nous sont que d’un faible secours dans notre phase pratique; car, éloignés du milieu inspirateur de la forme nouvelle, et plongés au contraire dans un monde d’idées, de choses et d’ÊTRES si différent de l’avenir, nous sommes obligés de créer tout, et le milieu et son symbole.49

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[We have often dreamt of the world of the future, we have all imagined the forms of the coming society, and these dreams have been useful, for the purpose of grasping what is needed in the present moment to realise them. Who amongst you has not wondered what would be the ceremonies of the CULT, the songs, the prayers, the costumes; how the temples would be built and the cities designed; in essence, we have formulated a great many questions of ART which convey our POLITICAL and RELIGIOUS thought in forms, in sounds, in colours; because the artist affirms his POLITICAL belief, writes his RELIGIOUS faith, as much with colours, sounds and forms as with phrases and speeches. Nonetheless, these dreams of ART are yet but theoretical fantasies, and are of little import in our practical phase, because, remote as they are from the inspirational milieu of the new form, and thrust instead into a world of ideas, things, and BEINGS that is so different from the future, we find ourselves compelled to create the whole lot, both the milieu and its symbol.]

As Enfantin argues, whatever exploits aesthetic initiatives may accomplish as a vector of modernization and anticipation are outstripped by the need for a broad recon­f iguration of the symbolic and discursive conventions (‘et le milieu et son symbole’) employed to describe the Saint-Simonian future. In consequence, the imagi­native conceptions of each poetic intervention are, for the purposes of authorial intentionality at least, secondary to a concern over their potential to articulate and elaborate upon the fundamentals of Saint-Simonian doctrine. As Régnier comments on a composition by a certain Margerin which appeared in L’Organisateur on 8 June 1830: Sa prose a beau être disposée en versets, charger les mots-clés d’une accentuation variée au moyen d’italiques ou de petites capitales, abuser d’antithèses et de symétries, frôler sans cesse l’hypotypose par l’usage de présents et d’imparfaits descriptifs, Margerin et son mentor Enfantin parviennent bien moins à l’émotion poétique qu’ils ne demeurent prisonniers de la réf lexion métapoétique.50 [Though his prose may well be set out in biblical versets, laden with keywords which are accented in various ways by means of italics or small capitals, or make use of antitheses and symmetries, or verge on hypothesis through recourse to presents and descriptive imperfects, Margerin and his mentor Enfantin do not so much manage to produce poetic emotion as to remain captive to metaphysical ref lection.]

Régnier’s discussion of the problems of accounting for the ‘poetic’ quality of Margerin’s verse can be further illuminated against the dialectic of ideology and utopia. As Michael Freeden notes, ideology refers to a configuration of political concepts and the specific relations between them; these concepts acquire their significance through a mixture of cultural context, meaning accumulated over time and ‘by means of their particular structural position within a configuration of other political concepts’.51 Ideology can thus be associated with such operations as legitimation, ordering, integration and socialization.52 These operations serve to guide practical, collective action and to codify discursive meaning by placing certain concepts beyond contestation.53 This theory of ideology as the production of decontested meanings transfers well to the Saint-Simonians’ emphasis on the authority

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of their core doctrine, which they sought to elevate to the status of a religious dogma. Returning to Chevalier’s ‘Le Temple’, the visual primacy accorded to the ‘ACADÉMICIENS / BANQUIERS / ARTISTES’ of stanza twenty suggest that the text’s formal innovations are not its author’s main objective. Rather, Chevalier is preoccupied chief ly with integrating the conceptual triumvirate of science, art and industry that underpins the Saint-Simonian world vision. The obscure quasimathematical directions given at the end of the poem also remain at the level of metapoetic discourse. Comparable factors are also a feature of the following passages from Duveyrier’s text ‘Au Père!’: Ta personne est mon vrai étendard, ma f lamme d’espoir, mon VISAGE de paix et de BONTÉ, de BONTÉ INALTÉRABLE, et je veux le dresser sur toute TERRE, afin que les yeux des Pontifes, des Rois et des Nations se lèvent et le voient. (Livre nouveau: 216) Que les tressaillements de ton cœur soient une action de grâce perpétuelle, en contemplant tous les traits du visage de ton Dieu, qui ne t’a encore montré de lui que son ESPRIT. (Livre nouveau: 222) [Your person is my true standard, my f lame of hope, my FACE of pace and MERCY, of UNYIELDING KINDNESS, and I wish to raise it over the whole EARTH, so that Pontiffs, Kings and Nations may raise their eyes and behold it.] [May the trembling of your heart be an act of perpetual grace, as you contemplate every feature of the face of your God, who until now has revealed to you only his MIND.]

As in the passages quoted earlier here, the italicizations and capitalizations signal the introduction of accent into the poetic phrase and are intended to activate the sensual properties of the word: ‘VISAGE’, ‘BONTÉ’, ‘TERRE’, ‘ESPRIT’. However, it is noticeable that the words selected for accentuation are cognitive categories rather than phonemic unities; the organic development of the euphonic potential of the poetic phrase and discrete syntactical modalities is thereby circumscribed. On a semantic level, each phrase always leads the reader back to (or is, at least from the point of view of the producers of this discourse, subsumed under) a prior ideological design which mimics the form of messianic discourse. The aim of this is to expedite the eventual triumph of the Saint-Simonian dogme via that ‘gigantesque moralisation de tout un peuple’ (Livre nouveau: 182) which Chevalier invokes in the description of his ‘temple pile de Volta’.54 This is not to suggest that all Saint-Simonian literature is oriented towards this decontested end and deploys a conciliatory rhetoric. In the Livre nouveau we can find an example of a text which adopts an explicitly polemical posture, attacking contemporary bourgeois mores and the institutions they support. Thus, a text of quite a different character to Duveyrier’s ‘La Ville Nouvelle’ or indeed to his own ‘Le Temple’, is Chevalier’s prose text ‘Il rit, le Bourgeois ...’ [‘He laughs, the Bourgeois’], composed in Ménilmontant in November 1832, and also included in the appendix. Employing an often caustic parler that is quite distinct from the rapturous tones of these other texts, the poem is, furthermore, likely to have

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some rooting in events experienced by Chevalier and his fellow Saint-Simonians as they proselytized on behalf of the movement. In the poem, a Saint-Simonian narrator apostrophizes a bourgeois shopkeeper in the ‘tu’ form, spurning the latter’s curmudgeonly ways and rapacious way of life. Repeated examples of ‘ton’ and ‘ta’ directed at the shopkeeper infer his proprietorial instincts, while the narrator associates him with a kind of latent violence and imagines him burnishing a sword and a rif le. The bourgeois himself sniggers as the narrator and his associated ‘prophètes du Seigneur’ (Saint-Simonian ‘apostles’) pass his shop. A series of negative epithets (‘dédaigneux’, ‘graisseux’, ‘grotesque’ etc.) serve to caricature the bourgeois and intimate his cynicism; meanwhile, the Saint-Simonians are viewed by the bourgeois as ‘crédules’ and identified in terms of ‘simplicité’ and ‘extravagance’. Analysing the vicissitudes of the Saint-Simonian movement, Jacques Rancière makes the following observation: Il y aurait [...] deux manières d’user de l’utopie: une manière utopique qui vise à la substitution d’un non-lieu, à la constitution d’un espace matériellement saturé par l’inscription du sens de la communauté; et une manière hétérotopique où l’utopie sert à constituer des espaces divisés, à varier les perceptions d’un monde, à y faire apparaître un autre, à constituer la scène d’opposition de deux mondes.55 [There would thus seem to be [...] two means of employing utopia: a utopian means which aims to substitute itself for a non-place, and to constitute a space which is saturated materially by the inscription of the community’s meaning; and a heterotopian means according to which utopia serves to constitute divided spaces, to vary perceptions of a world, to make another world appear there, to form the stage where two worlds will be opposed.]

In the context of Rancière’s analysis in this essay, these two means by which utopia may be ‘turned to account’ (the one instituting an illusory, artificial harmony from without, and the other incorporating a power of contestation as its constitutive element) correspond to positions occupied by opposing camps within the SaintSimonian movement. Elaborated upon in much greater depth in his meticulous history of the movement in La Nuit des prolétaires, the two camps can broadly be identified as, on the one hand, the ‘architects’ of the Saint-Simonianism (viz. Enfantin, Chevalier, and other technocratically inclined members of the upper echelons of the Saint-Simonian hierarchy), and, on the other, worker-poets and worker-philosophers who presented an active resistance to the movement’s hierarchical leanings, and worked instead towards more democratic forms of engagement.56 Rancière’s presentation of these tendencies is borne out in broad outline by the historical legacy of Saint-Simonianism, although it perhaps encourages us to overlook degrees of nuance to which close reading of texts such as ‘Il rit, le Bourgeois...’ can alert us. Insofar as the polemical quality of this poem presents a counterpoint to the conciliatory overtures of a text like ‘Le Temple’, it is possible to argue that the tension Rancière identifies as corresponding to the opposed poles of worker-poets and visionary technocrats is in fact internal to the subject position occupied by individuals actively involved in this movement. On the basis of the

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two poems in his name which we have discussed in this chapter, Chevalier’s own position seems dually inf lected by the contrasting forces described in the context of our discussion of utopia and ideology in the introduction to this book: one informed by a posture which seeks to query the given view of reality and another motivated by a desire to secure assent.57 As the bourgeois observes the narrator and the other Saint-Simonians from the entrance to his shop, we read: Quand il les voit sur ses carrefours, sur ses boulevards, il ricane et sa lèvre est dédaigneuse. (my emphasis) [When he sees them on his crossroads, on his boulevards, he sniggers and his sneer is disdainful.]

Thus, unlike the harmonic texture of the city described from a bird’s eye viewpoint by the narrator of Duveyrier’s ‘La Ville nouvelle’, the urban is inscribed in this poem as a divided space, one contested by the opposing forces of the Saint-Simonians and the bourgeoisie, and one in which the narrator is reduced to the level of one passant [passer-by] amongst others. It is in this context that the poem’s denunciation of bourgeois marriage and its objectification of women is staged: ‘Ris, et va le soir étendre auprès du corps frais et poli de la jeune femme que tu as achetée par devant notaire, ton humeur hargneuse et ton sale corps’.58 Heedless of their denunciation of prevailing sexual mores, the bourgeois is seen to retreat to the interior of his shop and his perspective in the text is thus framed by the surroundings of his home and business premises which he guards jealously. From his doorstep, the shopkeeper mocks the Saint-Simonians for naively projecting a future in which his wife would be ‘libre de [le] recevoir dans ses bras’. Perhaps surprisingly, then, although it is very much a product of Saint-Simonian ideology, through this posture of denunciation of generally accepted inequalities, ‘Il rit, le Bourgeois...’ can be seen to be engaged in a form of Rancierian partage du sensible, by adopting a contingent attitude to the forms of perception via which the modes of participation in a common space are established.59 Yet it is hardly the case that the reader who comes to these texts will necessarily internalize their ideological content in the way projected by their producers, and the remainder of this chapter will outline the case for moving beyond a discussion of the explicit meanings they articulate. While the work of scholars such as Philippe Régnier and Carel Lodewijk de Liefde has been extremely effective in eliciting allusions to elements of Saint-Simonian doctrine in, for instance, the poetry of Alfred de Vigny, or in Maxime du Camp’s verse collection Les Chants modernes, it is not the principal objective of this study to identify themes present in SaintSimonian writing in other literature with which it was contemporary.60 As the remainder of this chapter argues, this book is concerned with the way in which the particular textuality of Saint-Simonian writing 61 is constituted in a manner surplus to the explicit concerns of Saint-Simonian doctrine (although it is through the dialectic of utopia and ideology within Saint-Simonianism that such a surplus is produced). Both Freeden and Ricœur emphasize that ideologies produce a surplus of meaning that exceeds the conscious intention or awareness of their authors.62 A

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related understanding is present in the work of Ernst Bloch, who develops the notion of an Überschuss (literally, ‘overshot’) or surplus of ideology, according to which even ideology which serves an oppressive function in the present has a kernel of utopian potential for the future. Bloch illustrates this point by reference to the political concept of the citizen: although this concept emerges with the ascendance to power of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century, it carries with it an emphasis on individual rights and liberties that project beyond simple justification of the institutions and practices of the middle class.63 For Bloch, ideological surplus arises according to the utopian function in the formation of ideology and above this ideology. Thus, great art or great philosophy is not only its time manifested in images and ideas, but it is also the journey of its time and the concerns of its time if it is anything at all, manifested in images and ideas. From this vantage point, it is new for its time. From the vantage point of all times, it is that which is not yet fulfilled.64

What is surplus is (though coincident with ossified decontested meanings), by definition, without form; it has yet to coalesce. The ideological surplus of a given work is thus an unrealized quality, latent within that work, and to be discerned by an illuminating retrospective gaze. With regard to the passages cited from Duveyrier’s ‘Au Père’ above, that poem’s ideological surplus might be perceived in the iconicity of the capitalized words, which hint at an expressivity pushing beyond the boundaries of the semantic meanings those words denote. The graphic immediacy of these letters on the page suggests the possibility of activating modes of reading that are less uniformly linear and subvert syntactical convention, even if this is not the explicit purpose for which Duveyrier may have intended them. Since Saint-Simonian writing attempts to render the expression of ideological content as explicitly and in as controlled a manner as possible, its surplus is arguably located at points of opacity within the text: in typographic arrangements, in the projection of ambiguous, even unresolved figures (like the peculiar prodigious figure combining masculine and feminine traits who provides the image of the Saint-Simonian city),65 or, as suggested in the above citation by Régnier, in the paradoxical hermetic effect it creates for the uninitiated reader by so emphatically encoding doctrinal content. As later discussions of the appropriation of aspects of utopian textuality by the poets Gautier and Rimbaud will show, this writing’s surplus manifests itself, furthermore, at particular sites of démesure: in a verbal proliferation which intimates the dynamism of objects and figures passing through a futuristic cityscape, in the linguistic hyperbole of the narrators of ‘La Ville nouvelle’ or ‘Le Temple’, and in the lavish abundances of descriptive detail which those narrators at every turn project. For this reason, it follows that the ideological surplus of writing by SaintSimonians and members of other utopian movements of this period is brought into relief once it migrates out of the tightly controlled discursive contexts in which it is produced (whether those contexts be in newspapers such as Le Producteur or the curious scribal enterprise of the retraite de Ménilmontant) and instead undergoes re-inscription in the public sphere — in the columns of the mass press, or on posters and placards where it might meet the gaze of the poet-flâneur. Therefore, in many

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respects, the literary experiments of the Saint-Simonians are highly suggestive in relation to those aspects of the prose poem that later chapters of this book will consider in the work of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, not least through their projection of a new poetic form as a dynamic spatial conception catalysed by the diverse forms of tension and opposition it mobilizes and inf lecting the ideological conditions in whose orbit it is produced. In short, the remaining chapters of this book will demonstrate that utopian writing such as that by Chevalier and Duveyrier harbours a remarkably suggestive power, signalling dramatically new poetic potentialities which undergo a more controlled aesthetic formulation in the prose poem. It is hoped that the analyses contained in this chapter will have shown the literature of Saint-Simonianism to be an object of study of some considerable consequence for the particular understanding of the evolution of the prose poem that is set forth in this study. Saint-Simonian writing presents a worthwhile angle of approach to our subject since by the latter half of the nineteenth century the rhetoric of Saint-Simonianism is itself one of those ritualized discourses of social and material transformation which the prose poem acts to appropriate, fragment and redeploy. Indeed, Saint-Simonianism as a political force entered a period of decline from the late 1830s onwards, and a considerable number of erstwhile members of the group such as Chevalier and Duveyrier came to be reconciled to the dominant political powers. Yet, as we have seen in relation to Chevalier’s reports on the Universal Exhibitions, these individuals continued to pursue economic, industrial and other projects that had been their concern during their period as Saint-Simonians, leaving what Pascal Ory calls, ‘un saint-simonisme lénifié, diffus mais d’autant plus opératoire’ [a more mollified form of Saint-Simonianism, and all the more effective for it].66 Recalling a contemporary citation from the introduction to this book, according to which ‘[l’utopie] prend tous les tons, elle parle toutes les langues, s’accommode de toutes les opinions, cherche à s’infiltrer, à s’insinuer, à se glisser’ [[utopia] adopts every tone, speaks every language and adapts to every opinion, attempts to infiltrate itself, to insinuate itself, to worm its way in],67 as early as 1838, Chevalier had begun to anticipate this development, albeit in a more triumphant Saint-Simonian perspective: Le programme de Saint-Simon [...] est maintenant tombé dans le domaine public et a acquis droit de cité. Ce sont des idées qui actuellement se sont fait une case dans le cerveau des hommes les plus capables de notre temps; ce sont celles qui maintenant guident à leur insu, dans leurs actes les plus utiles, les hommes d’état les plus conservateurs comme les plus progressifs.68 [The programme of Saint-Simon [...] has now entered the public domain and become fully established. It his ideas which have taken up a space in the minds of the most capable men of our times; it is these ideas which, unbeknownst to them, and in their most useful actions, guide the most conservative as well as the most progressive statesmen.]

Although their utopian projects were of course evacuated of the contestatory quality invested in them by militant Saint-Simonianism, many former members of the movement were responsible for the newspaper, advertising, credit, exhibition and transport infrastructures which underlay the Second Empire’s wave of

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modernization, inspiring Enfantin to claim with satisfaction at the end of his life that: ‘Nous avons enlacé le globe de nos réseaux’ [We have wound our networks around the globe].69 In this way, what appeared as some of the most visionary elements of the prophetic texts they composed in the 1830s materialized as defining features of the topography of an imperial regime described as ‘Saint-Simon à cheval’ [Saint-Simon on horseback].70 Maintaining awareness of its potential to pervade contemporary practices and representations of the urban, one of the associated aims of the chapters that follow will then be to reveal ways in which the rich and pervasive economy of images and rhetorical figures advanced in Saint-Simonianism are encoded and displaced within the urban itineraries of the prose poem. In fact, a paradoxical development of the critical posture adopted by the prose poem vis-à-vis such rhetorics of social and material transformation is that ‘utopian’ language of the type encountered in this chapter will come to re-assume a dynamizing function once disengaged from any centralized ideological conception in the text. However, before examining this as a concerted strategy of the prose poem in the latter half of this book, the next chapter will attempt to demonstrate ways in which the journalistic prose of Théophile Gautier mobilizes the generative and aestheticizing potency of utopian rhetoric while suspending its subordination to an ideological construct. Notes to Chapter 1 1. Pierre Macherey, ‘Aux sources des rapports sociaux: Bonald, Saint-Simon, Guizot’, Génèses: Sciences sociales et histoire, 9 (Oct 1992), 25–44 (p. 33). 2. Antoine Picon, ‘Les Saint-Simoniens: espace géopolitique et temps historique’, in Actualité du Saint-Simonisme: colloque de Cerisy, ed. by Pierre Musso (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), pp. 321–37 (p. 333). 3. The majority of Saint-Simonians never encountered Saint-Simon himself; however, his initially small following eventually grew to several hundred in the years after 1825. In the period until 1831–32, Saint-Simonianism received its orientation from the teachings of its dual leaders, Barthélémy-Prosper Enfantin and Saint-Amand Bazard. Thereafter the movement split, following a schism which divided Bazard and Enfantin, and which saw the latter assume leadership of the majority of devotees. Enfantin infused Saint-Simonian doctrine with distinctly religious and mystical overtones, and it is principally the version of Saint-Simonianism which developed under his inf luence that will be treated in this chapter. Philippe Régnier provides an extensive list of adherents to the Saint-Simonian movement in his edition of the Livre nouveau des Saint-Simoniens [The New Book of the Saint-Simonians]. See Émile Barrault, Michel Chevalier and others, Le Livre nouveau des Saint-Simoniens, ed. by Philippe Régnier (Tusson: Éditions du Lérot, 1991), pp. 323–34. Future references to this edition of the Livre nouveau des Saint-Simoniens will take the following form: (Livre nouveau: 323–34). 4. Saint-Simon’s admiration for Newton is expressed in his first published work, the Lettres d’un habitant de Genève à ses contemporains [Letters of an inhabitant of Geneva to his contemporaries] of 1802–03. There, he wrote of his desire to open a subscription, symbolically performed before Newton’s tomb, which would be dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and would accord positions of social authority to artists and scientists. The utopian vision contained in the Lettres recalls the architect Étienne Boullée’s 1782 design for a colossal cenotaph to Newton. 5. Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, Œuvres, VI, ITS (Paris: Dentu, 1865–76; repr. Paris: Anthropos, 1966), p. 20. Saint-Simon’s works originally appeared in collected form in the former imprint as the forty-seven volume Œuvres de Saint-Simon et d’Enfantin, précédées de deux notices historiques et publiées par les membres du Conseil institué par Enfantin pour l’exécution de ses dernières volontés

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[Works of Saint-Simon and Enfantin, preceded by two historical notices and published by the members of the Council instituted by Enfantin for the execution of his last will]. The first five volumes of the sixvolume Anthropos publication from 1966 reproduce facsimile vols 15, 18–23 and 37–40 of the Dentu Edition, while the sixth Anthropos volume contains texts which did not appear in Dentu. As the texts which feature in the Anthropos edition often have separate paginations, it will be necessary here to indicate precisely the text referred to in each volume. This will be done by recourse to a system of initials. For example, the text referred to above is the Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIXe siècle; this will henceforth be designated in subsequent references as ‘ITS’. 6. Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, Œuvres, V, Mémoire sur la science de l’homme (Paris: Anthropos, 1966), pp. 285–86. This text will be designated henceforth by the initials MSH. 7. As is hinted by some of the terminologies implied in his sweeping nomenclature of ‘tubes, canaux, conduits ou vaisseaux, n’importe le nom qu’on leur donne’, Saint-Simon’s developing theoretical model suggests parallels with contemporary developments in science. In particular, it is important to note the proximity of his epistemology and the methods and aims of the early physiologists who are cited in the Mémoire sur la science de l’homme: Marie-François Xavier Bichat, Pierre Cabanis and Félix Vicq d’Azyr, all of whom describe the interdependence of organs and reveal the extent of living processes. For further reading on this connection in Saint-Simon’s thought, see Barbara Haines, ‘The Inter-Relations Between Social, Biological and Medical Thought in Saint-Simon and Comte’, British Journal for the History of Science, 11.1 (March 1978), 19–35, and Juliette Grange, Saint-Simon (1760–1825) (Paris: Ellipses, 2005). 8. Haines, p. 26. 9. Haines, p. 29. 10. Grange, pp. 24–25. 11. Doctrine de Saint-Simon. Exposition. Première année, 1829, ed. by Célestin Bouglé and Élie Halévy (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1924), p. 127. 12. Henri Desroche, ‘Notes sur quelques fragments d’Utopie’, Communications, 25 (1976), 128–37 (p. 131). 13. Desroche, p. 132. 14. Doctrine, ed. by Bouglé and Halévy, p. 410. 15. Prosper Enfantin, La Vie éternelle: passé — présent — future (Paris: Pagnerre, 1868), p. 105. 16. Père Enfantin, Lettres sur la vie éternelle, pref. by Antoine Picon (Paris: Corridor bleu, 2004), p. 44. 17. Enfantin, Lettres, pp. 18–19. This citation is from Picon’s preface, entitled ‘La Vie Éternelle au siècle de l’industrie’, pp. 7–32. 18. Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin and Henri de Saint-Simon, Science de l’homme: physiologie religieuse (Paris: Librairie Victor Masson, 1858), pp. 22–23. 19. This is also consistent with the project of a non-transcendent model of religious association which Saint-Simon outlines in his Nouveau Christianisme of 1825 (a work which the reader may consult in volume III of the Anthropos edition of Saint-Simon’s Œuvres). The Nouveau Christianisme describes a terrestrial paradise, a society founded on a principle of organization and optimal communication between its affiliated parts. In elaborating this framework, SaintSimon had from the outset demonstrated a preoccupation with the contemporary evolution of the disciplines of mechanics and hydraulics, and in the early 1800s he participated in a number of canal projects in the Netherlands and Spain; canals, railways and other infrastructures were therefore essential to his project of universal association. In addition, some notable SaintSimonians made major contributions to the establishment of the French railway network and the early plans for the Suez Canal. On this point, Marc Baroli claims that Saint-Simonian journalism was responsible for the introduction of the French public to the benefits of the railway. See Marc Baroli, Le Train dans la littérature française (Paris: Éditions N. M., 1964), p. 1. 20. See Stendhal, D’un nouveau complot contre les industriels suivi de Stendhal et la querelle de l’industrie, ed. by Michel Crouzet ( Jaignes: La Chasse au Snark, 2001). 21. Authors such as A. Cerclet and Philippe Buchez had already demonstrated an interest in the perceived potential of art to shape social cohesion via appeals to sentiment. For these SaintSimonians, man’s aesthetic faculty is developed socially, so it follows that the best type of art is

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that which provides forms of sensual jouissance for the masses. See A. Cerclet, ‘Considérations philosophiques sur la littérature: 1er article’, Le Producteur, 1 (1825), 49–60, and Philippe Buchez, ‘Physiologie: Des termes de passage de la physiologie individuelle à la physiologie sociale’, Le Producteur, 5 (1826), 68–86. For an astute and meticulous treatment of aesthetic thought in SaintSimon and Saint-Simonianism, see Neil McWilliam, Dreams of Happiness: Social Art and the French Left, 1830–1850 (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1993). 22. McWilliam, p. 137. 23. ‘Le Salon’, Le Globe, 12 May 1831. 24. Vanessa Schwarz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (London: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 150–51. 25. François Robichon, ‘Le Panorama, spectacle de l’histoire’, Le Mouvement social, 131 (April–June 1985), 65–86 (p. 83). 26. Antoine Picon, Les Saint-Simoniens: raison, imaginaire, utopie (Paris: Belin, 2002), p. 273. 27. ‘De la poésie telle que nous la concevons’, Le Globe, 3 January 1832. 28. For a summary of the group’s attitudes to versification, see Jean-Michel Gouvard, ‘Le Problème du langage dans Le Livre nouveau des saint-simoniens’, in Études saint-simoniennes, ed. by Philippe Régnier (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2002), pp. 61–92. 29. Picon, Les Saint-Simoniens: raison, imaginaire, utopie, p. 281. 30. Émile Barrault, A Paris! Adieu, Paris, Adieu — Barrière du trône, 15 décembre 1832 (Paris: impr. E. Duverger, 1832), p. 3. 31. Picon, Les Saint-Simoniens: raison, imaginaire, utopie, p. 263. 32. Michel Chevalier, Charles Duveyrier, and others, Religion saint-simonienne: politique industrielle et système de la Méditerranée (Paris: rue Monsigny (Imprimerie d’Éverat), 1832), p. 63. 33. McWilliam, p. 51. 34. Françoise Sylvos, L’Épopée du possible ou l’arc-en-ciel des utopies (1800–1850) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008), p. 184. 35. Picon, Les Saint-Simoniens: raison, imaginaire, utopie, p. 266. 36. For an overview of this Saint-Simonian vision of the union of East and West, see L’Orientalisme des Saint-Simoniens, ed. by Michel Levallois and Sarga Moussa (Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose, 2006). 37. Michel Chevalier, ‘Exposition du Système de la Méditerranée: politique nouvelle’, Le Globe, 12 February 1832; repr. in Michel Chevalier and others, Religion saint-simonienne: Politique industrielle et système de la Méditerranée (Paris: rue Monsigny (Imprimerie d’Éverat), 1832), pp. 132–33. 38. Robichon, p. 83. 39. Ann Lorenz Van Zanten, ‘The Palace and the Temple: Two Utopian Architectural Visions of the 1830s’, Art History, 2.2 ( June 1979), 179–201. 40. For an analysis of the revalorization of religion by nineteenth-century utopian movements, see Michael C. Behrent, ‘The Mystical Body of Society: Religion and Association in NineteenthCentury French Political Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 69.2 (April 2008), 219–45. 41. On this point, Chevalier’s correspondence with Verollot entitled ‘Lettre sur la physiologie’ conveys his interest in the potential of electricity to galvanize those physiological processes that the Saint-Simonians understand as supporting patterns of organization of social life: ‘L’Électricité joue le plus grand rôle dans les orages terrestres: orages, tempêtes, explosions de volcans. L’électricité remue puissamment les nerfs de l’homme. Dans les maladies de la terre, comme dans les crises nerveuses de l’homme, ce doit être comme quelque chose d’une pile de Volta dont l’harmonie est troublée. Certainement, la décomposition que les glandes font subir aux f luides, et au sang en particulier, opération qui se passe toujours en présence des nerfs, doit être un fait analogue, très analogue à l’action galvanique des piles’ [Electricity plays the most important role in terrestrial storms: thunderstorms, storms, volcanic explosions. Electricity powerfully stirs man’s nerves. The sufferings of the earth must be, like man’s nervous crises, akin to a Voltaic pile the harmony of which is disturbed. Without a doubt, the decomposition to which the glands subject f luids, and blood in particular, a process which always occurs in the presence of the nerves, must be analogous to the galvanizing action of batteries]. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms 7641, pp. 204–15 (p. 212). McWilliam is attentive to the socially catalysing metaphor that is supported by Chevalier’s images of electrification in this poem: ‘In Chevalier’s

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temple, the individual is held in a vortex of sound, light and color which solicits a total rendering of individuality and galvanizes the collectivity behind its sacred and secular guides without any recourse to rational persuasion.’ McWilliam, p. 83. 42. Picon, Les Saint-Simoniens: raison, imaginaire, utopie, pp. 273–74. 43. The following citation, for instance, from Chevalier’s report on the 1867 Paris Universal exhibition is couched in a language of universal association that recalls the rhetoric of SaintSimonianism: ‘[Les exposants] sont cependant accourus, poussés par cette force intime, de nos jours si active, qui provoque les peuples à se rapprocher et à se connaître les uns les autres, comme les membres d’une seule et même famille, unis par l’indissoluble lien de communes destinées’ [[The exhibitors] have, however, f locked to the event, driven by that inner force which is so active these days, and which brings people to unite and come to know each other, like the member of a single family, united by the indissoluble bond of common destinies]. Michel Chevalier, Exposition Universelle de 1867: rapports du jury international par Michel Chevalier (Paris: Paul Dupont, 1868), p. 3. 44. Exposition universelle de Londres de 1862: rapports des membres de la section française du jury international sur l’ensemble de l’exposition, ed. by Michel Chevalier (Paris: Napoléon Chaix, 1862), pp. iii–iv. 45. Chevalier’s model reader is one who reads in a spontaneous, un-premeditated manner and seeks to brood over neither the poem’s technical achievements nor its original insights. This is a point which recalls an argument advanced by Prochasson in relation to the extended readership to whom Saint-Simon sought to appeal. Saint-Simon, Prochasson claims, ‘vient donc à adopter la forme même du texte au public à qui il l’adresse prioritairement: les “industriels” ayant peu de temps à consacrer à la lecture, et, de plus, peu habiles dans le maniement des idées générales, celui qui travaille à les atteindre pour les sensibiliser doit faire court’ [thus comes to adopt the very form of the text to the audience to whom it is primarily addressed: since the ‘industrialists’ have little time to devote to reading, and, furthermore, are not well equipped to handle general ideas, the author who strives to reach them in order to heighten their awareness must use short formulations]. Christophe Prochasson, Saint-Simon ou l’anti-Marx: figures du saint-simonisme français, XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris: Perrin, 2005), p. 86. 46. Later a dramatist, Duveyrier composed works such as Clifford le voleur (1835) and Maurice (1839). 47. In this sense, the city of ‘La Ville nouvelle’ departs from the neoclassical and Enlightenment city whose structure was intended as a formal projection of an egalitarian concept of citizenship; in this model the social contract was ref lected in the regular, rational forms of urban space. By contrast, the modern city is secured to more mobile definitions of social subjectivity, as is ref lected in the complex and organic urban images invoked by Duveyrier. As Duveyrier seems to intimate, the subject’s connection to any social system does not occur via voluntary attachment to a series of rational concepts which affirm his affiliation with the polis, but rather through more subtle processes of organic assimilation. For instance, as a feature of the modern urban, advertising aims to fixate the attention of the urban subject through instantaneous sensational appeal. It is perhaps unsurprising to learn that Duveyrier was the founder in 1845 of France’s first agency for newspaper advertisements, the Société générale d’Annonces. As some of our examples from the following analysis will show, Duveyrier’s city is geared towards fostering an affective attachment in the urban subject by recourse to strategies of a similar type to those employed by advertising. These are focused more on the mechanics of visual cognition and sense perception than on the communication of abstract concepts. 48. Philippe Régnier, ‘Comment la poésie est venue aux Saint-Simoniens: origines, motivations et manifestations d’un changement de régime discursif (1829–1833)’, Aux origines du poème en prose français (1750–1850), ed. by Nathalie Vincent-Munnia, Simone Bernard-Griffiths and Robert Pickering (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), pp. 339–52 (p. 351). 49. Barthélémy-Prosper Enfantin and Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, Œuvres de Saint-Simon et d’Enfantin, XVI (Paris: E. Dentu, 1868), pp. 83–84. 50. Régnier, p. 346. 51. Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 4. 52. Freeden, p. 22. 53. Freeden, p. 76.

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54. Philippe Régnier contrasts this vision of the function of literature in Saint-Simonian thought, as providing a form of guidance for society, with the more critical understanding of Benjamin Constant and Stendhal. See ‘Relations concurrentielles entre les réseaux saint-simoniens et le monde littéraire: [accessed 8 August 2011]. 55. Rancière, ‘Sens et usages de l’utopie’, p. 77. 56. See Jacques Rancière, La Nuit des prolétaires (Paris: Hachette, 1981). 57. Thus, alongside the narrator’s vituperation of the shopkeeper, there is a re-emergence of the kind of rapturous language of ‘Le Temple’ in this poem when the narrator refers to the promulgation of Saint-Simonian doctrine as ‘cette grêle de livres que nous avons fait pleuvoir sur le globe, de Stockholm à la Vera-Cruz’. 58. Such anti-bourgeois invective is common in Saint-Simonian doctrine, which also condemns the inheritance of parental wealth. For a discussion of feminist strands within Saint-Simonian thought, see Clare Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984). 59. See Rancière, Le Partage du sensible. 60. For a discussion of Saint-Simonianism’s inf luence on a range of nineteenth-century poets, see Carel Lodewijk de Liefde, Le Saint-Simonisme dans la poésie française entre 1825 et 1865 (Harlem: Drukkerij Amicitia, 1927). A good point of entry to Régnier’s work on the Saint-Simonians is his doctoral thesis: ‘Les Idées et les opinions littéraires des Saint-Simoniens (1825–1835)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Université Paris III, 1983). 61. ...and, in a more selective manner, of the literature of other movements within the tradition of nineteenth-century utopianist thought: Chapters 2 and 4 will engage in brief discussions of Buchezianism and Fourierism in relation to Gautier and Rimbaud respectively. 62. Freeden, p. 108; Ricœur, p. 14. 63. The citoyen, Bloch says, was conceived inversely from the bourgeois ‘as a member of a nonegotistical and therefore imaginary polis’. Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, trans. by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1959; 1995), iii, 932. For a discussion of Bloch’s theorization of ideological surplus, see Douglas Kellner, ‘Ernst Bloch, Utopia and Ideology Critique’, in Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch, ed. by Jamie Owen Daniel and Tom Moylan (London: Verso, 1997), pp. 80–95. 64. Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays, trans. by Frank Mecklenburg and Jack Zipes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 38–39. 65. This is indicative of a pattern within nineteenth-century utopian socialism, following which, as Naomi J. Andrews notes, the androgynous body achieves a privileged status, for it provides an image through which dynamic new ideas about subjectivity receive expression in a manner reaching beyond the boundaries of individual experience: ‘The image of the androgyne, with its indeterminate bodily boundaries and internally divided nature, stands as an embodied alternative to the atomized individual.’ Naomi J. Andrews, ‘Utopian Androgyny: Romantic Socialists Confront Individualism in Nineteenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies, 26 (Summer 2003), 437–57 (p. 439). 66. Pascal Ory, L’Expo universelle (Brussels: Complexe, 1989), p. 10. 67. ‘Aux Ouvriers’, Le Charivari, 10 March 1848. 68. Michel Chevalier, ‘De Saint-Simon et de son école’, Journal des débats, 6 January 1838. 69. Cited in Gaston Pinet, Écrivains et penseurs polytechniciens (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1898), pp. 165–66. 70. Albert Leon Guérard, Napoleon III (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943), p. 214.

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‘Crayonnons à la hâte’: The Modern Urban in the Journalistic Prose of Théophile Gautier In his study Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France, Richard Terdiman argues that the nineteenthcentury newspaper and the department store are organized around a paradigm of ‘disorganized organization’, an ostensibly dislocated rationale of differential presentation of vast quantities of commodified objects and items of information. Terdiman demonstrates that the juxtaposition on the newspaper page of ‘detached, independent, reified, decontextualized “articles” ’ is the product of a pervasive and sophisticated power relation.1 He maintains that the newspaper is typical of modern institutions insofar as the latter are based on ‘a systematic emptying of any logic of connection. They rationalize disjunction; they are organized as disorganization’.2 This chapter will suggest that factors such as those which Terdiman says determine the space of the department store, and, more specifically, that of the newspaper page, also participate in the exploration of new formal poetic potentialities in the journalistic prose of Théophile Gautier. Moreover, it will argue that some of the formalizing strategies that begin to emerge in Gautier’s prose arise from the tension between the ideological formations which underlie the newspaper and other modern institutions and the particular aesthetic demands of poetic discourse. Of the three poets selected for analysis in this study — Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud — Gautier alone did not produce a collection of prose poetry. He is perhaps principally remembered as an adept practitioner of verse art whose skills are most in evidence in the collection Émaux et camées [Enamels and Cameos], but whose persistent foregrounding of an ‘artisanal’ poetic subject and resistant verse forms is evidence of a disavowal of the poetic encounter with modernity. The aim of this chapter, however, is to re-appraise Gautier’s particular contribution to the emergence of a prose poem aesthetic by diverting attention away from the verse and instead towards the poet’s abundant journalistic prose and the diverse aesthetic strategies manifest therein. As Terdiman argues, the discursive fragmentation effected by the spatial disposition of words on the newspaper page ‘overturns the consecrated canons of text structure and coherence which had operated in the period preceding its inception’.3 In keeping with this, the focus of

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this chapter will not be on the generic constitution of the prose poem but on the forging of new aesthetic strategies on the newspaper page, strategies that arguably provided considerable matter for ref lection for practitioners of the prose poem such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Gautier’s feuilletons and travel writings are particularly attentive to the pervasiveness of ideological formations throughout what he called modern ‘civilization’, by which can usually be inferred a disparaging reference to the emergent bourgeois culture of the nineteenth century. For instance, throughout his career, Gautier regularly expressed the fear that the machinery of journalism threatened to ‘freeze out’ the capacity for critical judgment, both explicitly and covertly. Commenting on the fact that his newspaper commissions are generally limited to descriptive travel pieces, in an entry from the Goncourts’ Journal of 6 July 1872 he is reported as saying the following: Il est entendu que dans les voyages, on n’émet pas d’idées. Il ne peut, n’est-ce pas, y être question de progrès, du mérite des femmes, des principes de 89, de toutes les Lapalissades qui font la fortune des gens sérieux. Les voyages, c’est la mise en style des choses mortes, des murailles, des morceaux de nature... Il est bien avéré, encore une fois, que l’homme qui écrit cela, n’a pas d’idées... Oui, oui, c’est une tactique, je la connais, avec cet éloge, ils font de moi, un larbin descriptif.4 [There is an understanding that in travel writing, the author does not express any ideas. It is out of the question, is it not, to make any mention of progress, the merits of women, the principles of 89, or of all those truisms which allow serious-minded people to make their fortune. Travel writing means the giving of style to inanimate things, walls, scraps of still life... once again, it is well known that the man who wrote that has no ideas... Yes, yes, it’s a tactic, in singing my praises they make me a servant to description.]

Gautier’s complaint appears to reside in the notion that the relations determining journalistic writing have reached such a level of obscurity and ubiquity that even unopinionated commentary or innocuous documentation of the external world carry ideological weight. Accordingly, the descriptions contained in an ostensibly harmless travel piece could serve to reproduce and extend pervasive worldviews with which they are contemporary, thereby restricting the critical and poetic voice. Concerns such as these on Gautier’s part go some way to accounting for the near absence of modern material culture and urban features from his verse, as they derive from a wariness of the ‘progressive’ culture with which these phenomena are associated. Where urban themes are present (such as in the poem ‘Nostalgies d’obélisques’ [‘Nostalgia of the obelisks’]), they tend to ref lect a nostalgia for the fixity of the ancient and classical city, implicitly rejecting the modern emphasis on temporal advance. By contrast, descriptions of the city and modern urban subjects inhere in many of Gautier’s journalistic writings; these texts thus present a useful point of departure for this analysis. In this context, I attempt to show how the prose writings are the privileged site for a discussion of how the structural paradigms underlying modern ideological formations are brought to bear on the uncompromising aestheticism with which we associate the Gautier of Émaux et

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camées. Beginning with a statement of Gautier’s early hostility towards prose, this chapter examines how the poet’s disdain for the medium derives from its association with journalism and with progressive political culture. ‘Prose’ thus serves as a strategic negative contrast to the formal and thematic development of Gautier’s verse. There is some irony in the fact that, in spite of his early attacks on the press, Gautier became one of the most notable feuilletonistes of his generation, and that collections of his journalistic prose have been the object of repeated publication since the 1850s.5 Such an apparent discrepancy between the content of the early polemics and the poet’s later practice suggest the need for a re-interrogation of Gautier’s negative characterizations of journalism in his later life, many of which coincide with the development on his part of a more complex attitude to the perceptual and productive modes inhabited by the writer of prose. In an essay on Baudelaire, Gautier wrote of the potential of prose poetry to discover new perceptual modes, ‘[...] à faire voir des objets qui semblent se refuser à toute description, et qui, jusqu’à présent n’avaient pas été réduits par le verbe’ [to allow objects to be seen that do not in any way lend themselves to description, and which, until now had never been reduced by the word].6 Gautier argued that the particular comprehensiveness of aesthetic vision which emerged from the poetry of Baudelaire derived from the latter poet’s formal pursuit of new intensities of impression and sensation; Gautier praises Baudelaire ‘[...] d’avoir fait entrer dans les possibilités du style des séries de choses, de sensations et d’effets innommés par Adam [...]’ [to have brought into the realm of style series of things, sensations and effects which went unnamed by Adam].7 This chapter will suggest that such an aesthetic vision is already present in a limited form in the journalistic prose of Gautier himself as he tentatively explores the expressive potentialities in prose of modern material culture and the metropolis. While his difficulty in reconciling his poetic vision with subjects drawn from the emergent culture of the cities arises from the fact that these subjects present representational difficulties for the Parnassian verse aesthetic, what emerges in many of the other texts under consideration here is a more nuanced, dynamic reappraisal of the relationship between literary form and its object of representation in a modern urban context. As this chapter maintains, Gautier’s journalistic prose texts explore a perceptual experience of dynamic urban phenomena such as train journeys and spectacular displays in a language that aims not to ‘close out’ aspects of these experiences that elude appropriation by conventional rhetorical or poetic means. Moreover, many of those expressive strategies deployed in his prose thereby serve implicitly to intimate underlying potentialities of these phenomena. While the majority of texts considered in this chapter are of a highly descriptive nature, they nonetheless demonstrate acute selfref lexive awareness of their own function in this respect. In order to explore this notion, the following comments by Philippe Hamon in relation to the function of textual description may be helpful: La description, en effet, est toujours le lieu d’inscription des présupposés du texte, le lieu où le texte, d’une part s’embraye sur le déjà-lu encyclopédique ou sur les archives d’une société, le lieu où sont, d’autre part, disposés les indices que le lecteur devra garder présents en mémoire pour sa lecture ultérieure.8

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[Description, indeed, is always the place of inscription of the text’s presuppositions, the place where the text, on the one hand opens onto an encyclopaedic set of literary references encountered once before or onto the archives of a society, the place where, on the other hand, the clues which the reader will have to keep in memory for later reading are set forth.]

Following Hamon, the descriptions contained in Gautier’s journalism demonstrate a keen perception of their own status as lieux d’inscription, and of their capacity to codify on a limited scale pervasive worldviews with which they are contemporary. Placed in the context of Gautier’s poetic vision, the prose excerpts under consideration in this chapter tentatively suggest the need for a more encompassing vision to explore the aesthetic and formal potential of contemporary material culture and the modern urban. The latter half of this chapter will therefore demonstrate Gautier’s exploration of utopian aesthetic and architectural frameworks as a means to elicit such latent potentialities. As Dean de la Motte writes, ‘in the daily paper were (con)fused the ostensibly conf licting discourses of utopian socialism, capitalism, utilitarianism, and aestheticism’,9 and it is precisely this pool of discourses that Gautier’s prose varyingly and wittingly inf lects as it explores the latent potentialities of the modern city and its complex cultural status. Given his status as an apologist of l’art pour l’art [art for art’s sake], Gautier may seem an unlikely choice of commentator on such projects. However, the analysis of his art criticism and other journalism here aims to nuance somewhat his problematic relation to utopian frameworks. In many instances, therefore, Gautier’s prose on the city explicitly mobilizes diverse strands of utopian rhetoric as a means to illuminate latent properties of its object, while deferring its subordination to any secure ideological protocol. Poetry and Prose In another entry to the Goncourts’ Journal of 12 May 1857, Gautier conveys to the authors that ‘il existe chez lui une incertitude sur la prose, sur sa complète réussite, tandis qu’un vers, quand il est bon, est une chose frappée comme une médaille’ [there is an uncertainty in him about prose, about its complete success, while a line of verse, when it is well written, is like a medal which has just been struck].10 Gautier’s ‘uncertainty’ lies in what he sees as a formal imperfection peculiar to prose, which contrasts with the ornamental precision of verse. Comparable concerns inform the negative characterization of prose as the antithesis of ‘pure’ literary or poetic language, contained in the article ‘Utilité de la poésie’ [‘Utility of poetry’]: Tous les utopistes à grand jargon, les économistes saint-simoniens, phalan­ stériens, palingénésiques, mystagogues, et tels autres gâcheurs de néologismes et de mauvais français, auront beau crier à l’inutilité et à la folie contre les poètes, ils n’empêcheront personne de faire rimer amour et jour.11 [All those utopianists so enamoured of jargon; the Saint-Simonian, Phalan­ sterian, Palingenetic, mystagogue economists, and other such utterers of neo­ logisms and poor French deplore hopelessly the uselessness and madness of poets, for they will never prevent anyone from rhyming ‘amour’ (love) and ‘jour’ (day).]

Here, progressive and utopian movements are strongly identified with a strict

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utilitarian outlook that is seen to stif le any assertion of the sovereignty of the work of art in the broad Romantic sense. Gautier expresses deep antagonism towards any effort to systematize aesthetic values consistent with utilitarian criteria or in accordance with the utopian schemes of Saint-Simonianism, Fourierism (designated by the reference to ‘phalanstériens’) or the palingenetic philosophy associated with Pierre-Simon Ballanche. Moreover, in this article the formal opposition of verse and prose is reinscribed within what is intended as a more consequential antagonism of poetry and prose. For Gautier, the colonization of the prose medium by the various utopianist movements represents a significant threat to the practice of poetry. Thus, in addition to designating a discursive medium, ‘prose’ garnered associations with a gamut of progressive, utilitarian and utopian ideologies and with the material world of commerce, as is suggested by a further opposition contained in the article: ‘le bateau à vapeur, c’est la prose; le bateau à voiles, c’est la poésie’.12 Prose corresponds to the world of the steamboat since it is ‘[...] toujours prête à porter ce qu’on veut où l’on veut, avec sûreté et en peu de temps, le tout à bon marché’ [always ready to carry anything anywhere, confidently and rapidly, and at a good price]. Poetry, like the sailboat, is ‘guidé par une intelligence et non par une machine’ [guided by an intelligence and not by a machine]; here poeticity is defined in terms of the deliberate creative intention of the poet (‘intelligence’).13 By contrast, prose, like the steamboat, is the commodified product of anonymous and mechanistic contrivance. The tensions elicited in ‘Utilité de la poésie’ similarly inform Gautier’s argument in his preface Mademoiselle de Maupin of 1835. Although Gautier did not provide a systematic formulation of his adherence to the credo of l’art pour l’art, critics have conventionally gleaned the essence of his aesthetic views from some of the polemical statements contained in the preface. In its defence of aesthetic autonomy, the preface relies heavily on a tactical opposition of modern material and political culture and art. Gautier’s criticisms of the former are supported by examples from the press, urban planning and petty commerce. The preface attacks the press for disseminating the views of moralistic and utilitarian critics and for nourishing what he saw as the philistinism of the bourgeoisie: ‘La lecture des journaux empêche qu’il n’y ait de vrais savants et de vrais artistes; c’est comme un excès quotidien qui vous fait arriver énervé et sans force sur la couche des Muses, ces filles dures et difficiles qui veulent des amants vigoureux et tout neufs’ [The reading of newspapers discourages genuine learning and art; it is like a daily excess which makes you arrive angry and spent on the bed of the Muses, those girls who are tough and hard to please and who desire vigorous young lovers].14 The reading of newspapers is incompatible with the idealism necessary to artistic practice in view of the newspaper’s routine presentation of crass material excess. Gautier’s belief in the need to combat this culture and reassert artistic autonomy is captured in the following passage: Il n’y a de vraiment beau que ce qui ne peut servir à rien; tout ce qui est utile est laid, car c’est l’expression de quelque besoin, et ceux de l’homme sont ignobles et dégoûtants, comme sa pauvre et infirme nature. L’endroit le plus utile d’une maison, ce sont les latrines.15

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[Nothing is truly beautiful unless it cannot be used for anything; everything that is useful is ugly because it is the expression of some need, and those of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, debilitated nature. The most useful place in a house is the latrine.]

Similarly unforgiving criticisms are reserved for contemporary urban utopias, as evidence of the stif ling effect of utilitarianism: L’homme, à qui un cercueil de deux pieds de large sur six de long suffit et au-delà après sa mort, n’a pas besoin dans sa vie de beaucoup plus de place. Un cube creux de sept à huit pieds dans tous les sens, avec un trou pour respirer, une seule alvéole de la ruche, il n’en faut pas plus pour le loger et empêcher qu’il ne lui pleuve sur le dos. [...] Avec cela, il pourra subsister à la lettre. On dit bien qu’on peut vivre avec 25 sous par jour; mais s’empêcher de mourir, ce n’est pas vivre; et je ne vois pas en quoi une ville organisée utilitairement serait plus agréable à habiter que le Père-la-Chaise.16 [Man, for whom a coffin two foot wide and six foot long suffices well after his death scarcely needs more room in life. To house him and keep the rain off his back, little more is needed than a hollow cube, measuring seven or eight feet in each direction, with a hole to breathe through, a single cell in the hive. [...] With that, he will be able to subsist, literally. It is indeed said that it is possible to live for 25 sous a day, but to prevent some from dying doesn’t allow them to live; and I cannot see how it would be more pleasant to live in a town organized along utilitarian principles than in Père-la-Chaise cemetery.]

The idea that what is useful is of necessity ugly and debilitating is typical of the uncompromising aestheticism with which Gautier came to be associated following this preface, and statements such as these go some way to explaining the absence of contemporary objects and themes from his poetry. In the quotation cited earlier in this section, verse emerged, ‘frappée comme une médaille’, as the privileged form capable of resisting the impingement of the new culture of commerce, industry and the press on poetic language. The concerns expressed in the Maupin preface directly inform Gautier’s adoption of a Parnassian aesthetic, notably in the collection Émaux et camées. In his Histoire du Romantisme, he writes: ‘Ce titre, Emaux et camées, exprime le dessein de traiter sous forme restreinte de petits sujets, tantôt sur plaque d’or ou de cuivre avec les vives couleurs de l’émail, tantôt avec la roue du graveur de pierre fines, sur l’agate, la cornaline ou l’onyx’ [This title, Enamels and Cameos, expresses the desire to work small subjects in a constraining form, sometimes on gold or copper plate with the bright colours of enamel, at other times with the engraver’s wheel for precious stones, on agate, cornaline or onyx].17 These many allusions to the art of the lapidary encourage the reader to consider the poems themselves as chiselled precious stones: Chaque pièce devait être un médaillon à enchâsser sur le couvercle d’un coffret, un cachet à porter au doigt, serti dans une bague, quelque chose qui rappelât les empreintes de médailles antiques qu’on voit chez les peintres et les sculpteurs.18 [Every piece had to be a medallion which would be mounted on the lid of a casket, a seal worn on a finger, set in a ring, something which would recall the impression of those ancient medals which we see in the work of painters and sculptors.]

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The thematic orientation of Émaux et camées is thus quite heavily coded and oriented towards the rarefied images of such poems as ‘L’Art’ and ‘Symphonie en blanc majeur’ [‘Symphony in White Major’], divorced from the objects of daily commerce and utility. While the aesthetic stances described in the foregoing paragraphs ref lect some of the principal preoccupations of Gautier’s poetic practice, their polemical force contrasts with the ambivalence of some of the aesthetic positions articulated by the poet in newspaper articles, notably in his journalism of the Second Empire. Those articles, many of which are the subject of comment later in this chapter, reveal a more accommodating attitude to modern material culture and the modern urban. This apparent ‘contamination’ of Gautier’s journalism by the utilitarianism he so despised has already been commented upon to a limited extent.19 Indeed, Gautier’s attacks on the press in the Maupin preface seem ill-advised, given that he went on to become one of the most celebrated journalists of the period spanning the July Monarchy, the Second Republic and the Second Empire, his name regularly appearing in periodicals such as Le Moniteur Universel, La Presse, La Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Musée des familles and others. Gautier, as poet, literally could not exist without the financial support provided by Gautier prosateur, as he wearily relates in the comment to the Goncourt brothers cited earlier and in his poem ‘Après le feuilleton’: Mes colonnes sont alignées Au portique du feuilleton Elles supportent résignées Du journal le pesant fronton Jusqu’à lundi je suis mon maître Au diable chefs-d’œuvre mort-nés! [My columns are aligned / with the portico of the feuilleton / They support, unprotesting / The burdensome pediment of the newspaper // Until Monday I am my own master / To the devil with stillborn masterpieces!]

While Gautier’s journalism may have impinged on his efforts to pursue his poetic craft in a manner untainted by the modern world, our representations of Gautier as journalist owe much to straightforward interpretations of a series of self-projections such as those contained in ‘Après le feuilleton’ and in many of his comments to the Goncourt brothers. The present analysis will submit Gautier’s journalism to more sustained commentary and interrogate and nuance some of his more negative characterizations of his experience of journalistic writing. It has already been argued that his art-critical writing served as a preparatory sketch, a ‘f lexing of the linguistic muscles’ which disciplined the poet for the challenge of writing in verse.20 However, more so than in his art criticism, Gautier’s occasional journalistic pieces and travel writings see him mixing in the crowd and the material reality of his society. Since the subjects treated in these writings — the Universal Exhibitions, the opening of ports, journeys by train — never underwent transposition into verse, they have traditionally been negatively received, if not mostly ignored by critics. Paul Bénichou writes of ‘infidelités à l’art pour l’art’;21 Albert Cassagne describes these pieces in terms of ‘concessions faites à l’industrialisme littéraire’ [concessions

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made to literary industrialism],22 and, more recently, Yann Mortelette remarks of Gautier that ‘si attaché qu’il soit à son indépendance d’esprit, il a sacrifié aux tâches ingrates du journalisme’ [as attached as he may have been to his independence of mind, he sacrificed it to the drudgery of journalism].23 But it is Cassagne who condenses the prevailing critical attitude with the following statement: ‘Le Gautier de La Presse, du Moniteur ou de l’Artiste n’était pas le vrai. Le vrai, c’était celui des Émaux et Camées’ [The Gautier of La Presse, Le Moniteur or L’Artiste was not the real one. The real one was the Gautier of Enamels and Cameos].24 Indeed the tone of many of these pieces is such that Gautier could be seen to court and tacitly support bourgeois public opinion. As Cassagne argues, the lightweight idiom of the mass press contrasted sharply with the difficult aesthetic cultivated by some partisans of l’art pour l’art. In this perspective, journalistic prose was trivial and pandered to public taste: Si l’idée juste manque ou se fait attendre, on se jette dans le faux et dans l’outré, on fait du style à la mode du jour; on suit docilement le va-et-vient de l’opinion; on use adroitement de l’actualité et on f latte le goût du public au lieu de le diriger et de l’élever.25 [If a fitting idea is missing or is slow to come, the writer instead resorts to false claims and indignation, to a style of writing which follows the fashions of the day; the wavering of opinion is respectfully followed; with deftness, items of news are put to use and the writer seeks to f latter the public’s taste rather than guiding and elevating it.]

The texts which this chapter takes as its focus undoubtedly belong to that type of ephemeral prose described by Cassagne; however it remains nonetheless that Gautier possessed an acute awareness of the particular constraints imposed on writing by his occupation, and that in many instances he succeeded in orienting those constraints to creative ends. The present chapter therefore argues that Gautier’s statements concerning the wearying financial necessity of journalism coincide with the development on his part of a more complex attitude to the perceptual and productive modes inhabited by the writer of journalistic prose. Many of the statements collected by the Goncourt brothers continue the repudiation of journalistic and modern material culture with which readers of Gautier were familiar since the Maupin preface. However, in order to elicit the particular ambivalence which appears to be operative in Gautier’s prose, it is important to set some of these assertions relating to his professional activity against other contemporary statements by him which are more exclusively concerned with the aesthetic. Production of the Text Amongst the complaints registered by Gautier concerning the damaging effects of his occupation on writing, some of the most frequent concern the impersonality and urgency which the press medium imposes on writing. In a comment to the Goncourt brothers of 20 January 1857, Gautier laments journalism’s severe limitation of self-expression, which, as noted earlier, resulted in the impersonal and highly descriptive quality of his articles:

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‘Crayonnons à la hâte’ Vraiment, je rougis du métier que je fais! Pour des sommes très modiques qu’il faut que je gagne, parce que sans cela je mourrais de faim, je ne dis que la moitié du quart de ce que je pense... et encore je risque, à chaque phrase, d’être traîné derrière les tribunaux.26 [Really, I am ashamed of my job! For the very modest returns which I require to survive, without which I would die of hunger, I say only a half of a quarter of what I think... and yet I run the risk, with every phrase, of being dragged before the courts.]

Similarly negative characterizations of journalism emerge from the Goncourts’ record of a visit to Gautier’s home on 3 March 1862: Comme nous lui demandons si nous le dérangeons: ‘Pas du tout. Je ne travaille jamais chez moi. Je ne travaille qu’au MONITEUR, à l’imprimerie. On m’imprime à mesure. L’odeur de l’encre de l’imprimerie, il n’y a que cela qui me fasse marcher. Puis il y a cette loi de l’urgence. C’est fatal. Il faut que je livre ma copie. Oui, je ne puis travailler que là... Je ne pourrais maintenant faire un roman que comme cela, c’est qu’en même temps que je le ferais, on m’imprimerait dix lignes par dix lignes... Sur l’épreuve on se juge. Ce qu’on fait devient impersonnel, tandis que la copie, c’est vous, votre main, ça vous tient par des filaments, ce n’est pas dégagé de vous.’27 [When we asked him if we were bothering him, he replied: ‘Not at all. I never work at home. I only work at Le MONITEUR, at the printery. They print me to measure. Only the smell of printer’s ink makes me work. Then there’s the law of urgency. It’s inevitable. I must submit my copy. Yes, I can only work there... Now I could only write a novel in that way, because as I would write it, they would print me off in instalments of ten lines each... One is judged on the proof. What one does becomes impersonal, whereas copy, that’s you, your hand, it attaches itself to you by threads, you cannot cut yourself free from it.’]

Gautier’s remarks depict a mechanical writing process in which the author is parti­ cipative only as a reified component and which is defined principally in terms of the immediacy of composition, as required by editorial deadlines. Moreover, the distinction maintained here between the familiarity and individuality of manuscript and the anonymity of printed proof further his denigration of the impersonality of journalistic writing. However, concomitant with these negative and even despondent representations is a certain pride which Gautier enjoys relative to his facility in producing copy. The ease with which he wrote and the imperfect or incomplete character of his journalistic prose is affirmed in a statement from the Goncourt’s Journal on 3 January 1857: Ça m’a toujours ennuyé d’écrire, et puis, c’est si inutile!... Là, j’écris posément comme un écrivain public... Je ne vais pas vite [...] mais je vais toujours, parce que, voyez-vous, je ne cherche pas le mieux. Un article, une page, c’est une chose de premier coup, c’est un enfant: ou il est, ou il n’est pas. Je ne pense jamais à ce que je vais écrire. Je prends la plume et j’écris.28 [Writing has always bored me, and it’s so useless!... I write calmly like a public writer... I do not do so quickly [...] but constantly, because, you see, I’m not looking for the best. An article or a page is something you do on a first attempt, it’s a child: either it’s enough, or it isn’t. I never think about what I’m going to write. I take a pen and I write.]

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Writing had become a ref lex activity for Gautier, one which received its orientation more from regular, methodical composition than from sporadic blazes of inspiration. As Cassagne notes, this was a characteristic shared by many of those writers who subscribed to the aesthetic of l’art pour l’art.29 What this appears to indicate is that precisely those f laws which Gautier imputes to journalistic writing simultaneously hold the potential to further his own creative preoccupations. Arguably, the disjunc­ tion of authorial subjectivity which he attributes to journalism and the immediacy this imparts on writing may be seen to feed back into aesthetic pursuits. For Gautier, the deliberate attenuation of personal sentiment and the pursuit of exter­iority were essential features of the creative enterprise, as Paolo Tortonese notes: Gautier a cherché la vérité hors de lui-même, loin des impulsions troubles du sentiment et des rigueurs analytiques de la conscience. Il a indiqué un chemin qui s’oppose à l’introspection, il a orienté l’espoir du salut non pas vers le cœur de l’identité individuelle, vers le noyau profond du caractère, mais vers l’extérieur, vers l’expérience des objets, des formes, des matières; vers ce qui se distingue du bruissement intérieur de l’existence.30 [Gautier sought the truth outside of himself, far from the confused impulses of feeling and the analytical rigours of consciousness. He pointed to a path which was incompatible with introspection, he led hopes of redemption away from the kernel of individual identity, and the deep core of character and instead towards the exterior, towards the experience of objects, forms and matters; towards what is distinct from the inner murmur of existence.]

By way of illustration, it may be useful to consider Gautier’s Portrait de Balzac, which originally appeared in an 1858 volume of L’Artiste. Here Gautier concentrates on Balzac’s deliberate dispersal of authorial viewpoint; the author of La Comédie humaine is seen to demonstrate a visionary quality through his apparent capacity to inhabit alternate subjectivities.31 In the long accompanying discussion of Balzac’s compositional method, Gautier places particular emphasis on his reliance on the printed proof as a means to pursue alterity: Sa manière de procéder était celle-ci: quand il avait longtemps porté et vécu un sujet, d’une écriture rapide, heurtée, pochée, presque hiéroglyphique, il traçait une espèce de scénario en quelques pages, qu’il envoyait à l’imprimerie d’où elles revenaient en placards, c’est-à-dire en colonnes isolées au milieu de larges feuilles. Il lisait attentivement ces placards, qui donnaient déjà à son embryon d’œuvre ce caractère impersonnel que n’a pas le manuscrit, et il appliquait à cette ébauche la haute faculté critique qu’il possédait, comme s’il se fût agi d’un autre. [...] Il opérait sur quelque chose; s’approuvant ou se désapprouvant, il maintenait ou corrigeait, mais surtout agitait. Des lignes partant du commencement, du milieu ou de la fin des phrases, se dirigeaient vers les marges, à droite, à gauche, en haut, en bas, conduisant à des développements, à des intercalations, à des incises, à des épithètes, à des adverbes. Au bout de quelques heures de travail on eût dit le bouquet d’un feu d’artifice dessiné par un enfant. Du texte primitif partaient des fusées de style qui éclataient de toutes parts. Puis c’étaient des croix simples, des croix recroisetées comme celles du blason, des étoiles, des soleils, des chiffres arabes ou romains, des lettres grecques ou françaises, tous les signes imaginables de renvoi qui venaient se mêler aux rayures. Des bandes de papier, collées avec des pains à cacheter, piquées avec des épingles, s’ajoutaient

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‘Crayonnons à la hâte’ aux marges insuffisantes, zébrées de lignes en fins caractères pour ménager la place, et pleins elles-mêmes de ratures, car la correction à peine faite était déjà corrigée. Le placard imprimé disparaissait presque au milieu de ce grimoire d’apparence cabalistique, que les typographes se passaient de main en main, ne voulant pas faire chacun plus d’une heure de Balzac.32 [His procedure was the following: once he had borne within him and inhabited a subject for a sufficiently long period, in a rapid, jerky, sketch-like, almost hieroglyphic form of handwriting, he would plot out a kind of scenario over a few pages which he would send to the printers. These would be sent back in the form of galleys, in other words in single columns centred on large sheets of paper. He read these galleys closely; they lent his work in its embryonic stages that impersonal character which handwriting lacks, and he applied his great critical powers to this sketch as if it were the work of someone else. [...] He would set to work on something, giving it his seal of approval or rejecting it; he would retain things as they were or make corrections, but above all he moved about restlessly. Lines sallied forth from the beginning, the middle and the end of sentences, towards the margins, on the right, the left, the top or the bottom, leading to developments, interpolations, asides, epithets, adverbs. After a few hours’ work, the whole thing would resemble the crowning piece in a firework display as drawn by a child. Rockets of style exploding on all sides set out from the primary text. Then there were simple crosses, or crosslets, like those seen on coats of arms, stars, suns, Arabic or Roman numerals, Greek or French letters, every imaginable sign indicating cross reference came to mingle with marks of erasure. Strips of paper which were glued with sealing wax or pricked with pins were added to insufficient margins, and were streaked with lines of slender characters to spare space. These strips were themselves riddled with marks of erasure, for corrections were barely made before they would again be corrected. The printed galley disappeared amidst this arcane, illegible scrawl which quickly changed hands amongst typographers who would do no more than one hour of Balzac at a time.]

On the initial encounter with Balzac’s final proofs, the reader is confronted with a complex visual ensemble that obstructs interpretative recovery, as is suggested by the reference to the ‘grimoire d’apparence cabalistique’ and the ‘quasi-hieroglyphic’ writing. The reified columns of the printed galley or placard are recolonized and redynamized by Balzac’s capricious notes, additions, and deletions. The last are deployed in a seemingly accidental, non-linear manner which contrasts with the regular form of the print. As is suggested by the references to ‘agiter’, ‘feu d’artifice’ and ‘fusée de style’, a dynamic tension is created between the abstract frame of the column and the heterogeneous movement of Balzac’s hastily scripted interventions, based on self-effacement and superimposition. The placard is the site of a complex layering of compositional processes to which Gautier is highly attentive. As the placard struggles to contain Balzac’s manifold editorial impulses, new, discrete spatial entities emerge on attached strips of paper, ‘zébrées de lignes en fin caractères pour ménager la place’. The placard is typical of the kind of dynamic and complex visual ensemble to which Gautier’s prose was highly responsive. His journalistic writing appears to thrive on such sites of animated heterogeneity, and this is but one example of a range of such ‘surfaces’ encountered throughout the visual topography of the

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modern urban; others include train stations, ports and the Universal Exhibition halls. Indeed, Gautier’s particular attentiveness to the formal peculiarities of Balzac’s placards is concomitant with his increasing attentiveness to the printed page of prose as a composite space, a site engendering the kind of hesitations and momentary interpretative confusion he experienced as one of the most eminent observers of the shifting urban topography of Second Empire France. Gautier and the Modern Urban: ‘une confusion pleine d’ordre’ Many of the formalizing strategies developed in the articles which are considered over the pages that follow coincide with the development on Gautier’s part of a complex attitude to the perceptual and productive modes inhabited by the writer of journalistic prose in a modern urban context. Gautier approaches the changing urban environment with a mixture of hesitation and enthusiasm, for there remains a tension between his avowed fascination with structures such as railways and factories and his critique of the coarseness of modern material culture. In the article ‘Plastique de la civilisation’, which appeared in L’Événement on 8 August 1848, he argues that modern utilitarianism has produced ‘une foule de nouveaux objets et de formes imprévues que l’art n’a pas eu le temps d’idéaliser’ [a mass of new objects and unforeseen forms which art has not yet had the time to idealize].33 In his view, the imprecise and provisional quality of the everyday objects and materials of modernity suggested an unrealized formal potential: ‘Notre vie se passe entre des inventions à l’état d’ébauche ou de squelette’ [Our life is spent between skeletal or sketch-life inventions].34 However, alongside these statements of the aesthetically dissatisfying austerity and superficiality of modernity, Gautier’s prose also evokes a contrasting aesthetic pleasure in observing formal transience and renewal. This tension is particularly apparent in his writings on architectural subjects. The piece ‘Le Nouvel Opéra’ [‘The New Opera’] which appeared in Le Moniteur Universel on August 7 1867 describes Gautier’s visit to the building site of Charles Garnier’s new Opera: Un de nos grands plaisirs est de nous promener dans quelque grand édifice en construction ou en ruine, ce qui se ressemble plus qu’on ne croit, à travers les vastes salles dont les plafonds inachevés encadrent des losanges de ciel et les planchers béants font pressentir des abîmes, le long des murs immenses qui attendent leur revêtement, par les couloirs obscurs traversés de jours soudains, et les enchevêtrements de poutres simulant les forêts des cathédrales.35 [One of our great sources of pleasure is to stroll through some great edifice which is either under construction or has fallen into ruins (two states which resemble one another more than is generally thought), through vast rooms whose unfinished ceilings frame lozenges of sky and whose gaping f loors prompt abyssal portents, along huge walls in need of cladding, through dark corridors traversed by sudden rays of light, and the tangle of beams which resemble the roof structure of a cathedral.]

By contrast with the formal closure of a completed construction, the building site or ruin is more satisfying to the poet’s gaze by virtue of its potential to suggest

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prior or future appearance. Indeed, elsewhere, Gautier claims that architecture might f lourish in view of the dislocation of conventional architectural categories by modern mechanics: ‘Il serait étrange que l’architecture, dont on proclame depuis longtemps la décadence et la mort, trouvât dans les constructions qu’occasionnent les chemins de fer le principe de sa renaissance’ [It would be strange if architecture, whose decline and death has been proclaimed for some time already, were to find the principle of its rebirth in the constructions necessitated by railways].36 Elsewhere still, he writes that railway stations, warehouses, factories and exhibition halls ‘ont déjà créé et feront naître encore une foule de formes possibles, inconnues des anciens et à qui l’élégance ne manquera pas autant qu’on veut bien le dire’ [have already created and will again give birth to a mass of possible forms which were unknown to the ancients and which will not be lacking elegance, whatever people say].37 In an article for the Moniteur Universel on the palace hosting the British Universal Exhibition of 1862, he asks: À quel style d’architecture appartient l’édifice? Nous ne saurions le désigner par aucun nom classique. L’industrie moderne a des besoins si imprévus de l’antiquité qu’il faut y satisfaire en dehors des types consacrés. Le palais de l’Exposition internationale est donc de cet ordre que nous appellerons mécanique, en attendant une meilleure dénomination, et qui réunit dans un type commun la gare, la halle et la serre.38 [To what architectural style does the building belong? We are unable to account for it under any classical label. Modern industry has needs that were so little envisaged by Antiquity that they have to be provided for independent of established types. The International Exhibition palace thus belongs to what we will call, until a more satisfying appellation is found, the mechanical order, and it brings together in a single type, the railway station, the covered market and the glasshouse.]

Alongside articulations of a persistent ambivalence over the formal imperfection of ‘mechanical architecture’ and expressions of the fear that individual artistic caprice was threatened by the march of Progress, or, as Martine Lavaud says, ‘par la création collective, anonyme et dévaluée’ [by collective, anonymous and devalued creation],39 Gautier simultaneously suggests that such architecture explores unprecedented aesthetic potentialities. Thus, the designs which held most appeal for Gautier were those which privileged a dynamic interaction of imaginative insight with the seemingly autogenous advances of modern architecture. By way of an example, in his report on an official excursion for the opening of the new harbour in Cherbourg in honour of Louis-Napoléon, we read the following appeal to architects to place the structural formation of the edifice in aesthetic relief: Avec la brique, la fonte, la charpente, quelques chaînes de pierre, il est possible de donner une sorte de beauté aux bâtiments utiles qui sembleraient les plus réfractaires à l’art, non pas en dissimulant, comme on pourrait le croire, leur destination derrière un placage architectural plus ou moins heureux, mais, au contraire, en l’accusant avec netteté, en indiquant bien les organes principaux, et en les prenant pour thème d’ornement. Ainsi, dans l’usine, soignez les cheminées, pensez à la figure qu’elles font sur le ciel au-dessus de la ligne des combles; dans un débarcadère, cherchez une belle courbe de voûte, une arcature

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qui, en satisfaisant aux lois de la statique, contente l’œil en même temps. Entrecroisez, compliquez les nervures, mais ne les cachez pas.40 [With brick, cast iron, framework and a few sets of stones, it is possible to give a kind of beauty to those utilitarian buildings which would seem to be the most resistant to art, not, as one might think, in concealing their purpose behind a felicitous architectural veneer, but rather in making it more evident, in highlighting its principal organs, and in making them the focus of ornamentation. Thus in a factory, treat the chimneys with care, think of the shape they will project against the sky above the roof timbers; on a landing jetty, look for a pretty curving vault, an arcature which is pleasing to the eye, as well as satisfying the laws of statics. Seek to make the ribs interlock and achieve complexity, but do not disguise them.]

As the comments in the foregoing passages suggest, the heterogeneity and mobility of many of the modern urban objects treated in Gautier’s journalistic texts obstruct the familiar, more disciplined modes of visual apprehension which are present, for instance, in Émaux et camées.41 This is apparent in his text ‘Cherbourg: Inauguration du bassin Napoléon’ [‘Cherbourg: Inauguration of the Napoleon Basin’]: Les jeunes formes commencent à crever partout les vieux moules, et l’ancien monde, le monde où nous avons vécu, tombe en ruine: bien qu’à peine ayant atteint l’âge mûr, nous ne sommes plus contemporains de notre époque. Aucune des habitudes de notre jeunesse ne subsiste, et personne ne pense plus aujourd’hui aux choses qui nous passionnaient — Il nous faut étudier tout à nouveau, comme un petit enfant. Nous savions les formes des stances, l’entrelacement des sonnets, le timbre des rythmes; belle affaire, vraiment! Et les organes des machines à vapeur, et le système tubulaire, et les rondelles fusibles, et la surface de chauffe, et les pistons, et les clapets, et les roues à aube, et l’hélice unie, et l’hélice striée? Si nous nous trompons d’un mot, les gamins se moquent de nous. Ne nous en plaignons pas trop: nous sommes à une époque climatérique de l’humanité. Ce siècle marquera dans les annales du monde, et c’est aujourd’hui plus que jamais que le mot du sage: ‘Je vis par curiosité’ a un sens profond. — L’homme pétrit vaillamment sa planète, et qui vivra verra — de grandes choses.42 [Young forms are beginning to shatter old moulds everywhere, and the old world, the world in which we lived, is falling into ruin: although we have barely reached a ripe old age, we can no longer consider ourselves as being of our time. No longer do any of the customs of our youth exist, and no one gives a thought anymore to those things which used to fascinate us — We have to scrutinize everything once more, like a little child. We are familiar with stanza forms, the intertwining of sonnets, the timbre of rhythms, but so what, really? What about the inner workings of steam engines, or tubular steel, fusible washers, heating surfaces, pistons, valves, paddle wheels, plain propellers and striated propellers? If we mistake even one word, the young ones poke fun at us. Let us not complain overly: this is a crucial time in the history of humanity. This century will go down in the records, and today more than ever the wise man’s remark ‘I live out of curiosity’ is laden with meaning. Man is valiantly moulding the planet to his needs, and the future has great things in store.]

This passage sets up an opposition between the conventions of versification and the material culture of modern industry, elucidating a new opposition between

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two kinds of technique: poetic and technico-rational. However, Gautier’s usually uncompromising aestheticism is tempered here by the explicit suggestion of the potential of formal renewal, and also in a tacit manner by the rhythmic enumeration of prosodic figures alongside items of industrial equipment. Despite stating the irreconcilability of these subjects with poetic verse, Gautier acknowledges their aesthetic potential in prose. Similarly, in the early text ‘Un tour en Belgique et en Hollande’ [‘A Journey in Belgium and Holland’], Gautier remarks that the railway ‘n’a rien de pittoresque en lui-même’ [has nothing picturesque in itself ].43 Indeed the stationary steam engine itself is not necessarily aesthetically pleasing, but Gautier is fascinated with the effect of travel at high speed on vision, as can be seen in the following description of a train journey: [Les] arbres fuyaient à droite et à gauche comme une armée en déroute; les clochers disparaissaient et s’envolaient à l’horizon; la terre grise, tigrée de taches blanches, avait l’air d’une immense queue de pintade; les étoiles de la marguerite, les f leurs d’or du colza perdaient leurs formes et hachaient de zébrures diffuses le fond sombre du paysage; les nuages et les vents semblent haleter pour nous suivre.44 [The trees f led from right to left like a routed army; the steeples vanished and took wing on the horizon; the grey earth, with its streaks of white, looked like an enormous guinea-fowl’s tail; star-like daisies and golden rapeseed f lowers lost their shapes and rent the furthest recesses of our vista with faint strokes; the crowds and winds kept pace with us breathlessly, it seemed.]

The effect of speed on the observer visually decomposes his apprehension of the tranquil country backdrop. Smoothness of outline is exchanged for spontaneity of impression and effect, as the layering of cadences suggests. Colour becomes detached from the forms to which it is applied, and instead appears to be f lecked or splashed onto the background in a manner resembling the tail of the guinea fowl. The distinct outlines of the f lowers are blurred and are replaced by bright stripes that intersperse the darker reaches of the landscape. The text ‘Une journée à Londres’ [‘A day in London’] continues this exploration of the reinvigoration of perception in a modern context through its description of the port of London: Outre les steamboats, les vaisseaux à voiles, bricks, goélettes, frégates, depuis le massif trois-mâts jusqu’au simple bateau de pêcheur, jusqu’à la pirogue où deux personnes peuvent à peine se tenir assises, se succèdent sans relâche et sans intervalle: c’est une interminable procession navale, où toutes les nations du monde ont leurs représentants. Tout ça va, vient, descend, remonte, se croise, s’évite avec une confusion pleine d’ordre, et forme le plus prodigieux spectacle qu’il soit donné à un œil humain de contempler, surtout lorsqu’on a le bonheur rare de le voir, comme moi, vivifié et doré par un rayon du soleil.45 [Aside from the steamboats, sailing vessels, brigs, schooners and frigates one after the other follow each other endlessly in an unbroken line, from massive three-masted boats right down to simple fishing vessels or canoes which can barely hold two people seated. It is an interminable naval procession in which every nation in the world has its representatives. The constant coming and going, falling and rising and interactions and deviations of every type amongst these vessels follows a kind of orderly confusion and forms the most immense

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spectacle that a human eye can contemplate, especially when one is fortunate enough to observe it, as I have, enlivened and set in golden light by the rays of the sun.]

Gautier takes manifest aesthetic pleasure in the citation of anglicisms and specialist vocabulary and in the verbal figuration of the spectacle of movement through an enumeration of verbs of movement void of an identifiable subject. His perceptual elation here is unconcealed, and it appears to increase in proportion to his awareness of the urban subject’s auditory, tactile and visual assimilation of its shifting environment. In ‘Cherbourg: inauguration du Bassin Napoléon’ he explores further linguistically dynamic responses to such animated scenes: Tout le bassin était rempli de navires, de pyroscaphes, de barques pavoisées, de canots pressés en apparence à ne pouvoir se remuer. Une légère brise faisait palpiter les f lammes et les banderoles de toutes couleurs; les cheminées des bateaux à vapeur dégorgeaient leur fumée blanche ou noire; les cordages, les vergues, les antennes s’entre-croisaient en fils menus comme les hachures d’un dessin, et par interstices, l’eau brillait entre les embarcations comme un miroir brisé en un million de morceaux. Sur le quai circulait à pas lents une foule compacte; mais la mer n’était pas moins peuplée que la terre; les steamers qui d’instant en instant partaient pour la rade, où stationnait la f lotte, s’enfonçaient et penchaient sous le poids des passagers; les tambours des roues, la passerelle d’observation étaient chargés de monde; pour occuper moins de place, les voyageurs se tenaient debout, il y en avait jusque sur le plat bord; à peine si le pilote avait les bras libres pour faire tourner la roue du gouvernail. En certaines circonstances, la compressibilité de la foule est un phénomène vraiment incompréhensible: elle renverse, les jours de fête, l’axiome: ‘le contenant doit être plus grand que le contenu’; on n’a pas idée d’une agglomération pareille.46 [The whole basin was filled with ships, steamships, small crafts decked out with f lags, all so tightly pack together that they seemed unable to move. A light breeze caused the f lames and motley banners to shiver; the steamboats’ smokestacks poured out black or white smoke; the rigging, the yards and the lateen sails interlaced with one another via delicate lines like the hatching in a technical drawing, and for brief moments, the water could be glimpsed glistening between the craft, like a mirror shattered into a thousand pieces. A dense crowd moved slowly along the quay; but the sea was no less filled with people than the land; the steamers which departed every few moments for the harbour where the f leet was moored, subsided and tilted under the weight of the passengers; the drums of the wheels and the observation gangway were weighed down with people; in order to take up less space, the travellers remained standing, with some even on the gunwale; the pilot scarcely had sufficient room to turn the rudder wheel. In some instances, the compressibility of the crowd is a phenomenon truly beyond comprehension; on fairground days, it invalidates the axiom according to which ‘the container must be greater than the content’; such density of numbers is beyond anyone’s grasp.]

The unfettered expansion of perspective and blurring of contours displaces the human crowd which appears to strain to remain within the scene, just as the observing Gautier struggles to delimit those objects present to his gaze. The recurrence of the imperfect tense conveys contemporaneousness and general animation, blurring distinctions between any of the privileged elements. This is

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borne out by the visual fragmentation suggested by the ‘miroir brisé’, ‘interstices’ and ‘hachures’. Sensual and visual collision is suggested by the alternation of white and black smoke, verbs of action and the proliferation of nouns. These various techniques seem intended to intimate the commotion and formal f lux of the port scene. Gautier next describes his appreciation as his own ship, the Éclair, negotiates the turmoil of the harbour: La Compagnie du chemin de fer avait frété gracieusement pour ses hôtes l’Éclair, bateau à vapeur bien baptisé, car il fait la traversée de Cherbourg au Havre en quatre heures cinquante minutes. Il portait un pavillon avec ce mot: OUEST, en grandes lettres noires, et ne faisait qu’aller et venir, menant les invités sur tous les points où il y avait quelque chose à voir. On ne saurait imaginer avec quelle prestesse de dorade frétillant de la queue l’Éclair se glissait parmi ce tumulte de navires, les uns rentrant, les autres sortant, tous se croisant et se frôlant. Quelle sûreté de manœuvres! Quelle promptitude à virer, à battre avant, à battre arrière pour éviter les abordages, pour ne pas couper en deux un canot trop hardi! Les aubes, les hélices, les rames, les proues brassaient, tordaient, fouettaient, coupaient l’eau de cent façons; l’écume des remous blanchissait le granit des quais et festonnait le cuivre des coques. C’était un clapotement joyeux, un chœur confus de cent mille voix que perçaient les cris stridents des mousses traduisant les ordres des capitaines, et que dominait de temps à autre la basse des canons de la rade exécutant quelque salve à grand orchestre. [...] Lorsque nous eûmes dépassé le goulet du bassin et que la houle plus large de la rade vint balancer notre bateau, nous ne pûmes nous empêcher de pousser un cri d’admiration, grave infraction aux règles du dandysme, car admirer, c’est montrer soi inférieur: mais nous ne sommes pas un dandy; devant nous se déroulait un spectacle merveilleux!47 [On behalf of its patrons, the railway company had the courtesy to charter a steamship appropriately named the Éclair, for it had crossed from Cherbourg to Le Havre in four hours fifty minutes. It sported a f lag on which the word OUEST could be read in large black letters, and came and went continuously, bringing the guests to any spot where there was something to see. It is difficult to conceive of the sprightliness with which the Éclair, like a sea bream thrashing its tail, snaked through the chaotic mass of ships, some of them returning, others departing, every one of them passing and brushing against the next. How poised the ship’s manoeuvres were! How swiftly it could turn, advance and retreat in order to avoid collisions or so as not to cut in two a rather reckless canoe! The blades, propellers, oars and prows churned, tossed, whisked and slit the water in a hundred different ways; the foam rising off the swirls blanketed the granite keys in white and decorated the copper hulls. There was a joyful swish-swash, a muddled chorus of a hundred thousand voices which was ruptured by the piercing cry of the ships’ boys as they conveyed captains’ orders, and drowned out every few moments by the double bass of the canons on the harbour as they fired some salvo of orchestral magnitude. [...] Once we had left behind the dock entrance and felt the heavier swell of the harbour cause our boat to pitch, we could not refrain from letting out a shout of admiration. Such behaviour is a grave violation of the laws of dandyism, because to admire is to show oneself to be inferior; but we are not a dandy, and before us a marvellous spectacle was taking place!]

Here the lyrical charge seems implicitly linked to the poet’s sensual exhilaration

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as he observes the activity within the harbour. Nouns of noise and sound are promoted: ‘cris’, ‘clapotement’ and ‘chœur’, while the recurrent exclamation points terminating each phrase, prepare for the poet’s own shout of admiration in an unmitigated sensational response to the scene. Indeed, Gautier explicitly states that his reaction is at odds with the attitude of the dandy, a social type with which he may have been more likely to be associated. If, as Baudelaire noted in a celebrated essay, the dandy enjoys ‘le plaisir d’étonner et la satisfaction orgueilleuse de ne jamais être étonné’ [the pleasure of astounding others and the proud satisfaction of never being astounded] (ŒC, II: 710; my emphasis), the poetic subjectivity emerging from these texts by Gautier is defined principally by ecstatic, visionary qualities and a pursuit of new configurations of sensation in language that anticipates the prose poems of Rimbaud.48 In The Writing of Melancholy, Ross Chambers disputes the validity of the posture of unyielding aestheticism adopted by Gautier in Émaux et camées. For Chambers, these poems are marked by a vain endeavour to suppress any textual indices of the modern context in which they are produced, and thereby to hermetically seal poetic subjectivity in an artisanal conception. The poem is therefore proffered ‘as an act of fabrication, just as that fabrication is presented as the product of a subject — of a subject that is readable only through that fabrication’.49 Yet what we see in this prose passage, and in many other examples in this chapter, is an attempt not to quell the persistence of the modern, but deliberately to amplify exposure to it. As the following pages will argue, in these prose texts Gautier can be seen to move precisely towards a conception of writing subjectivity as inf lected by, and therefore alternately legible through, the heterogeneous discursive strands which are brought to bear upon it. ‘Rêves de pierre, rêves de fer’: Gautier at the Universal Exhibitions The massively comprehensive formalizing patterns developed by Gautier in the texts considered thus far recall to some extent the representational structure based on juxtaposition and sensational impact common to the modern institutions analysed by Terdiman in Discourse/Counter-discourse. As Terdiman argues in the case of the newspaper, such paradigms served a tacit ideological function, that of ‘[schooling] readers to the neutralization of any active perception of contradiction’.50 However, Gautier’s texts arguably ref lect a heightened awareness that such apparently haphazard processes of social mystification are controlled and mediated by a complex network of ideological relations. This time directing attention to his feuilletons on the Universal Exhibitions, the present section argues that Gautier demonstrates a willingness to problematize these relations through a more direct interrogation of the representational challenges posed by the individual’s perception of dynamic visual heterogeneity, one which is arguably more successful in this perspective than another contemporary text on the Universal Exhibition of 1867, Victor Hugo’s ‘Paris’.51 Like Michel Chevalier, Gautier was one of the most senior reporters on both the French and British Universal Exhibitions, and the descriptions contained in his reports on these events reveal a heightened awareness of their functionalist inspiration. His writings on the Exhibitions are particularly

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attentive to the relations determining exhibition space: by reference to machines, railways and shrinking national boundaries, his texts implicitly acknowledge that the Exhibitions define and represent the kind of progressive cultural dynamic to which he was assumed to be opposed ever since his critical preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin. As the present chapter maintains, this apparent change of attitude in his journalistic prose does not derive from capitulation to the ideological conditions of the Second Empire, but may rather be attributed to Gautier’s acute awareness of the challenges facing poetic discourse as a means of representing modern life. On a formal level Gautier’s texts are sensitive to the impact of those effects of juxtaposition and sensual immediacy which the representational structure of the Exhibitions attempts to trigger in the spectator. For instance, the text ‘Exposition de Londres’ [‘London Exhibition’] on the 1862 British Universal Exhibition is attentive to the ‘effets de lumière tout à fait magiques’ [altogether magical lighting effects] created by the enormous glazed domes of the Exhibition palace.52 The text records the preparations for the Exhibition’s opening ceremony, and draws attention to its own urgency of composition: ‘En attendant que le grand cortège arrive, crayonnons à la hâte l’aspect général de la grande nef où l’ouverture solennelle de l’Exposition universelle doit avoir lieu’ [As we wait for the grand cortège to arrive, let us sketch quickly the general appearance of the great nave where the solemn opening of the Universal Exhibition must take place].53 A more detailed description follows: Une incroyable activité régnait à l’intérieur du palais. Partout retentissaient les marteaux, s’ouvraient les caisses, se démaillotaient les objets fragiles, s’ajustaient les pièces, se dressaient les montres, se tapissaient les estrades, s’habillaient de percaline rouge les barrières séparatives, se déroulaient les bandes d’étoffe, que devait fouler la procession de la cour; se croisaient, comme à la tour de Babel, des dialogues polyglottes où la réplique ne comprenait pas la demande, et réciproquement [...].54 [The interior of the palace was a hive of activity of an incredible kind. On every side, hammers pounded, boxes were thrown wide, fragile objects were removed from their packaging, exhibits were fitted together, stalls were set up, platforms were laid down, separating barriers were bedecked with red percaline and strips of fabric were unfurled on which members of the court procession would later tread. Just as in the Tower of Babel, conversations in many languages overlapped, and both questions and answers were lost in translation.]

As the multiplication of passive ref lexives here indicates, the sensational impact of the exhibition structure is based on generalized animation and on a Babel-like interpretative obscurity. Like the earlier description of the tumultuous London port where ‘toutes les nations du monde ont leurs représentants’,55 the exhibition space is here staged as one of cosmopolitan interaction. Together, these paradigms underpin what Benjamin would later term the ‘phantasmagoria’ of consumer distraction and glorification of commodity exchange value.56 Later, Gautier’s description of his exit from the palace is responsive to the continuity of the structure of the Exhibition palace with that of the modern urban topography more generally: Au dehors était un éblouissant tumulte d’équipages, de cabs, de patent safety, d’omnibus et autres véhicules, car les Anglais, ordinairement silencieux,

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manifestent leur joie par la rapidité; le cheval est chargé d’exprimer une partie de leur entrain. À travers la bagarre circulaient les hommes-affiches annonçant les choses du monde les plus saugrenues, et assis à l’envers sur un dog-cart lancé à toute vitesse, un petit être contrefait jetait au vent distributeur des poignées de prospectus jaunes. Partout le mot exhibition se découpait en lettres énormes, et les drapeaux de toutes les nations f lottaient aux fenêtres. [Outside was a dazzling tumult of crew, cabs, conveyances displaying the words ‘patent safety’, omnibuses and other vehicles, for the English, who are in normal circumstances a reserved people, express their joy through speed; the task of conveying some of this enthusiasm falls to horses. Sandwich-board men moved through the fray announcing the most ludicrous things in the world, and sitting facing backwards on a fast-moving dogcart, a small deformed child tossed into the wind handfuls of yellow leaf lets. On all sides, the word exhibition stood out in huge letters, and the f lags of every nation in the world f luttered at the windows.]

Here, the noisy agitation of the scene filters into the motion of the text, both via the rhythmical promotion of anglicisms — ‘cabs’, ‘patent safety’, ‘dog-cart’ — and via an attentiveness to the detachment of linguistic signs from their referents, through the motion of the ‘hommes-affiches’, as well as that of the yellow prospectuses thrown to the wind, and through the ubiquity and visual prominence of the word ‘Exhibition’ (that concept now elevated to an organizing principle within the text). Despite the apparent inclusiveness of the panoramic gaze imparted by the Universal Exhibitions, passages from these texts nevertheless contain tacit indications that the exhibitional gaze does not map directly onto the massively comprehensive aesthetic vision elsewhere pursued by Gautier. This is ref lected in Gautier’s descriptions of some of the displays, which diverge from those of Michel Chevalier. Chevalier’s reports adopt a disparaging attitude towards the oriental handcrafts, on the grounds that they do not rely on modern materials such as iron and mechanical production processes, explicitly suggesting that such objects are peripheral to the Exhibition’s drive for technological advance.57 By contrast, Gautier’s texts reveal a distinct enthrallment with the same objects; his descriptions emphasize the recourse to ornamentation in Indian design, which distracts the viewer from the function of objects such as saddles and pieces of armour: Le luxe indien [...] fait des robes couleur du temps, couleur du soleil, couleur de la lune; métaux, f leurs, pierreries, ref lets, rayons, éclairs, il mélange tout sur sa palette incandescente. [...] Il ne dédaigne rien, pas même le clinquant, pourvu qu’il jette son éclair; pas même le cristal, pourvu qu’il jette son feu. Il faut qu’à tout prix il brille, il étincelle, il reluise, qu’il élance des rayons prismatiques, qu’il soit f lamboyant, éblouissant, phosphorescent.58 [Luxury Indian taste [...] produces dresses in colours suggestive of every kind of weather, as well as of sunlight and moonlight; metals, f lowers, precious stones, ref lections, sunbeams and f lashes of lightning are all combined on its glowing artist’s palette. [...] It rejects nothing, not even what is garish, provided that it brings a spark to the creation; not even crystal, provided that it adds fire. The result absolutely must glitter, sparkle, gleam, shimmer in bright spectral colours; it must be blazing, dazzling and luminous.]

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‘Il ne dédaigne rien, pas même le clinquant’: to Gautier, these examples of ornamentation suggest an indiscriminate comprehensiveness of aesthetic vision, geared to capture and involve the viewer’s gaze. Here, the dynamic alteration of colour, texture and shade that is present in the display prompts a conspicuous layering of verbs and adjectives of luminosity and movement, conveying the immediacy of the spectatorial encounter. It is worth noting that comparable aestheticizing patterns to those which redeem the Indian silks for the poetic gaze emerge in the prose of a passage from an article by Gautier following a visit to an industrial exhibition for the Musée des familles in July 1844: Ce qui doit tout d’abord préoccuper le penseur dans une exposition de l’industrie au dix-neuvième siècle, c’est la salle des machines [...] nous étions face-à-face avec l’avenir du monde. Ces roues aux dents acérées, ces tubes contournés en spirales, ces chaudières aux f lancs en sueur, ces fourneaux haletants, ces poulies, ces engrenages, ces turbines, toutes ces machines mystérieuses et compliquées, étincelantes d’acier et de cuivre, dans le ventre desquelles on entend des bruits formidables de contrepoids, de leviers, nous paraissaient douées de vie et d’intelligence.59 [At an industrial exhibition, it is the machines exhibit which ought to capture the attention of the thinking person. [...] We were face to face with the future of the world. There were wheels with pointed teeth, elaborate spiral tubes, sweltering boilers, gasping furnaces, pulleys, gears and turbines. All these complicated and mysterious machines which glistened with steel and copper, and from whose bellies could be heard fearsome noises produced by counter­ weights and levers, seemed to us to be endowed with life and intelligence.]

The dynamism and internal complexity displayed by the machines here hinders succinct visual appropriation. The machines present Gautier with an open spatial structure that contrasts with the keepsakes, chiselled materials and immobile human figures that are the recurrent subjects of Émaux et camées. Such objects are neatly delimited in the Parnassian verse line; here instead Gautier exploits the expansiveness of cadence, introducing movement and animation. The objective is ultimately not meticulous delimitation but combination of multiple fragmentary glimpses and aural impressions that convey the indeterminacy of the objects and spaces present to the poet’s gaze. The inherent heterogeneity and topographical instability of the latter obstruct familiar interpretative modes, yet as the reference to ‘fourneaux haletants’ in this citation implies, breathlessness and exhilaration accompany the resulting re-invigoration of perception. Gautier’s prose conveys an unhewn immediacy of impression that contrasts with the sharply defined poetic images of his verse. He adopts strategies that anticipate movement and change and attend to what occurs on the edge of the subject’s field of vision, as is apparent from the report of his visit to the Indian pavilion at the Great Exhibition in London: Si nous disions que nous n’avons pas jeté un seul coup d’œil sur le reste de l’exposition, nous attirerions sur notre tête le mépris des industriels, des négociants, des utilitaires de toutes sortes. Telle est cependant la vérité. Nous avons passé sans un regard à travers ce troupeau de monstres de cuivre et d’acier, mastodontes et mammouths de l’industrie, qui agitent leurs bras tronqués, soupirent avec leurs poumons de fer et semblent emprunter à la

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vapeur l’inquiétude et la respiration de la vie, dans cette agitation furieuse et froide qui ne connaît pas la fatigue, activité de la matière qu’on peut pousser à toute outrance sans manquer aux saintes lois de la pitié, car la matière s’use et ne souffre pas. Les bobines tournaient comme des danseuses ivres, disparaissaient dans l’éblouissement de leur rapidité. Les pistons levaient et laissaient retomber leurs moignons avec un han plaintif, comme des bûcherons fendant un tronc de chêne; les poulies folles faisaient claquer leurs lanières de cuir et de guttapercha; les roues crénelées se mordaient à belles dents, les laminoirs se frôlaient en siff lant, les soupapes clappaient de la langue, les ressorts faisaient jouer leurs nerfs et leurs détentes; tous ces esclaves métalliques et plutoniens inventés par le génie de l’homme travaillaient à qui mieux mieux sur notre passage. [...].60 [If we were to say that we had not so much as glanced at the rest of the exhibition, we would draw the scorn of the industrialists, the wholesalers and practically minded people of all kinds. Such is the truth, however. We did not cast a single glance over that herd of monsters made of copper and steel, those mastodons and mammoths of industry, which brandish their trunked arms, sigh with iron lungs, seem filled with the anxiety of life, and sustain themselves by inhaling steam, in a tirelessly frenetic yet passionless sort of agitation, a set of actions which can be pushed to great excesses without infringing on the sacred law of pity, for matter does not suffer as it deteriorates. The pistons raised and lowered their stump-like limbs with a plaintive grunt, kin to woodcutters splitting the trunk of an oak tree; the erratic pulleys caused their leather and gutta-percha straps to snap; the jagged cogwheels bared their teeth against each other; the rolling mills whistled as they brushed against each other; the valves clicked their tongues, the springs added to the sound with their contractions and releases. As we passed, all these abominable metallic slaves brought into the world by the genius of man were at work, each one more deafening than the next.]

Gautier initially states that he ignored the machines on display at the Exhibition, but then goes on to give a remarkably detailed and parodic description of them. This parodic device has a distancing effect, by overstating visual contrasts and throwing up whimsical comparisons with mammoths, lumberjacks and drunken dancers. In addition, the recurrent use of commas and semi-colons and the promotion of the noun at the beginning of many phrases suggest a paradigm of chaotic superimposition of images rather than an organic coherence of effort. The machines described here seem furiously active, but they do not appear to be producing anything or carrying out any empirically useful activity. Such strategies, while conveying a singular acuteness of perception, combine to undo the Exhibition’s intended cognitive associations with technological progress and the association of labour, and to isolate the singularly aesthetic qualities of the objects viewed. The passage is indicative of a new attentiveness to heterogeneous movement as an aspect of the aesthetic experience on Gautier’s part, but moreover attempts to interrogate the ideological basis of exhibition presentation.

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Utopian Architectures of the Temple As the foregoing section has shown, in his journalistic prose Gautier pursues a number of aesthetic paradigms appropriate to contingent urban phenomena and gives complex articulation to contemporary aspirations to define a new architectural style appropriate to the conditions of the nineteenth century. While the new forms of construction demonstrated in the palaces of the Universal Exhibitions served to intimate the potentialities of materials such as iron and glass, as we have seen in the first chapter of the present study, the utopian projects of which the Exhibitions are to a certain extent a by-product present an even more ambitious rhetorical exploration of those possibilities. The remainder of this chapter will therefore demonstrate how Gautier specifically looks to utopian writing and brings his prose within the orbit of its proliferating textuality as a means to amplify expressive resource. As will be argued in our final chapter, this is a strategy which is adopted in a more concerted and radical manner in prose poems by Rimbaud, notably ‘Villes’. The remaining sections of this chapter will discuss the reception by Gautier of two representations of the temple, a monument which, as we have seen in our first chapter, is invested with considerable importance in nineteenth-century French utopianism. This centrality of the temple within utopian representations of the period is owing to its capacity to confer social meaning on a vast range of human exploits and activities by incorporating them into extravagant ritual or progressive narrative representations. In architectural terms, the monument would connote such meanings through the systematic deployment of murals or reliefs, technologically innovative lighting and amplification arrangements, and novel patterns of stylistic allusion. Moreover, the temple would hold an anticipatory function, as for instance in the projections of Michel Chevalier, for whom it would serve to prophesy the synthesis of diverse strands of knowledge and the realization of the potentialities latent in contemporary scientific discoveries or exotic travel. The following sections will consider in the first instance Gautier’s lengthy discussion in the newspaper La Presse of a planned decoration for the walls of the secular temple of the Panthéon in Paris by the artist Paul Chenavard and, secondly, his text ‘Paris futur’ [‘Future Paris’], which attempts to appropriate stylistic paradigms present in a design for a visionary cathedral by the architect Louis-Auguste Boileau. In these instances, Gautier ref lects at length on the cultural meanings communicated by such public and utopian architectural projects. Although Gautier adopts a stance that problem­ atizes the ideological closure associated with the progressive or utopian intel­lectual frameworks of Chenavard and Boileau, he nonetheless affirms the considerable imaginative potential of the reconfiguration of stylistic precedents and the reneg­ otiation of founding cultural narratives that are a feature of both of their projects. Paul Chenavard and ‘La Palingénésie sociale’ In view of the uncompromising positions he enunciates in the passages cited above from the preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, it may be surprising to discover Gautier’s enthusiasm for the plans for the decoration of the Panthéon, a project whose

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Figure 2.1. Paul Chenavard, La Palingénésie sociale. By permission of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.

themes are in keeping with much contemporary progressive and utopian thought. Designed by the architect Jacques-Germain Souff lot, this edifice was formerly the Roman Catholic church of Sainte-Geneviève before it was transformed by decree of the Constituent Assembly into a secular temple, in 1791. The Panthéon was dedicated to the memory of the heroes of the Revolution and assumed the Greek term for a shrine to all the gods. Over the subsequent years, under the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte and the period of constitutional monarchy which followed, the monument once again served ecclesiastical functions intermittently until the Revolution of 1848. Thereafter the government of the Second Republic selected controversially the little-known artist Paul Chenavard to decorate the interior of the rechristened ‘Temple of Humanity’. While Gautier’s acquaintance with Chenavard’s project is described in extenso in a recent book by James Kearns,61 the present analysis will deal selectively with the poet’s reception of aspects of Chenavard’s plans, whose principal relief was to be entitled La Palingénésie sociale [Social Palingenesis]. Acquainted with the philosophies of Hegel and Ballanche, Chenavard envisaged a didactic mural that would give pictorial expression to the progress of humanity through successive historical cycles.62 Following his abundant notes and cartoons for the project, which Gautier

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studied closely, the walls of the Panthéon would be covered with scenes describing the history of man from Adam and Eve to Napoleon Bonaparte; the different spatial divisions of the panorama would correspond to Chenavard’s understanding of the chronological progression across ancient and modern eras. Chenavard’s vastly encompassing scheme would serve to articulate in one continuous account a multiplicity of historical phenomena which might be excluded from traditional religious chronicles of the origins of humanity. As Gautier notes in one of his reviews of Chenavard’s plans for La Presse, the artist furthermore attempted to reinstate the figure of Jesus Christ within a secular narrative of the ascent of reason and understanding across the ages: ‘Il ne s’agit pas ici du Christ dogmatique et théocratique tel que le catholicisme l’a arrangé pour ses besoins [...] mais du Jésus tendre et bon, de l’ami des petits enfants et des femmes, du blond rêveur qui se fût volontiers promené sous les ombrages de l’Académie entre Platon et Socrate’ [This is not the dogmatic and theocratic Christ whom Catholicism suited to its needs [...] but the kind and tender Jesus, the friend of little children and women, the blond dreamer who had gladly strolled amongst Plato and Socrates in the shade of the Academy].63 In addition, Chenavard’s plans describe a series of increasingly humanized figurations of the divine; Gautier writes that his aim is to illustrate ‘l’histoire synthétique de ce grand être collectif, multiple, ondoyant, ubiquiste, éternel, composé de tous les hommes de tous les temps, dont l’âme générale est Dieu’ [the synthetic history of that great collective, multiple, heaving, all-pervading, eternal being, composed of all men from all ages, whose general soul is God].64 His design appeared to sanction the contribution of diverse cultures, races and nations to the advancement of universal understanding throughout history. Gautier thus notes that the multifarious historical and mythical spectacles selected for the murals tend to mobilize large masses of individuals in collective movements: Tous les Olympes, tous les paradis, tous les Walhallas y ont passé, sans compter les cosmogonies, les jugements derniers, les fêtes babyloniennes, les orgies et les triomphes romains, les invasions de barbares, les conciles, les grandes scènes de la Convention, les batailles de l’empire, tous les sujets où il faut remuer de grandes masses, et dont le personnage principal est la foule, personnage que nul ne s’entend à faire agir comme Chenavard.65 [All the Olympuses, all the heavens, all the Valhallas are there, without men­ tioning the cosmogonies, the Last Judgments, the Babylonian festivals, the Roman orgies and victories, the Barbarian invasions, the councils, the great scenes from the Convention, the imperial battles, all those subjects for which great masses have to be mustered and whose main character is the crowd, a character whom no one can make perform like Chenavard.]

Later, although he notes that Chenavard intended to delegate the de facto materializing task of painting the mural to a team of workers, Gautier applauds the originality of the artist’s almost ‘mathematical’ compositional ability in assimilating a multitude of pictorial strategies appropriate to the task of negotiating and circumscribing the mass entities described above: On dirait que, par une analyse sagace et patiente, il s’est rendu compte de la manière de composer de tous les maîtres, qu’il a désarticulé leurs groupes,

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pénétré le secret de leurs lignes, mis à jour leurs artifices, découvert leurs habitudes et leurs tics même. [...] il a combiné toutes les manières possibles d’assembler des figures, il connaît les types générateurs des groupes, le point de départ et d’arrivée des lignes, et peut mettre un géomètre au service de l’artiste.66 [It is as if, through patient, shrewd analysis, he took stock of the compositional practice of every one of the masters, that he dislocated their groups, fathomed the secret of their lines, exposed their artifices, discovered their habits and even their tics [...] he has brought together all the possible ways of combining figures, he knows all the types which generate groups, the starting and finishing points of lines, and can make a geometrician useful to the artist.]

Here, Gautier is attentive to Chenavard’s appropriation of diverse compositional practices from the most illustrious figures in the history of painting. Recourse to these practices enables Chenavard to maximize aestheticizing processes of spatial expansion and delimitation in order to ref lect the complex and collective quality of his subjects. It is worth noting that the assimilatory quality of the painter’s method is common to other contemporary utopian visions of the temple, for his integration of an array of compositional techniques is comparable to the way in which Michel Chevalier’s poem ‘Le Temple’ assimilates tropes from manifold textual idioms of mystical, utilitarian, orientalist and other orders. In a manner in keeping with the way Chevalier’s text thereby petitions its reader, Chenavard’s sweeping mural scenes seem intended to solicit the gaze from diverse angles and challenge attempts to categorize their content according to traditional historical or religious frameworks. As it prophesies humanity’s rise towards an apotheosis of harmony and universal comprehension, La Palingénésie sociale aims to incite the viewer to a consciousness of the variety and profuseness of the human phenomenon through the modalities of historical experience. Whether or not Chenavard’s complex treatment of the philosophy of history would have been intelligible to the lay viewer is disputable, as Joseph C. Sloane argues.67 Progress on this ambitious project was hampered by strong Catholic oppo­sition and by December 1851 the government of the Second Republic which had com­ missioned it was brought to an end by the coup d’état of Louis Napoléon. Seeking to buttress popular support, Louis Napoléon restored the monument to its eccle­siastical use once more. The cartoons of Chenavard’s project were exhibited at the Uni­ versal Exhibition of 1855 and are now held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon.68 Louis-Auguste Boileau and the ‘Nouvelle forme architecturale’ The divisiveness elicited by La Palingénésie sociale is characteristic of the reaction to projects of this type at the mid nineteenth century. A design which met with similar controversy was Louis-Auguste Boileau’s ‘cathédrale synthétique’, which was made public in the early 1850s and presented in a report entitled Nouvelle forme architecturale.69 Boileau was a follower of the Christian social reformist and former Saint-Simonian Philippe Buchez, and he attempted to link the thought of Buchez to his own systematic explanation of the historical evolution of architecture.

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Figure 2.2. Louis-Auguste Boileau, La Cathédrale synthétique, Nouvelle Forme architecturale. By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The final sections of this chapter will dwell brief ly on Boileau’s intellectual debt to Buchez and describe how the ‘cathédrale synthétique’ represents an effort on Boileau’s part to intervene critically in contemporary debates on eclecticism, before turning to ref lect on Gautier’s own imaginative appropriation of aspects of this project. Buchezian doctrine depicted history as a dynamic progression towards ever more just and sophisticated forms of social interaction and cooperation under the direction of religious faith. According to Buchez’s Introduction à la science de l’histoire of 1833, religion, in setting a general objective for the collectivity, provided a coherent framework around which individual conduct and social structures could be based.70 In this perspective, the distinctiveness of historical periods could be explained in terms of the successive ascendancy of diverse systems of belief as humanity progressed towards the aim of fraternity most successfully exemplified by the Christian model. History was not simply the ever-increasing accumulation of knowledge of actions and events but could be seen to articulate fundamental principles according to which the complexity of social evolution could be rationalized. For Louis-Auguste Boileau, the purposive understanding of history within Buchezianism provided a model for the systematic interpretation of the historical evolution of the discipline of architecture.71 In Boileau’s view, contemporary architectural practice was hampered by the fashion for eclecticism. Academic exploration of a variety of past models was

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in his view symptomatic of an increasing isolation of architectural practice from any consensus of belief and signalled the waning of the historical dynamic. Boileau’s aim was therefore to construct a new compositional order for the nineteenth century that would be conscious of its position respective of preceding architectures and of its function as a symbolic expression of the continual unfolding of history. Before attempting to characterize this ‘new architectural form’, Boileau contended that it was necessary to conduct a systematic historical classification of successive architectural orders in the manner of the Buchezian periodizations described above: [L’auteur] s’est attaché à déterminer à l’aide de l’histoire universelle, les progrès successifs qui ont eu lieu dans l’art monumental, ayant soin de n’isoler jamais, dans cet examen, les deux éléments constitutifs de cet art: la construction et la décoration. De la sorte, il n’a reconnu comme termes de la progression que les phases où le progrès de l’ensemble résulte du progrès simultané de chacune de ses parties; et il a classé seulement comme perfectionnements de détail, les modifications ou améliorations qui ne se sont manifestées que dans l’un ou l’autre de ces éléments. Ces termes de progression une fois épuisés, il a constaté quel est aujourd’hui le dernier terme connu, ou si l’on veut celui qui marque le point le plus élevé auquel l’art monumental soit parvenu dans sa marche ascendante. Ce degré qui n’a pas été dépassé, c’est, aux yeux de l’auteur, celui que l’art monumental du christianisme a atteint aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Il faut se rappeler qu’il s’agit toujours des inventions capitales, marquées du sceau d’une phase de civilisation, ou, selon les termes de classification adoptés par l’auteur, des synthèses, qui comportent un nouveau système de construction et un nouveau style de décoration.72 [[The author] set out to determine, with the aid of universal history, the successive progressions that have occurred in monumental construction, taking care never to isolate in this analysis the two constitutive elements of that art: construction and decoration. In this way, he took into account only those phases in which the progress of the whole results from the simultaneous progress of each of its parts as terms of the progression; and only modifications or enhancements that occur in one or other of these elements were classified as improvements of detail. Once these terms of progression were exhausted, he established the last acknowledged term, or rather the term which marks the highest point which monumental art has reached in its ascending course. In the author’s view, the stage which has not been exceeded is that which the monumental art of Christianity reached in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One must remember that it is always those inventions of capital importance which are marked by the seal of a phase of civilization, or, according to the terms of classification adopted by the author, by the syntheses, which indicate a new system of construction and a new style of decoration.]

Boileau concludes that hitherto the highest historical instance of the interrelation of constructive ‘system’ and decorative ‘style’ is present in the Gothic cathedral. His outlook is in keeping with the Buchezian valorization of the socially regenerative function of the Gothic cathedral, as summarized by Neil McWilliam: ‘the collaborative labor mobilized in fashioning its monumental form embodies the submission of individual will to a collective goal, while the mass celebrated within its walls represents a supremely organic, unifying experience, in which the

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“faithful are at once actors and spectators” ’.73 For Boileau, it would be possible to further enhance the structural and aesthetic potential of the Gothic ogival arch by nineteenth-century technological advances; his model for the ‘cathédrale synthétique’ thus makes unprecedented reliance on complex configurations of overlapping iron arches and stained glass, materials which would maximize colour, luminosity and space, thereby heightening the emotive and sensuous impact on the congregation. As Bruno Foucart writes, Boileau’s attempt to define architectural practice in a Buchezian historical perspective represented a ‘remarquable pouvoir libérateur à l’égard des distinctions stylistiques, géographiques et chronologiques’ [remarkable liberating power with regard to stylistic, geographical and chronological distinctions].74 It provided a comprehensive conceptual scheme that purported to endow nineteenth-century architecture with a framework to meaningfully validate Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Hindu and other architectural traditions as successive ascending ‘syntheses’ ref lecting a fusion of constructive ‘system’ and decorative ‘style’. The architect saw potential for the nouvelle forme to become a paradigm of broad cultural pervasiveness and he forecasted that aspects of the new composition could be implemented in numerous examples of civil and public architecture, ‘depuis le palais jusqu’à la maison d’habitation la plus humble’ [from the palace right down to the most humble residential house].75 Unfortunately for Boileau’s project, however, the plans met with strong resistance. The publication of the Nouvelle forme architecturale elicited a polemic between Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Boileau over the validity of the eclectic method and the use of iron in architecture; opposition from the Conseil des bâtiments civils was also a problem, and Catholic authorities were dissuaded from endorsing the project.76 For Bruno Foucart, the principal failing of Boileau’s conception for the ‘cathédrale synthétique’ is that ‘aucune confession particulière ne peut s’en réclamer: temple d’une religion universelle, comme on avait pu la rêver un instant en 1848, faisant appel pour cela à la fusion de toutes les formes architecturales jugées spiritualistes, elle ne pouvait rencontrer l’unanimité nécessaire et s’imposer comme style par l’absence même du public qui devait l’habiter’ [it cannot be claimed to be representative of any specific faith: as a temple of a universal religion of the kind dreamt of in 1848, and in that way appealing to a fusion of all those architectural forms deemed to be spiritualist, it could not attain the necessary unanimous support nor be received as a universally acknowledged style in view of the lack of the very audience destined to occupy it].77 Gautier and ‘Paris futur’ At the time of the polemic with Viollet-le-Duc, Gautier, together with Michel Chevalier and other former Saint-Simonians, was one of a limited number of socially eminent supporters of Boileau’s radical designs,78 and in an appreciative com­mentary on the plans for the ‘cathédrale synthétique’ for La Presse, he draws the reader’s attention to the project’s reconfiguration of stylistic references: Sur le mur de notre chambre est accrochée une épreuve daguerrienne sur papier d’une perfection rare, et représentant un monument étrange: cathédrale,

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Figure 2.3. Church of Notre-Dame de France, designed by Louis-Auguste Boileau. Built on the site of Robert Barker’s Panorama, Leicester Square, London. By permission of the London Metropolitan Archives.

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‘Crayonnons à la hâte’ basilique, pagode, église moscovite — un peu de tout cela, — sans être précisément rien de cela. [...] En effet, ce monument n’appartient à aucune civilisation, à aucun peuple. À aucune époque d’architecture. Il participe de toutes les traditions pour les assimiler et en dégager un certain absolu rare et curieux.79 [On our bedroom wall hangs a Daguerreian proof on paper of rare perfection, depicting a strange building: cathedral, basilica, pagoda, Muscovite church — a little of all of these — without being precisely any of them. [...] Indeed, this building does not belong to any civilization or people. Nor to any architectural period. It draws on every tradition so that it may assimilate them all, eliciting from them a rare and curious absolute quality.]

For Gautier, on a stylistic level, Boileau’s design suggests comparisons with sources as culturally distant as Russian churches or pagodas and, like other contemporary observers, Gautier shares the view that the design does not appear to celebrate any specific religious style, despite appearing to draw on the combined resources of multiple religious and spiritual traditions. Foucart argues that Gautier’s account of Boileau’s project in La Presse is oblivious to its underlying Buchezian rationale and tends to regard it rather as a mere stylistic ‘pot-pourri’;80 however, I wish to argue here that Boileau’s design nonetheless suggests a complex referential function prompting Gautier to meditate extensively on the interrelation of the social, cultural, and historical dimensions of human experience by and within the aesthetic work. Similarly, although it is likely that the erudition on display in the articles on Chenavard’s plans for the Panthéon are more the result of Gautier’s resourceful use of the artist’s own notes for the project than of a systematic understanding of its inherent philosophical scheme,81 La Palingénésie sociale appears to have given Gautier similar pause for ref lection. As the remainder of this chapter demonstrates, Gautier’s reception of these projects thus shows his growing cognizance of the potential of prose texts to codify and displace some of those pervasive worldviews with which they are contemporary. A characteristic of both of these projects (and of Michel Chevalier’s ‘Le Temple’) is that they delimit and dramatize the activity of consciousness as it attempts to organize and relate an immense variety of experiences belonging to historical, mythical, religious, scientific and other orders, and to project their latent significance. Gautier is mindful of this in evoking the cyclical, progressive regenerations of history traced by Chenavard’s cartoons, noting that: le présent est la matrice où le passé procrée l’avenir, et il doit exister dans les régions impalpables, sous l’obscurité des futuritions, une ébauche invisible de ce qui sera; les éléments de l’avenir, les combinaisons du hasard, les accidents de l’histoire, sont déjà en préparation sur un fourneau mystérieux.82 [the present is the matrix where the past procreates the future, and there must exist in the impalpable regions, under the darkness of futurity, an invisible sketch of what will be; the elements of the future, the combinations of chance, the accidents of history, are already in preparation in a mysterious furnace.]

Of particular importance here is Gautier’s implicit suggestion that La Palingénésie sociale deliberately foregrounds an inherent orientation of the aesthetic work towards

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the projection of future horizons; this is suggested by the allusion to the ‘ébauche invisible’ which denotes the aestheticizing processes mobilized for such a purpose. In an essay entitled ‘La Construction de l’image comme matrice de l’histoire’ [‘The Construction of the Image as a Matrix of History’], Éric Michaud argues that from the nineteenth century onwards the function of the image is no longer restricted to the documentation of the past; rather the image itself assumes a determining role as an ‘actor’ of history. For Michaud, this arises from a growing perception that images ‘réorganisent chaque fois la mémoire humaine sur la surface matérielle de leur support’ [reorganize human memory in every instance on the material surface of their medium].83 Citing Saint-Simon’s endorsement of an aesthetic avant-garde, Michaud contends that the image henceforth acquires a transformative quality and a heightened social and cultural valency by virtue of how it mobilizes aesthetic activity in the constitution of the future community. It is this evolving cultural perception of the function of the image as identified by Michaud which arguably informs the passage by Gautier cited above. For Gautier, La Palingénésie sociale is implicitly ‘matrixical’ for it functions simultaneously to mediate miscellaneous data of past perception and to elicit projections of transformative desire. The aesthetic work therefore has the potential to impel the viewer or reader towards a radically altered perspective by initiating new orders of discourse and modes of relation to the real.84 This may be related to another passage by Gautier on Balzac in which he appraises the particular ‘modernity’ of that author: De cette modernité sur laquelle nous appuyons à dessein provenait, sans qu’il s’en doutât, la difficulté de travail qu’éprouvait Balzac dans l’accomplissement de son œuvre: la langue française, épurée par les classiques du dix-septième siècle n’est propre lorsqu’on veut s’y conformer qu’à rendre des idées générales, et qu’à peindre des figures conventionnelles dans un milieu vague. Pour exprimer cette multiplicité de détails, de caractères, de types, d’architectures, d’ameublements, Balzac fut obligé de se forger une langue spéciale, composée de toutes les technologies, de tous les argots de la science, de l’atelier, des coulisses, de l’amphithéâtre même. Chaque mot qui disait quelque chose était le bienvenu et la phrase, pour le recevoir, ouvrait une incise, une parenthèse, et s’allongeait complaisamment. [...] Il avait, bien qu’il ne le crût pas, un style et un très beau style, — le style nécessaire, fatal et mathématique de son idée!85 [We deliberately stress modernity, because the difficulty Balzac experienced in completing his work arose unwittingly from this; purged by the seventeenthcentury classics, the French language is only appropriate, when one wishes to conform to it, for the expression of general ideas and for the depiction of conventional figures in an abstract setting. In order to express this multiplicity of details, characters, features, architectural styles and furnishings, Balzac was compelled to forge a special language for himself made up of all the forms of technology, and of all the idioms of science, workshops, the backstage and even of the lecture hall. Any word that expressed something was welcome and to accommodate it the sentence would open up a slit or parenthesis and lie down obligingly. [...] Although he did not believe so, he had a style and a very beautiful one — the necessary, fatal and mathematical style of his idea!]

Here Balzac is applauded for his success in constructing a literary idiom mediated by exceptional lexical and dialectal multiplicity and having the potential to relate a range

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of phenomena which would be difficult to classify by the conventional rhetorical means of French classicism. Significantly here, the assignment of an active role to literary style in the construction of a complex subjective environment in the work of Balzac is not presented as a metaphysically oriented project but one immanently grounded and dispersed through language and its manifold figurations. It is a similarly complex awareness of the factors that mediate creative activity and of the interrelated imaginative and historical dimensions of the aesthetic work which inform Gautier’s textual appropriation of some of those stylistic paradigms present in the work of Boileau. For the purposes of our analysis in this study, Gautier’s evolving perception of the text as a complex of multiple determinations is most suggestive in relation to an understanding of the prose poem as is developed in subsequent chapters. The last part of this chapter will therefore suggest that Boileau’s plans for the ‘cathédrale synthétique’ in particular serve as a potential model for a prose text composed by Gautier approximately one year after his article on Boileau for La Presse. ‘Paris futur’, which appeared in Le Pays on 20 and 21 December 1851, is a gentle yet sombre caricature of contemporary utopian visions of the city, replete with mummies and a dark underworld of defeated peoples who reside in the underbelly of a vast metropolis. Two passages of ‘Paris futur’ are devoted to a description of an enormous temple: Il n’y aurait qu’une seule église qui occuperait la place du Panthéon. Ce faîte serait consacré à la Divinité. Cette église aurait des proportions démesurées: toute la montagne latine, taillée en assises, lui servirait d’escalier. Ses tours et ses coupoles feraient au bord du ciel une entaille si profonde que les étoiles s’épanouiraient comme des f leurs d’or aux acanthes des chapiteaux du premier étage. Notre-Dame pourrait entrer par le porche géant sans baisser sa tête. Dans ce temple hybride seraient concentrées toutes les architectures du passé, celles du présent et celles de l’avenir: on y retrouverait, sous des formes plus savantes, les vertiges granitiques d’Ellora et de Karnac, les aspirations désespérées des ogives de la cathédrale de Séville; l’aiguille gothique, le campanile romain, la coupole byzantine, le minaret oriental, formeraient d’harmonieux accords dans cette vaste symphonie de pierre chantée à Dieu par tout un peuple. — Les mythes génésiaques, les allégories de la chute et du rachat, la rémunération du bien et la punition des forfaits, les symboles des puissances célestes, exécutés en mosaïques, revêtiraient les murailles de teintes chaudes et riches. L’or scintillerait aux parois intérieures avec une profusion digne des Incas [...]. Au lieu des cloches dont les capsules de bronze n’ont qu’une psalmodie lugubre et monotone, on établirait dans les tours des orgues immenses avec des tuyaux gros comme la colonne de la place Vendôme, dont les souff lets seraient mis en mouvement par des machines à vapeur de la force de huit cents chevaux. Des musiques religieuses, composées exprès, seraient exécutées aux différentes heures du jour, et des trombes d’harmonie passeraient sur la ville, dominant toutes les rumeurs et rappelant l’idée de Dieu à la foule distraite. À l’intérieur du temple, les voûtes, disposées selon les lois de l’acoustique, donneraient une sonorité merveilleuse aux cantiques sacrés, le prédicateur, du haut de sa chaire géante, aidé du téléphone, souff lerait la parole divine, comme du bord d’un nuage, un de ces grands anges à clairon que les peintres placent dans les jugements derniers.86 [A single church would occupy the Place du Panthéon. This hilltop edifice

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would be devoted to the Divinity. The church would be of extreme proportions, and the entire summit of the Latin Quarter, carved into steps, would serve as its stairway. Its towers and domes would be so deeply engraved into the edges of the sky that the stars would blossom like golden f lowers in the acanthus leaves of the capitals on its first f loor. Our Lady could enter through the enormous porch without lowering her head. This hybrid temple would combine all the architectures of the past, present and future: throughout it would be present, in more complex forms, the dizzying granite features of Ellora and Karnac, the desperate voids of the arching vaults of Seville cathedral, the Gothic spire, the Roman campanile, the Byzantine dome and the Oriental minaret; all would form harmonies in this vast symphony of stone sung to God by a whole people. — Mosaics of the myths of genesis, the allegories of the fall and redemption, the rewarding of good deeds and the punishment of terrible crimes, and the symbols of the celestial powers would cover the walls with rich warm shades. Gold would sparkle across the walls of the interior with an abundance worthy of the Incas. In place of those bells whose caps merely produce a monotonous and mournful pitch, enormous organs would be erected in the towers, with pipes as thick as the column in the Place Vendôme, while their bellows would be set in movement by steam engines with the power of eight hundred horses. Specially composed pieces of religious music would be performed at different hours of the day, and torrents of harmony would pass over the city, soaring over its babble and reminding the distracted crowds of the idea of God. Assembled in keeping with the laws of acoustics, the vaults of the temple would accord a marvellous sonority to sacred hymns; finally, with the aid of the telephone, the preacher would blast the divine word from the enormous pulpit, as if from the edge of a cloud, like one of those great trumpeting angels that painters insert into pictures of the Last Judgment.]

In this description, the recourse to manifold technological and ornamentative devices such as gold, murals, organs and the telephone reveals awareness on Gautier’s part of contemporary utopianism’s aspiration to enhance emotive and sensuous impact on the spectator through amplification and incandescent colour. Under the inf luence of the preacher’s persuasive rhetoric, disciples of the temple of the future Paris will be caught in a vortex of sound and sensation causing them to surrender their individuality and merge into an organic community of the faithful. Many of the elements of ‘Paris futur’ bear distinct resemblances to SaintSimonian programmes for the future city; examples include the text’s processions of magistrates, priests, scientists and artists; the allusions to universal pacifism and the abolition of armies, and the reference to the Enfantin-like chief whose enemies will be ‘subjugés par sa beauté’ [captivated by his beauty]87 and who presents the people with ‘les formes plastiques du pouvoir’ [the plastic forms of power].88 Indeed, the idiom of ‘Paris futur’ resembles that of Charles Duveyrier’s ‘Au Père!’ and ‘La Ville Nouvelle’ which were discussed in the first chapter.89 Like Boileau’s ‘cathédrale synthétique’, the edifice relies on a stylistic amalgam of diverse registers to elicit the architecture of the future: here, the examples are drawn from Egyptian, Gothic, Byzantine and a host of other traditions. This paradigm of stylistic amalgam serves as a model for the broader topographical structure of the future Paris. In another passage Gautier writes: La ville sera d’une magnificence architecturale dont on ne peut se faire une

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‘Crayonnons à la hâte’ idée [...] telle rue affectera le style byzantin, telle autre le style gothique, une troisième le goût mauresque, l’autre celui de la renaissance. [...] Les architectes de ce temps-là, au lieu de chercher à dissimuler les pièces de leurs constructions, leur donneront beaucoup de relief et d’accent; ils tireront des toits, des fenêtres, des portes, des poutres, nettement accusés, des motifs d’ornementation pleins de caractère et de nouveauté.90 [The city will be of inconceivable architectural magnificence [...] while one street might imitate the Byzantine style, another will resemble the Gothic, a third will be Moorish, and another again will be in the style of the Renaissance. [...] Rather than seeking to conceal the components of their designs, the architects of this age will confer on them marked prominence and emphasis; and from the distinctly defined roofs, windows, doors and beams they will elicit ornamental motifs full of character and novelty.]

Here, the narrator of ‘Paris futur’ envisages that both structural composition and aesthetic form will be simultaneously available to perception by the city dweller. The active interplay of form and structure in the pursuit of what is emphasized here as ‘nouveauté’ confounds interpretative gestures according to stable referential categories; indeed the narrator reminds us that the temple will be of unimaginable architectural magnificence. A further passage from ‘Paris futur’ presents the reader with a textual surface based on generalized animation: Au-dessus des toits, du milieu des touffes de palmiers et de baobabs surgit la trombe d’eau que le vent éparpille en perles fines et en brume argentée. Des rampes montent et descendent, traçant des angles sur le f lanc des terrasses; des proues de navires, des pointes de mâts, des antennes trahissent la présence des canaux; des rues en escaliers se font jour à travers la foule des édifices, et de loin en loin, selon les hasards de la perspective, apparaissent les murailles de l’enceinte, si épaisses qu’elles font, à trois cents pieds du sol, un chemin où huit quadriges galoperaient de front.91 [Above the roofs, amid clusters of palm trees and baobabs, a waterspout looms up, scattering fine pearls and silvery mist on the wind. Ramps rise and fall, at angles to the sides of the balconies; ships’ prows, mastheads and lateen yards betray the presence of the canals; streets lined with steps appear through the mass of buildings, and here and there, one can glimpse the city walls which are so thick that they form a three hundred-foot-high track on which eight chariots could gallop side by side.]

Here, Gautier makes exotic motifs of baobabs and palm trees coincide with everyday objects — aerials and banisters. Such juxtapositions are even inherent to the objects offered up to the gaze, as in the ‘rues en escaliers’ and the ‘foule des édifices’. The lengthy cadences of this passage may also be related to another statement recorded by the Goncourts, in which Gautier declares the following: ‘Moi je crois qu’il faut surtout dans la phrase un rythme oculaire. Par exemple une phrase qui est très longue en commençant ne doit pas finir brusquement, à moins d’un effet. [...] Un livre n’est pas fait pour être lu à haute voix’ [I believe that a sentence must have above all else an ocular rhythm. For instance, a sentence which is very long to begin with must not end abruptly, unless a particular effect is sought. [...] A book is not written to be read aloud’.92 The passage above foregrounds just

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such an interaction between the temporality of reading and the rhythm of the eye as it embraces an elaborate visual amalgam, providing a dramatic illustration of Henry James’s interpretation of Gautier’s style as ‘such a perpetual tissue of images and pictures’.93 As the eye explores the heterogeneous structure of the image, there is accompanying exploration of rhythmical potentialities in prose via the periodic enumeration of various deliberately ‘incongruous’ nouns: ‘rampes’, ‘angles’, ‘proues’, ‘pointes’, ‘antennes’. Here, Gautier seems to be attentive to the possibility within the utopian text to pursue what Paul Ricœur calls ‘an experience of the contingency of order’.94 On this point, given strong similarities in terms of thematic content and of the euphoric idiom of both texts, ‘Paris futur’ warrants comparison with Michel Chevalier’s ‘Le Temple’, which has been referred to at numerous instances in this chapter. However, despite such similarities, unlike ‘Le Temple’, Gautier’s text is not concerned with integrating the conceptual triumvirate of science, art and industry which underpins Saint-Simonian ideology. Gautier seems convinced, rather, that the elsewhere to which poetic language aspires is ultimately more immanently figured in its own plasticity and materiality. He is, however, sensitive to the fact that utopian textuality provides a privileged means towards the pursuit of that elsewhere. Accordingly, in another long passage from ‘Paris futur’, it is possible to observe how Gautier begins to conceive of the text of the printed page itself as a complex spatial arrangement: Souvent, lorsque je me promène dans quelque plaine sombre à l’heure du crépuscule, et que l’horizon livide est encombré de grands écroulements de nuages amoncelés les uns sur les autres, comme les blocs d’une immense ville aérienne tombée en ruine, il me vient des rêveries babyloniennes, des fantasmagories à la Martinn [sic] me passent devant les yeux. Je commence à tailler dans les f lancs des collines lointaines des tranches gigantesques pour le soubassement des édifices; bientôt les angles des frontons s’ébauchent dans la vapeur, les pyramides découpent leurs pans de marbre, les obélisques s’élancent d’un seul jet comme des points d’admiration de granit; des palais démesurés s’élèvent sur des superpositions de terrasses en recul, escalier colossal, que pourraient seuls enjamber les géants du monde pré-adamite. Je vois s’allonger sur des colonnes trapues, fortes comme des tours et rayées de cannelures en spirales où six hommes se cacheraient, des frises faites de quartiers de montagnes et couvertes de zodiaques monstrueux, d’hiéroglyphes menaçants; des arches de pont se courbent au-dessus du f leuve qui reluit à travers la ville qu’il tranche, comme un damas dans un col à moitié coupé; les lacs d’eau salée, où sautent les léviathans privés, miroitent sous un rayon de lumière, et le grand cercle d’or d’Osymandias étincelle comme une roue détachée du char du soleil! Baigné par sa base dans une brume ardente et rousse que soulève l’activité sans repos de la ville en ébullition de travail ou de plaisir, le temple de Bélus envahit le ciel, où il va défier la foudre, par huit efforts convulsifs dont chacun produit une tour énorme plus haute que l’aiguille de Strasbourg ou la pyramide de Gizeh; les nuages coupent ses f lancs de leurs bandes zébrées, et sur les entablements du dernier étage blanchissent des filets de neige éternelle.95 [Often when I wander in some dark plain at dusk while the pale horizon is strewn with great crumbling clouds banked one on top of the other, like the wedges of an enormous ruined city in the sky, Babylonian reveries and phantasmagorias in the style of Martinn [sic] f lit before my eyes.

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‘Crayonnons à la hâte’ Into the distant hillsides I begin to carve huge sections for the foundations of the buildings. Soon the angles of the pediments are sketched in the vapour; the pyramids segment their marble blocks, the obelisks shoot upwards in one shot like granite exclamation points; disproportionate palaces rise up on the overlays of descending terraces, like a colossal stairway that could only be climbed by giants of the preadamite world. Stretched out on the dense columns, which are as strong as towers and streaked with spiral f lutes inside which six men could hide, are friezes made from segments of mountains and covered in monstrous zodiacs and menacing hieroglyphs; bridges arch above the river which gleams throughout the town it bisects, like a damask woven into a trimmed collar; the saltwater lakes, where private Leviathans leap, shimmer under a ray of light, and the great golden circle of Ozymandias sparkles like a wheel loosened from the sun’s chariot! Bathed at its base in a fiery russet mist raised by the interminable movement of the city in a fever of work or pleasure, the temple of Belus invades the sky, where it will defy lightning, by eight convulsive efforts, each of which produces an enormous tower higher than the Strasbourg steeple or the pyramid of Giza; the clouds bisect its sides with their zebra stripes, and the entablatures of the top f loor are whitened by a dusting of eternal snow.]

As this reverie shows, the expressive démesure [excess] of the utopian idiom offers the potential to radicalize the dynamic interplay of spatial and textual structures. The passage’s many images of visual appropriation and concentration: ‘frises faites de quartiers de montagne’, ‘léviathans privés’, ‘le temple de Bélus envahit le ciel’, ref lect the increasing sophistication of this interplay. Although the phrase ‘Je commence à tailler...’ indicates an ‘artisanal’ command of the construction, such a paradigm is immediately displaced by a shift into the passive tense. This instead suggests a paradigm of voyance, that is, a ‘channelling’ of the urban space’s apparently autogenous expansion. As can be seen through the allusions to the ‘monde préadamite’, ‘Osymandias’, ‘Bélus’ and ‘Gizeh’, the narrator’s multiple attachments to different objects of his imagination and to diverse spiritual and mythological traditions serve here to maximize expressive resource. Insofar as he exposes himself to ‘autant de langages qu’il y a de désirs’ [as many languages as there are desires], the narrator warrants comparison with the remorseless, uninhibited utopian subject later evoked by Roland Barthes, who has at his disposal ‘deux instances de langage’ [‘two instances of language’] which are deployed as a function of desiring impulse in defiance of discursive norms.96 In ‘Paris futur’, the narrator’s vatic utterances derive their potency from the tissue of identifications which mediate the language and structure of the text. Since the prophetic voice that is the source of these utterances cannot be accessed directly in print, the passage from which I have just quoted foregrounds a number of implicit references to the construction of the printed page.97 Thus, in the phrase ‘les obélisques s’élancent d’un seul jet comme des points d’admiration’, there are implicit and explicit suggestions of links to print through the reference to exclamation marks and the ‘seul jet’, referring both to a ‘thrust’ and to a ‘draft’. The clouds which f leck the temple of Belus in ‘bandes zébrées’ recall the spatial disconnectedness implied in the passage quoted earlier from the Portrait de Balzac by the phrase ‘zébrées de lignes en fin caractères pour ménager la place’.98 Allusions to the visual immediacy of print are present in the reference to ‘découper’, while the phrase ‘sur les entablements du dernier étage blanchissent des filets de

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neige éternelle’ seems to hint at the white borders of the page. More generally, the reference to the hieroglyph in the context of this description of a visionary city suggests an intricate textual and visual structure that, although it does not lend itself readily to interpretative decoding, nonetheless pushes expressivity to new planes and prompts figurations of the new. As this consideration of a range of journalistic texts shows, Gautier’s prose deploys a diverse range of aestheticizing patterns in response to complex and contingent urban phenomena. Moreover, the formulation of these patterns is catalysed by his evolving perception of the spatial disposition of words on the newspaper page and of the range of cultural and ideological elements which shape the production of the text. While Gautier’s prose texts reveal a dramatically more comprehensive and dynamic vision than that to which we are accustomed in his verse, as we have seen in relation to his texts on the Universal Exhibitions, the expansive strategies deployed in his prose writing do not map easily onto the specific patterns of legibility which many modern institutions and ideological formations seek to project. This suggests a more effectively ref lexive engagement with modernity than is suggested by the posture of melancholy which Chambers attributes to Gautier.99 While Chambers argues that that melancholy is induced by ‘defeated socialisms gone up in smoke’,100 Gautier’s textual appropriation of aspects of utopian projects by Chenavard and Boileau seems linked to quite a different response. Rather, since they frequently push beyond the horizons of expediency or feasibility, these projects present a fraught relationship to the prospect of their eventual ‘realization’; this is a factor which, in turn, impels the writing subject to ref lect actively upon the drive towards consummation and closure, and the possibilities of a textual practice which on a certain level mirrors the quality of non-coalescence which they present. Furthermore, although it is unlikely that he gave firm credence to the conceptual schemes of either Chenavard or Boileau, Gautier is highly attentive to the fact that the progressive historical logic implicit in their projects is determined to an unprecedented degree by aesthetic criteria. In this way, his prose text ‘Paris futur’ attempts to mobilize the generative and aestheticizing potency of the discourse engendered by these projects while hindering its own subordination to a conceptual or ideological construct. The posture Gautier implicitly adopts, however, suggests that although La Palingénésie sociale and the ‘cathédrale synthétique’ might justifiably be accused of naively privileging the elaboration of their ideological frameworks over the pursuit of creative insight, they nonetheless invite an upwelling of imaginative activity. In ostensibly engendering multiple affinities with diverse moments and places, for Gautier, such utopian projects present aesthetic paradigms of ‘thinking out’ or ‘thinking through’ complicated multiplicities of historical fact and cultural reference in a manner that solicits latent dynamics and energies within collective consciousness. More generally, then, a further aim of the present study is to discern within the evolution of nineteenth-century poetic discourse responses to modernity in which the modes of rapture and euphoria have their place. What this requires is an approach which moves outside of the boundaries of the critical frameworks of melancholy and trauma, while remaining heedful of the lessons offered by each. If the suppression

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of the modern in Gautier’s chiselled verse occasions melancholy, the encounter with the new in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire is frequently aligned to experiences of shock and loss (although these are, of course, articulated in more oppositional or critical mode than is the case in Émaux et camées). For Ulrich Baer, following Walter Benjamin, Baudelaire’s concern with the fragmentation of subjective experience in modernity is assimilated to ‘assaults on the integrity of subjectively owned experience’.101 Baudelaire’s poetry therefore presents a site of trauma centred on the non-assimilated nature of certain contemporary experiences. Arguably, however, to focalize the poetic subject’s exposure to fragmentation on loss or trauma risks neglecting the status of euphoric states traversed by the Baudelairian poetic subject in that same context. The aim of the following chapter, therefore, is to explore such states as a function of fragmentation within Baudelaire’s oeuvre. Following the conception of utopia which we have set out in our introduction, our intent is not to present utopia as a blithely optimistic embrace of modernity. In effect, this approach does not seek to mask in a conciliatory fashion the fragmentation of subjectivity which the critiques of melancholy and trauma have elicited, but to assess the importance of that fragmentation to the poetic charting of modern experience in all its open-endedness. Notes to Chapter 2 1. Richard Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (London: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 122. 2. Ibid, p. 127. 3. Ibid, p. 121. 4. Edmond de Goncourt, Journal des Goncourt: mémoires de la vie littéraire, 6 vols (Paris: Charpentier, 1890), v, 52. Future references to the Journal des Goncourts in this chapter will take the following form: (Goncourt, V: 52). 5. Indeed, Gautier’s textual production during his journalistic career was nothing short of prodigious, as is noted in an edition of his correspondence: ‘Entre le 26 août 1836 et le 4 avril 1855, T. G. a donné environ 1200 feuilletons (critique littéraire et artistique, récits de voyage, variétés, nouvelles)’ [Between August 26 1836 and April 4 1855, T. G. produced around 1200 feuilletons(literary and artistic criticism, travel writing, miscellanies, short stories)]. Théophile Gautier, Correspondance générale, ed. by Claudine Lacoste-Veysseyre, 13 vols (Geneva: Droz, 1985), i, 399. As Lois Cassandra Hamrick observes of Gautier’s feuilletons artistiques: ‘These now fragile newspaper margins show themselves to be a dynamic space of intersection where aesthetic ideas collide with economic, political and/or social tensions of the time’. Lois Cassandra Hamrick, ‘The Feuilleton Artistique: On the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Texts (with Théophile Gautier)’, in On the Margins, ed. by Freeman G. Henry (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), pp. 71–86 (p. 71). 6. Théophile Gautier, Baudelaire par Théophile Gautier, ed. by Claude-Marie Senninger (Paris: Klincksieck, 1986), p. 165. 7. Ibid. 8. Philippe Hamon, Introduction à l’analyse du descriptif (Paris: Hachette, 1981), p. 45. 9. Dean de la Motte, ‘Utopia Commodified: Utilitarianism, Aestheticism, and the Presse à Bon Marché’, in Making The News: Modernity and the Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France, ed. by Dean de la Motte and Jeannene M. Przyblyski (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), pp. 141–59 (p. 142). 10. Goncourt, i, 184. 11. Théophile Gautier, Fusains et eaux-fortes (Paris: L’Harmattan: 1880; repr. 2000), p. 212. 12. Ibid, pp. 212–13.

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13. Ibid, p. 213. 14. Théophile Gautier, Œuvres: choix de romans et de contes, ed. by Paolo Tortonese (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1995), p. 203. 15. Ibid, p. 193. 16. Ibid. 17. Théophile Gautier, Histoire du Romantisme (Paris: Charpentier, 1884), p. 322. 18. Ibid. 19. See Paul Bénichou, Romantismes français, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1988 and 1992; repr. 2004), ii: Les Mages romantiques & L’École du désenchantement and Claude-Marie Book, ‘Théophile Gautier et la notion de progrès’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, 128 (Oct–Dec. 1967), 545–57. 20. David Scott, Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; repr. 2009), p. 53. 21. Bénichou, ii, 1988. 22. Albert Cassagne, La Théorie de l’art pour l’art en France chez les derniers romantiques et les premiers réalistes [1906], pref. by Daniel Oster (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1997), p. 141. 23. Yann Mortelette, Histoire du Parnasse (Paris: Fayard, 2005), p. 125. 24. Cassagne, p. 378. 25. Cassagne, pp. 57–58. 26. Goncourt, i, 168. 27. Goncourt, ii, 11. 28. Goncourt, i, 164–65. 29. Cassagne, p. 377. 30. Paolo Tortonese, La Vie extérieure: essai sur l’œuvre narrative de Théophile Gautier (Paris: Lettres modernes, 1995), p. 8. 31. Théophile Gautier, Portrait de Balzac (Montpellier: l’Anabase, 1994), p. 47. Later, Gautier comments further on this apparent dissipation of the authorial self: ‘Personne ne peut avoir la prétention de faire une biographie complète de Balzac; toute liaison avec lui était nécessairement coupée de lacunes, d’absences, de disparitions’ (p. 103). 32. Ibid, p. 67. 33. Théophile Gautier, Souvenirs de théâtre, d’art et de critique (Paris: Charpentier, 1883), p. 202. 34. Ibid. 35. Théophile Gautier, ‘Le Nouvel Opéra’, Paris et les Parisiens (Paris: La Boîte à Documents, 1996), p. 164. 36. Théophile Gautier, ‘Inauguration du chemin de fer du Nord’, La Presse, 16 June 1846. 37. Théophile Gautier, ‘Le Jardin d’Hiver’, La Presse, 10 January 1848. Quoted in Paris et les Parisiens, pp. 242–43. 38. Théophile Gautier, ‘Exposition de Londres’, Le Moniteur Universel, 4 May 1862. 39. Martine Lavaud, Théophile Gautier: militant du romantisme (Paris: Champion, 2001), p. 268. 40. Théophile Gautier, Quand on voyage (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1865), p. 7. Similarly, in the text ‘Le Nouvel Opéra’, Gautier argues that: ‘[...] la forme d’un monument doit être la saillie et en quelque sorte le repoussé de sa destination intérieure’ [[...] the form of a building must be the projection and in a kind of way the repoussé of its internal purpose] (Gautier, Paris et les Parisiens, p. 158). 41. To this end, the poems of Émaux et camées are set in a self-enclosed aesthetic realm, as in the case of the collection’s preface, which focuses on the poetic subject’s imperviousness to the political violence of modernity. One poem in the collection, however, f leetingly engages with the modern urban environment; in the first stanza of ‘Vieux de la Vieille’ [‘Veterans of the Old Guard’] the poet leaves behind the confines of his room, and in a manner evocative of a Baudelairian flâneur seeking to engage with the contingencies of urban experience, he is driven to roam the streets: Par l’ennui chassé de ma chambre J’errais le long du boulevard La chose vaut qu’on la regarde: Trois fantômes de vieux grognards

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‘Crayonnons à la hâte’ En uniformes de l’ex-garde, Avec deux ombres de hussards [Pursued from my bedroom by boredom / I erred along the boulevard // This is worth a look / Three ghosts of veterans / in their old guard uniforms / with two shadows of hussars]

The poem nevertheless continues the collection’s preoccupation with a precise visual appro­ priation and ornamentation of its subject matter. In this case, the subjects are some wizened veterans of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. Here, the rhyming structure of the second of these stanzas engages in a semantic play with the words ‘regarde’/‘garde’, and neatly conveys the poet’s method of hewing the rawness of an eyewitness account into a well-defined aesthetic object. 42. Gautier, Quand on voyage, p. 34. 43. Théophile Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (Paris: L. Hachette, 1856), pp. 69–70 (my emphasis). 44. Gautier, Fusains et eaux-fortes, p. 64. A variation on this description is also to be found in ‘Un tour en Belgique et en Hollande’. See Théophile Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (Paris: Victor Lecou, 1852; repr. Paris: Phénix, 1999), p. 64. 45. Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (1999), p. 106. 46. Gautier, Quand on voyage, p. 37. 47. Ibid, pp. 38–39. 48. Indeed, it has already been suggested that Gautier’s prose texts to some extent anticipate the vision of the city in the urban poems of Rimbaud’s Illuminations. See David Scott, ‘La Ville illustrée dans les Illuminations de Rimbaud’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 92.6 (1992), 967–81 (p. 972) and Jean Richer, Études et recherches sur Théophile Gautier prosateur (Paris: Nizet, 1981), p. 244. 49. Ross Chambers, The Writing of Melancholy: Modes of Opposition in Early French Modernism, trans. by Mary Seidman Trouille (London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 48. 50. Terdiman, p. 125. 51. Victor Hugo, Œuvres complètes. Politique, ed. by Jean-Claude Fizaine (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1985). 52. Gautier. ‘L’Exposition de Londres’, Le Moniteur Universel, 4 May 1862. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (1999), p. 106. 56. Benjamin, p. 7. 57. Michel Chevalier, L’Exposition universelle de Londres considérée sous les rapports philosophique, technique, commercial et administrative au point de vue français (Paris: L. Mathias, 1851), pp. 9–12. 58. Théophile Gautier, L’Orient, 2 vols (Paris: Charpentier, 1893; repr. Paris: Éditions d’aujourd’hui, 1979), i, 332–33. 59. Théophile Gautier, ‘L’Exposition de l’industrie’, Musée des familles, July 1844. 60. Gautier, L’Orient, i, 302–03. 61. James Kearns, Théophile Gautier, Orator to the Artists: Art Journalism in the Second Republic (London: Legenda, 2007), pp. 80–87. On Chenavard, see Joseph C. Sloane, French Painting between Past and Present: Artists, Critics and Traditions from 1848 to 1870 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 134–41. 62. Incidentally, Chenavard’s chronicle of the great thinkers of the modern age culminates in likenesses of the utopian socialists Saint-Simon and Fourier. 63. ‘Le Panthéon — Peintures murales’, 5–11 September 1848, La Presse, repr. in Théophile Gautier, L’Art moderne (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1856), pp. 1–94 (p. 17). 64. Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (1856) p. 5. 65. Ibid, p. 4. 66. Ibid, pp. 92–93. 67. Sloane, p. 138. 68. In addition, James Kearns notes that Gautier’s several newspaper articles were condemned by a Catholic group called the Congrès des Diverses Académies de France (Kearns, Théophile Gautier, Orator to the Artists, p. 85). 69. Louis-Auguste Boileau, Nouvelle Forme architecturale (Paris: Gide & J. Baudry, 1853).

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70. Philippe Buchez, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, ou science du développement de l’humanité (Paris: Paulin, 1833). 71. ‘Les classifications méthodiques qui ont si puissamment contribué à l’avancement des sciences naturelles font défaut dans l’enseignement de l’architecture, ce composé de science et d’art. [...] Pour moi, l’hypothèse générale de Buchez sur le progrès est celle qui répond le mieux à la vérité des faits’ [Those methodical classifications which so powerfully contributed to the advancement of the natural sciences are missing from the teaching of architecture, that composite of science and art. [...] In my view, Buchez’s general hypothesis on progress represents the best response to the real state of things]. Louis-Auguste Boileau, Histoire critique de l’invention en architecture. Classification méthodique des œuvres de l’art monumental au point de vue du progrès et de son application à la composition de nouveaux types architectoniques [...] (Paris: Veuve Charles Durand, 1886), p. 33. 72. This selection from Boileau’s Nouvelle Forme architecturale appears in La Querelle du fer: Eugène Viollet-le-Duc contre Louis Auguste Boileau, ed. by Bernard Marrey (Paris: Linteau, 2002), pp. 26–27. Marrey’s edition presents a series of texts dating from a polemic over eclecticism and the use of iron in architecture which followed the publication of La Nouvelle Forme architecturale. 73. McWilliam, p. 137. 74. Bruno Foucart, ‘La “Cathédrale Synthétique” de Louis-Auguste Boileau’, in Essais et mélanges en l’honneur de Bruno Foucart, 2 vols (Paris: Norma, 2008), i, 235–64 (p. 240). This article originally appeared in La Revue de l’art, 4 (1969), 49–66. 75. La Querelle du fer, ed. by Marrey, p. 45. 76. On a point that resonates with our first chapter’s understanding of the prominence awarded to the visualizing device of the panorama in utopian aesthetics, Marrey reveals that the construction by Boileau which came closest to his conception of the ‘cathédrale synthétique’ was the Roman Catholic church of Notre Dame de France in London. Intriguingly, this building which was completed in 1868 was erected at Leicester Square on the site of Robert Barker’s by then defunct Panorama, mentioned in the previous chapter. The building was extensively damaged by bombs in World War II (Marrey, p. 116). Boileau was also the architect of the first church in France to employ cast iron and sheet metal in its construction, the Église Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile in Paris’s ninth arrondissement. However, the choice of iron rather than stone for an ecclesiastical setting was controversial and it was not until the year 2000 that the church was consecrated. Opened in 1855, the church’s organ was originally constructed for the Universal Exhibition of the same year. 77. Foucart, p. 250. 78. For Michel Chevalier’s discussion of Boileau’s design for the church of St. Eugène Ste. Cécile in Paris, see his article ‘Le fer et la fonte employés dans les constructions monumentales’, Journal des débats, 1 June 1855. 79. Théophile Gautier, ‘Théâtres’, La Presse, 23 December 1850. Reproduced in Louis-Auguste Boileau, Nouvelle Forme architecturale, pp. 27–28. 80. Foucart, p. 249. 81. This interpretation is advanced in an article by Pierre-Olivier Douphis: ‘Le Poète et l’artistephilosophe: une collaboration retrouvée entre Gautier et Chenavard’, Bulletin de la Société Théophile Gautier, 23 (2001), 21–36. 82. Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (1856) pp. 70–71. 83. Éric Michaud, ‘La Construction de l’image comme matrice de l’histoire’, Vingtième siècle, 72 (Oct–Dec 2001), 41–52. 84. Gautier’s appreciation of Chenavard contrasts with the opinion of Baudelaire, who was also aware of the project for the Panthéon: ‘Deux hommes dans Chenavard, l’utopiste et l’artiste. Il veut être loué pour ses utopies, et il est quelquefois artiste malgré ses utopies’ [Two men in Chenavard, the utopianist and the artist. He wishes to be praised for his utopias, and he is sometimes an artist in spite of his utopias.] (ŒC, II: 606). 85. Gautier, Portrait de Balzac, p. 67. 86. Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (1999), pp. 315–16. 87. Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (1999), p. 317. 88. Ibid, p. 318. 89. An acquaintance with these texts on Gautier’s part seems possible, as is suggested by a review of a

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performance of music by the former Saint-Simonian Félicien David in which Gautier designates two prominent Saint-Simonians in the audience: ‘Rien ne manquait à l’assemblée, — toutes les illustrations de nom, de fortune, de beauté ou de gloire se trouvaient là. — il y avait même un Dieu, — l’ancien Dieu de Félicien David — le Père Enfantin — dont la face resplendissante a été célébrée autrefois par Ch. Duveyrier dans une prose dithyrambique’ [There was not a thing missing in the gathering, — all those who are illustrious by their names, fortunes, beauty or glory were there. — there was even a God, — the former God of Félicien David — le Père Enfantin — whose radiant face was once celebrated by Charles Duveyrier in a dithyrambic prose]. Théophile Gautier, ‘Théâtres’, La Presse, 6 January 1845. 90. Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (1999), pp. 319–20. 91. Ibid, p. 311. 92. Goncourt, ii, 14. 93. Henry James, Literary Criticism: French Writers, Other European Writers, ed. by Leon Edel and Mark Wilson (New York: Library of America, 1984), p. 353. 94. Ricœur, p. 300. 95. Gautier, Caprices et zigzags (1999), pp. 309–10. 96. Roland Barthes, ‘Leçon’ in Œuvres complètes, IV, ed. by Éric Marty (Paris: Seuil, 2002), pp. 427–48 (pp. 436–37). 97. De Spoelberch de Lovenjoul records the following note from Gautier which accompanied the two instalments in Le Pays: ‘Ce Paris de l’avenir ne figurera peut-être pas trop mal en feuilleton, et produira-t-il l’effet d’une gravure anglaise à la manière noire’ [This Paris of the future may fit well in a feuilleton, and produce the effect of an sombre English print]. De Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des œuvres de Théophile Gautier, 2 vols (Paris: 1887; repr.: Geneva: Slatkine, 1968), i, 462. 98. Gautier, Portrait de Balzac, p. 67. 99. Specifically, Chambers argues that Gautier’s ‘Préface’ to Émaux et camées ultimately fails in its attempt to shut out political violence and the ‘noise’ of history, and thus inadvertently registers a melancholic response to modernity (Chambers, pp. 46–47). 100. Chambers, p. 24. 101. Ulrich Baer, Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 3.

C H A P TER 3

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Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris: Rhapsodie and ‘le vertige senti dans les grandes villes’ In a draft Baudelaire prepared for the letter to his editor Arsène Houssaye, which would accompany his prose poem collection Le Spleen de Paris, the poet refers to that work as ‘cet ouvrage tenant de la vis et du kaleidoscope’ [this work resembling the screw and the kaleidoscope] (ŒC, I: 365–66). If the reader is to consider the preponderance of a synthetic or ‘panoramic’ urban viewpoint in those texts considered in earlier chapters of this study, the contrasting stylistic alignment of Baudelaire’s collection with the visualizing device of the kaleidoscope in this instance merits attention. In an earlier chapter on Saint-Simonian literature, it was established that the panoramic gaze permits a dynamic and comprehensive mode of vision allowing the viewer to apprehend multiple vectors and planes of the modern city. Like the panorama, the kaleidoscope enables a similarly animated and inclusive mode of visual apprehension; but whereas the panoramic mode of vision ultimately functions to normalize the relations it describes (and therein may serve an implicitly ideological design), the kaleidoscopic mode of vision has a more equivocal function. Remarking Baudelaire’s apparently deliberate eschewal of panoramic or ‘synoptic’ visual paradigms in many poems, Richard D. E. Burton comments that the poet sought to avoid such representations since they present ‘a distinct source of comfort and security’.1 If panoramic representation guarantees a certain ontological stability and ideological valence, by contrast, although it possesses a similarly dynamic composition and inclusive structure, the kaleidoscopic image does not permit the viewer a sufficient vantage point from which to grasp represented objects in their totality. Obeying a principle of fragmentation, the kaleidoscope signals an imaginary of infinite variation and the dis-organization of any stable or comprehensive representation. Baudelaire’s aim in the prose poems is, therefore, apparently to proceed, not through a totalizing vision, but through a process of accretion of discrete, often conf licting perceptions which resonate variably with one another. These textual facets of the Baudelairian prose poem to a certain extent draw on a number of visual models. While any settled comprehensive or ‘panoramic’ mode of representation is subject to scrutiny and dismantlement in Le Spleen de Paris, in

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many poems there remains a persistent concern with the foundational apprehension of an aggregate of complex social and material phenomena, albeit in a manner that is cognizant of instability and variation as functions of the subjective gaze. In both Baudelaire’s criticism and his poetry a number of patterns are set forth which enact a visual dynamic generated by dint of movement, fragmentation and juxtaposition. Correlates of such patterns can be identified in juvenile or popular entertainments such as the phenakistoscope, which Baudelaire describes in the essay ‘La morale du joujou’: Supposez un mouvement quelconque, par exemple un exercice de danseur ou de jongleur, divisé et décomposé en un certain nombre de mouvements; supposez que chacun de ces mouvements, — au nombre de vingt, si vous voulez, — soit représenté par une figure entière du jongleur ou du danseur, et qu’ils soient tous dessinés autour d’un cercle de carton. Ajustez ce cercle, ainsi qu’un autre cercle troué, à distances égales, de vingt petites fenêtres, à un pivot au bout d’un manche que vous tenez comme on tient un écran devant le feu. Les vingt petites figures, représentant le mouvement décomposé d’une seule figure, se ref lètent dans une glace située en face de vous. Appliquez votre œil à la hauteur des petites fenêtres, et faites tourner rapidement les cercles. La rapidité de la rotation transforme les vingt ouvertures en une seule circulaire, à travers laquelle vous voyez se réf léchir dans la glace vingt figures dansantes, exactement semblables et exécutant les mêmes mouvements avec une précision fantastique. Chaque petite figure a bénéficié des dix-neuf autres. Sur le cercle, elle tourne, et sa rapidité la rend invisible; dans la glace, vue à travers la fenêtre tournante, elle est immobile, exécutant en place tous les mouvements distribués entre les vingt figures. Le nombre des tableaux qu’on peut créer ainsi est infini (ŒC, I: 585–87). [Imagine any given movement, such as an exercise carried out by a dancer or juggler, split up and divided into a certain number of movements; imagine that each of these movements — twenty in number, say — is executed by the whole body of the juggler or dancer, and that they are all sketched in a circle on a piece of cardboard. Fit the circle, together with another circle punched with twenty little windows at equal distances from each other, to a rotating pin on the end of a handle which you hold just as if you were holding a screen in front of a fire. Position your eye next to the little windows and quickly turn the circles. The rapidity of rotation transforms the twenty openings into one circular one, through which you see twenty dancing figures which look exactly alike and carrying out the same movements with amazing precision. Each little figure gains by the next. On the circle, each one turns, and its speed makes it invisible; viewed through the rotating window, it is motionless, executing the movements which extend across the twenty figures. The number of images that can be created in this way is infinite.]

The presentation of the visual structure of the phenakistoscopic image in this passage is consistent with a perception of horizontal movement. This dynamic of relation emerging precisely from an awareness of difference and dissimilarity is congruent with the textual practice of Le Spleen de Paris. In stimulating such patterns of oblique association, Baudelaire states that ‘le nombre des tableaux qu’on peut créer ainsi est infini’. This suggests patterns of resonance across distinct images that are comparable with the reading paradigm of the prose poems, explained in the

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letter to Houssaye as follows: ‘Enlevez une vertèbre, et les deux morceaux de cette tortueuse fantaisie se rejoindront sans peine. Hachez-la en nombreux fragments, et vous verrez que chacun peut exister à part’ [Take out a vertebra, and the two parts of this tortuous fantasy will join up again without difficulty] (ŒC, I: 275). As this chapter will argue, Baudelaire’s deployment of this kind of visualizing strategy in Le Spleen de Paris is made evident to the reader through the frequent downward orientation of the gaze of many of the successive narrators of poems in the collection. As our analysis of several of these poems will show, the field of vision of many of these narrators rarely ascends above the items they encounter on the surface of the street, such as tramps, dogs, broken glass and other trivial or unsightly objects. These narrators find themselves so immersed in trivial detail and assailed by such a range of sensual and visual stimuli that their mode of relation to the urban frequently descends from initial exhilaration into trepidation. Baudelaire’s own increasingly antagonistic attitude to the frustrations of modern urban life is a feature of many of his other writings, such as his essay on Théodore de Banville. This text, written during the Second Empire, ref lects with nostalgia on the Paris of the 1840s: Théodore de Banville fut célèbre tout jeune. Les Cariatides datent de 1841. Je me souviens qu’on feuilletait avec étonnement ce volume où tant de richesses, un peu confuses, un peu mêlées, se trouvent amoncelées. On se répétait l’âge de l’auteur, et peu de personnes consentaient à admettre une si étonnante précocité. Paris n’était pas alors ce qu’il est aujourd’hui; un tohu-bohu, un capharnaüm, une Babel peuplée d’imbéciles et d’inutiles, peu délicats sur les manières de tuer le temps, et absolument rebelles aux jouissances littéraires. (ŒC, II: 162) [Thédore de Banvillle gained fame at a young age. The Caryatids date back to 1841. I remember the astonishment with which this volume was received, a book in which such somewhat tangled and chaotic richness was amassed. The author’s age was uttered over and over, and few consented to give credence to such astonishing precocity. Paris was not yet then what it is now: a hodgepodge, a shambles, a Babel populated by imbeciles and feckless individuals showing little elegance in their pastimes, and unsympathetic to literary pleasures.]

Here Baudelaire condemns the triviality and confusion of Second Empire Paris as factors which contribute to the contemporary difficulty of producing lyric poetry of the kind exemplified by Banville’s Les Cariatides. As will be argued in this chapter, it is significant that elsewhere in this essay on Banville, Baudelaire advocates the synthesizing, idealizing and transcendent qualities of lyric poetry, for he appears to identify a tension between the continuation of the lyric tradition and the increasingly urbanized character of modern experience. In Les Paradis artificiels, for instance, he writes: ‘rêver magnifiquement [...] risque fort d’être de plus en plus diminué par la dissipation moderne toujours plus croissante et par la turbulence du progrès matériel’ [dreaming magnificently [...] is at serious risk of being ever more diminished by steadily growing modern dissipation and by the turbulence of material progress] (ŒC, I: 497). In Baudelaire’s view urban experience stimulates the horizontal movement of dissipation, or what he terms ‘vaporization’, that is, the dispersal of individual consciousness into its material and social environment.

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Such dispersal induces a sense of uneasiness and confusion, figured here through the reference to ‘turbulence’; however it simultaneously arouses complex manifestations of desire that are directed outwards at the social and spatial locale of the city, as is ref lected in the following comment from Mon cœur mis à nu: ‘De la vaporisation et de la centralisation du Moi. Tout est là. D’une certaine jouissance sensuelle dans la société des extravagants’ [Of the vaporization and the centralization of the Self. All is there. Of a certain sensual pleasure in the company of the extravagant] (ŒC, I: 675). Such oblique or ‘horizontal’ aspirations are ref lected in poems such as ‘Le Vieux saltimbanque’ [‘The Old Jester’], in which the emancipative possibilities of the urban crowd are evoked by the narrator, albeit in terms which seem simultaneously to undermine implicitly such optimistic assertions. In this way, it is possible to argue that Baudelaire does not definitively banish utopian representations of the collectivity from his oeuvre. In his 1851 essay on chansonnier Pierre Dupont, we read the following statement: C’est une grande destinée que celle de la poésie! Joyeuse ou lamentable, elle porte toujours en soi le divin caractère utopique. Elle contredit sans cesse le fait, à peine de ne plus être. Dans le cachot elle se fait révolte; à la fenêtre de l’hôpital, elle est ardente espérance de guérison; dans la mansarde déchirée et malpropre, elle se pare comme une fée du luxe et de l’élégance; non seulement elle constate mais elle répare. Partout elle se fait négation de l’iniquité. (ŒC, II: 35) [What a great destiny is poetry’s! Joyous or lamentable, it bears within itself the divine utopian quality. It gainsays the given at the risk of no longer existing. In the dungeon it becomes insubordinate; at the hospital window, it is the hope of recovery; in the grottiness and tangle of the attic room, it adorns itself like a fairy of luxury and elegance; it not only renders account, but serves to make amends. Everywhere its role is to negate iniquity.]

Here, poetry is aligned to utopia triumphantly as a force of negation and de-fam­ iliarization, with the capacity to illuminate any configuration of subjective situation from a new angle. Despite his avowed disillusionment with progressive politics at the beginning of the Second Empire, the analyses in this chapter will suggest that for the Baudelaire of Le Spleen de Paris utopian aspirations continue to mediate his prose poetry in often perverse and conf licting ways. In keeping with the motif of the kaleidoscope, therefore, although the strategies employed by Baudelaire in his prose poetry tend to destabilize attempts at totalizing forms of representation, they do not ‘decompose’ or annihilate such representations completely. To reduce the multiple positions Baudelaire adopts either to one of immersion into a political or social ethos or to a retreat into private fantasy is problematic, but it is possible to detect in his prose poetry complex and mobile patterns of reference to the collectivity that intersect with a foundational gesture of utopia as negation and de-familiarization. Bringing to the fore these facets of Baudelaire’s prose poem aesthetic in Le Spleen de Paris, this chapter will in the first instance consider the tension between Baudelaire’s celebration of the intersubjective and visionary potentialities of the metropolis in Le Peintre de la vie moderne and the antagonistic attitudes he expresses towards the ‘turbulence’ of social and material ‘progress’. This chapter will argue

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that Baudelaire’s parallel development of the concept of ‘rhapsodie’ in Les Paradis artificiels helps the reader to explore this tension in greater detail. Under the inf luence of rhapsodie, the individual’s mental associations, although intensely pleasur­able, acquire an aleatory quality that confronts him with the possibility of his own self-effacement. As Jean-Pierre Richard writes, the rhapsodic state is one of such a degree of affective ecstasy that it can also be perceived as profoundly unsettling: ‘Simplement l’être s’y sent dépassé par l’accroissement de sa propre joie, il ne peut en comprendre le mouvement, en deviner la règle’ [The individual simply feels overcome by the increase in his own joy, he cannot grasp its development or the principle behind it].2 Rhapsodie, in Baudelaire’s understanding, therefore has an elaborate expressive function, as it is capable of simultaneously conveying both euphoria and deep uncertainty. In attempting to illustrate the potential importance of this concept for readings of Le Spleen de Paris, the present chapter will discuss the poet’s exploration of paradigms also present in the urban art of Constantin Guys and Charles Meryon. As my analysis of Baudelaire’s reception of these artists will show, rhapsodie may convey a deeply unsettling psychological experience but also signal an aestheticizing process focused on the displacement of consciousness across time and space. It therefore emerges as a particularly apposite means both to problematize the vertiginous effects of the modern city on individual consciousness and to poeticize the shifting dynamics and perspectives of the metropolis. Transposed into the frame of writing practice, rhapsodie thus hints at a logic of textual disorganization which can be related to the poems of Le Spleen de Paris. Extending unsolicited patterns of citation and a posture of irresolution between manifold (and frequently conf licting) affiliations and attachments, rhapsodie intimates a broadening of the scope of cognizance and suggests a framework appropriate to gauging that ‘excitation bizarre qui a besoin de spectacles, de foules, de musique, de réverbères même’ [bizarre excitement which requires spectacles, crowds, music, and even street lamps] which, as Baudelaire writes to Sainte-Beuve on 4 May 1865, the prose poems set out to probe.3 Exploring aspects of this poetics of rhapsodie, this chapter will relate Le Spleen de Paris as much to contemporary artistic practices with which Baudelaire was familiar as to his creative appropriation of popular visual entertainments such as the kaleidoscope or phenakistoscope. Consequently, it will be argued that instances of visual shorthand in the work of the sketch artist Constantin Guys may provide a paradigm for some of the verbalizing strategies Baudelaire adopts in the prose poems, while the engravings of Charles Meryon suggest uncertainties concerning the deployment of visual rhetoric that is of a piece with the dynamic generated by rhapsodie. The Visionary Experience of the Metropolis and ‘Le Peintre de la vie moderne’ Contemporary critical work on Le Spleen de Paris has revealed that many of the poems in the collection tend to problematize rhetorical consistency and interpretative closure as aspects of poetic discourse. Recent studies have emphasized the collection’s deployment of hidden textual traps designed to ensnare an unsuspecting reading public, and even the poet himself, in their own vanity and moral hypocrisy.4

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These deceptive textual features correspond in part to the adoption of a poetic persona that shares in the cruelty and blasé attitude of dandyism. In his essay on the dandy, as noted in an earlier chapter, Baudelaire writes that the latter enjoys ‘le plaisir d’étonner et la satisfaction orgueilleuse de ne jamais être étonné’ [the pleasure of astonishing and the proud satisfaction of never being astonished (ŒC, II: 710; my emphasis). Such deliberate foregrounding of the indifferent figure of the dandy in Baudelaire’s work seems to issue from a desire to offset the blind astonishment of the masses at the spectacle of the modern metropolis. Indeed, the textual deployment of duplicity, irony and superciliousness within Le Spleen de Paris seems to be at odds with the visionary paradigms present elsewhere in texts by Saint-Simonian authors and Gautier. These textual strategies and the new expressive and lyrical effects which accompany them are part of an attempt on Baudelaire’s part to subvert the conventions of lyricism and its metaphoric codes; however their espousal by Baudelaire seems to conf lict with his own frequent adoption of the contrasting poetic persona of the ‘observateur passionné’ of modern urban life. Baudelaire’s principal model in this respect is the artist Constantin Guys who is the subject of what is perhaps Baudelaire’s most famous essay, Le Peintre de la vie moderne [The Painter of Modern Life] of circa 1859. In this essay, Baudelaire provides the following characterization of Guys: Je le nommerais volontiers un dandy, et j’aurais pour cela quelques bonnes raisons; car le mot dandy implique une quintessence de caractère et une intelligence subtile de tout le mécanisme moral de ce monde; mais, d’un autre côté, le dandy aspire à l’insensibilité, et c’est par là que M. G., qui est dominé, lui, par une passion insatiable, celle de voir et de sentir, se détache violemment du dandysme. [...] Il possède l’art si difficile (les esprits raffinés me comprendront) d’être sincère sans ridicule. (ŒC, II: 691) [I would willingly describe him as a dandy, and I would be somewhat justified in doing so; for the word dandy implies a quintessence of character and a subtle grasp of the entire moral mechanism of this world; yet, on the other hand, the dandy aspires to insensibility, and it is in this respect that M. G., who is dominated, for his part, by an insatiable passion, that of seeing and feeling, marks a forceful departure from dandyism. [...] He is skilled in that very difficult art (refined minds will attest to my claim) of being sincere without appearing ridiculous.]

In this instance, the heightened sensual activity of the sketcher is placed in direct opposition to the indifference and complex moral positioning Baudelaire associates with the dandy. ‘Passionate observation’ is thus placed on the side of candour and perceptual rejuvenation, even of childish fascination; elsewhere in the essay, it is compared to ‘l’œil fixe et animalement extatique des enfants devant le nouveau’ [the fixed and animally ecstatic gaze of children before the new] (ŒC, II: 690). For Baudelaire, this infantile perceptual mode and the visionary state onto which it gives access are frequently evoked in terms of the pleasures of intoxication: L’enfant voit tout en nouveauté; il est toujours ivre. Rien ne ressemble plus à ce qu’on appelle l’inspiration, que la joie avec laquelle l’enfant absorbe la forme et la couleur. (ŒC, II: 690)

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[The child sees everything as a novelty; he is always intoxicated. There is nothing which resembles what is called inspiration more than the joy with which the child absorbs shape and colour.]

As this chapter will show, the aesthetic of Le Spleen de Paris bears a seemingly anta­­gonistic but nonetheless necessary relationship to the perceptual mode of passion­ate observation described in Le Peintre de la vie moderne. It is probable that hist­or­ical factors account somewhat for Baudelaire’s hesitancy in sharing in the utopian acclamation of the emancipative possibilities of the modern polis. There is a certain utopian resonance to the systematic programme of reconstruction under­taken by Haussmann in the 1850s and 1860s and in both the Second Empire’s spectacles of technological advance and the diluted Saint-Simonianism of official pronounce­ments by Louis Napoléon.5 However, if such utopianism is present in the vast material and social upheavals of that period, Baudelaire was aware that it was perversely so. For instance, although the utopian projects of July Monarchy Saint-Simonianism suggested a pursuit of radical political and social alternatives, by the time of the Second Empire it and other utopian movements had lost their opposi­tional quality in the popular conception. In this vein, the title of Baudelaire’s prose poem ‘Assommons les pauvres!’ [‘Let’s beat up the poor!’] lampoons the vulgarization of progressive slogans and Proudhonian maxims in the public sphere. Similarly, utopianism’s rapturous celebration of modern urban sociability could be perceived to have been appropriated by the rationale of Haussmannisation. Given the often oppressive functions which reformist and utopian rhetoric served to conceal, poets like Baudelaire were deeply suspicious of progressive schemes which purported to systematize aesthetic and social values. In the text Exposition universelle, he writes: J’ai essayé plus d’une fois, comme tous mes amis, de m’enfermer dans un système pour y prêcher à mon aise. Mais un système est une espèce de damnation qui nous pousse à une abjuration perpétuelle; il en faut toujours inventer un autre, et cette fatigue est un cruel châtiment. Et toujours mon système était beau, vaste, spacieux, commode, propre et lisse surtout; du moins il me paraissait tel. Et toujours un produit spontané, inattendu, de la vitalité universelle venait donner un démenti à ma science enfantine et vieillotte, fille déplorable de l’utopie. J’avais beau déplacer ou étendre le critérium, il était toujours en retard sur l’homme universel, et courait sans cesse après le beau multiforme et versicolore, qui se meut dans les spirales infinies de la vie. Condamné sans cesse à l’humiliation d’une conversion nouvelle, j’ai pris un grand parti. Pour échapper à l’horreur de ces apostasies philosophiques, je me suis orgueilleusement résigné à la modestie: je me suis contenté de sentir; je suis revenu chercher un asile dans l’impeccable naïveté. [...] Tant il est vrai qu’il y a dans les productions multiples de l’art quelque chose de toujours nouveau qui échappe éternellement à la règle et aux analyses de l’école! (ŒC, II: 577–78) [Like all of my friends, I have tried several times to lock myself into a system that would enable me to preach with comfort. But a system is a kind of damnation which pushes us towards perpetual recantation; a newer version always needs to be invented, and that wearying prospect is a cruel punishment. My system was always beautiful, vast, spacious, practical, unblemished and, above all, sleek, or so it seemed to me. And yet some spontaneous, unexpected offshoot of the

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universe’s vitality would come to contradict my quaint, immature science, that wretched daughter of utopia. Though I might rearrange or extend the criteria, they always trailed behind universal humanity, and constantly chased after beauty in its motley colours and shapes, which stir in the infinite spirals of life. Finding myself repeatedly condemned to the humiliation of new modifications, I came to an important conclusion. To escape the horror of these philosophical apostasies, I proudly resigned myself to modesty: I contented myself to feel; I sought refuge once more in impeccable naivety. [...] So it is that in art’s multiple productions, there is something unfailingly new which perennially escapes scholarly rules and analyses.]

Here again, Baudelaire affirms the value of naivety and the pursuit of sensation as against abstract rationalization. In this instance, utopia is placed disapprovingly on the side of systematicity and ideological closure and is seen to be incompatible with the shifting aesthetic criteria of ‘le beau multiforme et versicolore’.6 In a draft preface to Les Fleurs du mal [The Flowers of Evil], he writes: Mon éditeur prétend qu’il y aurait quelque utilité pour moi, comme pour lui, à expliquer pourquoi et comment j’ai fait ce livre, quels ont été mon but et mes moyens, mon dessein et ma méthode. [...] Pour insuff ler au peuple l’intelligence d’un objet d’art, j’ai une trop grande peur du ridicule, et je craindrais, en cette matière, d’égaler ces utopistes qui veulent, par un décret, rendre tous les Français riches et vertueux d’un seul coup. (ŒC, I: 185) [My publisher insists that it might be of use, to both him and me, to explain why and how I wrote this book, what were my aims and approach, my intentions and my method. [...] I am far too fearful of ridicule to be able to inspire the public to an understanding of the art work, and in this regard, I would be afraid of placing myself on a par with those utopianists, who by dint of a decree, wish to make all French people rich and virtuous in one fell swoop.]

In Baudelaire’s view, poetic discourse should retain a certain level of equivocation by comparison with what he sees as the more transparent and at the same time more deluded rhetoric of utopianism. It is worth noting however that the ingenuousness which Baudelaire associates with the creative artist is also a factor of utopian expressivity. In fact, Baudelaire’s foregrounding of organic communities of sensation, his interest in the intersubjective possibilities of the crowd, and the frequent visionary descriptions of the city that occur throughout his work all suggest a complicated relationship to utopian modes of representation. For Baudelaire, the exploration of these aspects of modern urban experience were essential features of the poetic enterprise of unlocking new aesthetic and imaginative potentialities. For instance, he evokes ‘l’éternelle beauté et l’étonnante harmonie de la vie dans les capitales, harmonie si providentiellement maintenue dans le tumulte de la liberté humaine’ [the eternal beauty and the astonishing harmony of life in capital cities, a harmony so providentially maintained in the tumult of human liberty] (ŒC, II: 692). The dynamism of the modern metropolis, moreover, generates an elaborate, and often euphoric, interrelation of individual and social experience: Ivresse religieuse des grandes villes. — Panthéisme. Moi, c’est tous; Tous, c’est moi. Tourbillon. (ŒC, I: 651)

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[Religious intoxication of great cities. — Pantheism. I am all; all are me. Maelstrom.]

Indeed, Baudelaire frequently acknowledges the vertiginous emotive and sensuous impact of the modern city. In the first instance, this corresponds to Baudelaire’s admiration for visual magnitude, what he refers to in his Salon de 1859 as ‘mon amour incorrigible du grand’ [my incorrigible love of what is big] (ŒC, II: 646). In addition, elsewhere he emphasizes the particular aesthetic pleasure both of registering, and of anticipating, the dynamic potentialities of the metropolis: Le vertige senti dans les grandes villes est analogue au vertige éprouvé au sein de la nature. Délices du chaos et de l’immensité. — Sensations d’un homme sensible en visitant une grande ville inconnue. (ŒC, II: 607) [The giddiness felt in great cities is analogous to the giddiness felt in the bosom of nature. Delights of chaos and immensity. — Sensations of a sensitive man as he visits a great city he does not know.]

Following this passage, Baudelaire’s preference tended to be for urban representations which maximized the dynamic potentialities of the city and demonstrated immensity of proportion. In the text of Le Salon de 1859, in the context of a discussion of British painters, Baudelaire alludes to a visionary image by an artist whose name he cannot recall: [...] cet autre, si étonnant dont le nom m’échappe, un architecte songeur, qui bâtit sur le papier des villes dont les ponts ont des éléphants pour piliers, et laissent passer entre leurs nombreuses jambes de colosses, toutes voiles dehors, des trois-mâts gigantesques!7 [That other astonishing artist, whose name escapes me, a visionary architect, who from mere paper built cities whose bridges have elephants as pillars, allow­ ing gigantic three-masters to pass between their colossal legs under full sail!]

Of all Baudelaire’s critical work, the essay which most comprehensively explores the aesthetic potentialities of the metropolis is Le Peintre de la vie moderne. In this piece, Baudelaire underlines Guys’s indiscriminate comprehensiveness of aesthetic vision. For Baudelaire, it is this willingness to expose himself to a child-like captivation which enables him to record and transform the vast range of objects and spaces present to the gaze in the modern city. This visionary positioning gives access to the sheer multiplicity of modern life and allows Guys to apprehend complex phenomena such as the crowd: Ainsi l’amoureux de la vie universelle entre dans la foule comme dans un immense réservoir d’électricité. On peut aussi le comparer, lui, à un miroir aussi immense que cette foule; à un kaléidoscope doué de conscience, qui, à chacun de ses mouvements, représente la vie multiple et la grâce mouvante de tous les éléments de la vie. C’est un moi insatiable du non-moi, qui, à chaque instant, le rend et l’exprime en images plus vivantes que la vie elle-même, toujours instable et fugitive. (ŒC, II: 692) [Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as if into an immense reservoir of electricity. He can also be compared with a mirror as immense as that crowd; with a kaleidoscope endowed with consciousness, which, in each

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of its movements, represents life in its multiplicity and in the shifting grace of its every element. This is a self which is insatiable for everything that is not itself, that is, everything which at any given movement, renders its image and expresses itself in images which are more animated than life itself, ever unstable and f leeting.]

It is worth noting the lyrical extravagance of some of Baudelaire’s expressions such as the ‘amoureux de la vie universelle’ and the ‘immense réservoir d’électricité’ which depict the crowd as a quasi-utopian community and also recall the rapturous idiom employed by utopian writers such as Duveyrier and Chevalier. Exploring the implications of Guys’s technique for artistic practice more generally, Baudelaire goes on to identify a dialectic between the heightened sensibility pursued by the artist and the latter’s own subjective integrity: Il s’établit alors un duel entre la volonté de tout voir, de ne rien oublier, et la faculté de la mémoire qui a pris l’habitude d’absorber vivement la couleur générale et la silhouette, l’arabesque du contour. Un artiste ayant le sentiment parfait de la forme, mais accoutumé à exercer surtout sa mémoire et son imagination, se trouve alors comme assailli par une émeute de détails, qui tous demandent justice avec la furie d’une foule amoureuse d’égalité absolue. Toute justice se trouve forcément violée; toute harmonie détruite, sacrifiée; mainte trivialité devient énorme; mainte petitesse, usurpatrice. Plus l’artiste se penche avec impartialité vers le détail, plus l’anarchie augmente. Qu’il soit myope ou presbyte, toute hiérarchie et toute subordination disparaissent. (ŒC, II: 698–99) [A duel emerges between the desire to see all, to forget nothing, and the faculty of memory which has acquired the habit of habitually absorbing the general colour, the silhouette, and the arabesque of the outline. An artist who has a perfect feeling for form, but who is accustomed to exercise chief ly his memory and imagination, then finds himself as if besieged by a riot of details, each of which demands justice with the frenzy of a mob passionately attached to absolute equality. Any kind of fair treatment thus finds itself violated, all harmony is ruined, sacrificed; many a triviality takes on huge significance; shabby behaviour becomes insurrectionary. The further the artist shows a preference for impartiality of detail, the more the anarchy increases. Whether the artist be long- or short-sighted, all hierarchy and subordination disappear.]

In this account of the creative tension between individual memory and the subject’s self-exposure to the emotive and sensuous impact of colour and form, it is interesting to note the radicalizing tone adopted by Baudelaire. The new aesthetic horizons discovered by Guys are evoked in rapturous overtones, from the ‘émeute de détails’ to the ‘furie d’une foule amoureuse d’égalité absolue’; ‘toute justice se trouve forcément violée’; ‘toute harmonie détruite, sacrifiée’. Baudelaire suggests that when passionate observation reaches its most ecstatic extremes, the maximization of the aesthetic potentialities of the metropolis comes into conf lict with their meaningful appropriation by consciousness.

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Baudelaire and rhapsodie: ‘une splendeur inquiétante, insupportable’ It may be fruitful to suggest that the tension Baudelaire identifies in the preceding passage is supplemented by his ideas on drug-taking in the essay Les Paradis artificiels. In its description of individual responses to stimulation by hashish and opium, Les Paradis artificiels describes the effects of the latter successively in terms of the Baudelairian concepts of surnaturalisme and rhapsodie. In Fusées, Baudelaire defines the former of these as a ‘qualité littéraire fondamentale’. He writes: ‘Le surnaturel comprend la couleur générale et l’accent, c’est-à-dire intensité, sonorité, limpidité, vibrativité, profondeur et retentissement dans l’espace et dans le temps’ [The super­natural includes general colouring and emphasis, that is, intensity, sonority, vibrativity, depth and resonance in space and time] (ŒC, I: 658). Le surnaturel expresses the potential of the poetic consciousness to harmonize and orchestrate these diverse sense impressions within the rich analogical network Baudelaire describes in the poem ‘Correspondances’ [Correspondences]: Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent. [Like long echoes which meld from afar / In a shadowy and profound unity / Vast like the night and like brightness / Perfumes, colours and sounds respond to one another.]

In the section on Eugène Delacroix in the Exposition universelle, Baudelaire notes that Edgar Allan Poe states ‘[...] je ne sais plus où, que le résultat de l’opium pour les sens est de revêtir la nature entière d’un intérêt surnaturel qui donne à chaque objet un sens plus profond, plus volontaire, plus despotique’ [I don’t know where, that the result of opium for the senses is to imbue all of nature with a supernatural interest that endows each object with a more profound meaning, more wilful, more despotic] (ŒC, II: 596). In this way, individual willpower dissolves and consciousness is captivated by external stimuli; opium thus permits the artist artificially to stimulate the conditions of surnaturalisme. Hashish, Baudelaire notes, has similarly entrancing effects on the subject, but these are of such intensity that they prohibit the codifying operations of the mind in pursuit of le surnaturel. The effects of hashish are thus described as profoundly unsettling, for they expose the subject to a state Baudelaire describes as rhapsodie: [Dans le cas de l’opium, comme dans celui du hachisch] l’intelligence, libre naguère, devient esclave; mais le mot rhapsodique, qui définit si bien un train de pensées suggéré et commandé par le monde extérieur et le hasard des circonstances, est d’une vérité plus vraie et plus terrible dans le cas du haschisch. Ici, le raisonnement n’est plus qu’une épave à la merci de tous les courants, et le train de pensées est infiniment plus accéléré et plus rhapsodique. C’est dire, je crois, d’une manière suffisamment claire, que le haschisch est, dans son effet présent, beaucoup plus véhément que l’opium, beaucoup plus ennemi de la vie régulière, en un mot, beaucoup plus troublant. [...] l’un est un séducteur paisible, l’autre un démon désordonné. (ŒC, I: 428)

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[In the case of opium as well as in that of hashish], the understanding, which hitherto was free, becomes enslaved; but the word rhapsodic, providing such a fine definition of a train of thought suggested and ordained by the outside world and happenstance, presents a truth that is all the more true and all the more terrible when it comes to hashish. Here, reason is no longer anything but a shipwreck at the mercy of every current, and the train of thought is infinitely more accelerated and more rhapsodic. I think this demonstrates quite clearly that hashish is, in its present effect, much more vehement than opium, much more inimical to a steadfast existence, in a word, much more disturbing. [...] One is a peaceful seducer, the other a reckless demon.]

Rhapsodie is experienced as an intensification of the sovereign pleasures of intoxi­ cation to the extent that the individual’s mental associations lose their ostensibly harmonious structure and achieve an aleatory quality, confronting him with the possi­bility of his own self-effacement. This is suggested also by the image of the ‘épave à la merci de tous les courants’, itself evocative of a Rimbaldian ‘bateau ivre’. Emerging from their ancient designation of detached pieces of Homeric verse, definitions of ‘rapsodie’ or, later, ‘rhapsodie’ dating from this period connoted notions of the fragmentary and disparate assemblage. For instance, the Trésor de la langue française notes the following definition of the adjective ‘rhapsodique’ from 1842: ‘Qui est formé de lambeaux’ [what is formed of scraps].8 In Les Paradis artificiels, the shift from surnaturel to rhapsodie marks the moment at which rapturous exhilaration disintegrates into just such a state of disorder in psychological terms. Baudelaire records the following anecdote of a hash smoker struck by rhapsodie: [Quelqu’un] me raconta qu’à travers sa jouissance, cette jouissance suprême de se sentir plein de vie et de se croire plein de génie, il avait tout d’un coup rencontré un objet de terreur. D’abord ébloui par la beauté de ses sensations, il en avait été subitement épouvanté. Il s’était demandé ce que deviendraient son intelligence et ses organes, si cet état, qu’il prenait pour un état surnaturel, allait toujours s’aggravant, si ses nerfs devenaient toujours de plus en plus délicats. Par la faculté de grossissement que possède l’œil spirituel du patient, cette peur doit être un supplice ineffable. ‘J’étais, disait-il, comme un cheval emporté et courant vers un abîme, voulant s’arrêter, mais ne le pouvant pas. En effet, c’était un galop effroyable, et ma pensée, esclave de la circonstance, du milieu, de l’accident et de tout ce qui peut être impliqué dans le mot hasard, avait pris un tour purement et absolument rhapsodique [...]’. (ŒC, I: 413–14) [[Someone] told me that in the midst of his enjoyment, that supreme enjoyment which leads one to feel full of life and to believe oneself a genius, he suddenly encountered a terrifying object. Though he had at first been dazzled by the beauty of the sensations it provoked, he suddenly found himself horrified by it. He wondered what would happen to his mind and his organs, if this state, which he took to be supernatural, continued to deteriorate, and if his nerves became more and more sensitive. Experienced through the faculty of magnification particular to the spiritual eye of the patient, this fear must be an unspeakable torture. ‘I felt’, he told me ‘like I was an excitable horse careering towards an abyss, attempting to stop, but unable to. Indeed, it was a horrifying gallop, and my thoughts, which had become enslaved to circumstance, to the environment, to random happenings and to everything that can be implied in the word chance, had taken a purely and absolutely rhapsodic turn.]

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In this instance, rhapsodie is experienced as radical contingency and as the incapacity of consciousness to codify meaningfully the effects of its perceptual stimuli. It connotes an enhanced figural potentiality but one that is linked to a disturbing sense of displacement across time and space.9 On this point, in his discussion of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater in Les Paradis artificiels, Baudelaire ref lects on the fragmentation of the visionary state following an excess of intoxication: Le premier symptôme qui se fit voir dans l’économie physique du mangeur d’opium est curieux à noter. C’est le point de départ, le germe de toute une série de douleurs. Les enfants sont, en général, doués de la singulière faculté d’apercevoir, ou plutôt de créer, sur la toile féconde des ténèbres tout un monde de visions bizarres. Cette faculté, chez les uns, agit parfois sans leur volonté. Mais quelques autres ont la puissance de les évoquer ou de les congédier à leur gré. Par un cas semblable notre narrateur s’aperçut qu’il redevenait enfant. Déjà vers le milieu de 1817, cette dangereuse faculté le tourmentait cruellement. Couché, mais éveillé, des processions funèbres et magnifiques défilaient devant ses yeux; d’interminables bâtiments se dressaient, d’un caractère antique et solennel. Mais les rêves du sommeil participèrent bientôt des rêves de la veille, et tout ce que son œil évoquait dans les ténèbres se reproduisit dans son sommeil avec une splendeur inquiétante, insupportable. [...] Toute cette fantasmagorie, si belle et si poétique qu’elle fût en apparence, était accompagnée d’une angoisse profonde et d’une noire mélancolie. (ŒC, I: 480) [The first symptom that showed in the physical disposition of the opium eater is strange to note. It is the starting point or the seed of a whole series of ills. Children are, in general, gifted with a singular faculty which allows them to perceive, or rather to create, a whole world of bizarre visions on the fertile canvas of darkness. In some, this faculty sometimes functions involuntarily. But others have the power to evoke such visions and to dispel them as they wish. In this way, our narrator noticed that he was becoming a child once more. Already around mid-1817, this dangerous faculty was tormenting him cruelly. He lay awake in bed, as prodigious funeral processions filed before his eyes; endless buildings, ancient and solemn in their appearance, rose up before him. Yet the things he dreamt of while asleep soon began to mix with those he dreamt up while awake, and everything he visualized in the dark manifested itself in his sleep with an unsettling and intolerable splendour. [...] This whole phantasmagoria, however beautiful and poetic it appeared to be, was accompanied by profound anguish and dark melancholia.]

While images of endless buildings and magnificent funeral processions convey the intoxicated individual’s intimation of the limitlessness of the possibilities of representation, his perceptions become detached from any significant context and are a source of extreme apprehension. It is worth considering the possible aesthetic dimension to the tension Baudelaire unearths between the harmonic refiguration of sensual experience and overstimulation of the sensorium. On this point, the following comment from Mon cœur mis à nu links the music of Liszt, composer of the Hungarian Rhapsodies, to a similarly complex aesthetic response: ‘Culte de la sensation multipliée et s’exprimant par la musique. En référer à Liszt’ [Cult of multiplied sensation expressing itself by music. Refer to Liszt] (ŒC, I: 701). In the

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poem ‘Le Confiteor de l’artiste’ [‘The Artist’s Confiteor’] from Le Spleen de Paris, the narrator focuses on the precarious point separating aesthetic jouissance from anguish: Grand délice que celui de noyer son regard dans l’immensité du ciel et de la mer! Solitude, silence, incomparable chasteté de l’azur! une petite voile frissonnante à l’horizon, et qui par sa petitesse et son isolement imite mon irrémédiable existence, mélodie monotone de la houle, toutes ces choses pensent par moi, ou je pense par elles (car dans la grandeur de la rêverie, le moi se perd vite!); elles pensent, dis-je, mais musicalement et pittoresquement, sans arguties, sans syllogismes, sans déductions. Toutefois, ces pensées, qu’elles sortent de moi ou s’élancent des choses, deviennent bientôt trop intenses. L’énergie dans la volupté crée un malaise et une souffrance positive. Mes nerfs trop tendus ne donnent plus que des vibrations criardes et douloureuses. [What a great delight to sink one’s gaze into the immensity of the sky and the sea! Solitude, silence, incomparable chastity of the blue! A little f luttering sail on the horizon, which by its smallness and its isolation imitates my irremediable existence, monotonous melody of the swell, all these things think through me, or I think through them (for in the expansiveness of the dream, the self is lost quickly!); they think, I say, albeit musically and picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions. Yet, these thoughts, whether they come from me or spring out of things, soon become too intense. Energy lost to voluptuousness creates a feeling of sickness and positive suffering. My nerves, too tense, now produce only shrill and painful vibrations.]

The asyndetic quality of the phrases in the first paragraph quoted here — ‘une petite voile frissonante à l’horizon’, ‘mélodie monotone de la houle’, ‘toutes ces choses pensent par moi’ — conveys the diversity and vividness of sensation and association, while the narrator’s enchantment is experienced as a gradual retraction of sovereignty over the self. The phenomenon Baudelaire describes as rhapsodie in Les Paradis artificiels is suggested by the evocation of a pattern of mental associations that follow a ‘musical’ and ‘picturesque’ logic that is distinct from deductive reasoning. In Les Paradis artificiels, Baudelaire links the increased suggestiveness of mental imagery to a heightened subjective volatility: Le lecteur a déjà remarqué que depuis longtemps l’homme n’évoque plus les images, mais que les images s’offrent à lui, spontanément, despotiquement. Il ne peut pas les congédier; car la volonté n’a plus de force et ne gouverne plus les facultés. La mémoire poétique, jadis source infinie de jouissances, est devenue un arsenal inépuisable d’instruments de supplices. (ŒC, I: 483) [The reader has by now noticed that for some time already, the man has ceased to evoke images, but that images present themselves to him, spontaneously, despotically. He cannot dismiss them, because he no longer possesses the strength of will and has no control over his faculties. Poetic memory, which was once an infinite source of pleasure, has become an inexhaustible arsenal of torture instruments.]

In the state of rhapsodie nervous sensibility is no longer able to cope with its stimuli;

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as was the case in ‘Le Confiteor de l’artiste’, this is the moment where the individual painfully perceives the sudden irreconcilability of his own individual self with the forces tending towards its dispersion. Elsewhere, in the poem ‘Les Vocations’, a pattern of subjection to external stimuli is provided by the narrator’s evocation of ‘une musique si surprenante qu’elle donne envie tantôt de danser, tantôt de pleurer, ou de faire les deux à la fois, et qu’on deviendrait comme fou si on les écoutait trop longtemps’ [a music so surprising that it makes one want to dance as much as to cry, or to do both at the same time, and which would drive one mad if one listened to it too long]. More generally, these antagonistic forces and the volatile subjectivity to which they give rise are at the core of the aesthetic project of Baudelaire’s prose poems. Writing to Sainte-Beuve on 15 January 1866, the poet explained his aspirations for Le Spleen de Paris: ‘Enfin, j’ai l’espoir de pouvoir montrer, un de ces jours, un nouveau Joseph Delorme accrochant sa pensée rapsodique à chaque accident de sa f lânerie et tirant de chaque objet une morale désagréable’ [Ultimately, I hope to show, one of these days, a new Joseph Delorme hooking his rhapsodic thought onto every chance encounter of his city stroll and drawing from every object an unpleasant moral].10 Here, the linking of ‘rhapsodic thought’ to the practice of flânerie indicates the appositeness of the concept of rhapsodie as a means to problematize the modern poet’s approach to the urban environment. In addition, the mention of the ‘morale désagréable’ in relation to Le Spleen de Paris gives some intimation of the emotional and moral volatility that is characteristic of several of the narrators of the collection, as will be argued in the analyses that follow. In seeking to consider the implications of the concept of rhapsodie for Baudelaire’s poetic practice in Le Spleen de Paris, the following negative connotation of the verb ‘rhapsoder’ from the Trésor de la langue française also appears relevant: ‘Compiler et citer en désordre, mal arranger; parler, écrire à tort et à travers’ [to compile and cite in a disorderly manner, to organize poorly].11 In addition, the sixth edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française of 1832–35 contains the following derogatory definition of ‘rapsodie’ evoking incoherent rhetoric: ‘Il se dit, figurément et familièrement, d’un mauvais ramas, soit de vers, soit de prose. Je n’ai jamais vu pareille rapsodie. Tout son discours n’était qu’une mauvaise rapsodie’ [It can be said, figuratively and informally, of an unsatisfying muddle, either in verse or prose. I have never seen such a rhapsody. His whole speech was nothing but a poor rhapsody].12 Transposed into the frame of writing practice, rhapsodie thus hints at a logic of textual disorganization. Recalling the absence of syllogisms and deductions from the narrator’s thought in ‘Le Confiteor de l’Artiste’, it suggests a wayward patterning that both counters the harmonic reconfiguration of visual stimuli by consciousness and evades the structuring demands of rhetoric. Incidentally, since several of these definitions evoke a certain disordering of discourse, it seems significant that the concept is elaborated within the passages of Les Paradis artificiels¸ given that work’s interspersion of a translation of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater with Baudelaire’s own paraphrase and commentary. At this point, it may be worth considering a passage from the notes Baudelaire prepared for a polemic against Abel-François Villemain, secretary of the Académie française at the time of his failed candidature for election to the learned body. In the

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following paragraphs Baudelaire describes some stylistic infelicities in Villemain’s writing: La phrase de Villemain, comme celle de tous les bavards qui ne pensent pas (ou des bavards intéressés à dissimuler leur pensée, avoués, boursiers, hommes d’affaires, mondains), commence par une chose, continue par plusieurs autres, et finit par une qui n’a pas plus de rapport avec les précédentes que celles-ci entre elles. D’où ténèbres. Loi du désordre. Sa phrase est faite par agrégation, comme une ville résultat des siècles, et toute phrase doit être en soi un monument bien coordonné, l’ensemble de tous ces monuments formant la ville qui est le Livre. (ŒC, II: 197) [Villemain’s sentences, like those of all prattlers who do not stop to think (or of those prattlers who strive to conceal their true thoughts, such as solicitors, stock market traders, businessmen and socialites), begin by way of one thing, carry on by means of several others, and round off via something which has no more connection to the previous things mentioned than any of the latter have to each other. Hence obscurity. The law of disorder. His sentences come about through a process of aggregation, like a city which results from centuries of history, and every sentence should be inherently a well-coordinated monument, all of these monuments together forming the city which is the Book.]

It is interesting that in this incidence, Baudelaire associates what he perceives as the inconsistencies of Villemain’s expression with a certain number of urban professions conducted by individuals often skilled in underhand or ambiguous rhetoric and manipulation: solicitors, stock market traders and businessmen. Baudelaire’s adoption of the metaphor of the city to oppose the inadequacies of Villemain’s writing (presented here as a haphazard, non-sequential series of accumulations governed by a ‘loi du désordre’) to the more desirable model of literature as a ‘monument bien coordonné’ seems significant. In fact, the latter characterization is more in agreement with the nostalgic vision of the Paris of the 1840s in Baudelaire’s essay on Banville in which, as noted earlier, he writes that ‘Paris n’était pas alors ce qu’il est aujourd’hui; un tohu-bohu, un capharnaüm, une Babel peuplée d’imbéciles et d’inutiles’ [Paris in those days was not what it is today: pandemonium, a shambles, a Babel populated by imbeciles and useless people] (ŒC, II: 162). Accordingly, the perceived inadequacies of style for which Baudelaire condemns Villemain in the passage might be seen, oddly, to be more in keeping with the kind of expressive strategies he himself wished to pursue in Le Spleen de Paris. Bearing in mind the implications of some of the foregoing ref lections on rhapsodie for Le Spleen de Paris, it is useful to ref lect initially on one of those prose poems which remained at the draft stage, but which was intended for inclusion in a later version of the volume. In this piece, Baudelaire describes a terrifying labyrinthine cityscape of colossal proportions. Entitled ‘Symptômes de ruine’ [‘Symptoms of Ruin’], the text conveys the speaker’s terror of imprisonment within this nightmarish city and of its impending collapse. The city in fact recalls the fictitious ‘prisons’ or Carceri d’Invenzione of the eighteenth-century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi; Piranesi’s dark and immense urban interiors formed a counterpoint to the more optimistic Enlightenment urbanism of French utopian architects such as Le Doux and Boullé. Although Baudelaire does not invoke the name of Piranesi in his writings, he is

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likely to have been aware of them indirectly by way of De Quincey’s discussion of the artist in his Confessions.13 Symptômes de ruine. Bâtiments immenses. Plusieurs, l’un sur l’autre, des appartements, des chambres, des temples, des galeries, des escaliers, des cœcums, des belvédères, des lanternes, des fontaines, des statues. — Fissures, lézardes. Humidité provenant d’un réservoir situé près du ciel. — Comment avertir les gens, les nations — ? avertissons à l’oreille les plus intelligents. Tout en haut, une colonne craque et ses deux extrémités se déplacent. Rien n’a encore croulé. Je ne peux plus retrouver l’issue. Je descends, puis je remonte. Une tour labyrinthe. Je n’ai jamais pu sortir. J’habite pour toujours un bâtiment qui va crouler, un bâtiment travaillé par une maladie secrète. — Je calcule, en moi-même, pour m’amuser, si une si prodigieuse masse de pierres, de marbres, de statues, de murs, qui vont se choquer réciproquement seront très souillés par cette multitude de cervelles, de chairs humaines et d’ossements concassés. — Je vois de si terribles choses en rêve, que je voudrais quelquefois ne plus dormir, si je n’étais sûr d’avoir trop de fatigue. (ŒC, I: 372) [Symptoms of ruin. Huge buildings. Several, one on top of the other, apartments, bedrooms, temples, galleries, staircases, caeca, belvederes, lanterns, fountains, statues. — Cracks, crevices. Moisture from a reservoir high up in the sky. — How to warn people, nations — ? Let us whisper it in the ears of the most intelligent. Right at the top, a column cracks and both ends of it shift position. Nothing has yet toppled. I can find no way out. I climb down and then up again. A maze tower. I never managed to escape. I must live forever inside a building which is about to collapse, a building worn down by a secret disease. — For amusement, I work out in my mind whether or not such a prodigious mass of stonework, marble, statues and walls which are destined to crash against each other will be very smeared by this multitude of crushed brains and human f lesh and bone. — I see such awful things in my dreams that I would prefer never to sleep again, if only such a prospect were not so exhausting.]

Here, the narrator conveys his imagined confrontation with a phenomenon of such immensity that it resists assimilation into representation. The sheer scale of the city described in these lines recalls the poems ‘Paysage’ [‘Landscape’] and ‘Rêve parisien’ [‘Parisian Dream’] from Les Fleurs du mal. In the former, the lines ‘Je fermerai partout portières et volets / Pour bâtir dans la nuit mes féeriques palais’ [I shall close all the shutters and doors / To build my fairy palaces in the night] convey a sense of intimate reverie that contrasts with the anguished exposure of the narrator of ‘Symptômes de ruine’ who is unsettled by his own nightmarish visions. In ‘Rêve parisien’, a similarly immense cityscape is evoked: Babel d’escaliers et d’arcades C’était un palais infini Plein de bassins et de cascades Tombant dans l’or mat ou bruni. [Babel of staircases and arches / It was an infinite palace / Filled with pools and waterfalls / Pouring into the dull or burnished gold]

In this instance the pools and waterfalls suggest an image of containment that corro­ borates what Sartre interprets as an aspect of Baudelaire’s predisposition towards the

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urban and artificial: ‘Citadin, il aime l’objet géométrique, soumis à la rationalisation humaine; Schaunard rapporte qu’il disait: “L’eau en liberté m’est insupportable; je la veux prisonnière, au carcan, dans les murs géométriques d’un quai” ’ [As a city dweller, he has a fondness for geometrical objects which have been subject to human rationalization; Schaunard relates that he used to say: ‘I cannot stand water that is not enclosed. I want it to be imprisoned, in shackles, inside the geometric walls of a quay’].14 Sartre imputes this desire to contain water to Baudelaire’s ‘horreur de son affaissement et de sa ductilité vagabonde’ [horror of its ebbs and f lows and its restless ductility].15 Indeed, ‘Rêve parisien’ draws upon such images of containment of water to suggest the poet’s imaginative sovereignty: Architecte de mes féeries Je faisais, à ma volonté Sous un tunnel de pierreries Passer un océan dompté. [Architect of my own visions / At will I made / A tamed ocean / Pass beneath a jewel-encrusted tunnel]

By contrast, in ‘Symptômes de ruine’, it is the ominous portent of the fissuring reservoir high above ground that instils panic in the voice of the narrator and prompts the thematic of disintegration. In contrast to the positive ‘constructive’ aesthetic of ‘Rêve parisien’, the emphasis here is on the fragmentation of the poet’s imaginative projections. In a notable perversion of conventional visionary depictions of the city, the narrator’s glimpse into infinity is linked to the presentiment of his subjective disintegration and a traumatic capitulation to imaginative vagary and psychological instability. Although this text cannot be considered a complete poem, its panicked and protracted enumerations of architectural features and scant grammatical structures hint at a logic of textual disorganization. As is conveyed by the ‘symptomatic’ running title, the narrator’s own subjective positioning and nervous disposition are thrown into uncertainty, and that uncertainty might be seen to filter into a textual practice that mirrors the narrator’s own perverse computations of the scale of human carnage in the crumbling metropolis. ‘Symptômes de ruine’ marks another significant departure from the aesthetic of ‘Rêve parisien’. One of the foremost features of the latter poem is its markedly visual orientation and its thematic attenuation of other varieties of sensation, notably that of sound: Et sur ces mouvantes merveilles Planait (terrible nouveauté! Tout pour l’œil, rien pour les oreilles!) Un silence d’éternité. [And over these stirring marvels / Hung (terrible novelty! / All for the eye and nothing for the ear!) / A silence of eternity.]

What distinguishes ‘Symptômes de ruines’ and many of the poems from Le Spleen de Paris is the sporadic exposure of many of the narrators to an aural stridency that disturbs their visual appropriation of their surroundings, especially when this occurs in a lyrical mode. The collection is cluttered with such raucous interventions, so it seems fitting to align the musically oriented notion of rhapsodie to the aesthetic

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of the prose poems. Drawing the musical analogy further, it is worth considering Baudelaire’s summation of Wagner’s talent in the following formulae from an essay on the composer: Tout ce qu’impliquent les mots: volonté, désir, concentration, intensité nerveuse, explosion, se sent et se fait deviner dans ses œuvres. Je ne crois pas me faire illusion ni tromper personne en affirmant que je vois là les principales caractéristiques du phénomène que nous appelons génie; ou du moins, que dans l’analyse de tout ce que nous avons jusqu’ici légitimement appelé génie on retrouve lesdites caractéristiques. En matière d’art, j’avoue que je ne hais pas l’outrance; la modération ne m’a jamais semblé le signe d’une nature artistique vigoureuse. J’aime ces excès de santé, ces débordements de volonté qui s’inscrivent dans les œuvres comme le bitume enf lammé dans le sol d’un volcan, et qui, dans la vie ordinaire, marquent souvent la phase, pleine de délices, succédant à une grande crise morale ou physique (ŒC, II: 807). [Everything implied by the words will, desire, concentration, nervous intensity, explosion, can be felt or intimated in his works. I do not think I am misleading myself or anyone else in stating that I see in that one of the main characteristics of the phenomenon which we call genius; or at least, that in the analysis of everything that we have hitherto with legitimacy called genius, the same characteristics can be found. I admit that I am not averse to excess in art; moderation has never seemed to me to indicative of a vigorous artistic nature. I love those excesses of health and sudden eruptions of the will that mark a work in the same way as bitumen catching fire inside a volcano, and which, in everyday life, often mark that delightful phase which follows a major moral or physical trauma.]

Like the impulsive and wayward subjectivity which is foregrounded in Les Paradis artificiels, this passage from the essay on Wagner’s Tannhäuser demonstrates an aes­thetic preference for volatility on the part of Baudelaire. Considering those potential aesthetic dimensions of rhapsodic experience, the prominence awarded to nervous intensity and ‘explosion’ in this passage, coupled with Baudelaire’s repeated acknowledgement of his predilection for excess and lack of moderation, suggests common facets of an aesthetic project that is worth considering in the context of Le Spleen de Paris. Many of the poems of Le Spleen de Paris are indeed saturated with aural disruptions and intrusions. In several instances, these prompt a sudden intolerable intensity of sensation on the part of the narrator, invariably hindering his attempts to orchestrate his visual impressions and thus fracturing the somewhat blinkered lyrical idiom into which he frequently slips. Examples of such sudden aural explosions throughout the collection include the narrator of the window pane seller of ‘Le Mauvais Vitrier’ [‘The Bad Glazier’] whose ‘cri perçant, discordant monta jusqu’à moi à travers la sale atmosphère parisienne’ [piercing, discordant cry rose to me through the dirty Parisian atmosphere], to the ‘cris discordants’ [discordant cries] of ‘Le Crépuscule du soir’ [‘Evening Twilight’] to the ‘explosion du nouvel an’ [explosion of the new year] which marks the beginning of ‘Un plaisant’ [‘A Joke’]. These noises generate a constant but amorphous din that obstructs the assimilation of visual stimuli and hinders successive narrators’ attempts to transcend the distractions and trivial details

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of modern urban life. On this point, it is worth noting that the poems of Le Spleen de Paris appear to possess in abundance many of the qualities which Baudelaire saw as the antithesis of lyric poetry in the essay on Banville. In that essay he writes: ‘La lyre fuit volontiers tous les détails dont le roman se régale. L’âme lyrique fait des enjambées vastes comme des synthèses; l’esprit du romancier se délecte dans l’analyse’ [The lyre voluntary shuns all the details on which the novel feasts. The lyric soul strides as wide as syntheses; the mind of the novelist regales itself with analysis] (ŒC, II: 165).The essay thus associates lyric poetry with a tendency to surpass and synthesize conf licting attributes of emotional and sensory experience; however, Baudelaire argues that the novel is more inclined to open to scrutiny these aspects of experience, and it can be argued that the expressive strategies deployed in Le Spleen de Paris seem to share that objective. In the Banville essay, Baudelaire writes that: Il y a, en effet, une manière lyrique de sentir. Les hommes les plus disgraciés de la nature, ceux à qui la fortune donne le moins de loisir, ont connu quelquefois ces sortes d’impressions, si riches que l’âme en est comme illuminée, si vives qu’elle en est comme soulevée. Tout l’être intérieur, dans ces merveilleux instants, s’élance en l’air par trop de légèreté et de dilatation, comme pour atteindre une région plus haute. (ŒC, II: 164) [There is, indeed, a lyrical way to feel. The most ill-favoured men of all, those to whom fortune has granted the least opportunities for leisure, have at some point experienced these sorts of impressions, which are so rich that it is as if they light up the soul, and so vivid that they seem to raise it to a higher plane. The whole internal being, in these marvellous moments, dilates and becomes lighter so abundantly that it soars into the air, as if to reach some superior stratum.]

In this view, by dint of their purity, those sensual impressions imparted by lyric poetry promise access to a transcendent sphere — ‘une région plus haute’. If the lyrical gaze can be considered to be uplifting in this way, readers of Le Spleen de Paris will acknowledge the frequency with which the gaze of the collection’s various narrators is most frequently oriented downwards at the surface of the street. Whether it be the tramp encountered at the entrance to a cabaret in ‘Assommons les pauvres!’, the mire of the tarmac into which tumbles the narrator’s hat in ‘Perte d’Auréole’ [‘Loss of a Halo’] or the live rat which is kept as a toy by the impoverished child sitting among the nettles and thistles in ‘Le Joujou du pauvre’ [‘The Poor Child’s toy’], the objects which meet the gaze without fail call the narrator back to the inconveniences and inadequacies of his present situation. If the gaze of lyric poetry is illuminating, that of these examples taken from Le Spleen de Paris appears to serve a more ambivalent function of registering the f luctuations of each narrator’s emotional and existential state. The Banville essay effectively proscribes any such role for lyric poetry, as can be seen in the following statement: Comme l’art antique, il n’exprime que ce qui est beau, joyeux, noble, grand, rythmique. Aussi, dans ses œuvres, vous n’entendrez pas les dissonances, les discordances des musiques du sabbat, non plus que les glapissements de l’ironie, cette vengeance du vaincu. (ŒC, II: 168) [ Just as in ancient art, it expresses only beauty, joy, nobility, greatness and

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rhythm. Moreover, in his works, you will not hear the dissonances and discord­ances of the music of the Sabbath, no more than the snarls of irony, that vengeance of the vanquished.]

In aligning lyric poetry with the classical aesthetic in this way, Baudelaire explicitly acknowledges that it tends to mollify dissonances and ironies of the kind alluded to here. In Le Spleen de Paris, however, such tensions are not resolved in poetic rhetoric; instead they possess an aesthetic quality deriving specifically from their discord. On a thematic level, they correspond to that mix of the grotesque and the tragic which, in Fusées, Baudelaire says is ‘agréable à l’esprit, comme les discordances aux oreilles blasées’ [agreeable to the mind, like discordances to indifferent ears] (ŒC, I: 661). An example of this can be observed in the poem ‘La Soupe et les nuages’ [‘The Soup and the Clouds’], in which the narrator contemplates cloud formations through the window of his dining room, comparing their beauty to that of his lover’s eyes: Ma petite folle bien-aimée me donnait à dîner, et par la fenêtre ouverte de la salle à manger je contemplais les mouvantes architectures que Dieu fait avec les vapeurs, les merveilleuses constructions de l’impalpable. Et je me disais, à travers ma contemplation: ‘— Toutes ces fantasmagories sont presque aussi belles que les yeux de ma belle bien-aimée, la petite folle monstrueuse aux yeux verts.’ Et tout à coup je reçus un violent coup de poing dans le dos, et j’entendis une voix rauque et charmante, une voix hystérique et comme enrouée par l’eaude-vie, la voix de ma chère petite bien-aimée, qui disait: ‘— Allez-vous bientôt manger votre soupe, s...b... de marchand de nuages?’ [My beloved little madwoman was making me dinner, and though the open window of the dining room I was contemplating the moving architectures that God constructs out of vapours, the marvellous constructions of the impalpable. And in my contemplation, I was saying to myself: ‘— All these phantasmagorias are almost as beautiful as the eyes of my beloved, my little green-eyed monstrous madwoman.’ And suddenly, I felt a violent blow to my back, and I heard a husky, charming voice, a hysterical voice hoarsened by brandy, they voice of my dear little beloved, who was saying: ‘ — So are you going to eat your soup, you b... b... of a cloud merchant?’]

In this instance, the window serves to frame and contain the narrator’s imaginative projections, but as soon as these are associated with the gaze of his lover, his enchantment is brought to an abrupt end. As is suggested by the repetition of variants on ‘contemplation’ in the first paragraph, which contrasts with the promi­ nent repetition of the word ‘voix’ in the second, the narrator’s visual captivation is violently disrupted by assertions of other sensual stimuli. While the violence of the blow the narrator receives to his back suggests a dissipation of the ‘mouvantes architectures’ and of the rhetorical framing device of the window, at the same time perverse new lyrical effects arise from the narrator’s sudden exposure to the here and now and his efforts to co-ordinate conf licting stimuli. His description of the clouds above him in terms of ‘merveilleuses constructions de l’impalpable’ thus draws an ironic comparison with the similarly cloudy but markedly less ethereal consistency of the soup below him on the plate. Meanwhile, his evocation of his

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lover’s ‘voix rauque et charmante, une voix hystérique et comme enrouée par l’eau-de-vie’ carries an unexpected lyrical effect, not least by its combination of seemingly conf licting epithets of ‘rauque’ and ‘charmante’. The narrator’s description of his lover’s spirit-soaked voice in this way in ‘La Soupe et les nuages’ warrants comparison with what the narrator of ‘Les Tentations’ [‘The Temptations’] describes as the ‘bizarre charm’ of the she-devil of that poem: Pour définir ce charme, je ne saurais le comparer à rien de mieux qu’à celui des très belles femmes sur le retour, qui cependant ne vieillissent plus, et dont la beauté garde la magie pénétrante des ruines. Elle avait l’air à la fois impérieux et dégingandé, et ses yeux, quoique battus, contenaient une force fascinatrice. Ce qui me frappa le plus, ce fut le mystère de sa voix, dans laquelle je retrouvais le souvenir des contralti les plus délicieux et aussi un peu de l’enrouement des gosiers incessamment lavés par l’eau-de-vie. [In order to define this charm, I could compare it to nothing better than that of those very beautiful women on the decline who nonetheless grow no older, and whose beauty retains the irresistible magic of ruins. She seemed both imperious and lanky, and her eyes, although they seemed defeated, contained a fascinating power. What struck me the most was the mystery of her voice, in which I rediscovered the memory of the most delightful contralti and also some of the hoarseness of throats bathed interminably in brandy.]

Here the she-devil’s voice is evoked in terms of a residual splendour: ‘la magie pénétrante des ruines’, but such potentiality is heavily ironized by the narrator’s simultaneous association of the she-devil with drunkards and contralti. Indeed her voice is described elsewhere in the poem as ‘charmante et paradoxale’. The she-devil possesses that ‘imperious’ or excessive quality which Baudelaire saw as a condition of rhapsodic experience. Combined with the pointed reference to her ungainliness, this suggests a pattern whereby formal incompleteness is linked to a heightened sensuous impact. ‘Multitude, solitude’ in Le Spleen de Paris One such pattern of formal incompleteness is explored in an urban context in the opening sentence of the poem ‘Un Plaisant’: C’était l’explosion du nouvel an: chaos de boue et de neige, traversé de mille carrosses, étincelant de joujoux et de bonbons, grouillant de cupidités et de désespoirs, délire officiel d’une grande ville fait pour troubler le cerveau du solitaire le plus fort. [It was the explosion of the New Year: chaos of mud and snow, criss-crossed by a thousand coaches, sparkling with toys and sweets, swarming with greedy desires and despairs, the official delirium of a great city destined to agitate the mind of even the most resilient loner.]

As Margery A. Evans has shown, passages such as that cited here may serve as meta­textual commentaries on Le Spleen de Paris more generally, in the form of mises en abyme. Considering the visual prominence awarded to the sparkling toys and sweets set against the opaque surfaces of mud and snow in this sentence, it is worth bearing in mind Evans’ assertion that: ‘most of these emblematic passages involve

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reference to inter-ref lecting light (recalling the jeu de miroirs of a kaleidoscope) or to music, and sometimes the two are directly associated’.16 By implication, the multiple trajectories of the coaches seem to describe a topographical structure; however this structure is transitory and the frenzied movement of the vehicles on the narrator’s perception is overburdening. What seems to be implied here is that the urban subject, and by extension the reader, are unable to gain sufficient remove from the tantalizing spectacle of the city (or from the collection) in order to be able to perceive them as autonomous totalities. As Maria C. Scott notes in an analysis of ‘Les Yeux des pauvres’, Le Spleen de Paris more broadly: ‘[...] illustrates and implicitly censures the violence of the drive towards ease of legibility that was exemplified so dramatically by Haussmann’s urban project’.17 Like the urban subject struggling to assimilate a mass of conf licting perceptual stimuli, the reader of Le Spleen de Paris may have difficulty in defining consistent thematic connections between different poems which would help to determine the ‘architecture’ of the collection. Moreover, the stress in this passage on the New Year suggests a pattern whereby the effects of urban modernization are of a piece with the increasingly disorienting complexities of textual innovation. The allusion in the quoted passage to the ‘délire officiel’ — an official delirium — suggests both the affective confusion into which the urban subject is cast, with its mix of cupidity and despair, and the complex set of responses engendered by many of Baudelaire’s poems. The solitary narrator’s weary dismissal of the ‘délire officiel’ thus conveys the incompatibility of individual experience with contrived models of the collectivity. In a similar vein, in ‘Any Where out of the World’, the narrator comments that ‘je serai toujours bien là où je ne suis pas’ [I will always be better off where I am not] and dwells upon ‘cette question du déménagement’ [this issue of displacement]. The poem stages an internal dialogue between the voice of the narrator’s soul, expressing immense dissatisfaction with his situation and that of the narrator himself, who tries to entice the soul with the possibility of travel to new climes. ‘Dis-moi, mon âme, pauvre âme refroidie, que penserais-tu d’habiter Lisbonne? Il doit y faire chaud, et tu t’y ragaillardirais comme un lézard. Cette ville est au bord de l’eau; on dit qu’elle est bâtie en marbre, et que le peuple y a une telle haine du végétal, qu’il arrache tous les arbres. Voilà un paysage selon ton goût; un paysage fait avec la lumière et le minéral, et le liquide pour les réf léchir!’ Mon âme ne répond pas. ‘Puisque tu aimes tant le repos, avec le spectacle du mouvement, veux-tu venir habiter la Hollande, cette terre béatifiante? Peut-être te divertiras-tu dans cette contrée dont tu as souvent admiré l’image dans les musées. Que penseraistu de Rotterdam, toi qui aimes les forêts de mâts, et les navires amarrés au pied des maisons?’ Mon âme reste muette. [‘Tell me, my soul, my poor cold soul, what would you think of Lisbon? It must be hot there, and you would perk up there like a lizard. This city is at the water’s edge; they say it is built from marble, and that the people have such a hatred of vegetation that they tear up all the trees. There’s a landscape to your taste; a landscape created with light and minerals, and liquid to ref lect them! My soul does not answer.

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‘Since you love rest so much, coupled with the spectacle of movement, do you want to go and live in Holland, that beatifying land? Perhaps you would enjoy this country whose image you have often admired in museums. What would you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts, and ships moored in front of houses?’ My soul remains mute.]

The destinations proposed by the narrator in this and other sections of the poem are all towns: Lisbon, Rotterdam, Batavia and Tornio. Furthermore, since these are all port towns, departure from them is uncomplicated, and the sea provides a relatively still vantage (‘le repos, avec le spectacle du mouvement’) from which to observe them as animated, self-contained totalities. The narrator’s description of Lisbon — ‘un paysage fait avec la lumière et le minéral, et le liquide pour les réf léchir’ — as a town where the inhabitants are wont to uproot trees out of abhorrence for the vegetal corresponds to Baudelaire’s own aversion to organic nature. In his Baudelaire, Sartre argues that aesthetic preferences of this kind in Baudelaire serve a narcissistic function of self-observation by severely diminishing contact with organic stimuli: C’est que le métal et, d’une façon générale, le minéral lui renvoient l’image de l’esprit. Par suite des limites de notre puissance imaginative, tous ceux qui ont, pour opposer l’esprit à la vie et au corps, été amenés à s’en former une image non biologique, ont nécessairement eu recours au règne de l’inanimé: lumière, froid, transparence, stérilité. De même que Baudelaire retrouve dans les ‘bêtes immondes’ ses mauvaises pensées réalisées et objectivées, le métal le plus brillant, le plus poli, celui qui laisse le moins de prise, l’acier lui paraîtra toujours l’objectivation exacte de sa Pensée en général. S’il a cette tendresse pour la mer, c’est que c’est un minéral mobile. Brillante, inaccessible et froide, avec ce mouvement pur et comme immatériel, ces formes qui se succèdent, ce changement sans rien qui change et, parfois, cette transparence, elle offre la meilleure image de l’esprit, c’est l’esprit. Ainsi, par haine de la vie, Baudelaire est amené à choisir dans la matérialisation pure des symboles de l’immatériel.18 [The reason is that, for him, metal, and more generally, minerals, offer a ref lection of the mind. Owing to the limits of our imaginative powers, all those who, in order to contrast the mind with life and the body, have been led to understand it in non-biological terms and have had recourse to terms belonging to the domain of the inanimate: light, cold, transparency and sterility. Just as it is in ‘hideous beasts’ that Baudelaire finds his darker thoughts made real and objectified, it is that most shining, polished and smooth of metals, steel, which always seems to present him with an exact objectification of his thought in general. The reason he may feel the same tenderness towards the sea is that it is an ever-changing mineral. Glistening, inaccessible and cold, with that pure and seemingly immaterial movement, those forms which supersede each another, that changeless change, and occasionally, that transparency, the sea offers the most appropriate image of the mind, it is the mind. Thus, through his hatred of life, Baudelaire is led to select symbols of the immaterial amongst purely material objects.]

While Sartre’s comments may be applicable to the fantasy of ‘Rêve parisien’, wherein the poet banishes ‘le vegetal irrégulier’ from his imaginative projections, given the more explicitly articulated tension between soul and narrator in ‘Any

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Where out of the World’, the latter poem does not seem unambiguously to corro­borate Sartre’s description of Baudelaire’s poetics. The whimsical dialogue between soul and narrator may elicit a certain scepticism from the reader, as may the narrator’s exaggerated enthusiasm for the merits of the various towns he describes. The narrator’s association of Lisbon and Rotterdam with non-organic and pictorial qualities appears conspicuous, and suspect, when considered against the characterization of the city of Paris elsewhere in Le Spleen de Paris as absolute confusion, a ‘tohu-bohu’ irreducible to the kind of unified urban representations at which this narrator is so adept. By extension, it is the latter characterization based on confusion and disorder which is more consistent with the unresolved dialogue of narrator and soul. The dialogic form of the poem conveys the extent to which external conf licts are internalized by the poet, thus complicating the impulse to lyricize. ‘Anywhere out of the world’ ends as follows: ‘Enfin, mon âme fait explosion, et sagement elle me crie: “N’importe où! n’importe où! pourvu que ce soit hors de ce monde!” ’ [Finally, my wise soul bursts out and cries: ‘Anywhere! Anywhere! As long as it’s out of this world!’]. Although there is a certain degree of finality to the soul’s ‘explosive’ last utterance, in effect the plea for a destination that cannot be located serves to perpetuate the tensions that pervade the rest of the poem. Underlying the final non-coherence of the soul’s statement is the poet’s perceived inability to project positively a desired elsewhere or to acquire a stable relation to place. At this point, Benoît Goetz’s concept of ‘indwelling’ appears relevant to the prose poems: ‘L’inhabitation est une habitation sans habitation, une habitation sans habitude. [...] Inhabiter, c’est être là, “tout en gardant un pied ailleurs”, et c’est en quoi on retrouve une problématique du seuil et de l’hésitation’ [Indwelling is a dwelling without residence, an inhabitating without habit. [...] To indwell, is to be here, ‘while keeping one foot elsewhere’, and this is why we find a problematics of the threshold and hesitation].19 The types of urban sensibility explored in Le Spleen de Paris can be aligned to the perceptual mode of ‘indwelling’ since they are similarly fragmented by hesitation and restiveness. However, in wavering between manifold (and frequently conf licting) affiliations and attachments, the poetic gaze embraces a broader territory spanning both the spaces of human and material proliferation and those of the dispossessed. Furthermore, in common with Goetz’s notion of ‘habitation sans habitude’, such f luctuations can be a source of perceptual defamiliarization and revitalization. Thus, although the psychological state which this chapter has thus far aligned to the concept of rhapsodie may prompt a sense of uneasiness and deracination, its effects are thereby simultaneously generative of new perspectives. This productive aspect is not a separate or secondary attribute of the phenomenon but an integral feature of the dynamic to which rhapsodie gives rise. In so far as it can be seen to obstruct the operation of visual analogies and rhetorical constructs borrowed from the lyric tradition, rhapsodie may be aligned to the function of irony in Baudelaire’s prose poetry, by virtue of its potential to produce radical uncertainty; however, such uncertainty is equally the condition for the unlocking of new aesthetic potentialities and the exploration of fresh expressive strategies. Modern urban experience is particularly apt at stimulating

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this process for it activates the horizontal movement of what Baudelaire refers to as ‘dissipation’, or the dispersal of individual consciousness into its material and social environment. For Baudelaire, prose is the privileged medium to convey the dispersal of the self in these multiple, contradictory directions, for it relinquishes the coherent mnemonic and spatial frame of verse, and through its alternate crystallizations and disintegrations offers the potential to produce a poetic present that is no longer coincident with its past. Therefore, while, as we have seen, Baudelaire seeks to problematize forms of representation based on systematicity and ideological closure (and which he designates explicitly as being common to utopian programmes), his prose is nonetheless frequently aligned to a spontaneous futurity. As André Hirt writes: ‘La prose avance et f lâne, s’arrête ou se cache aux angles des rues, en attente de l’événement. La prose va ainsi vers l’avenir, vers ce qui va arriver’ [Prose moves forward and wanders, stops or hides behind street corners, in anticipation of the event].20 The descriptions of the hedonistic popular festival contained in ‘Le Vieux saltimbanque’ offer an example of this: Partout s’étalait, se répandait, s’ébaudissait le peuple en vacances. C’était une de ces solennités sur lesquelles, pendant un long temps, comptent les saltimbanques, les faiseurs de tours, les montreurs d’animaux et les boutiquiers ambulants, pour compenser les mauvais temps de l’année. En ces jours-là il me semble que le peuple oublie tout, la douceur et le travail; il devient pareil aux enfants. Pour les petits c’est un jour de congé, c’est l’horreur de l’école renvoyée à vingt-quatre heures. Pour les grands c’est un armistice conclu avec les puissances malfaisantes de la vie, un répit dans la contention et la lutte universelles. [All around, the holiday throngs stretched out, spread out, rejoiced. It was one of those grand occasions which jesters, acrobats, animal trainers and pedlars await at length to make up for the hard times of the year. On those days, it seems to me that the people forget everything, both docility and work; they become like children. For the children, it’s a holiday, it is the horror of school held at bay for twenty-four hours; for the big people, it’s a truce declared with life’s malignant powers, a brief rest from the contention and struggle which reigns everywhere.]

With emphasis on the verbs ‘s’étaler’ and ‘se répandre’, the narrator describes the widespread jubilation in terms of a pattern of spatial expansion. This expansion occurs as the largely working-class spectators are released from drudgery and re-appropriate their urban environment in a playful manner. Within the free space of festivity, there occurs an apparent levelling of social distinctions and obstacles to community. Although the festival in question does not have an overtly political purpose, the narrator’s euphoric description of the gathering warrants consideration alongside Mona Ozouf ’s analysis of the French Revolutionary festival. Ozouf emphasizes the spatial dimensions of Revolutionary festivity through the potential it offers the multitude to annex new territory and discover novel forms of assoc­ iation: ‘Abattre des grilles, franchir des douves, se promener à l’aise où il était interdit d’entrer: l’appropriation d’un certain espace, qu’il a fallu ouvrir et forcer, est la première jouissance révolutionnaire’ [Knocking down fences, crossing moats, strolling at ease in places where it was forbidden to enter: the appropriation of

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a certain space which it was necessary to force open is the first revolutionary pleasure].21 The popular revelry described in ‘Le Vieux Saltimbanque’ appears to simmer with a comparably jubilant and transgressive collective energy: Elles se faisaient, en vérité, une concurrence formidable: elles piaillaient, beuglaient, hurlaient. C’était un mélange de cris, de détonations de cuivre et d’explosions de fusées. Les queues-rouges et les Jocrisses convulsaient les traits de leurs visages basanés, racornis par le vent, la pluie et le soleil; ils lançaient, avec l’aplomb des comédiens sûrs de leurs effets, des bons mots et des plaisanteries d’un comique solide et lourd comme celui de Molière. Les Hercules, fiers de l’énormité de leurs membres, sans front et sans crâne, comme les orangs-outangs, se prélassaient majestueusement sous les maillots lavés la veille pour la circonstance. Les danseuses, belles comme des fées ou des princesses, sautaient et cabriolaient sous le feu des lanternes qui remplissaient leurs jupes d’étincelles. Tout n’était que lumière, poussière, cris, joie, tumulte; les uns dépensaient, les autres gagnaient, les uns et les autres également joyeux. Les enfants se suspendaient aux jupons de leurs mères pour obtenir quelque bâton de sucre, ou montaient sur les épaules de leurs pères pour mieux voir un escamoteur éblouissant comme un dieu. Et partout circulait, dominant tous les parfums, une odeur de friture qui était comme l’encens de cette fête. [In truth, they competed with each other strenuously: they shrieked, bellowed, howled. It was a mixture of shouts, detonations of brass and explosions of rockets. The red-tails and Fools contorted their sunburnt faces, weathered by rain and sun; with all the aplomb of actors confident of their effects, they tossed out clever phrases and jokes of a solid and inelegant humour like that of Molière. The strongmen, proud of the enormousness of their limbs, without foreheads or skulls, like orang-utans, lounged about majestically in their outfits, laundered the day before for the occasion. The dancers, beautiful as fairies or princesses, leapt and capered under the light of the lanterns which filled their skirts with sparks. Everything was light, dust, shouts, joy, uproar; some spent while others gained, both equally happy. Children clung to their mothers’ skirts to be given some sugar lollypop or climbed onto their fathers’ shoulders to be able to get a better glimpse of a conjurer as dazzling as a god. And everywhere, a smell of frying spread through the air, dominating all other scents, like the incense of this celebration.]

For the narrator, it is tempting to detect in this hectic atmosphere a locus of associative potentialities that would permit more just forms of community; this can be seen in the reference to the ‘equal joy’ of both observers and participants, in references in a later passage to ‘la certitude du pain pour les lendemains’ and in the unfettered movements of performers and child spectators. Likewise, the narrator’s later allusion to the ‘f lot mouvant’ of the crowd and light could be linked to the pattern of revolutionary festivity described by Ozouf as ‘un mouvement indéfini, irrépressible et paisible comme la montée d’un f lot’ [an indefinite, irrepressible and peaceful movement, like a rising tide].22 Such intimations that a transformative optimism underlies the popular celebration suggest a utopian resonance. On this point, as we have seen in the first chapter, in the Saint-Simonian Duveyrier’s text

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‘Travaux Publics — Fêtes’, a similarly vibrant jubilee is described in which socially divisive forces are redirected into a series of urban public works intended to benefit the collectivity: [...] au milieu de f lammes, jaunes et bleues, allongeant leurs langues en spirales à travers un nuage de noire fumée, on [voit] plus rapide qu’un oiseau s’avancer la caravane des travailleurs, ambassade de paix avec ses chœurs nombreux et ses danseuses parées; que l’on voie les vaincus reprendre espoir, les hordes de houlans immobiles, muettes, séduites, laisser tomber leurs armes, et tous, vainqueurs et vaincus, entonner l’hymne de confédération universelle, et du milieu des tourbillons de danses et de valses, consacrer à l’œuvre commune leurs mains pacifiées.23 [amidst yellow and blue f lames extending their tongues in spirals through a pall of black smoke, the procession of workers can be seen, moving forward more swiftly than a bird, like an embassy of peace with its numerous choirs and emblazoned dancers; that we may we see the defeated regain hope, and the hordes of dumbstruck, motionless lancers become entranced and drop their weapons, and everyone, both victors and vanquished, break into singing the hymn of universal confederation, and within the whirlwind of dances and waltzes lend their pacified hands to the communal task.]

It remains, however, that despite such a similarly vivid display of movement and popular exhilaration in Duveyrier’s description, the actions of the figures in Baude­ laire’s spectacle are abrupt and paroxysmic by comparison. Although a similar dynamism pervades the narrator’s descriptions of the street performers and the urban throng in ‘Le Vieux saltimbanque’, their frenzied activities are portrayed as lacking the transformative purposiveness of the utopian community projected by Duveyrier. Returning to the last quotation from ‘Le Vieux saltimbanque’ once more, the multiplication of verbs of upheaval in the imperfect tense — ‘piaillaient, beuglaient, hurlaient’, ‘convulsaient’, ‘lançaient’, ‘sautaient’, ‘cabriolaient’ and ‘clamorous’ nouns — ‘cris, joie, tumulte’ — conveys an atmosphere of intense generalized activity but one that is unfocused and erratic. Semantically, such words convey an uncertainty with regard to the crowd’s ability to fulfil its utopian potential for empathy and solidarity; thus, while affirming the associative potentiality of such congregations, the narrator’s description simultaneously hints that the compulsive affective states which they generate threaten to overwhelm any such implicit progressiveness. Before further exploring the resonance of such patterns of heterogeneous aggregation in his work, it is instructive to consider Baudelaire’s comments on the working method of his model Constantin Guys. According to Baudelaire, Guys begins his drawings by ‘de légères indications au crayon, qui ne marquent guère que la place que les objets doivent tenir dans l’espace’ [light indications in pencil, which only just mark the place which objects must occupy in space] (ŒC, II: 699). Baudelaire writes that these are ‘vaguement, légèrement colorées d’abord, mais reprises plus tard et chargées successivement de couleurs’ [vaguely, lightly coloured at first, but returned to later and laden successively with colours]. It is a ‘méthode si simple et presque élémentaire’ [such a simple, almost elementary method] (ŒC, II: 700). Guys’s technique can be observed in an image such as his Cent-gardes à la revue depicting a cavalry inspection. Here the viewer’s attention is drawn to the

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Figure 3.1. Constantin Guys, Cent-gardes à la revue, Musée de l’Armée, Paris. By permission of the Réunion des Musées nationaux.

dissipation of contours as the line of cavalry recedes into the background on the left of the image. The use of shade and the increasingly faint and inchoate tracings of Guys’s pencil around the successive silhouettes of the cavalrymen and their horses are dynamic means by which to suggest multiplicity. Guys’s successful exploitation of techniques such as this appears to have prompted Baudelaire to explore comparable textual means by which to relate visual multiplicity. As James Hiddleston has argued, in Le Peintre de la vie moderne Baudelaire attempts to integrate this technique through the marked expressive prominence awarded to the noun in his description of Guys’s work. This is particularly the case where Baudelaire attempts to convey the density and vividness of impression Guys is assumed to experience on observing a passing military regiment: ‘Harnachements, scintillements, musique, regards décidés, moustaches lourdes et sérieuses, tout cela entre pêle-mêle en lui; et dans quelques minutes, le poème qui en résulte sera virtuellement composé’ [Trappings, glitter, music, determined looks, heavy, solemn moustaches, all that enters into him pell-mell; and in a few minutes the poem that results from it will be virtually composed] (ŒC, II: 692).24 Military formations lend themselves to successful exploitation by this technique but it is applicable to a range of equally dynamic and proliferating urban phenomena such as crowds and port and street scenes featuring ships and carriages, all of which are recurrent images in the work of both Guys and Baudelaire. In the case of his images of ships and carriages, Baudelaire notes in Le Peintre de la vie moderne that

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Guys’s method promotes a heightened degree of imaginative investment on the part of the viewer: ‘Le plaisir que l’œil de l’artiste en reçoit est tiré, ce semble, de la série de figures géométriques que cet objet, déjà si compliqué, navire ou carrosse, engendre successivement et rapidement dans l’espace’ [The pleasure which the artist’s eye receives from it stems, it seems, from the series of geometric figures which this object, already so complicated, a ship or a carriage, generates successively and rapidly in space] (ŒC, II: 723–24). Comparable techniques employed by Baudelaire in Le Spleen de Paris are those which suggest rapid accretions of diverse visual impressions. Examples might include the narrator of ‘Un Plaisant’, who describes an urban scene as ‘l’explosion du nouvel an: chaos de boue et de neige, traversé de mille carrosses, étincelant de joujoux et de bonbons’, and the popular festival described by the narrator of ‘Un Vieux Saltimbanque’, for whom ‘Tout n’était que lumière, poussière, cris, joie, tumulte’. The asyndetic quality of these phrases therefore seems intended to stimulate patterns of visual association in the reader’s imagination. While instances of visual shorthand in the work of Guys may provide a paradigm for some of the verbalizing strategies Baudelaire adopts in Le Spleen de Paris, the etchings of Charles Meryon, another contemporary artist esteemed by the poet, might be seen to contribute in a more oblique manner to the textual practice of the prose poems. Although the stable, minutely detailed views contained in Meryon’s ‘Eaux-fortes sur Paris’ contrast with Guys’s hastily sketched silhouettes and the shifting masses that are hinted at in his images, the peculiar suggestiveness of Meryon’s collection nonetheless demands to be accounted for in terms of Baudelaire’s creative project. Indeed, the affective turmoil that we have associated with rhapsodie thus far may at first seem irrelevant to the meticulously delimited visual fields of etchings such as Le Pont-Neuf or La Pompe Notre-Dame, but Meryon’s images possess what Baudelaire describes as ‘la solennité naturelle d’une ville immense’ [the natural solemnity of an immense city] (ŒC, II: 666–67), and exude an unsettling, vertiginous quality that suggests to the viewer a profound uncertainty concerning the deployment of coherent visual rhetoric. As Rémi Labrusse writes of Meryon: ‘Ces planches racontent bien quelque chose, elles sont bien possédées par une vision qui dépasse le simple relevé de la réalité; mais le discours qui les habite leur est simultanément consubstantiel et inadéquat; étant désorienté, il désoriente à son tour’ [These plates indeed tell us something, they are indeed possessed by a vision which exceeds a simple statement of reality; but the discourse that inhabits them is simultaneously consubstantial and inadequate; being disoriented, it is in turn a source of disorientation].25 Returning to the definitions of ‘rhapsodie’ and the associated terms cited earlier in this chapter, the reader will recall that the verbalizing activity of ‘rhapsoder’ conveys a confusing or perverse citational pattern; it is the manifestation of a comparable pattern in visual terms in the work of Meryon which the final pages of this chapter seek to address by assessing its relevance to elements of Baudelaire’s textual practice in Le Spleen de Paris. In 1860, a planned collaboration between poet and artist, composed of engravings of views of Paris by Meryon accompanied by poetic texts by Baudelaire was abandoned, due in part to the restricted descriptive format Meryon sought from

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Figure 3.2. Charles Meryon, Collège Henri IV (ou Lycée Napoléon), fifth state. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Baudelaire’s text. However, Meryon remained for Baudelaire exceptionally adept at depicting ‘la noire majesté de la plus inquiétante des capitales’ [the dark majesty of the most disturbing of capital cities] (ŒC, II: 667), and it is the distinctive capacity of Meryon’s plates to convey the ‘disturbing’ or ‘unnerving’ quality of the metropolis that merits consideration in terms of the textual practice of Le Spleen de Paris. Just as the ‘Eaux-fortes sur Paris’ present the viewer with multiple, discrete urban viewpoints, the many disparate narrative voices of Baudelaire’s collection suggest the conf lict and interaction of human strata within the metropolis. Moreover, in Meryon’s work an additional tendency to problematize the authoritativeness of individual images themselves is suggested, for he frequently made major variations on the same plate, incorporating significant changes to each subsequent state. One example in this respect is the image entitled Collège Henri IV (ou Lycée Napoléon) which presents the viewer with an aerial view of the Parisian school and its sur­rounding neighbourhood; amongst the more bizarre elements which feature as additions to or variations of successive states of this plate are the sea, mountains, a steamer, and a series of disproportionate human figures who appear in the foreground.26 Another example is Le Pont-au-change in which an apparently drowning man is seen to try vainly to attract the attention of a series of figures in a boat who are distracted by the sight of a balloon bearing the word ‘Esperanza’. In different states of this image, the sky fills with multiple balloons or swarms of menacinglooking birds.27 These various additions and omissions complicate the activity of conclusively identifying a narrative progression across different states of the

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same image; however, although they obscure its rhetorical consistency in this way, they nonetheless maximize the suggestiveness of the image and prompt a pattern of viewing that is comparable to the reading paradigm that Baudelaire saw as appropriate to Le Spleen de Paris: ‘Nous pouvons couper où nous voulons, moi ma rêverie, vous le manuscrit, le lecteur sa lecture; car je ne suspends pas la volonté rétive de celui-ci au fil interminable d’une intrigue superf lue’ [We may stop whenever we like, I my daydream, you the manuscript, the reader his reading; because I would not hold the stubborn will of the latter to the unbroken thread of a superf luous plot] (ŒC, I: 275). Another noticeable feature of Meryon’s art is his failure to elaborate a meaningful framework with which the viewer might negotiate the allegorical or fantastic inclusions in his views of Paris. This may be due to the artist’s psychological volatility, and indeed Baudelaire confides to Auguste Poulet-Malassis on 8 January 1860 that: ‘Je dois dire qu’il ne se cache en aucune façon de son respect pour toutes les superstitions, mais il les explique mal, et il voit de la cabale partout’ [I must tell you that he makes no attempt to conceal his respect for all superstitions and that he sees a cabal everywhere].28 Although Meryon’s comments on his own work appear to derive from such inscrutable obsessions rather than from a mature aesthetic scheme, inadvertently or otherwise, his frequent placing of fantastic figures alongside or within otherwise trivial objects or environments draws the viewer’s attention to the range of psychological associations that bear upon the construction of the image. His images thus in effect capture that vertiginous quality which is characteristic of rhapsodic experience. One instance of this occurs in his Tourelle, rue de l’École de médicine, 22 in which allegorical figures representing Truth, Justice and Innocence hover in the sky above the house in which Jean-Paul Marat was assassinated during the French Revolution. In the street below them, lined with grocers’, bakers’ and other shops, the crowd seems oblivious to their presence, a factor which heightens their conspicuousness. The apparent failure to supply the viewer with satisfactory means to discern the precise aesthetic function of such allegorical elements or to make significant differentiations between the objects of perception and the projections of fantasy tends, however, to heighten the disquieting effect of Meryon’s engravings. In Le Spleen de Paris Baudelaire exploits a comparable technique, albeit with a more concerted aim of unsettling the reader’s expectations, by destabilizing the conventional rhetorical effects of the recourse to allegory. Examples of incongruous incursions of the fantastic or the allegorical into otherwise conventional settings include the mournful ‘colossale Vénus’ [colossal Venus], viewed by a clown dressed in a ‘costume éclatant et ridicule’ [dazzling and ridiculous costume], whom the narrator of ‘Le Fou et la Vénus’ [‘The Fool and the Venus’] glimpses in an idyllic park; the diabolic ‘Altesse’ who accompanies the narrator of ‘Un Joueur généreux’ [‘The Generous Gambler’] in drinking, gambling and conversation in a luxurious den below the street; or the female figure in ‘Un cheval de race’ [‘A Thoroughbred’], of whom it is stated that ‘Le Temps et l’Amour l’ont vainement mordue à belles dents’ [Time and Love have scarred her with their claws], thus engaging two allegorical figures in a bizarre but highly tangible corporeal image.

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Discussing Meryon’s engravings in his Salon de 1859, Baudelaire makes the following comment: Les majestés de la pierre accumulée, les clochers montrant du doigt le ciel, les obélisques de l’industrie vomissant contre le firmament leurs coalitions de fumée, les prodigieux échafaudages des monuments en réparation, appliquant sur le corps solide de l’architecture leur architecture à jour d’une beauté si paradoxale, le ciel tumultueux, chargé de colère et de rancune, la profondeur des perspectives augmentée par la pensée de tous les drames qui y sont contenus, aucun des éléments complexes dont se compose le douloureux et glorieux décor de la civilisation n’était oublié. (ŒC, II: 666–67) [The majesties of accumulated stone, the steeples pointing to heaven, the obelisks of industry belching forth their coalitions of smoke, the prodigious scaffoldings which encompass monuments under repair and superimpose on the main body of a building their own openwork architecture which possesses such a paradoxical beauty of its own, the stormy sky, tense with anger and rancour, the depth of perspectives heightened by the thought of all the individual dramas which find themselves encompassed therein, none of the complex elements of civilization’s painful and glorious décor is neglected.]

Of all Meryon’s images, Baudelaire’s description evokes with particular success the atmosphere of Le Pont-Neuf. One of the most striking facets of this piece is the presence of smokestacks and scaffolding in some of its states, which serve to interrupt the visual continuity of the robust stonework that otherwise dominates the image. These inclusions serve to a certain extent to de-poeticize the content of the image but they produce an unanticipated visual effect that Baudelaire understands in terms of a ‘beauté si paradoxale’. In the context of this engraving (and of La Pompe Notre-Dame), the new effect derives from the superimposition of two visual structures — of ephemeral scaffolding and enduring stone — which fragment the unified organization of the image. Incidentally, this should serve to dispel any criticism that Meryon’s images are the product of nostalgia for medieval Paris, for they display a distinctly modern propensity to query the very status of the city as a place that can be effectively appropriated by observing consciousness. As Baudelaire’s comments on Meryon reveal, such intermittent obstruction of perspective within urban settings has the unexpected effect of broadening the scope of cognizance and unlocking multiple imaginative potentialities of the kind that are alluded to in the poem ‘Les Fenêtres’ [‘The Windows’]: Celui qui regarde du dehors à travers une fenêtre ouverte, ne voit jamais autant de choses que celui qui regarde une fenêtre fermée. Il n’est pas d’objet plus profond, plus mystérieux, plus fécond, plus ténébreux, plus éblouissant qu’une fenêtre éclairée d’une chandelle. Ce qu’on peut voir au soleil est toujours moins intéressant que ce qui se passe derrière une vitre. Dans ce trou noir ou lumineux vit la vie, rêve la vie, souffre la vie. [He who looks outside through an open window never sees as much as one who looks at a closed window. There is no object deeper, more mysterious, more fertile, more shadowy or more dazzling than a window lit by a candle. What we see in the sun’s light is always less interesting than what happens behind a window. In this black or luminous hole, life lives, life dreams, life suffers.]

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Figure 3.3. Charles Meryon, Le Pont-Neuf. © Trustees of the British Museum.

In this and other instances from Le Spleen de Paris, the blocking and interiorization of perspective in an urban context simultaneously engenders both a tangible sense of estrangement and a tantalizing feeling of belonging, of the kind evoked in Le Peintre de la vie moderne: ‘Être hors de chez soi, et pourtant se sentir partout chez soi’ [To be away from home, and yet to feel at home everywhere] (ŒC, II: 692). Indeed, the narrators are frequently immersed in trivial detail and assailed by such a range of sensual and visual stimuli that their mode of relation to the urban mixes exhilaration and trepidation, thus further stimulating the complex set of responses experienced by the reader of the texts. In keeping with the haphazard nature of the encounter which follows the line cited earlier from ‘Un plaisant’, in which a well-dressed gentleman mockingly salutes a passing donkey at a busy crossroads, the collection foregrounds patterns of unsolicited association from which little in the way of a coherent logic or ethos can be extracted. Reading these texts against both Baudelaire’s comments on rhapsodie and the visual practice of Guys and Meryon, it appears that such

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affective turmoil may nonetheless suggest aestheticizing patterns to the reader, patterns which would emerge f leetingly, around the fragmentation of the narrated subject’s perceptions and the deferral of the coalescence of imaginative vision. As we have seen, in his prose poems, Baudelaire experiments with a poetic practice informed, as the prefatory letter to Houssaye declares, by ‘la fréquentation des villes énormes’ [frequenting of enormous cities] and linked to an acute perception of the veiled possibilities of ‘[le] croisement de leurs innombrables rapports’ [the intersection of their innumerable rapports] (ŒC, I: 275–76). In the texts of Le Spleen de Paris a foundational experience of difference and variation is intimated through deferring full assimilation of the city’s multiple ‘rapports’ in discourse. This may be aligned to what Bernard Howells identifies in the context of an analysis of the Journaux intimes as a generalized uncertainty in Baudelaire’s work over ‘the possibility of producing internally coherent or definitive discourse’.29 This ‘anxiety about structuring possibility’30 goes some way to explaining his antipathy towards any received ‘utopian’ expectation or programmatic vision of art and society. Following his assertion in Fusées that ‘il y a dans l’engendrement de toute pensée sublime une secousse nerveuse qui se fait sentir dans le cervelet’ [there is in the begetting of everything a nervous shock which is felt in the cerebellum] (ŒC, I: 661), the texts of Le Spleen de Paris problematize the vertiginous effects of the metropolis on individual consciousness but also engage those imaginative processes mobilized by the dispersedness of urban experience. As our recourse to the concept of rhapsodie has shown, this is a posture ref lecting the increasing importance of the city’s status as constitutive of identity, experience and desire and of its potential to lead consciousness beyond the limits of the individual self. While rhapsodie may serve to articulate a sudden attenuation of subjective authority, it nonetheless simultaneously unfolds patterns by which poetic consciousness may negotiate the compass of accidents and circumstances extended in the present of urban perception. By securing exposure to a radically comprehensive range of phenomena, rhapsodie therefore engages a foundational form of apprehension with the potential to appraise latent possibilities emerging out of the present. This characteristic of rhapsodie may be elucidated by recourse to some passages from Pierre-Simon Ballanche’s La Ville des expiations in which the philosopher elaborates on a figure he describes as the ‘rhapsode’: La région où nous sommes parvenus, à mon avis, n’est point celle de la fiction; ce n’est point non plus celle de la vision; c’est la sphère de la pensée en puissance d’être, de la pensée générale, et non de la pensée individuelle; et j’oserais presque dire que le fait de l’expression ou de la forme n’a qu’une importance secondaire. Le fait est à la pensée ce que le corps est à l’âme: il la constate, il la manifeste, il la rend sensible. [...] Or la pensée que j’ai à constater, à manifester, à rendre sensible, est une pensée toute populaire, en ce sens qu’elle est intime en tous ceux qui sont susceptibles de la recevoir, c’est-à-dire en tous ceux qui ont le sentiment et la sympathie du progrès actuel. J’ai donné une forme quelconque à cette pensée, et la forme n’est rien en soi, néanmoins elle est tenue d’être vraie, d’accuser juste la pensée. Ce n’est pas moi qui parle, c’est le temps; je n’entre même pas dans l’avenir, je reste dans le présent. Je ne suis pas prophète, je suis voyant; je ne suis pas inventeur, je suis rhapsode.31

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[The plane which we have reached, in my view, is not that of fiction; nor is it that of vision; it is the sphere of the coming force of thought, of general thought, and not of individual thought; and I would almost say that matters of expression or of form have only secondary importance. The fact is to thought what the body is to the soul: it testifies to it, it manifests it, it makes it palpable. [....] Now, the thought which I have to testify to, to make manifest and palpable is a wholly collective thought, in that it is inherent in the minds of all those who are susceptible to entertain it, in other words, all those who have a feeling for and a sympathy towards the progress of our time. I placed little importance on the form of this thought, and form per se does not account for anything; however, it is held as being truthful, of doing justice to this thought. It is not I who is speaking, it is time; I do not even enter into the future, I remain in the present. I am not a prophet, I am a seer; I am not an inventor, I am a rhapsode.]

Although linked to the development of his palingenetic philosophy, Ballanche’s words are suggestive here in relation to the understanding of Baudelairian rhapsodie set out in this chapter, for they point to a consciousness conveyed beyond the limits of the individual self and a prospective activity oriented back towards the present. As Rémi Brague writes: ‘Le poète est ainsi prophète, mais il n’annonce rien d’extérieur, aucun événement réel qui tarderait seulement à venir. Il n’est prophète que du pur possible. Le nouveau qu’il annonce restera toujours nouveau, ne glissera jamais dans l’ancien’ [The poet is thus a prophet, but he announces nothing eternal, no real event which is soon to come. He is only a prophet of pure possibility. The new he announces will always remain new; it will never slip into the old].32 Consequently, the final chapter of this book will explore this fundamental new conception of the prophetic relation in the prose poems of Arthur Rimbaud. Notes to Chapter 3 1. Richard D. E. Burton, The Context of Baudelaire’s ‘Le Cygne’ (Durham: University of Durham Press, 1980), p. 87. 2. Jean-Pierre Richard, Poésie et profondeur (Paris: Seuil, 1955), p. 131. 3. Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance, ed. by Claude Pichois, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), ii, 492. 4. Examples of such studies include Steve Murphy, Logiques du dernier Baudelaire: lectures du ‘Spleen de Paris’ (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), Maria C. Scott, Baudelaire’s ‘Le Spleen de Paris’: Shifting Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), and Sonya Stephens, Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics of Irony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 5. On this connection, see James Donald, Imagining the Modern City (London: Athlone Press, 1999), p. 46. Similarly, David Harvey argues that it is ‘against the ferment of [Saint-Simonian and Fourierist urban theories] that we have to read what Haussmann actually did’; see David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 85. The relevance of such Saint-Simonian theories to Haussmann’s urban planning is investigated in Nicholas Papayanis, Planning Paris before Haussmann (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 129–68. 6. On this point, J. A. Hiddleston argues that the dédicace ‘Au bourgeois’ from Baudelaire’s Salon de 1846 encodes a number of indirect references to the programmatic vision of art in the thought of Saint-Simon. See J. A. Hiddleston, Baudelaire and the Art of Memory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 276–78. 7. ŒC, II: 609. Research by F. W. Leakey has attributed this drawing to the British architect H. E. Kendall; however, Leakey’s attempts to locate the drawing itself were in vain. See F. W. Leakey, ‘ “Un architecte songeur”: H. E. Kendall’, in Baudelaire: Collected Essays, 1953–1988, ed. by Eva Jacobs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 218–27.

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8. Trésor de la langue française online: [accessed 11 August 2011]. 9. Rhapsodie therefore mobilizes forces of negation and de-realization comparable to those on which the dynamic initiated by utopia is contingent. The collapse of certainties intimates a deferral of the object of consciousness and a forestalling of discursive closure. To illustrate this, it may be useful to consider the following passage from the memoirs of a former SaintSimonian, Édouard Charton (1807–1890). In a passage that may recall for the reader Baudelaire’s description of the wayward mental associations of the individual exposed to rhapsodie, Charton, an erstwhile editor of Le Globe who went on to found the publications Le Magasin pittoresque and L’Illustration, describes the intense affective state he entered during a hyperbolic address to fellow Saint-Simonians at the Salle Taitbout: ‘J’étais heureux, car je vivais corps et âme plus qu’il ne m‘avait été donné de vivre en aucun autre instant de mon existence: mon être entier se répandait et f lottait dans l’enceinte: toutes mes impressions de tendresse, de douleur, de regret ou d’espérance s’élançaient avec moi en jets brûlans [sic]: je planais sous un ciel mystérieux, soulevé par mes émotions les plus vives comme par de puissantes ailes.’ [I was happy, because in body and soul I was more alive than I had been at any other point in my existence: my whole being expanded and f loated towards the surrounding walls; all my impressions of tenderness, pain, regret or hope sprang forth with me in burning spouts. I glided beneath a mysterious sky, stirred by the most lively emotions as if by powerful wings.] Édouard Charton, Mémoires d’un prédicateur saint-simonien (Paris: Bureau de la Revue encyclopédique, 1832), pp. 22–23. As his description unfolds, however Charton’s initially serene rhetorical performance fragments into a wild, extemporized verbal f low: ‘Ma bouche parlait, mes bras frappaient l’air, les muscles de mon visage se contractaient; intérieurement mon esprit courait en arrière pour trouver dans ce labyrinthe d’idées le fil que j’avais perdu, courait en avant pour découvrir des traces de pensée nouvelle, une route à suivre, s’agitait en tous sens, tressaillait désespéré et se lançait avec rage, tandis que j’épiais l’auditoire pour y découvrir si l’on soupçonnait mon inquiétude, tandis que mes oreilles recueillaient le moindre murmure, le moindre souff le. Cet horrible tourment ne cessait qu’au moment où tous ces êtres divers, parties séparées de mon être venant à se rencontrer tout à coup et à se ressaisir, une commotion violente m’emportait, me brûlait; je m’écriais d’une voix tonnante, et quelquefois un fracas que me renvoyait l’assemblée me rendait à moi-même, me permettant de prendre un instant de repos et de me recueillir’ [My mouth spoke, my arms beat the air, my facial muscles contracted; inside, my mind rushed backwards to find the train of thought which I had lost in this maze of ideas, and it rushed forward to uncover traces of new thought, a way forward; while it thrashed in all directions, trembled desperately and hurled itself about with rage, I peered at the auditorium to see if anyone suspected my anxiety and strained my ears for the least murmur, the least breath. This horrible torment only ceased at the moment when all these different beings, different parts of my being merged once more all of a sudden: I was carried along, scorched by a violent commotion; I let out a resounding cry, and occasionally the sound of some tumult from the crowd reached me and brought me back to my senses, allowing me to take a moment’s rest and gather myself together.] (Charton, pp. 23–24). 10. Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance, ed. by Claude Pichois, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), ii, 583. 11. Trésor de la langue française online: [accessed 11 August 2011]. 12. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, sixth edition online at ARTFL project, University of Chicago: [accessed 11 August 2011]. 13. In particular, the reader will notice what would later become Baudelairian motifs of multiplication and vertiginous dissipation in the following passage from De Quincey: ‘Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi’s Antiquities of Rome, Coleridge, then standing by, described to me a set of plates from that artist, called his Dreams and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of these (I describe only from memory of Coleridge’s account) representing vast Gothic halls; on the f loor of which stood mighty engines and machinery, wheels, cables, catapults, etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, or resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon this, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther, and you perceive them reaching an abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who should reach the extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to

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become of poor Piranesi, at least you suppose that his labours must now in some way terminate. But raise your eyes, and behold a second f light of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Once again elevate your eye, and a still more aërial f light of stairs is descried; and, there, is the delirious Piranesi, busy on his aspiring labours: and so on, until the unfinished stairs and the hopeless Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams.’ See Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English OpiumEater [1821] (Ware: Wordsworth, 1994), pp. 188–89. 14. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire, pref. by Michel Leiris (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), p. 120. 15. Ibid. 16. Margery A. Evans, Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 126. 17. Maria C. Scott, p. 97. 18. Sartre, Baudelaire, p. 125. 19. Benoît Goetz, La Dislocation: architecture et philosophie (Paris: Éditions de la Passion, 2001), p. 103. 20. André Hirt, Il faut être absolument lyrique: une constellation de Baudelaire (Paris: Kimé, 2000), p. 100. 21. Mona Ozouf, La Fête révolutionnaire, 1789–1799 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), p. 205. 22. Ozouf, p. 207. 23. Michel Chevalier and others, Religion saint-simonienne: politique industrielle et système de la méditerranée (Paris: rue Monsigny (Imprimerie d’Éverat), 1832), p. 63. 24. On this point, see Hiddleston, p. 212. 25. Rémi Labrusse, ‘Baudelaire et Meryon’, L’Année Baudelaire, 1 (1995), 99–132 (p. 127). 26. See Richard S. Schneiderman, The Catalogue raisonné of the Prints of Charles Meryon (London: Garton, 1990), pp. 179–83. As will be shown later in this book in more direct relation to the poetry of Rimbaud, the heterogeneous properties of such imagery, in which trivial and fantastic elements are brought into contrast with the more enduring and monumental features of the Parisian cityscape, may offer a dynamic paradigm for the organization of the text of the prose poem. Although it does not appear to have served as a model for Rimbaud’s poetry, many of the features of Meryon’s Collège Henri IV (ou Lycée Napoléon) are nonetheless highly suggestive of the kinds of f lat perspectives and incongruous visual elements Rimbaud’s poems will later employ. Radicalizing Baudelaire’s insights into the mobility and complexity of urban space (as demonstrated through his reception of both Guys and Meryon), comparable examples from Rimbaud’s Illuminations might include the description of ‘la mer étagée là-haut comme sur les gravures’ in ‘Après le Déluge’ or the following bizarre projection by the narrator of ‘Villes!’ (‘L’acropole officielle...’): ‘Le haut quartier a des parties inexplicables: un bras de mer, sans bateaux, roule sa nappe de grésil bleu entre des quais chargés de candélabres géants’. 27. Schneiderman, Catalogue raisonné, pp. 83–85. 28. Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance, ed. by Claude Pichois, i, 655. 29. Bernard Howells, ‘ “La Vaporisation du Moi”: Baudelaire’s Journaux intimes’, French Studies, 42.4 (1988), 424–33 (p. 431). 30. Howells, p. 430. 31. Pierre-Simon Ballanche, La Ville des expiations, ed. by Amand Rastoul (Paris: Presses françaises/ Les Belles-lettres, 1926), p. 90. 32. Rémi Brague, Image vagabonde: essai sur l’imaginaire baudelairien (Chatou: Transparence, 2008), p. 80.

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Rhetorics of Transformation and Community in Rimbaud’s Illuminations Like the prose poems of Le Spleen de Paris, those of Arthur Rimbaud’s collection Illuminations consistently undermine their readers’ attempts to formulate stable assumptions about the world which they project. For Rimbaud, the tensions and dissonances of the modern city have the potential to generate textual disorganization; yet at the same time, the turbulence of the metropolis provides a model for the poet’s project of uninterrupted self-transformation. This chapter will demonstrate facets of Rimbaud’s exploration of the expanding, mobile dimensions of modern urban space as a model for poetic structures within the prose poem. Like the poets considered earlier in this study, Rimbaud is confronted with the problem of finding a language that expresses the variability and dynamic potentialities of the urban without stabilizing them and assimilating them to received uses. His response to this difficulty consists in a deliberate fragmentation of conventional discursive or narrative structures and a radical ‘spatialization’ of the poetic text, both of which serve frequently to shift the emphasis of reading away from the semantic content of the text and towards its visual and material aspects. The chapter will therefore begin by reappraising those tensions apparent in Rimbaud’s lettres du voyant [letters of the seer] between his project of an ideal expressive form (‘le temps d’un langage universel viendra’ [the time of a universal language will come]) and his poetic method of collapsing familiar meanings (‘le dérèglement de tous les sens’ the deregulation of all the senses]). It will argue that the utopian aspect of Rimbaud’s project demands to be thought precisely through the breakdown of accepted meanings, and not in terms of a desire to stave off uncertainties. The strangeness of the prophetic-sounding ‘là-bas’ that is the source of Rimbaud’s visions in his letter to Paul Demeny might therefore more fittingly be construed, not through assimilating it to a time or space set off from the here and now, but through focusing on those aspects of present perception to which Rimbaud deems the conventional uses of language inadequate. Such an approach affirms the importance of the variety and mutability of urban experience to the poetic project of Illuminations and places at the fore the problematic of a poetic language that opens onto the universal but is nonetheless amenable to the jolts and shifts of modern consciousness. Acutely alert to the difficulties of such a project, Rimbaud’s prose poetry in fact consistently reappropriates, fragments and redeploys diverse forms of ritualized

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discourse, from rhetorics of progress and transformation to those of the annonce and fairground spectacle. These aspects of the project of Illuminations set it apart from any utopian project in the restricted sense presented by the abundant nineteenthcentury doctrines of social reform with which it is roughly contemporaneous. Yet it remains that the poetry of Illuminations is nonetheless closely linked to an exploration of the possibilities of community, albeit one with no prearranged end. As Jacques Rancière writes: ‘Rimbaud a quelque chose d’unique à nous dire sur la poésie comme pensée, sur la manière dont cette pratique de pensée traverse un état de la langue, une tradition de son usage et de ses significations, dont elle rencontre, du même coup, d’autres manières de trancher dans le tissu commun de la langue et de l’organiser en pensée pour faire monde et communauté’ [Rimbaud has something unique to say about poetry as thought, about the way in which this practice of thought passes through a given state of language, that is, its traditional uses and meanings, and by the same token it reveals alternative ways to cut into the common fabric of language and to organize it as though to make a world and a community].1 Despite his opposition to the ideological closure of many contemporary rhetorics of urban transformation and social reconciliation, the city remains the most increasingly dominant instance of community in modernity, and it re-emerges as a locus of creativity and desire in Rimbaud’s prose poetry. However, its manifestation in Illuminations does not appear secured to any uniform image or any confined historical incidence, such as the poet’s putative experiences of the Paris Commune or the London of the early 1870s. While a whole tradition of Rimbaldian scholarship concentrated its investigations on the poet’s support for (or whereabouts during) the Commune, as Steve Murphy suggests, present-day readers may well be more advised to develop alternate fields of enquiry: Il faut, sans doute, éliminer la question ‘Rimbaud et la Commune’ afin de lui en substituer une autre, plus propice à de futures recherches, qui peut se formuler ainsi: dans quelle mesure la poésie de Rimbaud comporte-t-elle des traces de discours idéologiques contemporains. Jusqu’à quel point peut-on saisir l’historique à travers l’œuvre de Rimbaud, interrogation qui ne gomme pas un rapport au vécu, mais lui fournit au contraire un contexte, un arrière-fond à la fois ontologique et discursif.2 [Without a doubt, the question of ‘Rimbaud and the Commune’ must be cast aside and replaced with another one which would be more favourable to future research, and which can be formulated thus: to what extent does Rimbaud’s poetry incorporate traces of contemporary ideological discourses? In what ways does Rimbaud’s oeuvre enable us to understand history? The question should be posed in such a way as not to smooth over the work’s relationship to lived reality, but to provide it with a context, an ontological and discursive background.]

To account for the multiple discursive and rhetorical strands which traverse poetic consciousness in this way engages the problematic status of the self in Rimbaud’s oeuvre, marked out by the poet himself in his declaration to Izambard that: ‘C’est faux de dire: Je pense: on devrait dire: On me pense’. As the analyses which follow will show, for Rimbaud subjective consciousness does not resolve into a finite

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self hood but is a site of tensions and energies opening onto broader dimensions of being. As Leo Bersani writes: The Rimbaldian narrator [does not] claim for himself the special status of a fully constructed personality unaffected by the visions he evokes. In other words, there is no psychic totality in the Illuminations which might gather up the fragments of vision into an individual’s point of view. The self in each illumination (as in some of our dreams) is all over and in no one particular place.3

Congruous with this perception of the self as held in suspension in Illuminations is a poetic practice suggesting that history, memory and fantasy are not yet fully present to consciousness and any settled relation between them has yet to be formalized. The tendency to defer the materialization of vision within Illuminations is linked to a transformative desire which, as Kristin Ross writes, ‘presents nonfigurative indications: people given way to f lows, part-objects that are not synecdoches for some missing totality — the curve of a shoulder, postures and gestures’.4 In this context, it appears more effective therefore to locate the visionary drive in Illuminations immanently rather than conceptually or metaphysically; working through the f lux of the given, as the possibilities unearthed by any configuration of subjective situation are unfolded and extended for the reader in the multiple figurations of language, the quickening of desire, and the upwelling of corporeal affect. As Ross notes: ‘In Rimbaud the minimal real unity is not the word or the individual subject or the concept, but rather the arrangement, the process of arranging elements’.5 In this way, the transformative quality of Rimbaud’s prose poetry might be identified less in terms of a signified content than in relation to a textual dynamic which operates, as David Scott has shown, at the level of the phrase: in strategies of juxtaposition, punctuation, spacing and so on.6 By asserting a principle of difference and variation that is in excess of any stable conceptual formulation, it may be possible to move towards an understanding of the utopian dimension of Rimbaud’s poetic project similar to that of Dee Reynolds, who relates her own ref lections on ‘imaginary space’ to a series of Ricœurian ref lexions on utopia at the close of her book on Symbolist art and literature: Utopian spaces opened up by imagining activity can introduce ‘a sense of doubt that shatters the obvious’ by making us question assumptions previously taken for granted as immutable. [The] imaginary spaces constituted by imagining activity are always in excess of that which can be made fully present to consciousness or reality [...]; imagining activity continually ‘defers’ presence and transcends the given. The ‘unpresentability’ and the unrealizability of imaginary space mean that it continues to point up the potential ‘otherness’ of reality and its endless capacity for change and transformation.7

In Illuminations, numerous situations are foregrounded wherein such imagining activity is precipitated as consciousness struggles to make present to itself multiple, shifting objects of perception: in childhood, in spectacle, in the modern metropolis and other settings. As this chapter will argue, the insistent variability of perception, particularly in a modern urban context, is advanced as a means towards the exploration of possibilities of community which are latent in spectacular display, in

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dynamic, collective movements and in other phenomena which signal an expansion of consciousness and new horizons for collective experience. Frequently, the images of mass movements and spectacle which are foregrounded in Rimbaud’s prose poetry tend to mobilize rhetorical figures of the kind that are encountered in contemporary progressive discourse; examples might include the invocation to ‘saluer la naissance du travail nouveau’ in ‘Matin’ [‘Morning’] and the ‘mouvements de fraternité sociale’ [movements of social fraternity] that are projected in ‘Angoisse’ [‘Anguish’]. Consideration of the function of these fragments of progressive rhetoric in terms of Rimbaud’s poetics can be instructive, for as Ross writes, ‘Rimbaud’s tropology (or antitropology, as the case may be) is historically conditioned; it cannot be examined without considering the rhetorical function of the work within the wider cultural system, within the whole set of socially and historically specific discourses and representations in which it participates’.8 In a similar perspective, Jacques Rancière argues that Rimbaud’s ambition is to ‘écrire son siècle’: [...] Et écrire un siècle, quoi qu’en disent ceux qui se croient érudits, ne demande pas d’études préparatoires, simplement un regard attentif qui croise quelques séries d’écrits qui ordinairement, même avant la discipline des classifications de Dewey, ne se rencontrent jamais sur les mêmes rayons. Pour écrire le XIXe siècle, il faut par exemple croiser — quelques causeries de Flammarion et un tome ou deux de Figuier — quelques numéros du Magasin Pittoresque et du Tour du Monde — quelques vaudevilles de Scribe et quelques livrets d’opéra du même ou d’un de ses confrères, — un ou deux comptes rendus d’Expositions universelles — une poignée de ces brochures que publient par f lopées disciples et sousdisciples de Saint-Simon, Fourier, Ballanche, Azaïs, et de tous les inventeurs de religions nouvelles de l’amour, de la société et du travail — brochures où se mêlent inextricablement la langue régénérée, les villes de l’avenir, l’émancipation des femmes, la promotion des engrais, le développement des chemins vicinaux, le logement ouvrier, l’androgynie future, les poêles économiques et l’éternité par les astres.9 [And to write a century, regardless of what those who consider themselves erudite say, does not require preparatory studies, simply an attentive gaze which combines a series of writings which, in ordinary circumstances, even before the Dewey decimal system, would never be brought into contact on the same library shelves. To write the nineteenth century, it is necessary, for instance, to combine: — A few squibs published by Flammarion and a tome or two by Figuier — A few issues of the Magasin pittoresque and of the Tour du Monde — A few vaudevilles by Scribe and a few librettos by the same or one of his fellow dramatists — One or two reports on the Universal exhibitions — A fistful of those pamphlets which were published in great numbers by disciples and sub-disciples of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Ballanche, Azaïs and of all those inventors of new religions of love, society and work — brochures in which the rejuvenation of language, the cities of the future, the emancipation of woman, the promotion of manure, the development of by-roads, working-class housing, future androgyny, economic stoves, and eternity by the stars merge inextricably.]

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Drawing on some of the intertexts enumerated here by Rancière, this chapter will demonstrate how Rimbaud engages in a radical appropriation of rhetorics of progress and transformation as a means to catalyse the imaginative ferment of the real in the prose poems of Illuminations. Following an examination of the project of the lettres du voyant, this chapter will argue that in many cases, the reader’s attempts to source stable meaning are never fully adequate to the textual momentum of radical alteration in poems such as ‘Après le Déluge’ [‘After the Flood’] and ‘À une Raison’ [To a Reason’]. In several poems in the collection, it is the body which emerges as both the locus and agent of the multiple desires, tensions and energies which traverse a fractured poetic subjectivity implied by the poet’s declaration that ‘Je est un autre’ [I is an another’]. Rimbaud’s poetic exploration of corporeal dynamics can be seen to intersect in diverse ways with the positioning of the body in nineteenth-century utopian discourse. Finally, the latter half of the chapter will examine how poems such as ‘Parade’, ‘Villes’, ‘Métropolitain’ and ‘Solde’ [‘Sale’] dynamize and disseminate latent tensions and energies of which modern urban consciousness is the locus. In each of these texts, Rimbaud’s poetic consciousness thrusts forwards, but in all directions, thereby impelling the reader towards the lavishness of future illumination while simultaneously reaching indiscriminately backwards and reactivating miscellaneous images from the past. The Project of the ‘Lettres du voyant’ In his letter to Georges Izambard of 13 May 1871, Rimbaud insists on the necessity for a ‘poésie objective’ [objective poetry], a radically new form of poetic expression to supplant what he describes as the monotonous ‘poésie subjective’ [subjective poetry] supposedly favoured by Izambard: je veux être poète, et je travaille à me rendre voyant: vous ne comprendrez pas du tout, et je ne saurais presque vous expliquer. Il s’agit d’arriver à l’inconnu par le dérèglement de tous les sens. Les souffrances sont énormes, mais il faut être fort, être né poète, et je me suis reconnu poète. Ce n’est pas du tout ma faute. C’est faux de dire: Je pense: on devrait dire: On me pense. — Pardon du jeu de mots. — Je est un autre. Tant pis pour le bois qui se trouve violon, et Nargue aux inconscients, qui ergotent sur ce qu’ils ignorent tout à fait!10 [I want to be a poet, and I am working to make myself a seer: you won’t understand whatsoever, and I almost can’t explain it to you. It is necessary to arrive at the unknown by the deregulation of all the senses. The suffering is great, but it is essential to be strong, to be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet. This is not my fault. It is false to say: I think: we should say: I am thought. — Sorry for the pun. — I is another. So much the worse for the wood which finds it has become a violin, and pooh-pooh to the thoughtless ones, who quibble about things they have absolutely idea about!]

Here, Rimbaud’s perception of his self as something exterior to him is announced in the much-commented formulation ‘Je est un autre’, according to which the inner­most attributes of poetic consciousness come to be projected onto its external en­v iron­ment. This sudden perception of the self as another is made possible

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through ‘le dérèglement de tous les sens’, an experience of intense psychosomatic disorientation and of the dislocation of consensus in language (‘Tant pis pour le bois qui se trouve violon!’). Rimbaud prefers the impersonal articulation ‘On me pense’ over the more direct ‘Je pense’, suggesting that the outward projection of cognitive activity not only renders the poet’s thought strange to him, but moreover obliges the reader to undertake a greater share of that activity. This in turn complicates the task of locating the self of Rimbaud’s poetry, because, as will be observed in relation to many poems from Illuminations, poetic consciousness tends to spill over into multiple, sometimes conf licting identity positions or to gravitate towards collective formations. In the letter to Paul Demeny of 15 May 1871, Rimbaud continues to forecast the arrival of this new literature: ‘J’ai résolu de vous donner une heure de littérature nouvelle’ [I have resolved to give you an hour of new literature] (ŒC: 239): [Le poète] devra faire sentir, palper, écouter ses inventions; si ce qu’il rapporte de là-bas a forme, il donne forme: si c’est informe, il donne de l’informe. Trouver une langue; — Du reste, toute parole étant idée, le temps d’un langage universel viendra! Il faudra être académicien, — plus mort qu’un fossile, — pour parfaire un dictionnaire, de quelque langue que ce soit. [...] Cette langue sera de l’âme pour l’âme, résumant tout, parfums, sons, couleurs, de la pensée accrochant la pensée et tirant. Le poète définirait la quantité d’inconnu s’éveillant en son temps dans l’âme universelle: il donnerait plus — que la formule de sa pensée, que la notation de sa marche au Progrès! Énormité devenant norme, absorbée par tous, il serait vraiment un multiplicateur de progrès! (ŒC: 246) [The poet will have to make his inventions felt, touched and heard: if what he brings back from over there has form, he must endow it with form: if it is formless, he must bestow formlessness. Find a language; — Besides, since all speech is an idea, the time of a universal language will come! It will be necessary to be an Academician — more dead than a fossil — to bring to completion a dictionary in any language. [...] This language will be soul for the soul, taking the measure of everything: perfumes, sounds, colours, thoughts catching on other thoughts and tugging. The poet would define the quantity of the unknown stirring up in his time in the universal soul. He would give more — more than the formula of his thought, than the expression of his march towards Progress! Enormity becoming norm, absorbed by all, he would really become a multiplier of progress.]

Rimbaud’s aspiration to materialize sensation in language may remind the reader of some of the passages cited earlier from the Saint-Simonian Livre nouveau; however, the apparent contrast between his similarly utopian project of an ideal expressive form (‘le temps d’un langage universel viendra’) and his poetic method of collapsing familiar meanings (‘le dérèglement de tous les sens’) complicates the terms of comparison, for it reveals a tension between the desire to lead poetry into a collective consciousness beyond the limits of the individual self and the commitment to a logic of uninterrupted self-differentiation (‘Énormité devenant norme’). Although it is not immediately clear what is referred to here by ‘Progrès’, it is reasonable to assume that the sweeping social and cultural development conventionally implied by such a term relies on inherent assumptions that are likely

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to be dismantled by the volatile posture advocated by Rimbaud. When he refers to the poet as a ‘multiplicateur de progrès’, poetic ‘multiplication’ is not intended to ref lect a calculated conduct; instead it suggests an uncontrolled or uncontainable activity with the potential to function at variance with the uniform spatio-temporal patterns of what is commonly understood as progress. In turn, since, according to the earlier pronouncement that ‘Je est un autre’, consciousness is dispersed into the poet’s objects of perception, the stable points of reference that aid selforientation are uprooted. The basic conscious act of distinguishing between such terms as ‘here’ and ‘there’, ‘now’ and ‘then’ is thus complicated, as is the attempt to discover a language appropriate to the prophetic-sounding ‘là-bas’ that is the source of Rimbaud’s visions. Such considerations set the Rimbaldian project of voyance apart from how the prophetic relation might conventionally be conceived, for they imply that the strangeness of the ‘là-bas’ is not a function of the perceived remoteness or unattainability of such a state of plenitude, but of the incapacity of consciousness either to conclusively differentiate between its perceptual objects and the projections of desire or to coordinate history, memory and fantasy. While prophecy is conventionally understood as the foretelling of a future set off from the present, attempts to describe the temporal or spatial scope of Rimbaud’s ‘là-bas’ in such straightforward terms encounter difficulty, leading the reader to question whether the excess of visionary desire can indeed be positively formulated, for, as Rimbaud himself declares, ‘Le poète [...] donnerait plus — que la formule de sa pensée’. Since the state of disorientation into which poetic consciousness is thrust hinders the construction of a coherent chronological or physical framework for the different modalities of experience, the poet’s intellectual activity therefore clusters around the interminable differentiations of present perception (‘la quantité d’inconnu s’éveillant en son temps dans l’âme universelle’). It is significant that Rimbaud identifies this dislocation of subjective experience to be of universal import, for it serves to expose and make commonly intelligible latent potentialities within the present. In deliberately fragmenting the customary semantic, social and other relations that bind human experience of the present instant, Rimbaud compels his readers to partake in anticipating contingent new forms of reference to the real. The ‘langage universel’ Rimbaud envisions is therefore not in fact an idiom which readers could aspire to speak or understand but it can be ‘heard’ sporadically and fitfully in the fragmentation of customary perceptions. Earlier in the letter, Rimbaud reveals that he associates ancient Greek poetry with a ‘vie harmonieuse’ [harmonious life] (ŒC: 241); and in another passage from his ‘prose sur l’avenir de la poésie’ [prose on the future of poetry] (ŒC: 242), it is suggested that Greek poetry achieves this quality by giving coherent and aesthetically satisfying rhythm to human commotion: En Grèce, ai-je-dit, vers et lyres rhythment l’Action. Après, musique et rimes sont jeux, délassements. L’étude de ce passé charme les curieux: plusieurs s’éjouissent à renouveler ces antiquités: — c’est pour eux. L’intelligence universelle a toujours jeté ses idées, naturellement; les hommes ramassaient une partie de ces fruits du cerveau: on agissait par, on en écrivait des livres: telle allait la marche, l’homme ne se travaillant pas, n’étant pas encore éveillé, ou pas encore dans la plénitude du grand songe. (ŒC: 242)

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Transformation and Community in Rimbaud’s I lluminations [In Greece, said I, verse and lyres rhythm Action. Then, music and rhymes are games, recreations. The study of that past enchants the curious: several rejoice in recreating these antiquities: — that’s their affair. Universal understanding has always scattered its ideas, naturally; men would gather part of these fruits of the mind: they would act accordingly or write books about the topic: that was the way of things, man not working on himself, not yet being awake, or not yet in the fullness of the great dream.]

Rimbaud is however critical of what he perceives as a scholastic (and, implicitly, Parnassian) attachment to classical Greece in modern poetry, a factor which he sees as indicative of the narrow or inchoate present condition of poetic expression. Moreover, although he sees a certain harmonious quality in ancient poetry, Rimbaud identifies a discrepancy between the bounteousness of what he calls ‘l’intelligence universelle’ and the comparative paucity of expressions of individual thought which are not yet capable of grasping ‘la plénitude du grand songe’. When he writes that ‘L’intelligence universelle a toujours jeté ses idées’ (my emphasis) he seems to suggest that that intelligence is disseminated through a process of arbitrary scattering rather than through logical argumentative construction. In a subsequent part of the letter, the following claim is made concerning the new literature: ‘Toujours pleins du Nombre et de l’Harmonie ces poèmes seront faits pour rester. — Au fond ce sera encore un peu la Poésie grecque’ [Always full of Number and Harmony these poems will be made to last. — At bottom, it will still be a bit like Greek poetry] (ŒC: 246). The uncharacteristic attempt to qualify his assertions (‘Au fond ce sera encore un peu’) in this instance may strike the reader as unusual, for it arguably reveals an unresolved tension between a desire to accede to the vividness and multiplicity of insight associated with ‘l’intelligence universelle’ and the resistance of the latter to stable formulations. This tension is amplified when Rimbaud goes on to assert that the new literature will in fact supersede the example of Greek poetry: ‘La Poésie ne rythmera plus l’action; elle sera en avant’ [Poetry will no longer give rhythm to action; it will be in advance] (ŒC: 246). The new Poetry will not therefore be contained by a unified consciousness that is consistent with its own actions; instead it will surge ahead before cognition stems the f low of utterance and language coheres in intelligible langue. According to Rimbaud’s affirmation, the poet’s verbalizing activity will drift free of determining consciousness and the content of his thought will only become apparent to him at the moment of its enunciation, when he perceives his cognitive activity as spectacle: Si le cuivre s’éveille clairon, il n’y a rien de sa faute. Cela m’est évident: j’assiste à l’éclosion de ma pensée: je la regarde, je l’écoute: je lance un coup d’archet: la symphonie fait son remuement dans les profondeurs, ou vient d’un bond sur la scène. (ŒC: 242) [If copper wakes up as a bugle, it has nothing to blame itself for. It’s easy for me: I am present at the birth of my thought: I watch it, I listen to it: I fire an arrow from my bow: the symphony stirs in the depths, or arrives on the stage in a single leap.]

In this instance, the lexicon of ‘watching’, ‘listening’, ‘symphony’ and ‘scene’ is significant, for it suggests that the burgeoning activity of consciousness is exterior­

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ized in complex fusions of sound and image that are apprehended by the reader as a spectacular display. These assertions are of particular significance for the reader of Illuminations, for they reveal the importance of the collection’s recurrent images of festivity and spectacle to Rimbaud’s poetic project. As will be demonstrated later in this chapter in relation to a selection of poems from the collection, such images serve to hasten the unfolding of new imaginative horizons through quickening the reader’s pace of association and expanding the breadth of his or her awareness. Spectacle may mobilize the generative potency of movement, gesture and utterance without ascribing fixed significance to any of these; however, this shifting of object, place and perspective is nonetheless itself of universal import, for it interpellates the compass of human activity in Rimbaud’s imagination. The deployment of imagery of spectacle heightens the transformative ambit of the Rimbaldian project, as Gerald Macklin suggests in a discussion of the poem ‘Matinée d’ivresse’, in which he describes the Rimbaldian fête as ‘an experience that leads the moi beyond the limitations of first person identity and into a broader collective consciousness’.11 In the same manner as that of the spectacle in commotion, the coalescence of the objects of cognition in an urban context is deferred; in the prose poems of Illuminations, it is the turbulence of the modern metropolis that appears to activate just such a process of uninterrupted moral, social and material transformation. Une Saison en enfer: ‘Alchimie du verbe’ and ‘Adieu’ The remainder of this chapter will attempt to relate Rimbaud’s preoccupations in the lettres du voyant to the poems of Illuminations. In this latter work, the poet adopts a complex posture which both continues to problematize the legitimacy of the visionary affirmation in the manner of the lettres du voyant and propels the reader through a bewildering array of environments. As will be shown, in many instances the poems of Illuminations demonstrate Rimbaud’s unique appropriation of the language and imagery of utopia as a means to radicalize the visionary élan and to elicit a multiplicity of psychological associations. Although one of the most striking features of Illuminations is a tendency to subject conventional textual strategies of description and narration to systematic fragmentation, aspects of this approach are anticipated within certain sections of Une Saison en enfer [A Season in Hell]. The dramatization of the inherent difficulties of constructing autobiographical narrative within the latter work serves to draw attention to what will become one of the most prominent facets of Rimbaud’s poetic enterprise for the remainder of his writing career, namely a tendency to problematize stable definitions of self, image and text. As Susan Harrow writes, Une Saison en enfer ‘stages the failure of subjectivity to coalesce’;12 moreover, it appears to query its own status as text by highlighting the multiple other texts and images which mediate its construction, as in the following citation from ‘Alchimie du verbe’ [‘Alchemy of the word’]: Depuis longtemps je me vantais de posséder tous les paysages possibles, et trouvais dérisoire les célébrités de la peinture et de la poésie moderne. J’aimais les peintures idiotes, dessus de portes, décors, toiles de saltimbanques, enseignes, enluminures populaires; la littérature démodée, latin d’église, livres

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Here, a range of textual and visual models is advanced; from decorated lintels and badly spelled erotic books to fairy tales and street signs, many of these are drawn from popular literature and the culture of the street. Moreover, the narrator affirms his disregard for conventionally esteemed painting and poetry: ‘je [...] trouvais dérisoire les célébrités de la peinture et de la poésie moderne’. In a discussion of Rimbaud’s visual sources, David Scott writes: ‘Rimbaud, it seems, was stimulated rather by the idea of painting in general; that is as a relatively undifferentiated source of visual motifs and structures’.13 Indeed, it is the undifferentiated quality of the textual and visual sources that is of particular interest here, for rather than situating his poetic enterprise within a revered literary or artistic lineage, the narrator instead cites miscellaneous ‘minor’ instances of painting and writing. His attachment to such a diversity of texts and images is a function of the scattering of poetic consciousness in multiple directions and is linked to a vastly enhanced (albeit perverse) propensity to project imaginatively objects and environments that render problematic conventional forms of representation; examples here include the ‘républiques sans histoires’ and the ‘voyages de découvertes dont on n’a pas de relations’. Indeed, although in his disenchantment the narrator seems resolved to discard these projections in ‘Alchimie du verbe’, they nonetheless give the reader some intimation of the necessary incongruousness of the imagery Rimbaud deems appropriate to the charting of new imaginative territories in his prose poetry. As Atle Kittang writes, Rimbaud’s poetry actively effects referential disarray by drawing the reader’s attention to the divergent factors of self-construction: Le discours rimbaldien consiste en une multiplicité de figures, d’images, de structures thématiques et d’oppositions sémantiques qui ne désignent aucunement une vision, mais qui composent, par un jeu d’interférences multiples, un espace de constellations et de figures idéologiques et métaphoriques diverses.14 [Rimbaldian discourse consists of a multiplicity of figures, images, thematic structures and semantic oppositions which do not in any sense pertain to a vision, but which form, through the play of multiple interferences, a space of constellations and diverse ideological and metaphorical figures.]

In foregrounding the processes which construct subjective reality, Rimbaud also implicitly elicits new hallucinatory patterns of relating and ‘thinking through’ the

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complexity and multiplicity of the given, patterns that are not subordinate to a mimetic relation: Je m’habituai à l’hallucination simple: je voyais très franchement une mosquée à la place d’une usine, une école de tambours faite par des anges, des calèches sur les routes du ciel, un salon au fond d’un lac; les monstres, les mystères; un titre de vaudeville dressait des épouvantes devant moi. Puis j’expliquai mes sophismes magiques avec l’hallucination des mots! [I accustomed myself to pure hallucination: I saw a mosque quite distinctly in the place of a factory, a drummers’ school built by angels, horse-drawn carriages on roads in the heavens, a salon in the depths of a lake; monsters, mysteries; the title of a vaudeville conjured up terrors before me. Then I explained my magic sophisms with the hallucination of words.]

The narrator’s hallucinatory projections map an imaginative territory of perverse spatial deployments (‘un salon au fond d’un lac’) wherein conventional relations between subject and object have been dissolved. The Rimbaldian self is in Antoine Raybaud’s terms ‘lieu des phénomènes, siège des opérations’ [place of phenomena, seat of operations];15 indeed, just as, when later in the poem, the narrator announces that ‘Je devins un opéra fabuleux’ [I became a fabulous opera], the poetic subject is revealed as a boundless site of tensions and energies that gravitate towards bizarre and often accidental figures of community and coalesce momentarily around dynamic collective movements, present here in the reference to the ‘école de tambours faite par des anges’ and the ‘calèches sur les routes du ciel’. It may also be useful to consider the poem ‘Adieu’, the final text of Une Saison en enfer, the work which precedes Illuminations in most editions of Rimbaud’s oeuvre. In this piece, the narrator appears to express deep disillusionment with a visionary project of the kind described in the lettres du voyant: — Quelquefois je vois au ciel des plages sans fin couvertes de blanches nations en joie. Un grand vaisseau d’or, au-dessus de moi, agite ses pavillons multicolores sous les brises du matin. J’ai créé toutes les fêtes, tous les triomphes, tous les drames. J’ai essayé d’inventer de nouvelles f leurs, de nouveaux astres, de nouvelles chairs, de nouvelles langues. J’ai cru acquérir des pouvoirs surnaturels. Eh bien! je dois enterrer mon imagination et mes souvenirs! Une belle gloire d’artiste et de conteur emportée! Moi! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol, avec un devoir à chercher, et la réalité rugueuse à étreindre! Paysan! Suis-je trompé? [— Sometimes in the sky I see endless beaches covered with white nations rejoicing. A great golden vessel, above me, f lutters its multi-coloured f lags in the morning breeze. I have created all the feasts, all the triumphs, all the dramas. I have tried to invent new f lowers, new stars, new f lesh, new lan­ guages. I thought I had obtained supernatural powers. Well! I must bury my ima­g i­nation and my memories! The glories of an artist and storyteller cast aside! Me! I, who called myself a magus or an angel, not liable to any morality, I’ve been brought back to earth, with a purpose to find, and rugged reality to embrace! Peasant! Am I mistaken?]

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Here, the embrace of ‘la réalité rugueuse’ towards the end of the citation suggests disillusionment concerning the materialization of imaginative vision; however, insofar as it seems to imply a subsequent definitive rejection of visionary expression, the narrator’s statement that ‘je suis rendu au sol, avec un devoir à chercher’ could be misleading, as such imagery continues to mediate Rimbaud’s textual production in often perverse and unanticipated ways throughout the poems of Illuminations. In accordance with Harrow’s description of Une Saison en enfer as an ‘unresolved narrative that sets up premises and positions only to demolish and subsequently reinstate them’,16 in the line ‘Suis-je trompé’, the narrative voice of ‘Adieu’ queries the posture of the ‘paysan’ almost as soon as this is adopted. Thus the opposition which is advanced between an imaginary ‘ciel’ and a material ‘sol’ is not indefinitely sustainable, suggesting to the reader that such a framework in language is insufficient to contain the surplus of desire or disillusionment that is intimated by the sudden alternation of the narrator’s affirmations. The ability of the narrative voice to enunciate conclusively distinctions of this type is undermined, as such distinctions are not sufficient to encompass meaningfully the multiform expansion of consciousness. Although here they may seem to be definitively rejected, in the poems of Illuminations, fantasizing projections of a similar kind to the ‘plages sans fin couvertes de blanches nations en joie’ and the ‘pavillons multicolores’ re-emerge in perverse, aberrant forms in the spectacle and turbulence of the metropolis. The Body and its Horizons in Illuminations Despite the embrace of the peasant persona in ‘Adieu’, it is towards the tumult of the city that the narrative voice is drawn at the end of the poem: ‘Nous entrerons aux splendides villes’. The reader might therefore be surprised to discover that the first poems of Illuminations do not significantly incorporate urban settings. However, the candid atmospheres of ‘Après le Déluge’ and ‘Enfance’ nonetheless signal a febrile, undifferentiated perceptual activity that spills over into multiple images of spatial coextension, thereby preparing the reader for the tumultuous urban environments traversed in later poems in the collection. In these two initial poems of Illuminations, visionary desire radiates through the oscillations of affect and the foundational apprehension of the real by successive narrators. ‘Après le Déluge’ explicitly designates the obliteration of a previously integrated world and enumerates the first, inaugural gestures of postdiluvian consciousness as it animates the world once more; this can be seen in the frequent reliance on past historics throughout the poem (‘Un lièvre s’arrêta’; ‘Le sang coula’; ‘Le sang et le lait coulèrent’) and in lines such as the following: Dans la grande rue sale les étals se dressèrent, et l’on tira les barques vers la mer étagée là-haut comme sur les gravures. [In the great dirty street the stalls sprang up, and little boats were dragged towards the sea laid out up there like in engravings.]

For the narrator of this poem, the breakdown of a hitherto coherent subjective experience effects confusion but also occasions intense perceptual renewal and

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infuses those actions which re-construct the world from first principles with a fantasizing urgency prior to its colonization by secure meaning. This can be seen in the above example in the perverse vertical suspension of the sea ‘comme sur les gravures’; in this instance perspectival depth is radically foreshortened in accordance with a pictorializing strategy that, as David Scott suggests, does not subscribe to any fixed hierarchy of values.17 Each of these inaugural movements is thus suffused with a generative, liberating thrust; however, the fragmented lineation of the text has the effect of juxtaposing a bizarre succession of images of rainbows and deserts of thyme, Bluebeard and the Queen and hindering the reader’s attempts to relate them in a secure manner. As Jean-Pierre Giusto writes of this text: ‘rétablir un appareil conceptuel précis est sans aucun doute risqué dans un poème qui se métamorphose sous nos yeux’ [to try to reconstruct a precise conceptual construct is risky in a poem which transforms before our eyes].18 Although the narrative and syntagmatic structures which might link these images are fractured before their potentialities can be definitively stabilized by the reader, the text nonetheless advances repeated metaphors of construction which, while not serving to guide a coherent narrative development, intimate an accumulating prospective sense (instances include the stalls which ‘se dressèrent’; the beavers who ‘bâtirent’ and the piano which is ‘établi’). Disengaging from each syntagmatic unit so as to encompass the next, a reading dynamic materializes that exceeds any one of these enumerated objects, images and situations: Sourds, étang, — Écume, roule sur le pont et par-dessus les bois; — draps noirs et orgues, — éclairs et tonnerre, — montez et roulez; — Eaux et tristesses, montez et relevez les Déluges. [Spring up, pond, — Foam, roll on the bridge and over the woods; — black sheets and organs, — lightning and thunder, — rise and roll; — Water and sorrows, rise and restore the Floods.]

Habitual approaches to the sourcing of meaning by the reader are disrupted in this line, yet precisely through the foregrounding of punctuation, the possibility or potentiality of connotation between isolated words and images is heightened. The ‘spatialization’ of the line by recourse to combinations of commas, dashes and semicolons affirms the urgency of the animating impulse that is semantically intimated by what Gerald Macklin refers to as ‘cumulative waves of imperatives’: ‘Sourds’, ‘roule’, ‘montez’, and ‘relevez’.19 The precise objective of these commands is not finally disclosed, yet the foregrounding of the visuality and materiality of the text through a radical emphasis on the spatial distribution of punctuation over semantic content suggests that they announce a new horizon of being that ‘overf lows’ the boundaries of the construction of meaning under present conditions. Clive Scott’s recent work on translating Rimbaud’s poetry is highly instructive in relation to the potential of the dash to solicit such imaginative projections; Scott records the following statement from an article in a provincial newspaper which was reproduced in the Symbolist journal La Vogue of 4 April 1886: ‘Le tiret ne tracet-il pas matériellement le passage à un autre ordre d’idées? Il est horizontal, il conduit l’œil sans lui permettre de s’écarter de la ligne: il fait transition’ [Does not the dash materially trace the transition to another order of ideas? It is horizontal,

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it leads the eye without allowing it to deviate from the line: it marks a transition]. On this point, Scott comments that ‘the tiret picks up the voice when it threatens to slacken, throwing it forward into new realms of perception’.20 In effect, in the above example from ‘Après le Déluge’, the dash draws the reader’s eye onwards so insistently that imaginative activity is projected forwards along the line before stable meaning can be secured. This is in keeping with what Tzvetan Todorov views as the ‘présentatif ’ (rather than representative) character of Rimbaud’s language, for it serves to problematize and, paradoxically, thereby to dynamize the activity of ‘reading’ a world in transformation.21 In maximizing the spatializing possibility of punctuation within the prose poem, Rimbaud foregrounds its potential to elicit desiring projections and to initiate new modes of relation to the real; this ‘transitional’ orientation can be understood in terms of the ‘passage à un autre ordre d’idées’ announced by the author of the article from La Vogue. The upwelling of transformative energies in ‘Après le Déluge’ is worth brief consideration alongside the ecstatic tone of selections from the prose text ‘Au Père!’ by the Saint-Simonian Charles Duveyrier: J’ai réveillé, au bruit des chantiers et des universités d’Europe, Stamboul, le Caire, Smyrne, et jusqu’aux villes de la Perse et de l’Inde. J’ai fait sonder les mers du gigantesque archipel. J’ai rassemblé comme une nouvelle nation d’Anglais contre les montagnes de la Chine et je leur ai donné le désir de franchir ces montagnes. [...] J’ai fait éclater de merveilleux spectacles à la face de ma terre. J’ai brisé de mon souff le les tempêtes qui rasaient le sol comme des lunes de malheur. J’ai pressé les mamelles des montagnes et j’en ai fait sortir leur lait de feu. (Livre nouveau: 211–19) [I awoke, to the noise of the workshops and universities of Europe, Istanbul, Cairo, Smyrna as far as the cities of Persia and India. I have plumbed the seas of the gigantic archipelago. I have gathered people together like a new nation of Englishmen against the mountains of China and I have given them the desire to cross those mountains. [...] I have made marvellous spectacles explode against my earth. I smashed with my breath the storms which razed the earth like moons of misfortune. I clasped the breasts of the mountains and released their milk of fire.]

Duveyrier’s text prophesies that the frequently arcane generative impulses enumerated here will be illuminated by the ascension of Enfantin and the triumphant realization of the Saint-Simonian vision. Despite the presence of comparable impulses in ‘Après le Déluge’ however, Rimbaud’s text implicitly apprehends the impossibility of their object. In fact, the prose poem’s prolific textual energies gravitate towards and accumulate in respect of that impossibility, as the def lationary final paragraph suggests: Car depuis qu’ils se sont dissipés, — oh les pierres précieuses s’enfouissant, et les f leurs ouvertes! — c’est un ennui! et la Reine, la Sorcière qui allume sa braise dans le pot de terre, ne voudra jamais nous raconter ce qu’elle sait, et que nous ignorons. [Because since they slackened — oh the precious stones burying themselves, and the open f lowers! it’s a bore! And the Queen, the Witch who lights her coals in the pot of earth, will never tell us what she knows, and we do not.]

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Here, the ironic, opaque image of the witch who ‘ne voudra jamais raconter ce qu’elle sait, et que nous ignorons’ signals the puncturing and eventual dissipation of these energies before their potentialities can crystallize, yet it is the final disclosure of the futility of the visionary enterprise that precipitates the sourcing of such energies in the preceding lines. In ‘Enfance’, childhood is explored as a state in which such surplus, residual energies are particularly active prior to the integration of perceptual activity and the coalescence of subjective experience. For Raybaud, the Rimbaldian vision of infancy is that of an ‘espace d’inconvenance et de violence d’un désir braconneur d’images du non-vu et du non-su’ [space of impropriety and violence of a desire which pilfers images of the non-seen and the non-known].22 This analysis is informative, for it presents childhood not as a steadily evolving state but as one saturated with the impulsive momentum of posture and affect: ‘Pour Rimbaud, Enfance, c’est, plutôt que l’histoire de l’enfant, ses ailleurs: ses propriétés — non pas ses lieux d’installation, mais ses espaces de parcours; non ses biens, mais ses faims et ses rapines’ [For Rimbaud, childhood is, rather than the history of the child, his elsewhere: his properties — not the places in which he settles, but the spaces in which he moves; not his possessions, but his cravings and maraudings].23 Raybaud’s comments signal a voracious, hallucinatory perceptual activity that overspills established spatial or temporal frames of reference as it attempts to accede to new horizons of being. The ‘désir braconneur’ of the subject in infancy is manifest in a rampant annexation of images, memories and fragments of identity such as can be observed in the following passage of ‘Enfance I’: Cette idole, yeux noirs et crin jaune, sans parents ni cour, plus noble que la fable, mexicaine et f lamande; son domaine, azur et verdure insolents, court sur des plages nommées, par des vagues sans vaisseaux, de noms férocement grecs, slaves, celtiques. [This idol, black eyes and yellow mane, without family or court, nobler than legend, Mexican and Flemish: his domain, insolent azure and green, runs along named beaches, over waves empty of vessels, with ferociously Greek, Slavic, Celtic names.]

The iconized figure advanced in the first lines of the prose poem points to a problematization and dispersion of self-identity. Imaginative investment in this figure of fragmented human lineage (‘sans parents ni cour’) whose domain, as the allusion to the ‘vagues sans vaisseaux’ suggests, is radically ‘out of place’, tends to elicit multiple historical and cultural associations: Mexican, Flemish, Greek, Slavic and Celtic. Dames qui tournoient sur les terrasses voisines de la mer; enfantes et géantes, superbes noires dans la mousse vert-de-gris, bijoux debout sur le sol gras des bosquets et des jardinets dégelés — jeunes mères et grandes sœurs aux regards pleins de pèlerinages, sultanes, princesses de démarche et de costume tyranniques, petites étrangères et personnes doucement malheureuses. [Ladies who twirl on terraces by the sea: little girls and giantesses, superb black women in the grey-green moss, jewels standing on the rich soil of groves and thawed-out little gardens — young mothers and big sisters with pilgrimages

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Transformation and Community in Rimbaud’s I lluminations in their eyes, sultanas, princesses of tyrannical costumes and gait, little foreign girls and gently unhappy people.]

Here multiple identities are presented via fragmented syntactical structures that project the f luctuations of subjective identification with a miscellany of female figures: ‘dames’, ‘enfantes et géantes’, ‘superbes noires’, etc. In this context, deployment of the dash creates ambiguity, for it is uncertain whether its function is to announce a descriptive elaboration on the bizarre image of the superb black women in the moss or whether the ‘jeunes mères et grandes sœurs’ are themselves distinct entities. In the first instance this technique serves to problematize the integral status of any of these enumerated identities and simultaneously to maximize and disseminate their latent potentialities; an unbridling of libidinal energies thereby occurs that resonates through the fantasizing allusions to the ‘sultanes’, ‘princesses’ and ‘petites étrangères’. In ‘Enfance III’ the dynamism of infantile perception is explored further: Au bois il y a un oiseau, son chant vous arrête et vous fait rougir. Il y a une horloge qui ne sonne pas. Il y a une fondrière avec un nid de bêtes blanches. Il y a une cathédrale qui descend et un lac qui monte. Il y a une petite voiture abandonnée dans le taillis, ou qui descend le sentier en courant, enrubannée. Il y a une troupe de petits comédiens en costumes, aperçus sur la route à travers la lisière du bois. Il y a enfin, quand l’on a faim et soif, quelqu’un qui vous chasse. [In the woods, there is a bird, its song stops you and makes you blush. There is a clock which does not strike. There is a foundry with a nest of white creatures. There is a sinking cathedral and a rising lake. There is a little car abandoned in the bushes, or running down the path decorated with ribbons. There is a troupe of little actors in costumes, glimpsed on the road through the edge of the wood. And there is, when you are hungry or thirsty, someone who chases you away.]

The proliferation of the locative ‘Il y a’ is significant here for it signals a desire to intimate the exhilaration of perception without stabilizing the images encountered by the gaze and assimilating them to received linguistic uses. Rather than serving simply to confirm ‘what is’, the multiplication of the locative utterance works paradoxically to assert a principle of contingency of situation more in keeping with a dynamic of change and renewal. Commenting on this ‘Il y a’ in ‘Enfance’, Clive Scott writes that it ‘unsettles’, ‘re-orientates’ and ‘recontextualizes’ perception: ‘The “Il y a” here is no longer a consistent point of reference, implying a perceptual and psychic equidistance from all the images, but the reverse, the very agent of adjustment, variation, mobility’.24 Scott’s remarks are indicative of how the Rimbaldian gaze instates a qualified relation in regard to its object; as the curious images of the sinking cathedral and rising lake suggest, the repeated foregrounding of the locative intimates both the foundational affirmativeness of

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the poetic utterance and cognizance of the transience of the world which that utterance purports to describe. This is a posture that, rather than serving to stabilize the image, secures exposure to, and catalyses, the potentialities extended in the experience of perceptual f lux. In a similar vein, in ‘Vies III’ [‘Lives III’] the poet tends to dramatize the interplay of myth, memory and fantasy in juvenile consciousness through suspending the narrative orchestration of each of these elements: Dans un grenier où je fus enfermé à douze ans j’ai connu le monde, j’ai illustré la comédie humaine. Dans un cellier j’ai appris l’histoire. À quelque fête de nuit dans une cité du Nord, j’ai rencontré toutes les femmes des anciens peintres. Dans un vieux passage à Paris on m’a enseigné les sciences classiques. Dans une magnifique demeure cernée par l’Orient entier j’ai accompli mon immense œuvre et passé mon illustre retraite. J’ai brassé mon sang. Mon devoir m’est remis. Il ne faut même plus songer à cela. Je suis réellement d’outre-tombe, et pas de commissions. [In an attic where I was imprisoned at the age of twelve, I came to know the world, I illustrated the human comedy. In a cellar I learned history. At some night-time feast in a Northern city, I met all the women of the old painters. In an old arcade in Paris, I was taught the classical sciences. In a magnificent dwelling surrounded by the whole Orient I completed my immense work and whiled away my illustrious retirement. I stirred my blood. My duties have been given back to me. There’s no need to contemplate it any longer. I am really from beyond the grave, and free of errands.]

Use of the verb ‘illustrer’ in the first sentence of the text signals a linguistic effect created in the lines which follow, one analogous to that of visual illustration in so far as it mobilizes the dynamic and suggestive properties of individual images while minimizing explicit narrative development from one sentence to the next.25 This serves to heighten the suggestiveness of the narrator’s projections of encounters with ‘toutes les femmes des anciens peintres’ or the fairy-tale-like stylistic tropes he employs: ‘magnifique demeure’, ‘immense œuvre’. The effect is achieved through a relatively simple strategy of multiplying actions (‘J’ai appris’ / ‘J’ai rencontré’ / ‘On m’a enseigné’) and prepositions of place (‘Dans’ / ‘À’). The consequent impression is additionally comparable to how contemporary cinema has occasional recourse to the technique of montage to construct a condensed narrative of formative experiences that ‘explains’ the subsequent actions of a principal character; however in the case of Rimbaud’s narrator in this prose poem, the sequence of formative experiences is abruptly discontinued in statements of withdrawal: ‘Mon devoir m’est remis. Il ne faut même plus songer à cela.’ This functions to displace the reader’s efforts to assign autobiographic intention to the text, for the heterogeneous desiring projections and formative memories of Rimbaud’s narrator are not channelled into a more psychologically integral mature narrative self. In ‘Jeunesse IV’ [‘Youth IV’], as in ‘Enfance’ and ‘Vies’, juvenile consciousness is not presented in terms of a distinct, integral self hood but as a site traversed by multiple desires, tensions and energies. In this context, the creative labour of the poet is not given over to the realization of a prior poetic conception but is transferred to imaginatively working through, and, indeed, accelerating, these manifold residual

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forces. The tensions between withdrawal and imaginative élan that are present in ‘Vies III’ are thus also a feature of ‘Jeunesse IV’: Tu es encore à la tentation d’Antoine. L’ébat du zèle écourté, les tics d’orgueil puéril, l’affaissement et l’effroi. Mais tu te mettras à ce travail: toutes les possibilités harmoniques et architecturales s’émouvront autour de ton siège. Des êtres parfaits, imprévus, s’offriront à tes expériences. Dans tes environs aff luera rêveusement la curiosité d’anciennes foules et de luxes oisifs. Ta mémoire et tes sens ne seront que la nourriture de ton impulsion créatrice. Quant au monde, quand tu sortiras, que sera-t-il devenu? En tout cas, rien des apparences actuelles. [You are still at the temptation of Anthony. The frolics of curtailed zeal, the tics of childish pride, weakening, and terror. But you will set yourself to this work: all the harmonic and architectural possibilities will stir round your seat. Perfect, fortuitous beings will offer themselves to your experiments. Around you will gather dreamily the curiosity of ancient throngs and idle luxuries. Your memory and your senses will be nothing other than nourishment for your creative impulse. As for the world, when you emerge, what will have become of it? Nothing, in any case, like its present appearance.]

Here the verbs ‘s’émouvoir’ and ‘aff luer’ and the adjective ‘imprévu’ serve to convey the impromptu constellation of the libidinal energies that traverse the subject in verbal figures that are common to the lexical field of Saint-Simonian, Fourierist and other utopian texts: harmonies, architectures, ideal beings, crowds, luxuries. Although the ‘work’ of the poet moreover consists in deferring their submission to any such stable conceptual schemes, these figures connoting social and material transformation are foregrounded in view of their potential to accelerate latent potentialities of which poetic consciousness is the locus (‘toutes les possibilités harmoniques et architecturales s’émouvront autour de ton siège’); as later analyses in this chapter will show, the acceleration of such architectural potentialities within the context of the city is a feature of many of the ‘urban’ poems of Illuminations. These aspects of ‘Jeunesse IV’ are worth consideration in terms of what Michael G. Kelly refers to as the ‘leavening of present reality’ initiated by the utopian dynamic.26 In ‘Jeunesse IV’ the language of utopia seems appropriate to Rimbaud’s strategy of charting new imaginative horizons by dint of hastening the differentiation and variation of perceptual activity: ‘Quant au monde, quand tu sortiras, que sera-t-il devenu? En tout cas, rien des apparences actuelles’. The deployment of utopian rhetoric also serves a dynamizing function in ‘Being Beauteous’, which projects a bizarre, prodigious female figure: Devant une neige un Être de Beauté de haute taille. Des siff lements de mort et des cercles de musique sourde font monter, s’élargir et trembler comme un spectre ce corps adoré; des blessures écarlates et noires éclatent dans les chairs superbes. Les couleurs propres de la vie se foncent, dansent, et se dégagent autour de la Vision, sur le chantier. Et les frissons s’élèvent et grondent, et la saveur forcenée de ces effets se chargeant avec les siff lements mortels et les rauques musiques que le monde, loin derrière nous, lance sur notre mère de beauté, — elle recule, elle se dresse. Oh! nos os sont revêtus d’un nouveau corps amoureux.

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[Against a fall of snow, a tall Being of Beauty. Whistling of death and the circles of muff led music make this adored body rise, expand and tremble like a spectre; wounds of scarlet and black burst from superb f lesh. Life’s own colours darken, dance and loosen themselves around this Vision, in the making. And shudders rise and groan, and the frenetic f lavour of these effects bearing that mortal whistling and raucous music that the world, far behind us, hurls at our mother of beauty — she recoils, she rears. Oh, our bones are clothed with a new amorous body!]

The prose poem’s dramatization of the energies associated with this protean object (‘la Vision, sur le chantier’) has already been remarked upon to some extent; Macklin describes it in terms of a ‘poème-fête’,27 while Raybaud notes that ‘le texte pratique-t-il une extraordinaire théâtralisation du corps rendu à sa dimension sensorielle et sauvage du déploiement d’une sorte d’énergétisme total, scène abolissant la position de sujet et d’objet: corps d’acteur conducteur; corps de spectateur transformé: monde-corps [...]’ [the text practices an extraordinary theatralization of the body which is restored to its sensorial and savage dimension by the deployment of a sort of total energetics, a scene abolishing the position of subject and object: an actor/conductor body; a transformed spectatorial body: a world-body].28 As these comments suggest, ‘Being Beauteous’ exposes the multiple strands of recognition and desiring projection in a complex spectacle of sound and image which dissolves the distinction between viewing consciousness and what is viewed. In externalizing those explosive, unconscious drives that cut through perception (‘siff lements de mort’ / ‘blessures écarlates et noires’ / ‘frissons’), the poem intimates the problematics of the inclination to extricate perceptual activity from involvement in its object and to assign to consciousness a position from which it is materially unaffected by that object. Consequently, it is the body which emerges as both the locus and agent of the pressures and forces acting on consciousness. On this point, some comments by Michel Foucault may be instructive in relation to our reading of ‘Being Beauteous’: Mon corps, en fait, il est toujours ailleurs; il est lié à tous les ailleurs du monde. Et à vrai dire, il est ailleurs que dans le monde. Car c’est autour de lui que les choses sont disposées; c’est par rapport à lui, et par rapport à lui comme rapport à un souverain, qu’il y a un dessus, un dessous, une droite, une gauche, un avant, un arrière, un proche, un lointain. Le corps, il est le point zéro du monde, là où les chemins et les espaces viennent se croiser. Le corps, il n’est nulle part; il est au cœur du monde, ce petit noyau utopique à partir duquel je rêve, je parle, j’avance, j’imagine, je perçois les choses en leur place, et je les nie aussi par le pouvoir indéfini des utopies que j’imagine.29 [My body, in fact, is always elsewhere; it is linked to every elsewhere in the world. And in truth, it is elsewhere than in the world. Because it is around it that the things of the world are set out; it is in relation to it, and in relation to it as in relation to a sovereign, that there is an above, a below, a right, a left, an in front, a behind, a near and a far. The body is the zero point of the world, the site where ways and spaces come to intersect. The body is nowhere; it is at the heart of the world, that little utopian kernel from which I dream, speak, move forward, imagine, perceive things in their place, and deny them too by the indeterminate power of the utopias I imagine.]

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In ‘Being Beauteous’, as in ‘À une Raison’, the first, necessary actions that inaugurate the temporal or spatial relation of the subject to its surroundings originate in motions of the body (‘monter, s’élargir et trembler’ / ‘s’élèvent et grondent’ / ‘elle recule, elle se dresse’). The world is thus set out in respect of the body, as Foucault asserts. However, as the multiplication of prepositions of place suggests (‘Devant’, ‘dans’, ‘autour’, ‘sur’, ‘derrière’, ‘sur’), almost as soon as these relations are established they are dissolved by successive displacements of perspective which consciousness struggles to stabilize and make present to itself. The body advanced here thus appears to correspond to that ‘point zéro du monde’ described by Foucault; it is a site of excess, a deferred presence that awakens the hallucinatory energies of the viewer and orients them towards aspects of being in the world that are as yet unresolved by consciousness. Once again here, the reference to the ‘nouveau corps amoureux’ has Fourierist overtones while the invocation of the ‘mère de beauté’ may remind the reader of the colossal androgynous figure that is at the centre of the Saint-Simonian Charles Duveyrier’s vision of the future Paris. Saint-Simonian texts frequently prophesied the advent of a new ‘mother’ to complement Enfantin, the group’s self-proclaimed ‘Père’; as Jacques Rancière comments in an analysis of Rimbaud’s ‘Les Reparties de Nina’ [‘Nina’s Retorts’], the figure of the Saint-Simonian ‘Mère’ was intended to signal ‘la place vide de la femme au couple/humanité de l’avenir: place vide de celle qu’on ne peut encore classer, qui ne s’est pas encore connue et dite elle-même’ [the empty space of woman in couple/humanity of the future: the empty space of the one who does not yet belong to any category, who has not yet come to know and declare herself as such].30 The following passage from a text by the Saint-Simonian Émile Barrault hypothesizes the advent of the symbolic female figure in terms of a mollifying aestheticization and ritualization of social relations that will supposedly inaugurate an age of social harmony: Tu nous a donné le PÈRE; nous attendons la MÈRE! De quel point de l’horizon et par quels chemins viendra-t-elle? Habite-t-elle un palais? fille des rois, doit-elle, par ses bienfaits inattendus, réconcilier avec le trône les masses populaires qui grondent, poser un pied vainqueur sur l’hydre des révolutions, en affranchissant de sa noble main le prolétaire, et faire luire, aux yeux des peuples qui n’attendent d’en-haut que la grêle et l’orage, un soleil de bonté et d’amour? Surgira-t-elle de la poudre des champs ou de la fange des villes?31 [You have given us the FATHER; we await the MOTHER! From what point of the horizon and by what paths will she come? Does she live in a palace? A daughter of kings, must she, by her unexpected favours, reconcile the grumbling masses with the throne, tread victoriously over monstrous revolutions, while setting free the worker at the touch of her noble hand, and causing a sun of pity and love to gleam in the eyes of peoples who expect only hail and storms to descend on them from above? Will she arise from the dust of the fields or from the mire of the cities?]

For Barrault and other Saint-Simonian authors, the ‘place’ of the symbolic woman has yet to be assumed and fully articulated. As Rancière continues: ‘Mais ce qui n’est pas encore dit, et empêche ainsi le dire de l’humanité nouvelle d’entrer dans l’ordre d’un faire nouveau, peut s’écrire dans la forme du poème’ [But what is not

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yet said, and thus prevents a new humanity’s statements to enter into a new order of doing, can be written in the form of the poem].32 As we have seen in relation to Saint-Simonianism in an earlier chapter, literary modes of expression thus fulfil an important function in this respect, insofar as they play an important prospective or anticipatory function. Rancière’s comments are instructive, furthermore, in relation to the present reading of ‘Being Beauteous’. Like the Saint-Simonian ‘Mère’, the figure evoked in the prose poem is linked to the advent of a radical new beauty, yet this beauty actively problematizes the idealizing gaze. ‘Being Beauteous’ can thus be linked to what Susan Harrow refers to as the ‘pathologization’ of the classical ideal of beauty in Rimbaud’s poem ‘Vénus Anadyomène’ which functions to ‘[abolish] Beauty as a stabilized immutable reification’.33 But while the hideous figure rising from the bathtub in ‘Vénus Anadyomène’ marks a disfigurement of the classical/ mythological trope of Beauty, in ‘Being Beauteous’ this strategy of disfigurement is additionally brought to bear on the discourses with which the prose poem is contemporary. Expressive patterns materialize in this prose poem around the fragmented rhetorical armature of the utopian ‘nouveau corps amoureux’ and ‘mère de beauté’; through exposure to the suggestive potency of these tropes, imaginative activity is led beyond the limitations of a finite self-identity and towards collective formations and aggregates of sensation — ‘nos os sont revêtus’. Similarly, the text’s vocabulary of dynamic, collective movements (‘dansent, et se dégagent’ / ‘s’élèvent et grondent’) seems to be a further instance of what Kristin Ross refers to in an analysis of the poem ‘Sensation’ as Rimbaud’s ‘erotico politics’, for it appears to accomplish ‘the translation or effectuation of a crowd effect onto the body’.34 Despite their manifest ideological function, utopian texts occasionally retain an orientation towards the extravagant and the incongruous that at certain points invites an imaginative response which outstrips the idealizing meaning they are intended to encode (in the case of Saint-Simonianism, the projected transcendence of historical male–female gender oppositions). Examples of this might include Philippe-Joseph Machereau’s drawings of the Saint-Simonian ‘Temple-femme’ or some of those selections from Charles Duveyrier’s ‘Paris ou la Ville nouvelle des Saint-Simoniens’: Mon temple est une femme! Autour de son vaste corps, jusqu’à sa ceinture, montent en spirale, à travers les vitraux, des galeries qui s’échelonnent comme les guirlandes d’une robe de bal. [...] Sa robe descend en arrière sur la grande place des parades, et forme des plis de sa queue un immense amphithéâtre où l’on vient jouir du spectacle des pacifiques carrousels, et respirer le frais sous des orangers. [...] On dirait à l’éclat des vitraux qui serpentent autour de son corps, le long de la spirale des galeries, qui rayonnent aux rosaces de sa poitrine, que les pierreries des cinq continents sont dans sa robe et dans son corsage. J’ai chargé ses bras de riches bracelets qui saillent en terrasses damasquinées à jour. J’ai tissé sa ceinture de lames métalliques, espacées et vibrantes. C’est là que repose le nouvel orgue, à la voix de cuivre, d’argent et d’airain, dont les mélodies et les harmonies descendent comme une chute d’eau sur le plancher de mon temple, et jaillissent de sa bouche, de ses oreilles, de ses yeux, des intervalles qui séparent les perles de son cou et les tresses de ses cheveux, et des créneaux de son magnifique diadème, semences de vie que ma bien-aimée répand dans la ville et dans le monde. (Livre nouveau: 233–34)

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Figure 4.1. Philippe-Joseph Machereau, Femme colossale assise (above) & Untitled (left). By permission of the Biblio­ thèque nationale de France.

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[My temple is a woman! Around her vast body, as high as her belt, galleries rise in spirals, through the stained glass windows, spreading out like garlands on a ball gown. [...] Her dress descends as far as the parade square, and in the folds trailing behind her forms a huge amphitheatre where people come to enjoy the spectacle of the pacific carrousels, and to breathe in the fresh air under orange trees. [...] In the dazzle of the stained glass windows which wind around her body, along the spiral of galleries which shine forth from the rose windows of her chest, one would think that precious gems from all five continents were in her dress and bodice. I wove her belt with rich bracelets which stand out on damascened balconies. There sits the new copper-, silver- and bronze-voiced organ from which melodies and harmonies issue like a waterfall on the f loor of my temple, and gush from its mouth, from its ears, from its eyes, from the gaps which separate the pearls of its neck and the braids of its hair, and from the gaps in its magnificent diadem, the seed of life which my beloved spreads throughout the city and the world.]

Machereau’s naive visual incorporation of robust architectural motifs into the feminine figure in his images suggests degrees of ambiguity of gender and potential for juxtaposition of contrasting visual surfaces; meanwhile Duveyrier’s text, as already noted in an earlier chapter, is interspersed with diverse stylistic tropes that serve to dynamize the activity of reading. Both utopian text and image therefore have the potential to quicken the imaginative ferment of the real, as Rimbaud appears to have been aware. However, the poet’s technique of maximizing the incongruity of his poetic images tends to sever them from any anchoring in stable textual or visual relations. Contrasting with the glistening, translucent body described in ‘La Ville nouvelle’ (‘Autour de son vaste corps, jusqu’à sa ceinture, montent en spirale, à travers les vitraux, des galeries qui s’échelonnent comme les guirlandes d’une robe de bal’), the apparently f layed f leshly textures (‘des blessures écarlates et noires éclatent dans les chairs superbes’) unsettle the reader’s expectations of this ‘Being Beauteous’ and complicate desiring response. On this point, Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy’s 1984 sculpture of Rimbaud entitled L’Homme aux semelles devant arguably extends the complex Rimbaldian attitude to the body and its modalities that is present in ‘Being Beauteous’. In this work, the body of the poet is split in two and the torso and legs are dislocated and suspended in a horizontal position, while an empty space is inserted at the point where the centre of the figure would conventionally be located. As Michel Dupré writes, ‘cette vaste concavité creusée en son milieu par la pesanteur, plans courbes déroulés en surfaces complexes et continues, déborde largement de part et d’autre du support, posée en diagonale sur le socle dérisoire, comme en équilibre précaire, vacillant’ ‘[this vast concavity hollowed in the middle by gravity, curved planes in complex and continuous surfaces, broadly expands beyond both sides of its support, and is positioned diagonally on that derisory base, as if precariously perched, and tottering].35 Ipoustéguy’s title puns grossly on the Verlainian sobriquet applied to Rimbaud, ‘L’homme aux semelles de vent’. Rather than having the wind at his soles (‘les semelles de vent’), the poet is depicted reclining with his elbow placed on his own feet, which hover in the air in front of him (‘les semelles devant’). Reading the irresolvable posture of the figure as an allusion to the representation of the

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Figure 4.2. Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy, L’Homme aux semelles devant. Place du Père Teilhard de Chardin, Paris

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deceased on tombs in Antiquity, Dupré describes the sculpture as a ‘[sorte] de (re) présentation contradictoire (utopique) d’un mort comme toujours vivant...’ [a kind of contradictory (utopian) representation of a dead man as if he were still alive].36 Dupré’s emphasis on the contradictoriness of the (utopian) pose of the figure of L’Homme aux semelles devant seems significant here, for it suggests that the forces acting on the Rimbaldian body become detached from any circumscribed experience of the self and are displaced instead through unreconciled postures that have the potential to inscribe simultaneously motionlessness and lines of f light. Moreover, this impression is accentuated by its situation on the Place du Père Teilhard de Chardin in Paris’s fourth arrondissement (opposite the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal where many of the Saint-Simonian texts under discussion in this book are held in the Fonds Enfantin), for a further interplay arises between the inertness of the sculpture and the animation of the boulevard, thus preventing the viewing gaze from arriving at a stable perspective on its object. In the prose poem ‘À une Raison’, a similarly irresolvable corporeal dynamic is advanced: Un coup de ton doigt sur le tambour décharge tous les sons et commence la nouvelle harmonie. Un pas de toi, c’est la levée des nouveaux hommes et leur en-marche. Ta tête se détourne: le nouvel amour! Ta tête se retourne, — le nouvel amour! ‘Change nos lots, crible les f léaux, à commencer par le temps’, te chantent les enfants. ‘Élève n’importe où la substance de nos fortunes et de nos vœux’, on t’en prie, Arrivée de toujours, qui t’en iras partout. [A tap of your finger on the drum loosens all sounds and begins the new harmony. One step of yours is the rising of the new men and their forward march. Your face turns away: the new love! Your face turns back, — the new love! ‘Change our fate, bombard the plagues, beginning with time,’ the children sing to you. ‘Raise, no matter where, the substance of our fortunes and wishes,’ they beg you. Arrived your whole life long, you’ll go away everywhere.]

The title of this text may strike the reader as puzzling given that many of those aspects which have been observed so far in Rimbaud’s work are far from consistent with the progressive watchword ‘Reason’. The foregrounding of a volatile, restive vocabulary unsettles the reader’s attempts to rationalize concisely the assorted gestures and noises denoted by ‘coup’, ‘pas’, décharge’, ‘sons’, ‘marche’, ‘chantent’ and ‘élève’. This vocabulary of animating movements and intonations intimates the pressures and energies acting on a consciousness which strains to contain them, giving rise to an affective overload that drives sound and gesture towards new expressive territories which are projected through the allusions to ‘nouvelle harmonie’, ‘nouvel amour’ and ‘nouveaux hommes’, terms couched in a language of transformation that recalls the idiom of Charles Fourier, author of the Nouveau Monde amoureux and L’Harmonie universelle. These terms are however subject to radical reappropriation by Rimbaud as they become detached from any

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circumscribed sense they might convey in Fourierist rhetoric. The fragmentary lineation of the text also functions to precipitate the repeated invocation of the new, for each new line signals an inaugural motion that precedes and liberates its agent: ‘Un coup...’, ‘Un pas...’, ‘Arrivée...’. As David Evans comments: One tap alone does not constitute a rhythm, and the usual rhythmical function of the drum is subverted, just like the poetic rhythm. The poetic endeavour is no longer the creation of rhythm in time, but rather, the problematization of rhythm, and the anticipation of a future state of harmonic perfection embracing, of course, ‘tous les sons’ in a resolution which is impossible in the present time of poetry.37

In ‘À une Raison’, each action or utterance, from the beat of the drum, to the first step, to the motion of the head surges ahead of consciousness, acting upon a generative momentum that elevates its author to a radically altered perspective. The ‘Raison’ of the title thus bears a contingent relation to the confident ‘Raison qui donnera à l’humanité des lois nouvelles, et engendrera bonheur et progrès’ [Reason which will give humanity new laws and engender happiness and progress] 38, evoked by the Suzanne Bernard and André Guyaux edition of Rimbaud’s oeuvres, for, as Pierre Brunel notes, the text actively problematizes the authority of Reason with a capital ‘R’: ‘le titre est déjà provocateur: parler d’une raison parmi d’autres ou d’une raison indéfinie dans une civilisation occidentale qui croit en la Raison!’ [the title in itself is provocative because it talks about one reason amongst others or about an indefinite reason in a western civilization which believes in Reason with a capital R] (ŒC: 894). The ‘Reason’ invoked in ‘À une Raison’ is, therefore, neither a teleological function nor a moral or theoretical precept on which conduct may be predicated, but an experimental or exploratory imaginative logic that is never fully adequate to its own momentum and purposes. ‘Arrivée de toujours, qui t’en iras partout’, it is a force which traverses consciousness and expands outwards in all directions across the world of phenomena. The Metropolis in Illuminations: Spectacle, Variability, Community The prose poem ‘Scènes’ [‘Stages’] intimates just such an expansion of the breadth of cognizance through imagery of spectacle: L’ancienne Comédie poursuit ses accords et divise ses Idylles: Des boulevards de tréteaux. Un long pier en bois d’un bout à l’autre d’un champ rocailleux où la foule barbare évolue sous les arbres dépouillés. Dans des corridors de gaze noire suivant le pas des promeneurs aux lanternes et aux feuilles. Des oiseaux de mystères s’abattent sur un ponton de maçonnerie mû par l’archipel couvert des embarcations des spectateurs. Des scènes lyriques accompagnées de f lûte et de tambour s’inclinent dans des réduits ménagés sous les plafonds, autour des salons de clubs modernes ou des salles de l’Orient ancien. La féerie manœuvre au sommet d’un amphithéâtre couronné par les taillis, — Ou s’agite et module pour les Béotiens, dans l’ombre des futaies mouvantes sur l’arête des cultures.

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L’opéra-comique se divise sur une scène à l’arête d’intersection de dix cloisons dressées de la galerie aux feux. [The ancient Comedy pursues its harmonies and shares out its idylls: Boulevards of theatre stages. A long wooden pier from one end to the other of a stony field where the barbarous crowd move beneath bare trees. In corridors of black gauze, following in the steps of strollers with their lanterns and leaves. Birds from mystery plays swoop down on a scaffold roused by the archipelago covered with spectators’ boats. Lyrical scenes accompanied by f lute and drum lean forward on special recesses right under the ceiling around the salons of modern clubs or ancient halls of the Orient. The extravaganza manoeuvres at the top of an amphitheatre crowned with thickets, — Or moves and modulates for the philistines, in the shade of a shifting forest on the crests of cultivated fields. The comic opera is divided on a stage at the ridge where ten partitions intersect standing from the balcony to the footlights.]

In this text the dilation of consciousness is intimated through the dissolution of basic distinctions (interior/exterior, urban/rural) that serve to orient reading. The effect is to complicate the reader’s attempts to secure any stable significance for the sporadic movements lexically suggested throughout the poem: ‘évolue’, ‘pas’, s’abattent’, ‘s’inclinent’, ‘manœuvre’, ‘s’agite’, ‘module’, ‘se divise’. Despite the tanta­lizing possibility of links between such related elements as the ‘ancienne comédie’ and the ‘opéra-comique’, the ‘long pier en bois’ and the ‘ponton de maçon­nerie’, any attempt to conclusively situate the actions and events described here is made problematic by a multiplication of actors and locales, yet the effect of this is to expand dramatically the breadth of imagining activity. As successive commen­tators have noted, the poetic text is thereby not simply a description of an assortment of theatrical presentations, but is itself transformed into a spectacle that mobilizes multiple patterns and possibilities of reading without assigning perma­ nent significance to these. Raybaud, for instance, comments that the text ‘est non la représentation (mimétique) d’une représentation théâtrale, il est lui-même mouvement de représentation, représentation opérée’ [is not the (mimetic) repre­ sentation of a theatrical performance, it is itself the movement of representation, representation brought into effect],39 while Kittang asserts that ‘[le] véritable acteur du texte, c’est la théâtralité même, c’est-à-dire le processus métamorphosant manifesté à l’état pratique par ce texte particulier, ou plutôt, constituant justement ce texte’ [the real actor of the text is theatricality itself, in other words the transformative process manifested in a practical state by this particular text, or rather, actually constituting this text].40 Kittang argues that ‘Scènes’ offers ‘un exemple curieux du passage [...] du paysage au théâtre’ [a curious example of the transition [...] from landscape to theatre];41 and it seems appropriate to append ‘et du théâtre au paysage’ to this remark, for the text outwardly extends the boundaries of the spectacular as it inscribes the imaginative apprehension of the world as a space of contradiction. Presenting a spectacle encompassing boulevards, an archipelago and the Ancient

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East, ‘Scènes’ extends a space that the reader struggles to make present to conscious­ ness; this space is a non-lieu insofar as it problematizes, and is in excess of, any settled connotation. The poem thus intimates a potentially disquieting fragment­ation of experience, yet as textual spectacle it holds together multiple tempor­a lities and spatialities. Kelly comments suggestively on this potential of the non-lieu: The text takes on the virtues of the lieu, and simultaneously overcomes its limitations — arrogating to itself the power to progress in non-linear, fusional, or contradictory instalments. Demarcating its own ‘possibility’ within the greater natural and human economy, the textual non-lieu embodies language’s dimension, its prerogatives upon and within the ‘real’.42

Since the lieu of the poem is not yet available to consciousness, desire receives no positive expression, yet it is latent in textual dynamics that, to borrow Kelly’s terms, ‘demarcate’ language and its possibilities. Such dynamics are active in the dissolution of stable spatial distinctions in ‘Scènes’, where elements of a specifically urban topography (‘boulevards’, ‘pier’, ‘foule’, ‘promeneurs’, ‘ponton de maçonnerie’, ‘embarcations des spectateurs’, ‘salons’) are interleaved with agrarian images (‘champ rocailleux’, ‘arbres dépouillés’, ‘feuilles’, ‘oiseaux’, ‘taillis’, ‘futaies’, ‘cultures’). As will be argued later in this chapter, these textual dynamics are suggestive of how Rimbaud’s prose poetry inscribes the tumultuous environments of the modern metropolis in the more recognizably ‘urban’ poems of Illuminations. Like ‘Scènes’, the poem ‘Parade’ also presents the reader with a heterogeneous spectacle: Des drôles très solides. Plusieurs ont exploité vos mondes. Sans besoins, et peu pressés de mettre en œuvre leurs brillantes facultés et leur expérience de vos consciences. Quels hommes mûrs! Des yeux hébétés à la façon de la nuit d’été, rouges et noirs, tricolores, d’acier piqué d’étoiles d’or; des faciès déformés, plombés, blêmis, incendiés; des enrouements folâtres! La démarche cruelle des oripeaux! — Il y a quelques jeunes, — comment regarderaient-ils Chérubin? — pourvus de voix effrayantes et de quelques ressources dangereuses. On les envoie prendre du dos en ville, affublés d’un luxe dégoûtant. Ô le plus violent Paradis de la grimace enragée! Pas de comparaison avec vos Fakirs et les autres bouffonneries scéniques. Dans des costumes improvisés avec le goût du mauvais rêve ils jouent des complaintes, des tragédies de malandrins et de demi-dieux spirituels comme l’histoire ou les religions ne l’ont jamais été. Chinois, Hottentots, bohémiens, niais, hyènes, Molochs, vieilles démences, démons sinistres, ils mêlent les tours populaires, maternels, avec les poses et les tendresses bestiales. Ils interpréteraient des pièces nouvelles et des chansons ‘bonnes filles’. Maîtres jongleurs, ils transforment le lieu et les personnes, et usent de la comédie magnétique. Les yeux f lambent, le sang chante, les os s’élargissent, les larmes et des filets rouges ruissellent. Leur raillerie ou leur terreur dure une minute, ou des mois entiers. J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage. [Very sturdy rascals. Several have exploited your worlds. Not needy, and in no hurry to put to work their brilliant faculties or their experience of your consciences. Such mature men! Eyes dazed like the summer’s night, red and black, tricoloured, steel covered with golden stars; deformed features, leaden, pallid, on fire; sprightliness with a hoarse voice! The cruel bearing of rags! —

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Some of them are young, — how would they watch Cherubino? — endowed with frightening voices and a few dangerous resources. They’re sent off to get buggered in the city, clad in disgusting luxury. O the most violent Paradise of the maddened grimace! No comparison with your Fakirs and the other theatrical buffooneries. In improvised costumes of nightmarish taste they perform laments, tragedies of brigands and demigods of a spirituality never known to history and religions. Chinese, Hottentots, bohemians, fools, hyenas, Molochs, old dementias, sinister demons mingle popular motherly turns with bestial poses and caresses. They would perform new plays and sweet-natured songs. Master jugglers, they transform people and places, and use magnetic drama. Eyes swell, blood sings, bones grow, tears and red trickles stream. Their mockery or their terror lasts a moment, or whole months. I alone have the key to this savage parade.]

The figures composing this procession in a paroxysm of festivity appear exposed to a primeval transfiguration: ‘faciès déformés plombés, blêmis, incendiés’ / ‘Les yeux f lambent, le sang chante, les os s’élargissent’. A comment by Rancière from his analysis of ‘Les Reparties de Nina’ would additionally seem apposite in relation to this boisterous, hideous cortège: ‘Le corps du poème, son corps infigurable, c’est ce tintamarre de la langue autour d’un regard dont on ne sait pas ce qu’il voit ni le désir qu’il signifie’ [The body of the poem, its body which escapes figurative representation, is this racket produced by language around a gaze whose object is unknown, just as is the desire which it signifies].43 Indeed, the gruesome, protean quality of the figures of ‘Parade’ is intimated through a linguistic tumult of interminable enumerations (‘Chinois, Hottentots, bohémiens, niais, hyènes, Molochs, vieilles démences’), by dint of numerous jarring, unexpected or nonsensical epithets seemingly free of any fixed relation to the noun to which they refer (‘Des yeux hébétés à la façon de la nuit d’été, rouges et noirs, tricolores, d’acier piqué d’étoiles d’or’) or through the halting syntax of the following line: ‘La démarche cruelle des oripeaux! — Il y a quelques jeunes, — comment regarderaient-ils Chérubin? — pourvus de voix effrayantes et de quelques ressources dangereuses’. The effect is to complicate any attempt on the part of the reader to acquire meaningful remove from, or to integrate in a coherent visual representation, these sundry wretched figures. However, as recourse to the dash in the last example cited shows, this serves to intimate the ephemerality and protean momentum of the procession. The restive activity of reading the poem comes to mirror the energies of the parade, dissolving any meaningful distinction between observing consciousness and its object: ‘J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage’. Rimbaud’s aim here appears to be to amplify the spatial-temporal ambit of festivity, to extend its logic beyond the phenomenon related in the poem to the whole breadth of human activity, in a manner comparable with the way Mikel Dufrenne accounts for the deployment of festivity in ancient civilizations: [Si] subversive que soit la fête, les cultures archaïques l’avaient sans doute ‘récupérée’ en l’institutionnalisant et en la ritualisant, sans pour autant la dénaturer comme l’idéologie dominante aujourd’hui le fait de l’art. Le rituel ne visait pas à l’apprivoiser et à la mettre au service d’un ordre qui en principe

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Dufrenne’s observations are instructive in accounting for the function of images of festivity and spectacle throughout Illuminations. It seems that such images proliferate in Rimbaud’s poems in view of their potential for constant displacement of object, place and perspective, a factor which renders problematic efforts to reconcile the activity of reading the poems with any hermeneutic order which would act to stabilize the dynamic potentialities they explore. On this point, the figures evoked in ‘Parade’ warrant comparison with the manner in which a July 1848 article printed in Le Charivari derides the outlandishness of contemporary social agitators and their schemes for reform: [Beaucoup] d’excentriques modernes ont imaginé d’essayer de brûler la logique ou de couper la queue au bon sens. D’autres affichent des barbes indéfinies ou des idées indémêlables. Ceux-ci adoptent des chapeaux ou des systèmes ridiculement pointus. Ceux-là se parent de théories ou de paletots impossibles. Le but est toujours le même: frapper l’attention publique par le bizarre, l’absurde, lorsqu’on ne peut pas la captiver par un mérite de bon aloi. Voilà l’explication de tant de soi-disant rêveurs et utopistes qui, surtout à cette époque, se sont plu à émettre les balivernes les plus renversantes. Ils ont cherché à dessein ce qu’il y avait de plus à rebours de la raison, parce qu’ils savaient bien que le phénomène, quel qu’il soit, prête à la parade foraine. Ils ont voulu faire dans l’ordre logique de la vache à deux têtes ou du veau à huit pattes.45 [Many modern eccentrics have attempted to reduce logic to ashes or cut off the tail of common sense. Others display untidy beards or ideas which it is impossible to get to the bottom of. Some don hats or adopt absurdly recondite systems; others clad themselves in theories or ridiculous cardigans. The aim is always the same: to grab the attention of the public by the bizarre and the absurd when they fail to captivate by genuine means. That is how to account for so many would-be dreamers and utopianists who, nowadays especially, have a fondness for uttering the most astounding nonsense. They have deliberately sought out what was most contrary to reason, because they know full well that freaks of nature, in whatever form they take, lend themselves to a fairground treatment. They have tried to make two-headed cows and eight-legged calves belong to the sphere of logic.]

The author’s description of these rhetorical displays in terms of a ‘parade foraine’ is highly suggestive here, in particular since it signals a pattern whereby the rhetoric of social transformation is overlaid with that of popular entertainments and the fairground extravaganza, a pattern to which Rimbaud’s prose poetry is highly attentive. Like the figures of Rimbaud’s prose poem ‘affublés d’un luxe dégoûtant’, the social reformers alluded to here are portrayed as skilled manipulators of miscellaneous forms of disguise seeking to ‘frapper l’attention publique par

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le bizarre, l’absurde’. Additionally in this connection, Rimbaud’s parade can be assessed in relation to the boisterous serenade of the charivari itself. David S. Kerr notes that charivaris ‘were organized to express the local community’s objection to unbalanced marriages or to punish couples whose domestic life broke customary norms. During carnival, the young men of the village gathered outside offenders’ homes in the evening and made an infernal din with an improvised orchestra of saucepans and other domestic instruments. They sang obscene songs and taunted their victims until they agreed to pay a fine.’46 As these cultural comparisons serve to suggest, in ‘Parade’ Rimbaud is attentive to the potential of the subject in spectacle to assume a singular power. It is a prerogative of the spectacular to pursue the incongruous and the contradictory; hence the wretched band of the prose poem is linked to a transformative logic (‘ils transforment le lieu et les personnes, et usent de la comédie magnétique’) and initiates a transgressive new order as it performs ‘des complaintes, des tragédies de malandrins et de demi-dieux spirituels comme l’histoire ou les religions ne l’ont jamais été’. Like the noisy chorus of the charivari, the parade arrogates a singular authority to itself and extends bizarre, contingent forms of community (‘comédie magnétique’). As we have seen, in ‘Scènes’ and ‘Parade’ the imagery of spectacle extends dynamic and complex patterns for relating multiple, contrasting phenomena. Just as when it is exposed to the burgeoning activity of the spectacle, consciousness struggles to contain the sudden confrontations of old and new, nature and civilization, the exotic and the familiar that occur within the space of the city. Many of the poems of Illuminations thus relate the simultaneous exhilaration and frustration of attempts to integrate the expanding, mobile structure of urban phenomena. The prose poem ‘Départ’ [‘Departure’], for instance, traces these inextricable accelerations and decelerations of consciousness and desire: Assez vu. La vision s’est rencontrée à tous les airs. Assez eu. Rumeurs des villes, le soir, et au soleil, et toujours. Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. — Ô Rumeurs et Visions! Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs! [Enough seen. The vision was encountered in all skies. Enough had. Sounds of cities, in the evening, and in sunlight, and always. Enough known. The halts of life. — O Sounds and Visions! Departure in new affection and noise!]

Centring on an irresolvable tension between perception of the familiar (‘Assez vu’ / ‘Assez eu’ / ‘Assez connu’) and the insertion into consciousness of the radically new, this text relates the insistent variability of urban experience. As Gilles Marcotte comments in a reading of some of the urban poems of Illuminations: ‘c’est pour toujours que la ville est nouvelle, le “recent” (modo, récemment) devenant sa forme même, sa définition. Elle est à la fois ce que nous connaissons le mieux, notre seule habitation, l’extrême du familier, et ce que nous connaissons le moins, ce qui se dérobe au vieux désir de l’habitation’ [The city will be forever new, the ‘recent’ (modo, recently) becoming its very form, its definition. It is both what we are most familiar with, our sole residence, the extreme of the familiar, and what we know the least, what escapes the old desire for dwelling].47 The text thus extends a statement ref lecting

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progressive inurement to urban hubbub (‘Rumeurs des villes, le soir, et au soleil, et toujours’). Yet, simultaneously, the material interstice of the full stop and dash preceding the interjection ‘Ô Rumeurs et Visions!’ serves to signal a path leading out of that cyclical present. The final line thus relays a tumultuous new orientation towards an experience of community with no prearranged end (‘l’affection et le bruit neufs’), which at the same time def lects back imaginatively upon the habitual and the routine. These aspects of urban experience provide a model for several of the prose poems of Illuminations, such as ‘Métropolitain’: Du détroit d’indigo aux mers d’Ossian, sur le sable rose et orange qu’a lavé le ciel vineux viennent de monter et de se croiser des boulevards de cristal habités incontinent par de jeunes familles pauvres qui s’alimentent chez les fruitiers. Rien de riche. — La ville! Du désert de bitume fuient droit en déroute avec les nappes de brumes échelonnées en bandes affreuses au ciel qui se recourbe, se recule et descend, formé de la plus sinistre fumée noire que puisse faire l’Océan en deuil, les casques, les roues, les barques, les croupes. — La bataille! Lève la tête: ce pont de bois, arqué; les derniers potagers de Samarie; ces masques enluminés sous la lanterne fouettée par la nuit froide; l’ondine niaise à la robe bruyante, au bas de la rivière: les crânes lumineux dans les plans de pois — et les autres fantasmagories — La campagne. Des routes bordées de grilles et de murs, contenant à peine leurs bosquets, et les atroces f leurs qu’on appellerait cœurs et sœurs, Damas damnant de longueur, — possessions de féeriques aristocraties ultra-Rhénanes, Japonaises, Guaranies, propres encore à recevoir la musique des anciens — et il y a des auberges qui pour toujours n’ouvrent déjà plus — il y a des princesses, et si tu n’es pas trop accablé, l’étude des astres — Le ciel. Le matin où avec Elle, vous vous débattîtes parmi les éclats de neige, les lèvres vertes, les glaces, les drapeaux noirs et les rayons bleus, et les parfums pourpres du soleil des pôles, — ta force. [From the indigo strait to the seas of Ossian, on the pink and orange sands washed by the purple sky crystal boulevards have sprung up and intersected populated forthwith by poor young families who shop at the greengrocers. Nothing rich. — The city! From the desert of bitumen, in reckless f light under sheets of fog stacked in frightful layers through the curving sky, retreats, descends formed of the most deeply sinister black smoke that the Ocean in mourning can deliver, helmets, wheels, boats, hindquarters f lee. — The battle! Look up: that arched wooden bridge; the last kitchen-gardens of Samaria; those masks lit up by the lantern over them f luttering in the cold night; the foolish water sprite with the boisterous dress, in the bottom of the river; luminous skulls in the pea patch — and the other phantasmagoria — The countryside. Roads bordered by rails and walls, barely containing their thickets, and the atrocious f lowers which would be called hearts and sisters. Damascus damning in its length — the property of fairy-tale German, or Japanese or Guarani aristocracies, still fit to receive the music of the ancients — and there are inns already forever no longer open — there are princesses, and, if you are not too overwhelmed, the study of stars — The sky.

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The morning when, with Her, you struggled amid the shimmers of snow, the green lips, the ice, the black f lags and blue rays of light, and the purple perfumes of the Polar sun — your strength.]

Given its references to oceans and seas, deserts and the countryside, it is difficult to reconcile the multiform environments traversed in this poem with any readily identifiable vision of the metropolis. Objects and settings are extended to the gaze and withdrawn before any logical relation between them can materialize. A verbalizing pattern is thus set forth that mirrors the febrile activity of the gaze as it strains to assimilate the f lux of the given, in a manner that warrants a certain degree of comparison with the experience of travelling on London’s Metropolitan railway. In an article on this poem Michael Spencer states that: ‘[the] popularity, convenience, uniqueness, and above all the strangeness of what was in effect the world’s first underground railway, must have rendered it an irresistible source of attraction for those who, like Verlaine and Rimbaud, were bent on absorbing as many curiosities of the new city as possible’.48 The attempt to give any conclusive account of the spatio-temporal scope of the excursion enacted in ‘Métropolitain’ appears problematic, however, for the reader is presented with multiple divergent or conf licted temporalities (‘le ciel vineux’ / ‘la lanterne fouettée par la nuit froide’ / ‘des auberges qui pour toujours n’ouvrent déjà plus’) while the references to the roads lined with railings and walls ‘contenant à peine leurs bosquets’ connote an uncontainable spatiality. Some images in fact conf late the temporal and spatial planes; in the line ‘Lève la tête: ce pont de bois, arqué; les derniers potagers de Samarie’, the pattern of increasingly intermittent gardens potentially glimpsed by a traveller on entering or leaving a conurbation aboard a passenger train is unexpectedly converted into a temporal referent which evokes the historical decline of the city of Samaria. Moreover, the repeated foregrounding of exotic names (Samaria, Damascus, ‘féeriques aristocraties ultra-Rhénanes, Japonaises, Guaranies’) and geographical extremities (‘désert de bitume’, ‘soleil des pôles’ etc.) suggests a spatializing pattern at odds with any concentrated urban structure. Some aspects of the text thus open onto contemporary cultural visions of a centralized métropole of France extending its inf luence outwards across the surface of the planet, comparable with that which was discussed in relation to SaintSimonian ideology in this book’s first chapter. Certain images might be seen to encode references to colonial conquest and advance: ‘les casques, les roues, les barques, les croupes. — La bataille!’ The attempt to identify a firm position in respect of this ideological context is unsatisfactory, however, for the object of the successive affirmations around which the text is structured is evasive. Although these affirmations are ostensibly addressed to one individual (‘Lève la tête’, ‘si tu n’es pas trop accablé’, ‘avec Elle, vous vous débattîtes’, ‘ta force’) the identity of this ‘you’ remains unspecified, and it is difficult to determine whether it designates a single, finite individuality or a series of alternating subject positions. Similarly, sentence structures throughout the poem do not follow the conventional subject–verb– object relation, in keeping with a textual dynamic which conveys an expansion of consciousness that is not reconcilable with any single or settled identity: Lève la tête: ce pont de bois, arqué; les derniers potagers de Samarie; ces

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Here, semi-colons, colons, dashes and commas create accelerations and decelerations, dynamizing the activity of reading. While the sentence itself is expanded, its component clauses are fragmented and multiplied. Rather than to demarcate any readily comprehensible subject–object relation, throughout ‘Métropolitain’ the effect of the erasure of stable points of reference is thus to suggest an expanding field of possible subject positions. A similar process is at work in the poem ‘Villes’ (‘L’acropole officielle...’), although at first glimpse the text appears to follow a more conventionally descriptive form than poems such as ‘Métropolitain’ and ‘Villes’ (‘Ce sont des villes!’). As Mark Treharne notes, despite this, the city is not set out in meaningful relief for the viewer: ‘what ensues is not the traditional kind of panoramic view of the objects in a cityscape [...] where the view is embraced, coherently accounted for and often placed in some specifically functional relation to the viewer’.49 L’acropole officielle outre les conceptions de la barbarie moderne les plus colossales. Impossible d’exprimer le jour mat produit par le ciel immuablement gris, l’éclat impérial des bâtisses, et la neige éternelle du sol. On a reproduit dans un goût d’énormité singulier toutes les merveilles classiques de l’architecture. J’assiste à des expositions de peinture dans des locaux vingt fois plus vastes qu’Hampton-Court. Quelle peinture! Un Nabuchodonosor norwégien a fait construire les escaliers des ministères; les subalternes que j’ai pu voir sont déjà plus fiers que des Brahmas et j’ai tremblé à l’aspect de colosses des gardiens et officiers de constructions. Par le groupement des bâtiments en squares, cours et terrasses fermées, on évince les cochers. Les parcs représentent la nature primitive travaillée par un art superbe. Le haut quartier a des parties inexplicables: un bras de mer, sans bateaux, roule sa nappe de grésil bleu entre des quais chargés de candélabres géants. Un pont court conduit à une poterne immédiatement sous le dôme de la Sainte-Chapelle. Ce dôme est une armature d’acier artistique de quinze mille pieds de diamètre environ. Sur quelques points des passerelles de cuivre, des plates-formes, des escaliers qui contournent les halles et les piliers, j’ai cru pouvoir juger la profondeur de la ville! C’est le prodige dont je n’ai pu me rendre compte: quels sont les niveaux des autres quartiers sur ou sous l’acropole? Pour l’étranger de notre temps la reconnaissance est impossible. Le quartier commerçant est un circus d’un seul style, avec galeries à arcades. On ne voit pas de boutiques. Mais la neige de la chaussée est écrasée; quelques nababs aussi rares que les promeneurs d’un matin de dimanche à Londres, se dirigent vers une diligence de diamants. Quelques divans de velours rouge: on sert des boissons polaires dont le prix varie de huit cents à huit mille roupies. A l’idée de chercher des théâtres sur ce circus, je me réponds que les boutiques doivent contenir des drames assez sombres. Je pense qu’il y a une police, mais la loi doit être tellement étrange, que je renonce à me faire une idée des aventuriers d’ici. Le faubourg aussi élégant qu’une belle rue de Paris est favorisé d’un air de lumière. L’élément démocratique compte quelques cents âmes. Là encore les maisons ne se suivent pas; le faubourg se perd bizarrement dans la campagne, le ‘Comté’ qui remplit l’occident éternel des forêts et des plantations prodigieuses

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où les gentilshommes sauvages chassent leurs chroniques sous la lumière qu’on a créée. [The official acropolis outdoes the most colossal ideas of modern barbarity. Impossible to describe the dull light produced by the unfailingly grey sky; the imperial dazzle of the buildings, and the ground’s eternal snow. They have reproduced, with singularly appalling taste, all the classical marvels of architecture. I view exhibitions of paintings in buildings twenty times larger than Hampton Court! What painting! A Norwegian Nebuchadnezzar had the steps of the ministries built; the junior officials I managed to see are already prouder than Brahmas, and I trembled at the colossal stature of the caretakers and foremen. By grouping the buildings in squares, terraces, and closed courtyards, coachmen have been kept out. The parks represent primitive nature cultivated with wondrous skill. The high district has inexplicable parts: a stretch of the sea, without boats, rolls its sheet of blue hail between quays loaded with giant candelabras. A short bridge leads to a postern immediately below the dome of Sainte-Chapelle. This dome is an artistic steel frame about fifteen thousand feet in diameter. At certain points on the copper bridges, the platforms, the stairways which wind round the covered markets, I thought I could judge the depth of the city! That was the prodigious thing I could not be sure of: what are the levels of the other districts above or below the acropolis? For the outsider from our time recognition is impossible. The commercial quarter is a circus in a single style, with galleries in the form of arcades. No shops to be seen. But the snow in the street is trampled; a few nabobs, rare as walkers on a Sunday morning in London, walk towards a diamond coach. A few red velvet divans: polar drinks are served at price ranging from eight hundred to eight thousand rupees. When the thought occurs to seek out theatres in this circus, I tell myself that the shops must contain quite sombre dramas. I think there is a police force but the laws must be so strange that I give up trying to imagine what the adventurers here must be like. The suburbs, as elegant as any fine street in Paris, are favoured by something resembling sunlight; the democratic element numbers a few hundred souls. Here again, the houses are not in rows; the suburbs lose themselves oddly in the countryside, the ‘County’, which fills the endless west with the forests and vast plantations where savage gentlemen hunt for newspaper columns in man-made light.]

Despite presenting comparisons seemingly reminiscent of the register of the tourist guide (‘aussi rares que les promeneurs d’un matin de dimanche à Londres’ / ‘Le faubourg aussi élégant qu’une belle rue de Paris’), attempts by the reader to situate the urban space of ‘Villes’ in any recognizable location are complicated, since this is a city where it snows, where the currency is in rupees and the only named inhabitants are Nababs. In a manner which recalls the ‘goût du mauvais rêve’ that characterizes the procession of the poem ‘Parade’, this city’s architecture is presented as symptomatic of ‘un goût d’énormité singulier’ while its monuments are ‘outre les conceptions de la barbarie moderne’ (my emphasis). Exaggeration serves to impel the innumerable objects encountered by the gaze outside of any recognizable stylistic paradigm and to intimate the uncontainability of the urban space in a coherent verbal account: ‘j’ai cru pouvoir juger la profondeur de la ville!

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[...] quels sont les niveaux des autres quartiers sur ou sous l’acropole?’; in this way, the city is related as a space of contradiction, one exceeding rational dimensions and taking on instead the properties of the image: ‘Le haut quartier a des parties inexplicables: un bras de mer, sans bateaux, roule sa nappe de grésil bleu entre des quais chargés de candélabres géants’. Treharne thus notes that, in ‘Villes’, ‘there is no sense of anything other than visual proximity [...] between viewer and seen, no sense of familiarity or meaningful alienation. The accumulation of objects composing this cityscape is so strange and so semantically diverse that they seem to bear very little relation to any real model’.50 These comments are revealing, as they point to the difficulty of constructing any conclusive discourse either of affiliation or of estrangement around the urban visions of ‘Villes’, for they suggest a mode of relation that is disengaged from any restricted understanding of subjective experience. In this way, the narrative voice alternates between personal and impersonal constructions and dialogues with itself: ‘J’assiste à des expositions’ / ‘Par le groupement [...] on évince’ / ‘À l’idée de chercher, je me réponds que [...]’. Similarly, in the poem ‘Villes’ (‘Ce sont des villes!), modern urban consciousness is not presented in terms of an integral self. In this poem, the narrator is confronted with an urban spectacle so intensely proliferating that it seems to elude assimilation into a coherent narrative account: Ce sont des villes! C’est un peuple pour qui se sont montés ces Alleghanys et ces Libans de rêve! Des chalets de cristal et de bois qui se meuvent sur des rails et des poulies invisibles. Les vieux cratères ceints de colosses et de palmiers de cuivre rugissent mélodieusement dans les feux. Des fêtes amoureuses sonnent sur les canaux pendus derrière les chalets. La chasse des carillons crie dans les gorges. Des corporations de chanteurs géants accourent dans des vêtements et des orif lammes éclatants comme la lumière des cimes. Sur les plateformes au milieu des gouffres les Rolands sonnent leur bravoure. Sur les passerelles de l’abîme et les toits des auberges l’ardeur du ciel pavoise les mâts. L’écroulement des apothéoses rejoint les champs des hauteurs où les centauresses séraphiques évoluent parmi les avalanches. Au-dessus du niveau des plus hautes crêtes une mer troublée par la naissance éternelle de Vénus, chargée de f lottes orphéoniques et de la rumeur des perles et des conques précieuses, — la mer s’assombrit parfois avec des éclats mortels. Sur les versants des moissons de f leurs grandes comme nos armes et nos coupes, mugissent. Des cortèges de Mabs en robes rousses, opalines, montent des ravines. Là-haut, les pieds dans la cascade et les ronces, les cerfs tettent Diane. Les Bacchantes des banlieues sanglotent et la lune brûle et hurle. Vénus entre dans les cavernes des forgerons et des ermites. Des groupes de beffrois chantent les idées des peuples. Des châteaux bâtis en os sort la musique inconnue. Toutes les légendes évoluent et les élans se ruent dans les bourgs. Le paradis des orages s’effondre. Les sauvages dansent sans cesse la fête de la nuit. Et une heure je suis descendu dans le mouvement d’un boulevard de Bagdad où des compagnies ont chanté la joie du travail nouveau, sous une brise épaisse, circulant sans pouvoir éluder les fabuleux fantômes des monts où l’on a dû se retrouver. Quels bons bras, quelle belle heure me rendront cette région d’où viennent mes sommeils et mes moindres mouvements? [These are cities! This is a people for whom those Alleghanies and Lebanons of dreams sprang up! Chalets of crystal and wood that move on invisible rails and

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pulleys. Old craters circled by giants, and copper palm trees roar melodiously in the f lames. Feasts of love resound on canals hanging behind the chalets. The hunt of chimes shouts in the gorges. Guilds of gigantic singers rush up in garments and banners as dazzling as the light on the summits. On platforms in the centre of the chasms, the Rolands trumpet their bravura. On bridges across the abyss, and the roofs of inns, the sky’s passion covers the masts with f lags. Crumbling apotheoses overtake the high meadows where seraphic centauresses move among avalanches. Above the line of the highest peaks, a sea troubled by Venus’ eternal birth, filled with orpheonic f leets and the murmur of precious pearls and conches — the sea darkens at times with mortal f lashes. On the slopes, harvests of f lowers, as great as our swords and cups, bellow. Processions of Mabs in red, opaline gowns ascend the ravines. Up there, their feet in the waterfalls and briars, the deer suckle at Diana’s breast. The Bacchantes of the suburbs sob, and the moon burns and howls. Venus enters caves of smiths and hermits. Clusters of bell-towers sing the ideas of peoples. From castles built of bone an unknown music can be heard. All the legends evolve and elks rush through the towns. The paradise of storms subsides. Savages ceaselessly dance the nocturnal feast. And, once, I descended into the movement of a Baghdad boulevard, where companies sang the joy of the new labour, under a thick breeze, circling without being able to elude the fabulous phantoms of the hills where they must have gathered. What kind arms, what sweet hour will recover that region from which my slumbers and slightest movements come?]

Since the reader is given to understand that much of this urban commotion escapes the narrator’s gaze, despite the latter’s attempts to give as inclusive a verbal representation of it as possible, it can be said that panoramic models of observation are strained in this poem. Just as visual elements may come to obstruct one another through superimposition, textual elements exposed to the same process of layering obscure their respective meanings, and these instances of perspectival fragmentation obstruct the articulation of any unified metatextual meaning. By way of illustration, the semantic intimation of an upwards accumulative movement through the repeated prepositions of spatial superimposition is in contrast both to the movement of the reader’s eye down the page and to the progressive contraction of line lengths, from the line beginning with the words ‘Sur les versants’ until the line ending with ‘la fête de la nuit’. This contraction of line lengths suggests that expressive content accumulates so rapidly that its articulation is rendered problematic. In this way, linguistic superf luities such as the extravagant comparison contained in the line ‘Sur les versants des moissons de f leurs grandes comme nos armes et nos coupes, mugissent’ give way to abrupt affirmations such as ‘Le paradis des orages s’effondre’, from which such lavish associations are starkly absent. Given the increasing fragmentation of the linearity of the description, logical connections between individual sentences come to be lost, as can also be seen in the following lines: ‘Au-dessus du niveau des plus hautes crêtes une mer troublée par la naissance éternelle de Vénus, chargée de f lottes orphéoniques et de la rumeur des perles et des conques précieuses, — la mer s’assombrit parfois avec des éclats mortels.’ Here, the dash serves to peremptorily thrust the reader’s attention onwards from a description of a sea that is heavily laden with mythical imagery to an altogether more concise

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and bleak image. However, precisely on account of the sudden foreshortening of perspectival depth, the narrator’s perceived incapacity to give a full and coherent account of the spectacle he observes is itself a source of patterns of textual variation. Indeed, although his perceptual activity is not centralized and articulated along stable trajectories, his language is nonetheless extremely successful in suggesting the perceptual rawness and intense dynamism of the activity of viewing in modern urban space. In this respect, Rimbaud’s text contrasts with contemporary progressive accounts that project integrated models of the metropolis, mobilizing cultural referents and marshalling them into a synthetic historical or mythical narrative. One case in point in this respect is Étienne Cabet’s description of the fictional city of Icaria, a settlement in which every attempt has been made to make rational values visually apparent to the onlooker. Cabet’s Icaria is a community based on compulsory work and progressive taxation where property is held in common. In the following selection of passages, Cabet’s fictional traveller in Icaria, William Carisdall, is invited to survey a map of its capital, Icara, by his host Eugène: Voyez! la ville, presque circulaire, est partagée en deux parties à peu près égales par le Tair (ou le Majestueux), dont le cours a été redressé et enfermé entre deux murs en ligne presque droite, et dont le lit a été creusé pour recevoir les vaisseaux arrivant par la mer. [...] Vous voyez qu’au milieu de la ville, la rivière se divise en deux bras, qui s’éloignent, se rapprochent et se réunissent de nouveau dans la direction primitive, de manière à former une île circulaire assez vaste. Cette île est une place, la place centrale, plantée d’arbres, au milieu de laquelle s’élance une immense colonne surmontée d’une statue colossale qui domine tous les édifices. De chaque côté de la rivière, vous apercevez un large quai bordé de monuments publics. [...] Chaque quartier porte le nom d’une des soixante principales villes du monde ancien et moderne, et présente dans ses monuments et ses maisons l’architecture d’une des soixante principales nations. Vous trouverez donc les quartiers de Pékin, Jérusalem, et Constantinople, comme ceux de Rome, Paris et Londres; en sorte qu’Icara est réellement l’abrégé de l’univers terrestre.51 [Look! The town, which is almost circular, is divided into two roughly equal parts by the Tair (or the Majestic), which has been altered in its course and enclosed within two almost straight walls, while its bed has been dredged to enable it to receive sea-going vessels. [...] You see that in the centre of the city, the river divides into two channels, which separate, come close together and meet again in the original direction, in such a way that it forms a rather vast island in the form of a circle. This island is a square, the central square, planted with trees, in the midst of which stands an immense column surmounted by a colossal statue towering over the rest of the buildings. On each side of the river, you will notice a wide quay bordered by public monuments. Each neigh­ bourhood bears the name of one the sixty principal cities of the ancient and modern world, and presents the architecture of one of its sixty principal nations in its monuments and houses. You will thus come across the districts of Peking, Jerusalem and Constantinople, as well as those of Rome, Paris and London; in such a way that Icara is truly a compendium of the terrestrial universe.]

Cabet projects an image of Icara as a city in the form of a circle bisected by a

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canalized river which allows sea-going vessels to moor at its centre. Within this spatially coherent model, a central statue and a pattern of public monuments focalize the gaze, while the values and rationale of the settlement are made legible to the onlooker in the great civilizations which are referenced in the names of the different neighbourhoods. Combined with the ‘majestic’ nomenclature of the river and the Greek resonance of the name ‘Icara’ itself, the architectural allusions to Roman, Chinese, Turkish and other cultures suggest an accumulating order of historical precedent or cultural comparison. It is significant that Cabet refers to Icara as ‘l’abrégé de l’univers terrestre’, for the settlement is intended as the triumphant final term of all manifestations of human civilization. Returning to the urban spectacle of ‘Villes’, the narrator’s vision warrants consideration alongside this description of Icara in view of its comparable vastly inclusive cultural and mythical citations; however, the resulting miscellany in ‘Villes’ is far from being as readily intelligible as Cabet’s ‘abrégé’. When these texts are considered together, Cabet’s projection of the future community in terms of a consistent narrative development is, in a sense, punctured by the hallucinatory vision of ‘Villes’, in which the narrator appears to be engaged in a frenzied ‘prospecting’ of future horizons via the ludic dislocation of cultural references and founding myths. When the narrator informs the reader of the ‘écroulement des apothéoses’ and states that ‘Toutes les légendes évoluent’, there is a sense that such founding narratives are rendered uncertain. Rimbaud’s apprehension of urban history deliberately shirks the assumptions which underlie such projects as Cabet’s calculated narrative of social and cultural advancement, for, rather than ascending towards a prophetic synthesis, the narrator’s exclamations in ‘Villes’ seem prompted by f luctuations of psychological association which explode the logical links between the cultural referents he cites. Many of the referential patterns present in ‘Villes’ may strike the reader as inconsistent; for instance, the orientalizing tone of the allusions to Baghdad and Lebanon tends to jar with the reference to the Allegheny mountain range. In the references to Mabs, Diana and Venus, the reader is invited to imagine an ensemble of elements from competing mythological traditions — the examples in this case being Celtic, Greek and Roman — but in some instances the text more f lagrantly juxtaposes the mythical and the modern, as in the phrase ‘les Bacchantes des banlieues’. Medieval references to corporations, banners, the legendary Roland and belfries similarly contrast with the enumerated modern vocabulary of pulleys, rails and platforms. Prompted by such visual saturation, the narrator’s affirmations gesture backwards and forwards across spatial and temporal boundaries. In this way, the abrupt multiplication of prepositions of place suggests that the position the narrator occupies in respect of the feverish activity he observes is subject to sudden displacement. ‘Villes’ thus intimates the problematics of the inclination to stabilize the shifts of perspective to which urban consciousness is exposed. On a formal level, this gives rise to a pattern whereby successive images are continuously overlain. This paradigm of superimposition is present in the following examples (to which emphasis is added): ‘sur des rails et des poulies invisibles’, ‘Au-dessus du niveau des plus hautes crêtes’, ‘Sur les versants’, ‘Là-haut, les pieds dans la cascade et les ronces,

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les cerfs tettent Diane’. In the last instance, the preposition ‘là-haut’ positions the narrator below the action, conveying a sense that the urban space is unfolding at such a rapid rate as to appear uncontainable in language. The ‘unfolding’ of urban space is multi-directional, in so far as, from the narrator’s point of view, it seems to occur as much horizontally as vertically, as is suggested by the reference to the ‘canaux pendus derrière les chalets’. The resultant foreshortening of perspectival depth drives expressivity to new strata beyond the limitations of a finite self identity. Expressive patterns thus materialize frequently around collective movements and in dynamics which intimate a levelling of obstacles to community: these include the ‘fêtes amoureuses’, ‘corporations de chanteurs géants’, ‘f lottes orphéoniques’, the ‘groupes de beffrois [qui] chantent les idées des peuples’ and the ‘compagnies [qui] ont chanté la joie du travail nouveau’. Rhetorics of fraternity and transformation are thus re-affirmed in perverse, fragmented form in the narrator’s hallucinatory projections. The dissolution of spatial boundaries is also a feature of the poem ‘Les Ponts’: Des ciels gris de cristal. Un bizarre dessin de ponts, ceux-ci droits, ceuxlà bombés, d’autres descendant ou obliquant en angles sur les premiers, et ces figures se renouvelant dans les autres circuits éclairés du canal, mais tous tellement longs et légers que les rives chargées de dômes s’abaissent et s’amoindrissent. Quelques-uns de ces ponts sont encore chargés de masures. D’autres soutiennent des mâts, des signaux, de frêles parapets. Des accords mineurs se croisent, et filent, des cordes montent des berges. On distingue une veste rouge, peut-être d’autres costumes et des instruments de musique. Sont-ce des airs populaires, des bouts de concerts seigneuriaux, des restants d’hymnes publics? L’eau est grise et bleue, large comme un bras de mer. — Un rayon blanc, tombant du haut du ciel, anéantit cette comédie. [Crystal grey skies. A bizarre arrangement of bridges, some straight, some rounded, others subsiding or forming angles on the first, and these patterns repeating themselves in the other illuminated meanders of the canal, but all so long and slight that the banks weighed down with domes sink and diminish. Some of these bridges are still covered with hovels. Others support masts, signals, frail parapets. Minor chords entwine, and spin out; ropes rise from the banks. A red jacket can be seen, other clothes perhaps and musical instruments. Are these popular airs, snatches of noble concerts, leftovers of public anthems? The water is grey and blue, wide as an arm of the sea. — A white ray, falling from the sky, annihilates this comedy.]

In this poem, bridges provide an appropriate model for a textual dynamic which tends to maintain contrasting or distinct elements in a state of tension and relation. As Georg Simmel writes, the bridge devient une valeur esthétique, non seulement lorsqu’il établit, dans les faits et pour l’accomplissement de ses buts pratiques, une jonction entre des termes dissociés, mais aussi pour autant qu’il la rend immédiatement sensible. Il fournit à l’œil, pour relier les parties du paysage, le même support qu’il offre au corps pour satisfaire la réalité de la praxis. La simple dynamique du mouvement, dans l’effectivité duquel vient s’épuiser à chaque fois ‘l’objectif ’ du pont, s’est faite visuellement durable [...].52

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[[...] becomes an aesthetic value, not only as, in a real sense and in order to serve practical ends, it forms a junction between unrelated terms, but, furthermore, because it renders that junction readily tangible. Just as it enables the eye to establish links between different parts of the landscape, it also provides the body with the same means by which to satisfy the reality of praxis. The mere dynamism of movement, which by dint of its efficacy effaces any sense of the ‘purpose’ of the bridge every time it is crossed, has become something visible and lasting [...].]

A pervasive impression of variation created by numerous verbs of movement in this text (‘descendant ou obliquant en angles’, s’abaissent et s’amoindrissent’, ‘soutien­ nent’, ‘se croisent’ , ‘filent’, ‘montent’) points to a pattern according to which the dynamics extended by the object of perception are foregrounded, while no settled image of that object is attained. Similarly, patterns of refracting and bending (‘les rives chargées de dômes s’abaissent et s’amoindrissent.’, ‘L’eau est [...] large comme un bras de mer’) signal a dilation of the field of vision. Cognate with a ‘bizarre dessin’, the poetic text therefore has the potential to maintain in a state of tension or relation a set of dynamics that are latent within perception but never fully available to it. Commenting on ‘Les Ponts’, Dee Reynolds notes that ‘the spatial illogicalities and semantic uncertainties in the description of the bridges which make it impossible to resolve the conf licting visual data in a coherent image actually increase the intensity of the desire to visualize, as the reader is teased and tantalized by the seductive forms and textures which elude the possession and control of the imagining gaze’.53 The coincidence of the solicitation of desire with the deferral of its object is also explored in the poem ‘Solde’, which exposes a vast and incongruous range of items and themes to the hyperbole of the newspaper annonce: À vendre ce que les Juifs n’ont pas vendu, ce que noblesse ni crime n’ont goûté, ce qu’ignorent l’amour maudit et la probité infernale des masses; ce que le temps ni la science n’ont pas à reconnaître; Les Voix reconstituées; l’éveil fraternel de toutes les énergies chorales et orchestrales et leurs applications instantanées; l’occasion, unique, de dégager nos sens! À vendre les Corps sans prix, hors de toute race, de tout monde, de tout sexe, de toute descendance! Les richesses jaillissant à chaque démarche! Solde de diamants sans contrôle! À vendre l’anarchie pour les masses; la satisfaction irrépressible pour les amateurs supérieurs; la mort atroce pour les fidèles et les amants! À vendre les habitations et les migrations, sports, féeries et comforts parfaits, et le bruit, le mouvement et l’avenir qu’ils font! À vendre les applications de calcul et les sauts d’harmonie inouïs. Les trouvailles et les termes non soupçonnés, possession immédiate. Élan insensé et infini aux splendeurs invisibles, aux délices insensibles, — et ses secrets affolants pour chaque vice — et sa gaîté effrayante pour la foule — À vendre les Corps, les voix, l’immense opulence inquestionable, ce qu’on ne vendra jamais. Les vendeurs ne sont pas à bout de solde! Les voyageurs n’ont pas à rendre leur commission de si tôt! [For sale what the Jews have not sold, what nobility and crime have not

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In this text, like the department store customer or the individual glancing at a column of newspaper ads, the reader is exposed to the seduction of a vast range of signs frequently having no explicit connection with one another. The more familiar seductive solicitations of the annonce and the grand magasin are however here magnified and extended to a perplexing range of abstractions, items and sensations such as ‘l’amour maudit’, ‘applications de calcul, and ‘l’occasion unique de dégager nos sens’. The textual dynamic to which this gives rise spurs the reader to attempt to make sense of manifold images of gratification — ‘comforts’, ‘féeries’, ‘possession immédiate’ — but simultaneously frustrates ordering impulses of this kind by making the range and diversity of those images disproportionate to the scope of the reader to make satisfactory sense of the relation between them. Rimbaud appears to consider these compulsive and rummaging aspects of the sale as paradigmatic of modern urban relations more generally, because they present the individual subject with a spectacle of boundless proliferation that eludes positive construal or appropriation within consciousness. As he demonstrates in other poems from Illuminations, commerce, transportation, monumental construction and other facets of modern urban life both accelerate and consolidate the subject’s confrontation with the objects and images of his or her desire and with the collective aspirations of the metropolis. On this point, the placing of radicalizing sloganeering in ‘Solde’ (‘Les Voix reconstituées’, ‘l’éveil fraternel de toutes les énergies chorales et orchestrales’, ‘gaîté effrayante pour la foule’) in a context usually reserved only for the most commodified of objects seems significant. In the first instance these phrases are subject to a parodic effect which divorces them from any progressive narrative and exposes the recuperation of this kind of rhetoric by the market forces which it purports to dissolve. As Ross notes, ‘the revolutionary cry and the advertising slogan are indistinguishable from each other in an onslaught of consumer goods and services’.54 However, their fragmentation and evacuation of positive content simultaneously endows the phrases with a renewed suggestive

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Figure 4.3. Bertall, La Foire aux idées, Journal pour rire, 37 (October 1848). By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

power that paradoxically affirms the possibility of a more authentic linguistic and social relation, one that is to be achieved precisely through fracturing the illusion of semantic consistency or collective entente. To appreciate the peculiarity of this aspect of the Rimbaldian text, let us at this point examine a similarly parodic representation targeted at progressive rhetoric. ‘La Foire aux idées’ by Albert d’Arnoux, known also as Bertall, which appeared in an October 1848 edition of the Journal pour rire, satirizes the claims of those socialist doctrines which achieved prominence prior to the revolutionary movement of that year. In the image, absurd caricatures of several luminaries of the socialist tradition, including the communist Étienne Cabet, the socialist Charles Fourier and the mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, are shown alongside equally preposterous orators propagandizing on behalf of a range of progressive currents promising the alleviation of social ills. These individuals are seen to compete vocally with one another as they declaim progressive maxims before a swarm of onlookers, while in the caption a hawker’s voice reminds the reader that ‘ces farces ne dureront pas longtemps’. Revolutionary and reformist philosophies are here reduced to an incoherent and ludicrous spectacle presented to the masses as an object of disposable consumption, and in this respect Bertall’s satire warrants comparison with the parodic quality of

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Rimbaud’s ‘Solde’. There are, however, some important differences between prose poem and image which reveal both the more uncertain posture which Rimbaud adopts by comparison with Bertall and the extent to which ‘Solde’ goes beyond the conventional caricatural function operative in ‘La Foire aux idées’. Arguing that Bertall’s aim is to comfort a politically and socially conservative audience in the wake of the revolutionary tremors of 1848, Anne-Françoise Leprevots-Bonnardel and Laurent Portes emphasize the ironizing linguistic play arising from Bertall’s juxtaposition of the dental and social ‘prostheses’ promoted alternatively in the image by Louis Blanc and by an individual identified as Fattet: Le dessinateur prend aussi plaisir à mettre sur le même plan les rêveries en quête de ‘prothèse sociales’ et les charlataneries des vendeurs de dents ‘osanaures’, dont se faisait une spécialité un certain Fattet. On pense alors à l’expression ‘mentir comme un arracheur de dents’. Il s’agit donc là d’une représentation propre à plaire aux partisans de l’ordre, qui se scandalisent des critiques sociales, en dénoncent à plaisir les aspects contradictoires et réagissent avec vigueur à toutes les utopies, en quoi ils ne veulent voir que chimères.55 [The cartoonist also takes pleasure in placing on the same plane dreams of ‘social prostheses’ and the quackery of those peddling ‘osanaure’ teeth, the latter being the speciality of a certain Fattet. We are given to think of the expression ‘to lie like a tooth puller’ [non-literal equivalence: ‘to lie through one’s teeth’]. This representation is thus likely to be well received by the supporters of law and order, who are scandalized by such social critiques, offering fierce denunciations of their contradictory aspects and mount a vigorous reaction to all utopias, which they see merely as chimeras.]

The satirical impact of Bertall’s image would on this reading appear to derive in part from its recourse to the idiomatic expression ‘mentir comme un arracheur de dents’ and its appeal to the conservative assessment that such socially transformative aspirations are ephemeral and in vain. Readers of Rimbaud’s work by contrast, notably of the verse piece ‘À la musique’, will be familiar with his keen suspicion of such customary bourgeois perceptions. In keeping with the project of the lettres du voyant, Rimbaud’s intention is expressly to fragment such customary attitudes and perceptions and the stable forms of reference which underpin them. ‘Solde’ makes no such recourse to idiomatic wisdom in its f lagrant juxtaposition of the rhetoric of social progress and transformation with that of tourism and retail, and it seems that the complexity of the reading experience of the prose poem, and more precisely, the difficulty the reader encounters in attempting to identify conclusively a consistent line of critique within it, in no small part derive from a desire on Rimbaud’s part to collapse any such entreaty to common accord.56 This in turn problematizes the articulation of semantic content within ‘Solde’, for the reader is confronted with a poetic parole in such uncontrolled proliferation that it outstrips the langue of petitions to common sense which we have observed in ‘La Foire aux idées’. The reader is not in a position to draw a comforting moral about the chimeras of the rhetoric of social transformation from the parody of ‘Solde’, for the text demonstrates deep uncertainty concerning the communication of such messages. Rather, because it is emptied of any stable relation to identifiable political orientations, the deployment of rhetoric such as ‘les Voix reconstituées’ and

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‘éveil fraternel’ in the prose poem paradoxically confers on those terms a renewed persuasiveness and suggestiveness. Since their potential for ideological consistency is fractured, these exhortations to transformation re-emerge as particularly potent, for they are oriented towards states of contingency and the forestalling of subordination to authority. In its paradoxically simultaneous peddling of ‘l’anarchie pour les masses’ and dismissal of ‘la probité infernale des masses’, the text seems implicitly to suggest that a more authentic social relation can only be acquired extemporaneously and not programmatically. This is, moreover, ref lected in the narrative structure of the prose poem, for as the eye reads through it, scanning downwards as it would scan the advertisements in a newspaper, two ‘insertions’ seem to offset the cyclical exclamations of ‘À vendre!’: Les Voix reconstituées; l’éveil fraternel de toutes les énergies chorales et orchestrales et leurs applications instantanées; l’occasion, unique, de dégager nos sens! [...] Élan insensé et infini aux splendeurs invisibles, aux délices insensibles, — et ses secrets affolants pour chaque vice — et sa gaîté effrayante pour la foule —

In the second instance here, the use of dashes stimulates a horizontal dynamic that contrasts with the downward movement of the repetitions of ‘À vendre!’ thereby implying a contrasting temporality to the cycle of compulsion. In considering this sporadic profusion of punctuation marks, some remarks by Macklin in relation to the expressive function of punctuation in Rimbaud’s prose poetry more generally are suggestive; he remarks that it may ‘[serve] notice of imaginative exultation, of a f leeting aperçu of a much coveted transcendence and, in technical terms, of a structural development of special significance. At these privileged moments, a stream of ciphers seems to encode the shift from one state of awareness to a heightened, more dynamic realm’.57 Similarly, the interspersion of this progressive parlance with terms like ‘éveil’, ‘élan’ and ‘dégager’ implies a sudden burst of movement that springs from desiring caprice rather than adherence to programmatic injunctions, as is suggested by the references to ‘gaîté effrayante pour la foule’ or the ‘élan insensé et infini aux splendeurs invisibles’ (my emphasis). By extension, the allusion elsewhere in the poem to the ‘Corps sans prix, hors de toute race, de tout monde, de tout sexe, de toute descendance’ suggests perceptions of a corporeal state beyond the compass of individual affect.58 Just as the first line promises us ‘ce que noblesse ni crime n’ont goûté’, the state to which the narrative voice promises access appears to be beyond the bounds of conventional individual morality (or immorality). A desire on Rimbaud’s part to drive expressivity to new planes mediates the complex intertwining of the rhetoric of sales patter and social progress in ‘Solde’, for the hyperbole of both commerce and transformation are all-encompassing, compelling desires that are disproportionate to their object, and inducing a sense of turbulence that foreshadows the dissolution of stable relations between signs and their referents and between subjects and their milieu. For Rimbaud, such turbulence seems to generate a state of futurity ex nihilo that is suggested in the reference to ‘le bruit, le mouvement et l’avenir qu’ils font’, similar to the ‘Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs!’ of the poem ‘Départ’. However, that futurity is paradoxically

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inexhaustible in its potential linguistic manifestations, as is suggested by the tantalizing allusion to ‘Les trouvailles et les termes non soupçonnés, possession immédiate’. This may be considered against both the puzzling line ‘À vendre les Corps, les voix, l’immense opulence inquestionable, ce qu’on ne vendra jamais’ and the final declaration that ‘Les vendeurs ne sont pas à bout de solde! Les voyageurs n’ont pas à rendre leur commission de si tôt!’, for the latter both seem to imply at once an acceleration of transformative desire and a suspension of its object. Frequently in the poems of Illuminations, it is the modern metropolis which activates patterns of uninterrupted self-, social and material transformation. At many junctures, the prose poem proves appropriate to this task, but what dist­ing­ uishes the texts of Illuminations from those of Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris is a more manifestly contingent attitude to poetic form. As Rimbaud himself wrote of Baudelaire: ‘Encore a-t-il vécu dans un milieu trop artiste; et la forme si vantée en lui est mesquine: les inventions d’inconnu réclament des formes nouvelles’ (ŒC: 246). Rimbaud’s deliberate fragmentation of conventional discursive or narrative structures and his new appraisal of textual space as a constitutive dimension of the prose poem represent his original response to this problem. As we have seen, the ‘formes nouvelles’ to which he alludes here demand to be thought in terms of a series of textual practices of fragmentation, juxtaposition, and spacing, which are mobilized by the prose poem, rather than in terms of any materialized form. Consonant with the understanding of utopia set out in this study as a dynamic practice of the text rather than as a formal conception more or less likely to be realized, from punctuational, spatial, syntactical and other perspectives the Rimbaldian prose poem offers ways of ‘working through’ space that are not centralizing, but serve to orient imaginative activity in multiple directions and to open up new dimensions for collective experience that are latent within the present configuration of the real. Rimbaud’s Illuminations consistently reappropriate, fragment and redeploy progressive or utopian rhetorics common to many nineteenth-century popular movements and doctrines of social reform. Yet they nonetheless articulate a fantasizing, transformative urgency, typified by the narrator of ‘Vagabonds’ who declares that he is ‘pressé de trouver le lieu et la formule’. These aspects of the project of Illuminations set it apart from any utopian project in the sense presented by contemporary instituted movements and doctrines, but link it nonetheless to an exploration of the possibilities of community. As Rancière writes, ‘[...] Rimbaud a enfermé dans la disposition du poème toutes les dimensions et toutes les orientations cardinales de son siècle [...]’ [Rimbaud enclosed in the layout of the poem all the dimensions and principal orientations of his century].59 In this perspective, the poems of Illuminations mobilize a multitude of voices and discourses to produce a singularly open-ended vision of a poetry which accedes to planes of expression and experience beyond the horizons of a finite self.

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Notes to Chapter 4 1. Jacques Rancière, ‘Préface’, Le Millénaire Rimbaud, ed. by Alain Badiou, Michel Deguy and others (Paris: Belin, 1993), pp. 5–10 (p. 5). 2. Steve Murphy, ‘ “Rimbaud et la Commune”?’, Rimbaud Multiple: colloque de Cerisy, ed. by Alain Borer, Jean-Paul Corsetti and Steve Murphy (Paris: Éditions Bedou & Touzot: 1986), pp. 50–66 (p. 60). 3. Leo Bersani, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature [1969] (London: Marion Boyars, 1978), p. 246. 4. Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p. 123. 5. Ross, pp. 52–53. 6. David Scott, ‘La Structure spatiale du poème en prose d’Aloysius Bertrand à Rimbaud’, Poétique, 59 (September 1984), 295–308. 7. Dee Reynolds, Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 223–24. 8. Ross, p. 128. 9. Jacques Rancière, ‘Les voix et les corps’, Le Millénaire Rimbaud, ed. by Alain Badiou, Michel Deguy and others (Paris: Belin, 1993), pp. 11–33 (pp. 21–22). Additionally in this perspective, André Rolland de Renéville claims that Georges Izambard introduced the young Rimbaud to the texts of Saint-Simon and other nineteenth-century progressive or social radical thinkers. André Rolland de Renéville, Rimbaud le voyant (Paris: au Sans Pareil, 1929; repr. Paris: Vieux Colombier, 1947), p. 20. 10. Arthur Rimbaud, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Pierre Brunel (Paris: Libraire Générale Française: 1999), p. 237. Future references to Rimbaud’s Œuvres complètes in this chapter will take the following abbreviated form: (ŒC: 237). 11. Gerald Macklin, ‘Epiphany, Identity, Celebration: Towards a Definition of the Rimbaldian poème-fête’, Neophilologus, 82.1 ( January 1998), 19–31 (p. 27). 12. Susan Harrow, The Material, the Real and the Fractured Self: Subjectivity and Representation from Rimbaud to Réda (London: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 14. 13. David Scott, Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; repr. 2009), p. 132. 14. Atle Kittang, Discours et jeu: essai d’analyse des textes d’Arthur Rimbaud (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble; Bergen, Universitetsforlaget, 1975), p. 183. 15. Antoine Raybaud, Fabrique d’‘Illuminations’ (Paris: Seuil, 1989), p. 38. 16. Harrow, p. 32. 17. David Scott, Pictorialist Poetics, p. 133. 18. Jean-Pierre Giusto, ‘Après le Déluge: l’écriture des êtres de rêverie et la parodie’, Parade sauvage, 2 (1985), 72–79 (p. 79). 19. Gerald Macklin, ‘Perspectives on the Role of Punctuation in Rimbaud’s Illuminations’, Journal of European Studies, 20 (1990), 59–72 (p. 62). 20. Clive Scott, Translating Rimbaud’s ‘Illuminations’ (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006), p. 38. 21. Tzvetan Todorov, Les Genres du discours (Paris: Seuil, 1978), pp. 128–30. 22. Raybaud, pp. 193–94. 23. Raybaud, p. 194. 24. Clive Scott, p. 99. 25. In the context of an analysis of ‘Après le Déluge’, David Scott writes that Rimbaud is likely to have sourced this technique from children’s literature (D. Scott, Pictorialist Poetics, pp. 133–34). 26. ‘Definitive realization, on this reading, is the antithesis of what the utopian dynamic — a leavening of present reality — is understood to be. The question of ‘realization’ for the artwork being inseparable if not indistinguishable from that of the execution, or making, or writing of the work itself, this emerges as the governing tension within a ‘utopian’ creative practice’ (Kelly, p. 16). 27. Gerald Macklin, A Study of Theatrical Vision in Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Illuminations’ (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993), p. 61.

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28. Raybaud, p. 147. 29. Michel Foucault, Utopies et hétérotopies. INA Mémoire vive collection. CD IMV056. Foucault’s comments are taken from two lectures which were broadcast on France Culture on 7 and 21 December 1966, entitled ‘Les Hétérotopies’ and ‘Le Corps utopique’. These lectures formed the basis for his subsequent article ‘Des espaces autres’ which appeared in Architecture, mouvement, continuité, 5 (October 1984), 46–49. In the France Culture talk, Foucault refers to the human body as ‘l’acteur principal de toutes les utopies’ [the principal actor of all utopias]. 30. Jacques Rancière, La Chair des mots: politiques de l’écriture (Paris: Galilée, 1998), p. 58. 31. Émile Barrault, A Paris! Adieu, Paris, Adieu — Barrière du trône, 15 décembre 1832 (Paris: impr. E. Duverger, 1832), p. 6. 32. Rancière, Le Chair des mots, p. 58. 33. Harrow, p. 25. 34. Ross, pp. 112–13. 35. Michel Dupré, Autres Rimbaud (Paris: E. C. Éditions, 2000), p. 28. 36. Dupré, p. 30. 37. David Evans, Rhythm, Illusion and the Poetic Idea: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), p. 197. 38. Arthur Rimbaud, Œuvres, ed. by Suzanne Bernard and André Guyaux (Paris: Bordas, 1991), p. 495. 39. Raybaud, p. 27. 40. Kittang, p. 267. 41. Kittang, p. 266. 42. Kelly, p. 25. 43. Rancière, La Chair des mots, p. 61. 44. Mikel Dufrenne, Art et politique (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1974), p. 207. 45. Untitled article, Le Charivari, 12 July 1848. 46. David S. Kerr, Caricature and French Political Culture 1830–1848: Charles Philipon and the Illustrated Press (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 193–94. 47. Gilles Marcotte, ‘Une Ville appelée Rimbaud’, Études françaises, 27.1 (1991), 49–61 (p. 60). 48. Michael Spencer, ‘A Fresh Look at Rimbaud’s “Métropolitain” ’, Modern Language Review, 63.4 (October 1968), 849–53 (p. 849). 49. Mark Treharne, ‘Unstable Objects: Acropole and Barbarie in Rimbaud’s Villes I’, in French Literature, Thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century: A Material World, ed. by Brian Rigby (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 169–83 (p. 172). 50. Treharne, p. 174. 51. Étienne Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, pref. by Jacques Attali (Paris: Bureau du Populaire, 1848; repr. Paris: Dalloz, 2006), pp. 20–21. 52. Georg Simmel, ‘Pont et porte’, in La Tragédie de la culture et autres essais, trans. by Sabine Cornille and Philippe Ivernel (Paris: Rivages, 1988), pp. 161–68 (p. 163). Originally appeared in Der Tag. Moderne illustrierte Zeitung, 683 (15 September 1909). 53. Reynolds, p. 69. 54. Ross, p. 151. 55. Anne-Françoise Leprevots-Bonnardel and Laurent Portes, ‘Satire des idées nouvelles’, in Utopie: la quête de la société idéale en Occident, ed. by Lyman Tower Sargent and Roland Schaer (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France / Fayard, 2000), pp. 220–21. Alternatively, the Littré of 1872–77 defines ‘osanores’ as ‘Dents osanores, dents artificielles faites avec l’ivoire de l’hippopotame (mot barbarement fait de os, sans, et or, parce que dans ces appareils il n’entre pas d’or)’; [‘Osanores teeth: artificial teeth made with ivory from the hippopotamus (the word is a barbarism composed of bone [‘os’], without [‘sans’] and gold [‘or’], because they contain no gold’]. Bertall’s intention may therefore equally have been to implicitly repudiate the imminence of a utopian ‘golden age’. See Émile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française (1872–77), available online at ARTFL project, University of Chicago: [accessed 11 August 2011]. 56. Gilles Marcotte comments on this ambivalence of the notion of the ‘sale’ in ‘Solde’: ‘Elle dit bien que cela même, les idées les plus généreuses, les plus avancées, l’amour, l’harmonie universelle,

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la régénération de l’humanité, tout cela qui semble échapper aux lois d’airain de l’économie de marché est tout de même à vendre, vendable. En cela, elle donne raison à l’opération réductrice de l’analyse idéologique. Mais en même temps elle démystifie le présupposé matérialiste de cette analyse, en se présentant comme interminable, essentiellement insuffisante, impossible: “À vendre [. . .] ce qu’on ne vendra jamais!” ’. [It does indeed say exactly that: that the most noble and the most advanced ideas: love, universal harmony, the regeneration of humanity, all those things that seem to escape the leaden laws of the market economy are nonetheless for sale, sellable. In this respect, it bears out the reductive operation of ideological analysis. But at the same time it demystifies the materialist presupposition on which this analysis is based, by presenting itself as interminable, essentially insufficient, impossible: ‘For sale [...] what will never be sold’. Gilles Marcotte, La Prose de Rimbaud (Montreal: Boréal, 1989), p. 184. 57. Macklin, ‘Perspectives on the Role of Punctuation’, p. 68. 58. As Clive Scott writes of Rimbaud’s poetry: ‘This is an expressive world all right, a world of feelings under pressure, but the feelings are not owned and exercised by a subjectivity: text is not the product of a subjectivity, but of subjectivation, collective, available to individualities’ (C. Scott, Translating Rimbaud’s ‘Illuminations’, p. 150). 59. Rancière; ‘Les Voix et les corps’, p. 21.

Conclusion v

It is hoped that the foregoing chapters can contribute to a more fruitful under­ standing of the relationship between utopian writing and the evolution of poetic discourse in the nineteenth century. What this requires is a commitment to utopia as a variably oriented field of action and ref lection; utopia is, in Krishan Kumar’s words, a ‘variegated project, the meeting place of many purposes and many disciplines of thought’.1 As Kumar furthermore argues, the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new emphasis within utopian thought on time and history as constitutive forces with human society, henceforth understood in an evolutionary perspective. For Kumar, this, in turn, ‘[demanded of nineteenth-century utopia] an incompleteness, an open-endedness and f luidity’, to which the classical model associated with Thomas More was not deemed appropriate. It is in this context that a major strand of inquiry within Saint-Simonian thought is the prospecting of changes that are latent within the existing order: for instance, in the architectural possibilities of the city in modernity, in new technologies of display and transport, and in the increasing democratization of culture. As our discussion of texts by the Saint-Simonians Charles Duveyrier and Michel Chevalier has shown, utopian writing has the potential to def lect back imaginatively on the tensions which underpin the here and now, presenting ways to ‘think through’ simultaneously, and thereby project pathways beyond, terms which are conventionally held in opposition: male/female, the rural/industrial and the artificial/organic.2 Since it presents a nexus of images of exchange and interaction, the metropolis is a privileged terrain for such ref lections. In textual and visual terms, utopia presents ways in which to give animation to different parts of a complex ensemble. In this perspective, the utopian vision of the city invites a dramatically comprehensive new vision of culture and civilization, and offers a heightened understanding of the centrality of factors of dynamic movement, exhibition, exoticism and circulation as aspects of metropolitan life. Like Étienne Cabet’s fictional city of Icaria, which was the subject of commentary in the last chapter, these aspects of utopianism can be related to an acute and emergent cultural perception in the nineteenth century of the metropolis as an ‘abrégé de l’univers terrestre’.3 Such breadth and dynamism of vision stimulates the pursuit of those diverse forms of prose writing examined in the foregoing chapters on the texts of the Saint-Simonians, the journalism of Gautier, and the prose poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Rimbaud. What links the kind of prose writing explored by the Saint-Simonians and Gautier to the prose poem is their shared sensibility towards the spectrum of possibilities unfolded by the metropolis and the potential of urban imagery to substantialize the inherent diversity and vitality of human experience.

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Each engage factors of dynamic heterogeneity, simultaneity and multiplicity as constitutive of the act of inscribing the social and material environment of the city and maintain an awareness of the prose text as itself a product and an agent of the relations which determine the phenomenon of the modern urban. This study’s description of the trajectory leading through Saint-Simonian writing and culminating in the verbal spectacle of Rimbaud’s Illuminations is, moreover, served by a more concerted examination of the pattern of increasing ref lexivity of the prose poem with respect to the competing ideological attachments mobilized in its composition. Our aim has been to consistently underline the potential of aspects of utopian textuality to catalyse the prose poem’s dispersal of discursive closure. Of course, the existence of degrees of proximity between the prose poem and the textuality deployed in the work of Chevalier or Duveyrier may not at first glance seem self-evident, but this circumstance arguably arises from the fact that literary history understands these texts as primarily an offshoot of ‘utopian socialism’, a fact which downplays their status as literary discourse. This designation, and, with it, the term utopianism, can be said to be to marked by an attempt to diffuse or ‘contain’ the critical purchase of utopian thought on given reality. As an instance of what Bloch might read as a ‘terminological corrective’4 which is levelled at utopian thought, such designations function to conscript utopia back into the order of expediency and to censure the epistemological indeterminacy of its discourse. Indeed, the traditional critical construal of these texts has discouraged close engage­ ment with them, and serves ultimately to conceal the tensions internal to them. The intro­duction and first chapter of this book have, following Ricœur, understood those tensions as the product of the dialectic of utopia and ideology. While on the one hand, Saint-Simonian writing can be said to be dominated by a persistent concern with the integration into literature of the movement’s founding doctrine, on the other, these texts actively unsettle customary meanings and perspectives and continually project new possibilities of human expression and association. It is not, however, this book’s intention purely to reduce these texts to the explicit tensions they articulate; rather, in line with a concept developed by Ricœur and Freeden, and elaborated more extensively by Bloch, the preceding chapters have put forward the notion of a surplus of utopian writing, which is catalysed by the dialectic of utopia and ideology, but which pushes beyond ideological designs. This is a notion which is corroborated by Miguel Abensour’s understanding of the complex of tensions and energies mobilized by utopia as a political construct: ‘Si l’on accorde que l’utopie porte toujours en elle une part d’excédent, n’est-elle pas d’abord en excès sur ses effets totalitaires possibles qu’il faudrait plutôt imputer à l’idéologisation de l’utopie, résultant de l’écart entre le dit utopique et le dire de l’utopie? [If one grants that utopia still carries within it a surplus element, is that not primarily in excess of its possible totalitarian effects? The latter ought instead to be attributed to the ideologization of utopia, which is the result of gap between the utopian statement and utopia’s power to state].5 Abensour’s distinction between a utopian ‘dit’ and a utopian ‘dire’ is highly suggestive in the context of this analysis. It enables us to differentiate between, in the case of the ‘dit’, the circumscribed meanings which can be extracted from the

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text, and in that of the ‘dire’, a generative potentiality of the act of utterance which is foreclosed by no prescriptive formulation. The particular excess or surplus which the present study links to utopian writing is understood as a residual textuality which bears a perennially contingent relation to ideas of form, and suspends the drive towards definitive realization. In fact, it is a paradox of the works by Chevalier and Duveyrier which emerge from an ideological perspective aimed at effecting a total instrumentalization of language that one of the most striking characteristics of their writing is its linguistic trop plein [excess] — the uncontainable force which signals itself, for instance, in pullulating enumerations of detail: crowds, colours, shimmering temples and so on. In Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Roland Barthes remarks the following: Peut-être l’imagination du détail est-elle ce qui définit spécifiquement l’Utopie (par opposition à la science politique); ce serait logique, puisque le détail est fantasmatique et accomplit à ce titre le plaisir même du Désir.6 [Perhaps the imagination of detail is what specifically defines Utopia (as opposed to political science); that would be logical, because detail is phantasmic and on that basis it accomplishes the very pleasure of Desire.]

Manifesting itself sporadically in the writing of the Saint-Simonians, this phantasmic quality of utopian writing is linked to a radically new practice of the literary text that can be said to inform many of the expressive strategies charted by the prose poem. On this point, the consideration of Baudelaire in the context of our argument may initially seem unusual, given that his writings are arguably the least amenable to any programmatic ‘utopian’ project. An effect of Baudelaire’s tendency to problematize such closural frameworks is, however, that the prose of his collection Le Spleen de Paris is frequently oriented to an extempore futurity. This to a certain extent rejoins a central aspect of utopia, namely its potential to engage a foundational form of perception with the potential to appraise latent possibilities emerging out of the present. The textual practice of Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris is linked to an acute awareness of the ‘innombrables rapports’ presented by the modern city and of the f luctuating affective and perceptual experiences of the urban subject. The protean apprehension associated with the Baudelairian concept of rhapsodie serves to conduct consciousness outside any settled experience of self or desire and activates a textual imaginary of infinite displacement, fragmentation and variation. All of this is not to suggest that the ultimate claim of this book is in any straightforward sense that ‘the prose poem is utopian’. Rather our aim has been to argue that the radical practice of the text presented by the Baudelairian and Rimbaldian prose poem may be served by the complex spatial metaphor of utopia, insofar as it serves to enact what Marin refers to as ‘l’indétermination du lieu’.7 Nor is this to argue that the dynamic of the Rimbaldian text reaches such a degree of self-ref lexivity that it operates in complete autonomy from the multiple ideological attachments it momentarily elicits. Rather, as we have seen in relation to how the texts of Illuminations encode and displace the language of utopia, the instituted discourses of utopianism serve a constitutive function in these prose poems, projecting a highly suggestive vision of physical and social interaction and a miscellany of slogans, catchwords and images of social harmony that Rimbaud

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fragments and redeploys to unfold dramatic new horizons for language and experience. In order to explore more meaningfully the trajectory linking the diverse forms of prose writing in its scope, this book has therefore primarily adopted an approach rooted in close reading rather than one anchored in the perspective of literary history. While studies such as the works collected in Paul Bénichou’s Romantismes français may ref lect at length on literary Saint-Simonianism and its relation to more prominent movements such as Romanticism, it is hoped that the approach adopted here offers a more comprehensive examination of the specific poetic textuality of the many feuilletons, prose poems, tracts and other literary experiments within its reach.8 Equally, it is hoped that an achievement of this study is to have brought to light the complex factors which link the writings of Chevalier, Duveyrier and Rimbaud, and to reveal the marked originality of the former writers when considered from this perspective, elevating them to a more important position in a literary tradition in which until the present they have been seen as marginal. As the analysis of the prose journalism of Gautier has shown, for instance, many of the texts we have studied demonstrate complicity in ideological formations such as those which determine the representational structure of the Universal Exhibitions, while at the same time deploying strategies to hinder ideological modes of representation. In this way, the implicit documentary purpose served by Gautier’s writing is frequently eclipsed by a rapturous exploration of a range of aesthetic and expressive possibilities in response to the modern metropolis. Many of the paradigms deployed in Gautier’s prose are therefore extremely suggestive when set against the expressive territories charted by the later prose poem. Thus, in linking the complex of orientations mobilized by utopia with diverse forms of prose by poets, one of the aims of this book has been to overturn a conventional characterization of the former term as a purely fictional or theoretical space where no action is possible. As we have seen, the expressive and spatializing strategies mobilized in the diverse examples of prose by poets in this study are linked to an acute and abiding perception of language in its plastic dimensions and of its bearing upon the world. Prose by poets is consistent with a dynamic of variation within discourse, one that is catalysed by the deferral of any definitive formalization of the potentialities it extends, thus placing emphasis on an effective practice of poetic language rather than the pursuit of form. Uniting all the prose texts considered in this book is their sensibility towards the boundaries of established discursive forms and their continual re-engagement with the factors that determine the organization of the literary work and construct the interpersonal horizon of subjectivities enmeshed within complex dynamics of historical change. The em­phati­cally modern poetics presented by these texts once more corresponds to Marin’s understanding of utopia as ‘la latente poussée de ce qui est en train de passer, de se dire’,9 and serves time and again to affirm the veiled possibilities of now.

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Notes to the Conclusion 1. Krishan Kumar, Utopianism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), p. vii. 2. Miguel Abensour remarks the following: ‘l’hypothèse utopique aurait pour fonction de soulever la pesanteur du réel, sa massivité, sa compacité, de telle sorte qu’elle le rende soudain problématique, qu’elle le prive de son absoluité sous le nom d’“horizon indépassable” et laisse entrevoir, à travers le prisme de cette problématicité, au cœur de cette évasion, une pluralité de possibles’ [the aim of the utopian hypothesis would be to lift the weight of reality, its massiveness, its compactness, so that is suddenly renders it problematic, depriving it of its absoluteness which goes under the name of ‘fixed horizon’, and thereby revealing a glimpse, through the prism of this problematic quality, in the heart of this escape, of a plurality of possibilities’. Miguel Abensour, L’Homme est un animal utopique: Utopique (Paris: Éditions de la nuit, 2010), p. 193. 3. Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, pp. 20–21. 4. Bloch writes: ‘The power of anticipation which we called concrete utopia [...] (as distinct from the utopistic and from merely abstract utopianizing), with its open space and its object which is to be realized and which realizes itself forwards has still remained untouched by the terminological correction and broadening which the romantic, for example, underwent in “revolutionary Romanticism”, and the ideological underwent in “socialist ideology” ’ (Bloch, The Principle of Hope, i, 157). Underpinning Bloch’s argument here is a key distinction between an ‘abstract’ form of utopia, which projects idealized visions of the future and a ‘concrete’ form which can be discerned in latent processes of social change. 5. Miguel Abensour, ‘Le Nouvel Esprit utopique’, Cahiers Bernard Lazare, 128–30 (1991), 132–64 (p. 135). 6. Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Paris: Seuil, 1971), p. 110. An analogous point is made in the following citation, in which Barthes argues that the proliferation of detail produces an effect of vertiginousness, pushing beyond ‘style’ into écriture: ‘l’écriture, elle, arrive au moment où il se produit un échelonnement de signifiants, tel qu’aucun fond de langage ne puisse plus être repéré’ [writing manifests itself when a staggering of signifiers occurs, such that language no longer seems to have any point of anchorage] (pp. 10–11). 7. Marin, Utopiques: jeux d’espaces, p. 330. 8. Paul Bénichou, Romantismes français, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1973 & 1977; 2004), i: Le Sacre de l’écrivain & Le Temps des prophètes. 9. Marin, p. 344.

Appendix v

Michel Chevalier, ‘Le Temple’ Je te ferai voir mon temple, dit le Seigneur Dieu —— Les colonnes du Temple étaient des faisceaux de colonnes creuses de fer fondu; c’était l’orgue du temple nouveau —— La charpente était de fer, de fonte et d’acier, de cuivre et de bronze. L’architecte l’avait posée sur les colonnes comme un instrument à cordes sur un instrument à vent —— Les voûtes étaient garnies d’airain, c’étaient les cloches et le carillon. –•– Le temple rendait ainsi, à chaque instant du jour, des sons d’une harmonie nouvelle. —— La f lèche s’élevait comme un paratonnerre, elle allait dans les nuages chercher la force électrique: l’orage la gonf lait de vie et de tension, comme fait l’ardeur des sens embrasés au membre de l’homme. –•– Au sommet des minarets le télégraphe agitait ses bras et de toutes parts apportait de bonnes nouvelles au peuple. —— Sur le dôme était le phare propice au navigateur. —— Dans ses tours et sur les pyramides étaient des savants attentifs observant le cours des astres, mesurant le tems et les saisons.

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Michel Chevalier, ‘The Temple’ I shall show you my temple, said the Lord God —— The columns of the Temple were fasces of hollow columns of smelted iron; it was the organ of the new temple —— The roof was made of iron, cast iron and steel copper and bronze. The architect had placed it on columns like a string instrument on top of a wind instrument —— The vaults were decorated with bronze here were the bells and chimes –•– At every moment of the day, the temple thus diffused sounds of a new harmony —— The spire rose like a lightning conductor, reaching into the clouds in quest of electrical energy: the storm led it to swell with life and tension, just as a male member stirs when the senses are aroused with passion –•– At the apex of the minarets the telegraph waved its arms and brought good news to the people from far and wide —— On top of the dome was the lighthouse looking kindly down on the sailor —— Inside its towers and on its pyramids were careful scientists observing the movements of the heavens gauging the weather and the seasons

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Appendix —— Et il y avait sous terre des labyrinthes et des fournaises de silencieux carrefours où étaient disposées avec un art infini les merveilles et les trésors des entrailles de la terre, et où d’autres savants expérimentaient, enveloppés de repos et d’ombre. —— Qu’il est grand! qu’il est beau! votre Temple ô mon Dieu! Qu’il est puissant! Lorsque la chaleur et l’électricité et l’élastique vapeur qui circulent dans ses membres, et la lumière qui doucement les caresse par cent mille houppes de gaz ou qui vivement les frappe, condensée par les vitraux taillés en lentilles, le font frémir et palpiter! Qu’il est harmonieux lorsque parlent sa charpente, ses piliers et ses voûtes! Qu’il est magnifique dans l’ampleur et la variété de son espace! —— Le soleil y vit par la lumière et le feu; la terre, dans son mystère, par l’électricité et le magnétisme, dans son éclat, —— par les panoramas et les dioramas qui concentrent les mers et les montagnes les champs et les villes; par les cascades et les jets d’eau qui rafraîchissent les avenues et les portiques, les parvis et les voûtes; par les pierres qui y sont suspendus ou qui le parsèment, par les cristaux taillés et colorés, par les métaux tressés, coulés ou polis, par les eaux et les monts, les plaines et les bois qui entourent l’édifice de leurs cimes, de leurs profondeurs, de leurs f leurs et de leurs fruits! ——

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—— Underground there were labyrinths and furnaces crossroads at a standstill where the marvels and treasures of the earth’s innards were laid out with inestimable skill and where other scientists conducted experiments shrouded in silence and shadow —— How great it is! How beautiful! Your Temple O my God! How powerful! When the heat and electricity and coiling steam which resonate through its limbs and the light from a hundred thousand gas lamps which gently caresses them or dazzles them as it is condensed by the stained glass windows shaped like lenses make it quiver and pulsate! How harmonious it is when its framework, pillars and arches speak! How magnificent in the scale and variety of its space! —— The sun dwells there through light and fire; the earth in its mystery, through electricity and magnetism in its brilliance —— through the panoramas and the dioramas which condense the seas and mountains the fields and the cities; by waterfalls and fountains which refresh the avenues and the porticos, the squares and the vaults; through the precious gems which dangle in the air or are strewn throughout it through the brightly coloured hewn crystals through the braided, cast and polished metals, through the seas and the mountains the plains and the woods which encompass the edifice with their peaks and depths, their f lowers and fruits! ——

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Appendix L’humanité y vit dans son progrès par les monuments et les âges, par les peintures, les sculptures et les drames, par la musique et le verbe qui, pour le bonheur du présent, ressuscitent le passé glorieux et animent le brillant avenir. –•– Elle y est, l’humanité, par les cœurs des hommes et des femmes, par la gravité majestueuse des vieillards et la gracieuse légèreté des enfants; elle y est par les danseurs et les danseuses aux mouvements vifs ou moelleux, par les hommes et les femmes qui jettent au peuple assemblé leur vie débordante, dans le drame et dans la prédication alternative et solitaire; elle y est par les peintures et les sculptures, par la symphonie et le chant, par les artistes, les savants et les industriels! —— Par les engins de l’industrie, par les splendides produits étalés autour de la nef, par les solennels ateliers qui s’étendent au loin à droite; par les musées des savants, par leurs laboratoires tranquilles, et leurs paisibles bibliothèques qui, sous un frais ombrage occupent la gauche. Gloire à Dieu! C’est, disent les savants, une pile Volta. C’est, disent les industriels... C’est, disent les artistes... C’est... c’est...c’est... C’est... c’est...c’est... Le temple est fait comme la terre, la place des nations y est marquée. Au nord est une nef immense occupant toute la largeur: c’est la place du Peuple Blanc, de celui dont la vie est dans les nerfs, la vie mâle dans les nerfs du cerveau, la vie femelle dans les nerfs du plexus solaire.

Appendix Humanity dwells there too in its progress through the monuments and ages through the paintings, sculptures and plays through the music and words which, for the greater happiness of the present revive the glorious past and bring to life the radiant future –•– Humanity dwells there through the hearts of men and women through the majestic solemnity of elderly men and the graceful sprightliness of children; it dwells there in the male and female dancers with their deft and tender movements, through the men and women who project their abundant vitality to the f locking crowds, in plays and in sermons delivered alone and in turns; it dwells there through the paintings and sculptures through the symphonies and songs, through the artists the scientists and industrialists! —— Through the machines of industry through the splendid creations spread around the nave, through the solemn workshops which stretch far away to the right; through the museums of science, through their tranquil laboratories and their placid libraries which, under a cool shade occupy the left. Glory to God! It is, say the scientists, a Volta battery. It is, say the industrialists... It is, say the artists... It is...it is... it is... It is... it is... it is... The temple is built like the earth it marks the seat of the nations. To the north is a huge nave which occupies its entire breadth: this is the place of the White People, of those whose life lies in their nerves, male life in the nerves of the brain, female life in the nerves of the solar plexus.

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Appendix —— A droite est le cirque animé de la Peau noire dont la vie est dans les muscles; à gauche est la basilique rêveuse de la Peau rouge dont la vie est dans le triple f luide, la lymphe, le sang des artères, le sang des veines. —— Dans la nef, il en est un et ils sont deux, l’homme et la femme, et ils sont trois: à gauche, l’Arabe, fils de Sem; à droite, le Chinois avec le Malais et le Tartare; au centre, l’Européen. au centre, le vin coule, à gauche, le café circule, à droite le thé ruisselle; à gauche, les parfums, à droite les festins; au milieu, les festins et les parfums! —— Entre le cirque et la Basilique, au midi la nef, une place immense s’étend entourée et coupée d’eaux qui serpentent et de lacs transparents; elle est semée d’îlots, mystérieux asiles du plaisir, que des bosquets ombragent, qu’émaillent toutes les f leurs, où sont les grottes dont la voûte humide est soutenue ici par les colonnes naturelles de basalte, là par les stalactites perlées; des avenues la traversent bordées de cèdres et de sapins; ici c’est l’image du Canal Impérial de la Chine, là, c’est le portrait du Chemin de fer de Paris à Constantinople, Toutes les végétations s’y unissent, Bananes, blé, thé, café, riz, vigne, etc., etc., etc., etc. Au centre de la place sont dressés une série d’édifices (Nouvelle Hollande) ACADÉMICIENS BANQUIERS ARTISTES

Appendix —— To the right is the animated circus of Black Skin, whose life lies in the muscles; to the left is the dreamy basilica of the Red skin whose life is in the triple f luid, lymph, arterial blood, venous blood. —— In the nave, there is one of them and there are two, man and woman and there are three of them to the left, the Arab, son of Sem; to the right, the Chinaman with the Malay and the Tartar in the centre, the European in the cities, wine f lows, on the left, coffee pours forth, on the right, tea gushes; on the left, perfumes, on the right, feasts; in the middle, feasts and perfumes! —— Between the amphitheatre and the basilica the south nave, a huge square extends surrounded and criss-crossed by meandering waters and transparent lakes it is scattered with islands, mysterious refuges for pleasure In the lee of a grove Spangled with f lowers Where natural basalt columns And beaded stalactites here and there buttress the ceilings of damp caves it is crossed by avenues lined with cedars and firs; at this spot, it is the image of the Imperial Canal of China at another, it is a replica of the railway from Paris to Constantinople all vegetal life converges on it bananas, wheat, tea, coffee, rice, vines, etc., etc., etc., etc. In the centre of the square stand A series of buildings (New Holland) ACADEMICIANS BANKERS ARTISTS

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Appendix Là règnent les amours les plus vives et les plus profondes, etc. —— Dans la grande enceinte, l’on voit, un puits entouré des sables du Sahara; à droite, des steppes avec des tentes et des chariots; ailleurs, des savanes avec des buff les et des chevaux sauvages, neiges et glaces, terrains chauffés par combustion souterraine monts, forêts, f leuves, etc., etc. Cascades couvrant de leur écume les blocs de la Finlande, le granit de l’Altaï, le porphyre du Caucase, le marbre des Pyrénées, le calcaire des Alpes, les basaltes des Cordilières, les monceaux de fer de l’Afrique Niagara Lieux célèbres, jets d’eau reportant l’arc-en-ciel sur les bouquets des cocotiers, les bras allongés des cèdres, les touffes des chênes, les noirs chapeaux des sapins Fêtes

Division du sanctuaire 2 et 3. Division du côté droit 5; au côté droit 7; nombre π et ε ————————————————————————————— Peut-être faut-il mettre l’Amérique au milieu, à gauche l’Océanie, à droite l’Afrique. Cela changerait toute la distribution, Les deux Isthmes auraient bien leur place alors. ——

Appendix It is there that the strongest and deepest loves triumph, etc. —— In the great enclosure, a well surrounded by the sands of the Sahara can be glimpsed; to the right, are steppes with tents and chariots elsewhere, are savannahs with buffaloes and wild horses. snow and ice. grounds warmed by combustion below the surface of the earth mountains, forests, rivers, etc., etc. Waterfalls enveloping with their spray blocks of stone from Finland, Granite from the Altai, porphyry from the Caucasus, marble from the Pyrenees, limestone from the Alps, basalt from the cordillera, iron mounds from Africa Niagara Famous places, fountains projecting rainbows onto clusters of coconut palms, the outstretched arms of cedars, clumps of oaks, and the black hats of firs. Feasts Division 2 and 3 of the sanctuary. Division 5 on the right side; 7 on the right side; number π and ε ————————————————————————————— Perhaps America should be placed in the middle Oceania to the left, Africa to the right. That would change the whole distribution, both isthmuses would fit well then. ——

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Charles Duveyrier, ‘La Ville nouvelle ou le Paris des Saint-Simoniens’ Le Dieu bon a dit par la bouche de l’homme qu’il envoie: “j’établirai au milieu de mon peuple de prédilection une image de la nouvelle création que je veux tirer du cœur de l’homme et des entrailles du monde. Je bâtirai une ville qui soit un témoignage de ma munificence. Les étrangers viendront de loin au bruit de son apparition. Les habitants des villes et des campagnes y accourront en foule, et ils me croiront quand ils l’auront vue. Paris! ville qui bout tumultueusement, ainsi qu’une chaudière de cendres; ville semblable à ton peuple; comme lui, pâle et défigurée! Tu gis sur les bords de ton f leuve, avec tes noirs monuments et tes milliers de maisons ternes, comme un amas de roches et de pierres que le temps rassemble au bassin des vallées, et il en sort comme un grondement monotone d’une eau comprimée sous ces pierres, ou d’un feu caché qui va les crever. Paris! Paris! c’est sur les bords de ton f leuve, cependant, et dans ton enceinte que j’imprimerai le cachet de mes nouvelles largesses, et que je scellerai le premier anneau des fiançailles de l’homme et du monde! Tes rois et tes peuples ont obéi à mon éternelle volonté, quoiqu’ils l’ignorassent, lorsqu’ils se sont acheminés avec leurs palais et leurs maisons du sud au nord, vers la mer, la mer qui te sépare du grand bazar du monde, de la terre des Anglais. Ils ont marché avec la lenteur des siècles, et ils se sont arrêtés en une place magnifique. C’est là que reposera la tête de ma ville d’apostolat, de ma ville d’espoir et de désir, que je coucherai ainsi qu’un homme au bord de ton f leuve. Les palais de tes rois seront son front, et leurs parterres f leuris son visage. Je conserverai sa barbe de hauts marronniers, et la grille dorée qui l’environne comme un collier. Du sommet de cette tête, je balaierai le vieux temple chrétien, usé et troué, et son cloître de maison en guenilles; et sur cette place nette, je dresserai une chevelure d’arbres, qui retombera en tresses d’allées sur les deux faces des longues galeries, et je chargerai cette verte chevelure d’un bandeau sacré de palais blancs, retraite d’honneur et d’éclat, pour les invalides des établis et des chantiers. Des terrasses qui saillent sur la grande place, comme les muscles d’un cou vigoureux et d’une gorge forte, je ferai sortir les chants et les harmonies du colosse. Des troupes de musiciens et des chanteurs feront retentir chaque soir la sérénade en une seule voix. Je comblerai les fossés de cette place, et j’en ferai une large poitrine qui s’étalera, bombée et découverte, et qui se gonf lera d’orgueil, lorsqu’aux jours des carrousels pacifiques, elle sentira briller à sa surface, comme des joyaux de toutes couleurs, les

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Charles Duveyrier, ‘The New City or the Paris of the Saint-Simonians’ The Blessed Lord spoke through the words of his messenger: ‘In the midst of my chosen people I will create an image of the new creation I wish to draw forth from men’s hearts and from the bowels of the earth. I will build a city bearing testament to my bounteousness. Foreigners will come from afar on hearing the sounds of its emergence. The inhabitants of city and country will rush up in crowds, and they will believe me once they lay eyes on it. Paris! Tumultuous city, like a furnace filled with ashes; a city in the image of your people; like them, pale and disfigured! You lie on the banks of your river, with your black monuments and your thousands of drab houses, like a heap of rocks and stones which over time gathers in the hollow of a valley, and from within this heap can be heard the angry rumble of the water caught beneath it, or of a hidden fire which will shatter it. Paris! Paris! Yet it is what is on the banks of your river and within your walls that will be marked with the stamp of my new generosity, and it is there that I will seal the first ring betokening the marriage of man and world! Your kings and peoples have obeyed my eternal desire, though little did they know it when they migrated with their palaces and houses from the south to the north, towards the sea, the sea which separates you from the world’s great bazaar, the land of the English. They walked with the slowness of the centuries, and came to rest in a magnificent setting. It is here that the head of the city of my apostolate shall lie, my city of hope and desire, which I will lay down like a man on the banks of your river. The palaces of your kings will be his forehead, and their f lowerbeds his face. I will retain his beard of high chestnut trees, and the gilded fence which surrounds it like a necklace. I will sweep aside the worn out and cracked old Christian temple and its raggedy cloister house from the summit of this head; and on this trim new square I will stand a mane of trees which trail downwards in braided paths onto both sides of the long galleries, and will lade this green mane with a sacred headband of white palaces, a retreat of honour and splendour for convalescents drawn from the workbenches and building sites. I will draw forth the giant’s songs and harmonies from the balconies protruding over the great square, like the muscles of a vigorous neck and a powerful throat. Every evening serenades will resound as troupes of musicians and singers play and sing in unison. I will seal the ditches of this square, and I will shape it into a broad chest which will stretch out, ample and bare, and swell with pride when, on those days when peaceful carousels take place, it senses women more beautiful and exquisitely clad than the ladies of the courts of love and tournaments, men more brilliant and

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femmes plus belles et plus parées que les dames des cours d’amour et des tournois, les hommes plus brillants et plus forts que les chevaliers aux armes dorées, et les vieux grenadiers de Napoléon. Au-dessus de la poitrine de ma ville, au foyer sympathique d’où divergent et où convergent toutes les passions, là où les douleurs et les joies vibrent, je bâtirai mon temple, foyer de vie, plexus solaire du colosse. Les buttes du Roule et de Chaillot seront ses f lancs. J’y placerai la banque et l’université, les halles et les imprimeries. Autour de l’arc de l’Etoile, depuis la plaine de Monceau jusqu’au parc de la Muette, je sèmerai en demi-cercle les édifices consacrés au plaisir des bals, des spectacles et des concerts; les cafés, les restaurants avec leurs labyrinthes, leurs kiosques et leurs tapis de gazon, aux franges de f leurs. J’étendrai le bras gauche du colosse sur la rive de la Seine, il sera plié en arc à l’opposé du coude de Passy. Le corps des ingénieurs et les grands ateliers des découvertes en composeront la partie supérieure qui s’étendra vers Vaugirard, et je formerai l’avant-bras de la réunion de toutes les écoles spéciales des sciences physiques et de l’application des sciences aux travaux industriels. Dans l’intervalle qui embrassera le Gros-Caillou, le Champ-de-Mars et Grenelle, je grouperai tous les lycées que ma ville pressera sur sa mamelle gauche où gît l’université. Ce sera comme une corbeille de f leurs et de fruits, aux formes suaves, aux couleurs tendres; de larges pelouses comme des feuilles les sépareront et fourmilleront de troupes d’enfants comme de grappes d’abeilles. J’étendrai le bras droit du colosse, en signe de force, jusqu’à la gare Saint-Ouen, et je ferai de sa large main un vaste entrepôt où la rivière versera la nourriture qui désaltérera sa soif et rassasiera sa faim. Je remplirai ce bras des ateliers de menue industrie, des passages, des galeries, des bazars, qui perfectionnent et étalent aux yeux éblouis les merveilles du travail humain. Je consacrerai la Madeleine à la gloire industrielle et j’en ferai une épaulette d’honneur sur l’épaule droite de mon colosse. Je formerai la cuisse et la jambe droite de tous les établissements de grosse fabrique; le pied droit posera à Neuilly. La cuisse gauche offrira aux étrangers de longues files d’hôtels. La jambe gauche portera jusqu’au milieu du bois de Boulogne les édifices consacrés aux vieillards et aux infirmes, plus frais et plus luisants avec leurs parterres et leurs ruisseaux que les palais des lords et des princes. Ma ville est dans l’attitude d’un homme prêt à marcher, ses pieds sont d’airain; ils s’appuient sur une double route de pierre et de fer. Ici se fabriquent et se perfectionnent les chariots de roulage et les appareils de communication: ici, les chars luttent de vitesse. Par-dessus ces routes, le pont de Neuilly prolonge un arceau vers la face de ma ville et forme ainsi sa capitale entrée. Entre les genoux est un manège en ellipse; entre les jambes, un immense hippodrome. Voilà le colosse dont mon doigt creusera le tracé sur le sol. Les membres qui le composeront, divisés et mêlés, sont une masse monstrueuse, informe, inanimée, morte. Ils sont comme étaient les chairs, les os, les nerfs, la cervelle et les entrailles de l’homme avant que d’une secousse de ma volonté je

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powerful than knights with gilded swords, and aging grenadiers from the time of Napoleon all glittering on its surface, like motley coloured jewels. Above the chest of my city, within the pleasant seat whence all passions diverge and converge, the place through which pleasure and pain resonate, I will build my temple, the life source and solar plexus of the giant. The hillocks of Le Roule and Chaillot will be its sides. I will position the bank and the university there, along with the markets and printing works. Around the Arc de L’Étoile, from the plain of Monceau as far as the park at La Muette, I will set out in semi-circles the buildings devoted to the pleasures of balls, spectacles and concerts; cafés and restaurants with mazes, pavilions and lawns bordered with f lowers. I will stretch out the left arm of the giant along the banks of the Seine. It will form a bow at the bend in the river at Passy. The corps of engineers and the great workshops of discovery will form the upper part which will extend towards Vaugirard, and I will create the forearm from a merger of all of the schools specializing in the physical sciences and in the application of science to industrial works. In the gap between le Gros-Caillou, the Champ de Mars and Grenelle, I will group together all the secondary schools which my city will compress onto its left breast next to where the university stands. It will be like a basket of f lowers and fruits, with smooth shapes and tender colours; wide lawns like leaves will separate them and will crawl with troupes of children like bees on clusters of f lowers. I will stretch out the right arm of the giant, as a sign of strength, as far as the Saint-Ouen station, and I will make its hand into a vast warehouse into which the river will pour the nourishment that will quench its thirst and satisfy its hunger. I will fill this arm with the workshops of small industry, with arcades, galleries, and bazaars which bring the marvels of human work to perfection and spread them out for all to behold with wonderment. I will dedicate la Madeleine to the glory of industry and I will make it into an epaulette of honour on the right arm of my giant. I will form the thigh and right leg from all the heavy industries combined; the right foot will be set down in Neuilly. The left thigh will provide long chains of hotels for foreigners. All the way to the Bois de Boulogne, the left leg will bear buildings dedicated to old people and the sick, which, with their f lowerbeds and streams will be more glistening than the palaces of lords and princes. My city has the bearing of a man about to step forward, its feet are made of bronze; they are supported by a dual road of stone and iron. It is here that the haulage carts and other devices for transportation are constructed: here, the wagons battle to overtake each other. Above these roads, the Pont de Neuilly extends an arch towards the foremost part of my city, and thus serves as its most important point of entry. Between its knees is a set of fairground attractions in the form of an ellipse; between its legs, an immense racecourse. This is the giant whose outline I will trace on the ground with my finger. Its limbs, lying separated and in disarray, are a monstrous, formless, inanimate, dead mass. They are akin to the state of man’s f lesh, bones, nerves, brain and entrails before I made this inconceivable and terrifying mass arise in the form of a

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fisse se dresser cette masse inconcevable et effrayante en un être harmonieux et vivant: avant que les os s’emboîtassent les uns dans les autres; que les nerfs, les veines, les chairs, s’appliquassent sur les os; que la cervelle versât dans le crâne sa membrane fragile; que la tête prît place sur les épaules, le coeur, le foie sous les côtes, les entrailles aux cavités du bassin; et que l’homme parût superbe, radieux, merveilleusement ordonné comme un seul édifice. Ainsi je ferai sortir de leur chaos hideux les membres et les organes de ma ville. Je les appellerai à grands cris de voix d’hommes et d’instruments de musique; et tous, doués de mouvement, prendront leur place. On verra les manuscrits, les livres, les cartes et les rouleaux de dessins et d’images de la Bibliothèque, s’avancer en une armée innombrable vers la galerie du Louvre, bâtie des mains du dernier de mes capitaines. Ils seront portés sur le dos de soldats. Des régiments auront été dressés à cette manœuvre; les officiers les coucheront en ordre sur leurs rayons et dans leurs cases, et le cerveau de ma ville se formera. On verra tous les vieillards illustres de la science et de l’art dont la vie est encore un travail, mais un travail d’observation, d’attention et de jugement, entrer par files au frontail et aux ailes du palais, et ma ville aura des yeux et des oreilles. Je ferai descendre des hauteurs de Sainte-Geneviève et du faubourg SaintGermain, tous les savants emportant leurs chaires, leurs salles, et leurs instruments d’expérimentation, et les animaux, les plantes et les arbres du Jardin-du-Roi, et les trésors de sciences naturelles enfouis dans son cabinet. Je ferai descendre les laboratoires, l’Observatoire avec ses machines et ses lunettes, l’école Polytechnique, l’école des Arts et Métiers, et tous les collèges. Ce sera une longue procession. Je mettrai au centre l’université tout entière, et les académies, précédées des imprimeries noires et graisseuses; en tête seront les vieillards, les malades et les infirmes; les immenses hôpitaux de la Salpétrière, de Saint-Louis et de l’HôtelDieu, avec leurs ailes et leurs façades; et leurs lits innombrables se lèveront du sol, et marcheront, donnant l’exemple. Puis viendra le bataillon des aubergistes, des hôteliers et de leurs serviteurs, qui ont le sentiment de l’ordre et de la continuité du service personnel. Cette caravane sera longue et marchera au pas lent de la science, de la patience et de la vieillesse. Elle coulera silencieusement avec ses habitations, et elle se couchera aux bords du f leuve, depuis le Palais-Bourbon jusqu’à Passy et de Passy à Vaugirard, depuis le milieu des Champs-Elysées, par Chaillot, l’arc de l’Etoile et la Muette, jusqu’au milieu du bois, et formera ainsi les os, les nerfs et les chairs de toute la moitié gauche du corps de mon colosse. En même temps tous les entrepôts aux vins, aux blés, les marchés et les abattoirs, les grosses usines, les fonderies, les ateliers de construction des mécaniques avec leurs rouages, leurs chaudières et leurs cylindres de fonte, leurs enclumes, leurs marteaux, leurs souff lets et leurs laminoirs, les charpentiers et les forgerons en tête, se lèveront. Et aussi se lèveront les établis des travaux qui font plus briller la main de l’homme que la force des machines; les tabletiers, les fabricants de meubles, les tailleurs, les modistes, les chapeliers, les bijoutiers et les horlogers; les magasins et les boutiques des quartiers Saint-Denis, Saint-Antoine et Saint-Martin; l’immense bazar du Palais-

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harmonious and energetic being with a jolt of my will; before, that is, the bones came to fit into each other, the nerves, veins and f lesh came to attach themselves to the bones, the brain slid its fragile membrane into the skull, the head found its place on the shoulders, the heart and the liver under the ribs, the entrails in the spaces of the pelvis, thus before man emerged: superb, radiant, and marvellously well-ordered like a single building. So will I cast forth the limbs and organs of my city from their hideous chaos. I will summon them loudly with men’s voices and musical instruments; endowed with movement, they will all find their place. The manuscripts, books, maps and rolls of drawing and images belonging to the Library will be seen moving like a countless army towards the Louvre gallery. Regiments will have been called up for this manoeuvre; the officers will order them to lie down on the shelves and in their compartments, and the brain of my city will thereby take form. All the illustrious old men of science and art whose life is still devoted to work (albeit a labour of observation, thoughtfulness and appraisal) will be seen moving in file towards the browband and the wings of the palace; my city will then have its eyes and its ears. I will bring down all the scientists from the heights of Sainte-Geneviève and from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and they will carry with them their rostrums, classrooms and instruments of experimentation, and the animals, plants and trees of the Jardin du Roi, and the treasures of the natural sciences which lie hidden in their cabinets. I will bring down the laboratories, the Observatory with its machines and telescopes, the École Polytechnique, the École des Arts et Métiers, and all the colleges. This will be a long procession. I will place the university in its entirety at the centre, along with the academies, preceded by the greasy black print works; first will come the old men, the sick and the infirm; the immense hospitals of La Salpétrière, Saint-Louis and the Hôtel-Dieu, with their wings and facades and their innumerable beds will raise themselves from the ground and begin walking, setting an example. Then will come the battalion of innkeepers, hoteliers and their servants, who have a keen sense of order and of the continuity of domestic service. This caravan will be long and will walk with the steady pace of science and age. Its dwellings will f low silently through it and it will lay down on the edge of the river, from the Palais-Bourbon to Passy and from Passy to Vaugirard, from the middle of the Champs Elysées, through Chaillot, the Arc de l’Étoile and La Muette as far as the middle of the Bois de Boulogne, thus forming the bones, nerves and f lesh of the entire left side of my giant’s body. At the same time, all the depots holding wine, wheat, markets and abattoirs, large factories, foundries, workshops for the building of machines, with their cog wheels, boilers, and cast iron cylinders, their anvils, hammers, bellows and rolling mills, and their carpenters and ironsmiths forming the vanguard, will rise up. So too will rise those accustomed to the kind of work which makes the product of man’s labour shine more than powerful machines; cabinet-makers, furniture makers, tailors, milliners, hatters, jewellers and watchmakers; the shops and boutiques of the neighbourhoods of Saint-Denis, Saint-Antoine and SaintMartin; the immense bazaar of the Palais-Royal and the arcades where objects are

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Royal et des passages où sont artistement rangées en éventail les riches ciselures d’or et d’argent, les pierreries, les cristaux et les bijoux d’émail, les plumes et les tissus de l’Inde et de l’Afrique, les étoffes lustrées aux figures fraîches et éclatantes, les meubles de bois colorés et odoriférants, les tentures, les candélabres avec leurs globes damasquinés. Toute cette grande armée industrielle, hommes et femmes, avec leurs marchandises, leurs instruments, leurs chantiers et leurs maisons, rangés par troupes, et renfermant au centre la Banque et ses administrations, le Trésor, le Timbre, la Monnaie; toute cette armée active, bruyante, animée, marchant d’un pas vif, et fouettant l’air de ses gestes et de ses cris de joie, faisant voler autour d’elle, comme un nuage d’encens, la poussière du sol, s’ébranlera et roulera par-dessus les églises, les quais et les quartiers retardataires, et viendra de la Madeleine à la gare Saint-Ouen, et de l’Elysée-Bourbon, par Monceau et les Sablons, jusqu’à Neuilly, former les membres rebondis et fermes de la droite de mon colosse. Je déracinerai des bords du boulevard les opéras et tous les théâtres avec leur matériel d’instruments, de costumes et de décors, et leurs troupes passionnées, et les salles de danse et de concert, et les jardins aux fruits de neige et de glace, aux liqueurs brillantes comme le métal, et tous les édifices consacrés aux extases de l’esprit et au délire des sens. Ils s’enlèveront ainsi qu’une troupe de danseurs et de danseuses, dont les tressaillements répandront le plaisir jusqu’aux extrémités du corps de mon colosse, et enlacés les uns dans les autres, tournoyant sur eux-mêmes, ils viendront se grouper autour de l’étoile. Ainsi, par ma volonté et par les bras de mes enfants, sera bâtie, en un seul édifice, ma ville vivante. Et pour aucun ma volonté ne fera scandale ou servitude; car de ces hommes et de ces femmes, de ces vieillards et de ces enfants, et de ces édifices, ces magasins, ces chantiers, il n’y aura ni un clou, ni un cheveu qui bouge autrement que de son propre mouvement et par sa libre volonté. Beaucoup n’auront point de cette vie le sentiment de leur destinée. Ils resteront dans leur chaos de pavés boueux et de masures tremblantes. La ville ancienne reposera sur les épaules de la nouvelle. Fardeau léger sur ses larges épaules; fardeau sacré, car le colosse ainsi chargé de son vieux père, pressant son enfant sous son bras, sera, comme Enée, le symbole de la religion de l’homme qui sort de la guerre et appelle la femme. Accourez donc! accourez tous, peuples du Nord et du Midi, Prussiens, Anglais, Russes, Saxons. Vous vîntes chez mon peuple bien-aimé vous enivrer de ses raisins et de ses femmes, et nourrir vos chevaux des arbustes de ses jardins, parce que ce peuple, dans sa fureur, s’était hérissé comme un porc-épic, et qu’il courait par vos campagnes, emportant du bout de ses pointes les pans de vos places fortes, et les quartiers de vos villes, et foulant sous ses pieds vos moissons! Venez tous! accourez à cette heure. Ce peuple est enfin devenu industrieux et magnifique; le premier, au nom de ses frères, il a mis la main dans mon trésor. Venez! ici la terre se gonf le du désir de vivre de la vie de l’homme; ici la terre se donne à l’homme, comme une femme à son amant. La ville qu’habite le peuple est vivante, ornée, sonore; elle pense, elle travaille, elle aime, elle rit, elle danse.

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set our artistically in a fan-shaped display featuring rich engravings of gold and silver, precious gems, crystals and enamel jewels, feathers and cloths from India and Africa, glossy fabrics covered with novel and vivid designs, brightly coloured and sweetly-scented wooden furniture, curtains and candelabras with their damascened globes. This whole great industrial army of men and women, carrying their wares, instruments, workshops and homes, arranged in troupes, holding at its centre the Bank and its administration, the Treasury, the Stamp Office, the Mint; this whole animated, boisterous army, walking with a brisk step, and beating the air with gestures and cries of joy, kicking up around it, like a cloud of incense, the dust of the earth, will move off and rumble over the churches, the quays and the musty old neighbourhoods, and will proceed from Madeleine to Saint-Ouen station, and from the Elysée-Palace, through Monceau and Les Sablons, to Neuilly, forming the solid, well-developed limbs of my giant. I will uproot from the edges of the boulevard the operas and all the theatres with their paraphernalia of instruments, costumes and scenery, and their enthusiastic players, and the ballrooms and concert halls, and the gardens with their fruits of snow and ice, their liqueurs which glisten like metal, and all the buildings dedicated to the ecstasy of the mind and the frenzies of the senses. They will leap up into the air like a troupe of male and female dancers whose pulsating movements will spread pleasure to the extremities of my giant’s body. Knitting their bodies together and swirling around each other, they will gather around the Place de l’Étoile. My living city will thus be built in a single edifice by the force of my will and by the arms of my children. And my will shall neither scandalize nor reduce anyone to servitude; because of all these men and women, old people and children, and of these edifices, shops and building sites, not a single nail or hair shall move for any other reason than its own free will. There are many who will never in this life come to appreciate their own destiny. They will stay behind in the chaos of muddy paving stones and tottering hovels. The old city will sit on the shoulders of the new. This will be a light burden on his broad shoulders, a sacred burden, because in thus bearing his aging father on his back, and clutching his own child under his arm, the giant will come to resemble Aeneas, the symbol of the religion of man who emerges out of war to summon woman. Hurry, then! Hurry all ye peoples of the North and the Midi, Prussians, Englishmen, Russians and Saxons. You came to the home of my beloved people to intoxicate yourself with their wines and women, and to feed your horses on the shrubs in their gardens, because this people, in their fury, hoisted themselves up like a porcupine, and because they overran your countryside, carrying off pieces of your fortified towns on the tips of their shoes, and trampling your harvests under their feet! Come ye all! Hurry, now. This people have finally become industrious and magnificent; they were the first to reach for my treasures on behalf of their brothers. Come! Here, there earth swells with human life’s desire to live; here the earth gives itself to man, like a woman to her lover. The city inhabited by this people is lively, ornate, and sonorous; it thinks, it works, it loves, it laughs and dances.

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Et les peuples accourront, et ils sauront qu’ils portent en eux-mêmes les formes et le plan de ma ville; ils la reconnaîtront: ils descendront comme en extase devant la face et les membres du géant. Ma ville est ample et de haute taille, mais nul ne craint de s’y perdre. Que vous veniez du Nord ou du Midi, des bancs de l’Allemagne ou des chantiers de l’Angleterre; que l’esprit ou la chair soit votre orgueil, que votre vie soit le mystère ou le mouvement, vous marcherez d’un pied sûr, dans mon colosse, vers le lieu que votre cœur appelle, à travers les places ombragées et les canaux remplis d’une eau limpide et les fontaines jaillissantes, entourés d’édifices dont les formes expriment le nom, vous marcherez! Aux lieux qu’habitent les hommes de science, de contemplation, d’expérience, ceux qui sont l’ordre et la règle de la cité, le silence et le mystère règnent, les arbres régulièrement plantés sur les places prolongent au milieu du jour l’ombre et la fraîcheur de la nuit. Les monuments s’élèvent en surfaces planes, les murs tombent droit, se coupent en équerre et s’avancent en saillies brisées; le jour bondissant sur ces saillies ne fait luire sous les pilastres que des échos de sa lumière. Ce sont des bandes parallèles de hauts portiques à plafonds plats. Ce sont des places anguleuses au fond desquelles les monuments semblent descendre d’une grotte invisible, comme les palais de larmes du creux des montagnes, ou monter au ciel en légers cristaux. Les f lèches et les clochers abondent, et les gerbes d’arêtes en forme de prismes, et les treillages à losanges déliés, et les ogives sveltes et pointues. Les merveilles de ma terre bien-aimée sont rassemblées au jardin d’un palais qui fait voir des animaux géants sous un portail égyptien couvert de fresques symboliques. Le chimiste est appelé vers le sol par les formes basses de son laboratoire aux pilastres druidiques, au triangle aplati; et des terrasses bordées de festons, chargées de f lèches et d’aiguilles, élèvent au-dessus des nuées l’astronome et son télescope. La Seine coule en silence et marie la couleur de ses eaux au milieu de ces monuments chargés d’incrustations, de grisailles, de peintures pâles; et ces couleurs et toutes ces formes se trouvent harmonieusement rassemblés dans l’immense université, dont les ailes, les bas-côtés et les façades portent la robe violette de l’évêque du Christ, et dont le pâté central se lance jusqu’à une prodigieuse hauteur en une masse triangulaire de clochers blanchis et dentelés, qui semblent, quand le soleil couchant frappe leurs pointes argentées, une pyramide de cierges enf lammés. Aux quartiers qu’habitent les hommes d’action et de force, là où sont les établissements de la grosse et de menue industrie, là où le cuivre et le fer sont pétris et moulés comme la pâte, où les troncs des bois durcis dans les eaux tièdes de la Gambie et du f leuve des Amazones sont coupés par tranches comme les chairs d’un fruit fondant; et là aussi où les cristaux et les métaux sont taillés en dentelles et en pierreries, où le lin et la soie sont tissés plus finement que la toile d’un insecte; dans toute la droite de mon colosse, les édifices s’élèvent en formes arrondies et bossues comme les muscles bombés d’un homme vigoureux. Les rues sont sinueuses comme des anneaux qui s’entrelacent. Les murs sont couchés à terre, fermes et gonf lés comme le turban d’un pacha, ou suspendus en l’air transparents et légers en des tresses de roseaux.

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And the people will gather round quickly, and they will know that they carry within them the shapes and the map of my city; they will recognise it: they will drop as if in ecstasy before the face and the limbs of the giant. My city is vast and tall, but no-one fears becoming lost there. Whether you come from the North or the Midi, from the workbenches of Germany or the building sites of England, whether you take pride in the spirit or the f lesh, and whether your life is mystery or movement, you will walk sure-footedly, in my giant, to the place dictated to you by your heart, past the shaded squares and canals filled with crystalclear water and the gushing fountains, surrounded by buildings whose names are expressed in their shape, you will walk! In those places where the men of science, contemplation and experience reside, those who are the source of order and rule in the city, silence and mystery hold sway, the trees planted at regular intervals on the squares extend the shade and freshness of the night into the heart of the day. The monuments stand on f lat surfaces, the walls form straight lines down to the ground, intersecting at right angles and advancing in broken protrusions; when daylight is cast on these protrusions only its palest echoes reach the space below the pilasters. These are parallel strips of tall porticos with f lat ceilings. These are angular squares at the rear end of which the monuments seem to descend from an invisible cave, like palaces of tears in the hollow of the mountains, or to ascend into heaven in light crystals. Spires and steeples abound, as well as clusters of ridged roofs in the shape of prisms, latticework in svelte diamond shapes, and slender ogives which narrow to a point. The wonders of my beloved earth are gathered together in the garden of a palace where giant animals can be seen under an Egyptian gate covered with symbolic frescoes. The chemist is drawn towards the ground by the low-slung forms of his laboratory with its druidic pilasters and its f lattened triangle; and festooned balconies displaying arrows and needles elevate the astronomer and his telescope above the clouds. The Seine f lows in silence and mingles different coloured waters amidst all these monuments covered in inlays, grisaille and pale paintings; and these colours and all these forms are brought together harmoniously in the huge university, whose wings, side aisles and facades bear the purple robe of the bishop of Christ, and whose central block rises to a prodigious height in a triangular mass of whitewashed and jagged steeples, which, when the setting sun is cast on their silvery peaks, resemble a pyramid of blazing candles. In the neighbourhoods where men of action and strength dwell, where the factories of light and heavy industry can be found, where copper and iron are shaped and moulded like pastry dough, where the tree trunks which have hardened in the warm waters of the Gambia and the Amazon are sliced like the f lesh of a luscious fruit, and where crystals and metals are hewn into filigree and precious stones, where f lax and silk are woven more finely than an insect’s web; all over the right side of my giant, buildings spring up in rounded, squat forms like the muscles of an athletic man.

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Il s’élève du sol des colonnades et des voûtes qui sont semblables à des champs de plantes grasses dont les larges feuilles s’unissent en arceaux massifs, ou à des forêts de minces bambous au sommet desquels reposent des cloches, comme de f leurs sur leurs tiges. Les places circulaires n’y sont pas plantées de quinconces régulièrement serrés et étouffés; des bouquets d’arbres s’élèvent çà et là comme les touffes d’herbes dans la campagne. Car ici la lumière et le son circulent avec vitesse et dans leur plénitude. Du milieu de ces places on voit surgir à l’horizon les courbes paraboliques des fonderies et des forges, les cônes noircis des fours, les cheminées cylindriques ouvrant leurs gueules pleines de f lammes, comme des serpents dressés sur leurs queues, les tours en tuyaux pour la fonte des plombs, et les chapeaux de magiciens qui couvrent les leviers, les grandes roues, les chaudières. On voit se mouvoir au milieu des airs d’immenses engins qui marquent le temps dans l’espace; des étincelles jaillissent, et des nuées de vapeur montent dans le ciel qui retentit des coups des marteaux et des haches, du grincement des vis et des scies, des tournoiements des laminoirs, des battements cadencés des pompes à bascules et des chants des travailleurs. Les couleurs éclatantes et fières sont partout jetées, depuis le vermillon, symbole de santé, jusqu’au jaune éblouissant des rayons du soleil, symbole de richesse. Des milliers de candélabres, groupés en guirlandes autour des places, ou soutenus dans les airs sur les trépieds de cariatides, prolongent dans toute la droiture de ma ville, comme les lustres dans les théâtres, la clarté du jour au milieu de la nuit. Sur la mamelle droite de mon colosse s’étale la Banque, et c’est là que toute la magnificence de la force et de la richesse se trouve déployée en un seul édifice; c’est une assemblée des corps dans l’espace. C’est l’univers avec ses sphères entassées les unes sur les autres; elles brillent de l’éclat de feu du soleil, de l’argent blanc de la lune, des couleurs brunes et vertes de la terre et des mers; et sur une dernière rangée de globes étincelants de la nacre des huîtres du Japon s’élève en pente douce un dôme d’azur tacheté d’or. Des touffes de colonnes d’herbes géantes, des grappes de fruits et de f leurs saillent des intervalles; et ces sphères entassées reposent dans une vaste enceinte brodée, dentelée, et faisant luire le rouge pourpre de la robe des Césars. Et au centre de ma ville, entre les globes de la Banque étalés en un large espace et les cierges de l’Académie dressés à une immense hauteur, plus haut que ces cierges, plus étendu que ces globes, est mon temple. Par tous les noms que je me suis donnés à la face de la terre, voici que j’enracine dans le sol et que je déploie dans l’espace un temple où je puis graver mon vrai nom. Mon temple est mon soleil d’équité, mon nœud d’alliance parmi les hommes, ma f leur de grâce et de pureté, mon sourire de tendresse et de fécondité; mon temple est l’espoir du monde. Mon temple est mon amour vivant, la joie de mon cœur, la beauté de ma face, ma main de caresse et de charité.

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The streets are sinuous like interlocking rings. The walls slope towards the ground, solid and bloated like a pasha’s turban, or hang in the air, transparent and light like braids of reeds. Rising from the ground are colonnades and vaults which resemble fields of luxuriant plants whose broad leaves come together in great hoops, or forests of slender bamboos at the summit which sit bells, like f lowers on their stems. The circular squares are not regularly planted in stif ling, staggered rows; clumps of trees rise up here and there like tufts of grass in the countryside. Here light and sound circulate with speed and in abundance. From the centre of these squares, the parabolic curves of the foundries and forges can be seen on the horizon, along with the blackened cones of the furnaces, the cylindrical chimneys opening their f laming mouths, like snakes standing on their tails, the pipe-like towers for lead smelting, and the magicians’ hats which cover the levers, the large cogwheels and the boilers. Huge machines which mark time in space move through the air; sparks f lash, and clouds of steam rise in the sky which echoes with the sounds of hammers and axes, the shrill noises of screws and saws, the twirling of rolling mills, the rhythmical beating of pumps and the workers’ songs. Bright, proud colours are scattered everywhere, from vermilion, a symbol of health to the dazzling yellow of the sun’s rays, a symbol of wealth. Thousands of candelabras, clustered in garlands around the squares, or suspended in mid-air on tripods of caryatids, extend the brightness of the day into the middle of the night throughout the ride side of my city, like the centre lights in theatres. It is on the right breast of my giant that the Bank sits, and it is there that all the magnificence of strength and wealth is set out in a single building; it is an assembly of bodies in space. It is the universe with its spheres stacked one on top of the other; they shine with the dazzling f lame of the sun, the silvery white of the moon, the brown and green colours of the earth and the seas; and, on a last row of globes which gleam with Japanese mother-of-pearl, an azure dome speckled with gold stands on a gentle slope. Columns of giant grasses, clusters of fruits and f lowers protrude from the gaps; and these heaped spheres sit upon a vast embroidered and crenelated surrounding wall which causes the red and purple robes of the Caesars to gleam. In the centre of my city, between the globes of the Bank which are set out in a large space and the candles of the Academy which stand at an immense height, greater even than the height of those candles and wider than the breadth of those globes, is my temple. Though I have taken many names on the face of the earth, now I will root in the soil and set out in space a temple on which I can engrave my true name. My temple is my sun of equity, my bond of union with men, my f lower of grace and purety, my smile of tenderness and fertility; my temple is the hope of the world. My temple is my living love, the joy of my heart, the beauty of my face, the caresses and charity which come forth from my hands.

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Levez vos fronts! vieux temple des Juifs! ruines de Thèbes et de Palmyre! Parthénon! Alhambra! levez vos fronts courbés dans la poussière! Dômes de SaintPierre et de Saint-Paul! clocher du Kremlin! mosquées des Arabes! pagodes de l’Inde et du Japon! palais de mes rois! temple de mes christs! morts et vivants! levez vos fronts et pliez le genou! MON TEMPLE EST UNE FEMME! Autour de son vaste corps, jusqu’à sa ceinture, montent en spirale, à travers les vitraux, des galeries qui s’échelonnent comme les guirlandes d’une robe de bal. Du haut de ces galeries, on voit par-dessus les toitures de verre des imprimeries, par-dessus les kiosques et les tentes bariolées des halles, par-dessus les théâtres et les cafés, et les salles de concert, groupés autour de l’Etoile, comme des bijoux de fantaisie; on voit le grand cirque, qui semble une coupe avec sa bordure de prairie et ses ciselures de hauts platanes, et ses écuries comme deux anses sculptées aux deux bouts. Et les chevaux de course, quand leur ventre rase la terre, semblent des fourmis qui bougent à peine. Sa robe descend en arrière sur la grande place des parades, et forme des plis de sa queue un immense amphithéâtre où l’on vient jouir du spectacle des pacifiques carrousels, et respirer le frais sous des orangers. Le bras droit de la bien-aimée de ma ville est tourné vers les coupoles et les dômes industriels, et sa main repose sur une sphère au sommet de cristal, à la surface enluminée de vert tendre des jeunes gazons, du jaune argenté des blés mûrs, et de toutes les nuances vives que les belles campagnes épanouissent sous les premiers baisers du matin. Cette sphère forme en dedans du temple l’emplacement de mon théâtre sacré, dont les décors sont des panoramas. J’ai mis dans la main gauche de l’épouse de mon colosse un sceptre d’azur et d’argent qui touche à terre et se marie dans les airs avec les f lèches droites et argentées de l’Académie, et son pourtour de pilastres violets. Du sommet élargi de ce sceptre monte, en pyramide affilée, une f lamme, phare immense dont la lumière éclate au loin et rend visible au sein des nuits le sourire de son visage. Les escaliers latéraux des industriels et des savants forment les plis de sa chaussure, le large escalier des prêtres et du peuple monte à travers les plis de sa robe entr’ouverte et agrafée. On dirait à l’éclat des vitraux qui serpentent autour de son corps, le long de la spirale des galeries, qui rayonnent aux rosaces de sa poitrine, que les pierreries des cinq continents sont dans sa robe et dans son corsage. J’ai chargé ses bras de riches bracelets qui saillent en terrasses damasquinées à jour. J’ai tissu sa ceinture de lames métalliques, espacées et vibrantes. C’est là que repose le nouvel orgue, à la voix de cuivre, d’argent et d’airain, dont les mélodies et les harmonies descendent comme une chute d’eau sur le plancher de mon temple, et jaillissent de sa bouche, de ses oreilles, de ses yeux, des intervalles qui séparent les perles de son cou et les tresses de ses cheveux, et des créneaux de son magnifique diadème, semences de vie que ma bien-aimée répand dans la ville et dans le monde. Voilà mon temple!

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Raise your brows! Ancient temple of the Jews! Ruins of Thebes and Palmyra! Parthenon! Alhambra! Arise from the dust where you crouch! Domes of Saint Peter and Saint Paul! Spires of the Kremlin! Mosques of the Arabs! Pagodas of India and China! Palaces of my kings! Temple of my christs! The dead and the living! Raise your brows and fall to your knees! MY TEMPLE IS A WOMAN! Around her vast body, as high as her belt, galleries rise in spirals, through the stained glass windows, spreading out like garlands on a ball gown. From the top of these galleries, one can see over the glass roofs of the printing works, over the stalls and many-coloured tents of the markets, over the theatres and cafes, and the concert halls which are clustered around the Place de l’Étoile, like costume jewellery; one can see the great amphitheatre, which resembles a goblet with its border of prairies and its engravings of tall plane trees, and its stables which resemble two basket-handle arches. And the racehorses, when their underbellies skim the ground, resemble ants which barely move. Her gown descends as far as the parade square, and in the folds trailing behind her forms a huge amphitheatre where people come to enjoy the spectacle of the pacific carrousels, and to breathe in the fresh air under orange trees. The right arm of the beloved of my city is turned towards the cupolas and the industrial domes, and her hand rests on a crystal-topped sphere whose surface is illuminated with the tender green of thriving lawns, with the silvery yellow of ripe wheat, and with all the lively nuances with which beautiful country scenes burgeon in the first kisses of morning light. This sphere inside the temple is the site of my sacred theatre, in which panoramas serve as scenery. In the left hand of the bride of my giant I placed a silver and sky blue sceptre which reaches to the ground and rises as high as the vertical silvery spires of the Academy and the violet pilasters which surround it. On the broad summit of this sceptre stands a pointed f lame in the shape of a pyramid, a huge lighthouse whose light shines afar and illuminates her smile in deepest night. The side staircase taken by the industrialists and scientists forms the folds of her shoe and the broad stairs taken by the priests and the people rises through the folds of her half-open staple gown. In the dazzle of the stained glass windows which wind around her body, along the spiral of galleries which shine forth from the rose windows of her chest, one would think that precious gems from all five continents were in her dress and bodice. I wove her belt with rich bracelets which stand out on damascened balconies. There sits the new copper-, silver- and bronze-voiced organ from which melodies and harmonies issue like a waterfall on the f loor of my temple, and gush from its mouth, from its ears, from its eyes, from the gaps which separate the pearls of its neck and the braids of its hair, and from the gaps in its magnificent diadem, the seed of life which my beloved spreads throughout the city and the world. That is my temple!

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Mon temple est mon amour vivant, la joie de mon cœur, la beauté de ma face, ma main de caresse et de charité! Voilà mon temple! Voilà ma ville! — Venez donc, accourez de toutes les parties de la terre, ô hommes! L’enfantement de ma ville sera un temps de réjouissance inimaginable. Je ferai passer sur ses membres d’airain et de pierre, sur son visage de f leurs, dans sa barbe et ses cheveux de bois élancés et touffus, une musique retentissante et suave; ouragan qui balaie les montagnes, brise molle qui se balance sur les eaux bleues de la mer. Je ferai tressaillir tout son corps d’une danse nouvelle; et quand viendra le soir, je l’endormirai dans un vêtement d’étincelantes lumières. Alors vous sortirez en foule, et vous monterez aux collines de Sèvres et de Meudon, au parc de Saint-Cloud, au Calvaire, à Montmartre, à Ménilmontant, sur les buttes de Chaumont; vous vous grouperez dans les bois de Romainville et de Clamart, comme sur les bords d’un cirque immense, pour contempler la nouvelle création dans tout son éclat, pour voir le géant, homme de feu, dormir, couché sur son lit noir. Des ballons vous porteront tour à tour dans les airs, afin de le voir dans toutes ses dimensions et dans son ensemble. Sa chevelure et sa barbe sont éclairées par un météore de lueurs pâles, qui se jouent dans les massifs, comme l’air et la lumière se jouent dans les cheveux. Ses yeux sont deux soleils tournoyants, éblouissants comme serait mon soleil si je gardais en lui les rayons qu’il disperse dans l’espace, et que je le voulusse montrer seul quand il fait nuit. De sa bouche s’échappe un bouquet de f lammes et de jets d’étincelles qui montent à travers les airs, comme une création d’un monde d’étoiles que ma terre envoie dans mon ciel. Sa jambe droite et son bras droit, et la partie droite de son ventre, étincellent d’un feu rouge. C’est un tricot de pourpre qui colle à la peau et fait ressortir les saillies de ses muscles. Sur son épaule gauche, et sur toute la partie gauche de son corps, est jeté son manteau f lamboyant d’un feu violet, comme la grande mer des îles de l’Inde. Le temple brille de la double blancheur des perles et des diamants. Le bandeau de palais qui fait le tour de sa chevelure, est une couronne de gigantesques pierreries, vertes, jaunes, rosées, bleues d’azur. Et le colosse, ainsi embrasé de feux de toutes couleurs, illumine au loin les campagnes, et montre aux hommes un jour qu’ils n’ont pas vu. Voilà, dit le Dieu bon qui fait largesse aux hommes, voilà le joyau que je tirerai des coffres de ma munificence! Voilà la première pierre de mon édifice! Je veux renouveler la face et les entrailles de ma terre. Je veux que les hommes déplacent les mers, et qu’ils fassent surgir de nouveaux continents; je veux qu’ils prennent ma terre dans leurs mains, et qu’ils la taillent et la polissent, ainsi qu’un nouveau diamant de mon incommensurable couronne. Terre! Je t’inonderai des pluies de lumière de mon soleil, et ma volonté te promènera à travers les harmonies du ciel, aux yeux éblouis de tous les mondes!”

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My temple is my living love, the joy of my heart, the beauty of my face, the caresses and charity which come forth from my hands. That is my temple! That is my city! — Come then, hasten from every corner of the earth, o men! The birth of my city will be a time of unimaginable rejoicing. I will send sweet, resonant music f loating over his limbs of bronze and style, his face of f lowers, through his beard and his sleek thick hair; it will be a hurricane sweeping through the mountains, a gentle breeze ruff ling the blue waters of the sea. I will make his whole body tremble with a new dance, and at nightfall, I will send him to sleep in a costume of glittering lights. You will come out in crowds, and you will ascend the hills at Sèvres and Meudon, Le Calvaire, Montmartre, Ménilmontant and the Buttes de Chaumont; you will gather together in the woods of Romainville and Clamart, as if on the edges of an immense amphitheatre, to contemplate the new creation in all its splendour, to see the giant, a man of fire, lie asleep in his dark bed. Balloons will carry you in turns up into the sky, so that you may observe his every dimension in perspective. His hair and his beard are illuminated by the pale lights of a meteor which also plays across the mountain peaks, just as air and light play across hair. His eyes are two twirling suns which are as dazzling as my own sun would be if at my bidding it were to withhold the rays which it radiates through space and set them free only at the fall of night. A cluster of f lames and showers of sparks escapes from his mouth and rises through the air, like some stellar creation which my earth sends into the sky. His right leg and his right arm, and the right side of his stomach sparkle with a red f lame. It is a purple sweater which cleaves to the skin and accentuates his bulging muscles. His left shoulder and the entire left side of his body is covered by a gleaming overcoat of purple f lame, like the Indian ocean. The temple scintillates with the double whiteness of pearls and diamonds. The headband of palaces which encircles his head is a crown of gigantic precious stones: green, yellow, pinkish and azure blue. And the giant, thus set aglow with f lames of every colour, lights up faraway lands and reveals to men a light which they have never seen. There, says the Blessed Lord who extends his generosity to men, there is the jewel which I will reap from the coffers of my bounteousness! There is the first stone of my building! I want to renew the surface and the depths of my earth! I want men to move seas, and to make new continents spring up; I want them to take my earth in their hands, and to hew and polish it like a new diamond of my boundless crown. Earth! I will f lood you with downpours of light from my sun, and, at my will, I will lead you through the heavens’ harmonies, dazzling other worlds!

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Michel Chevalier, ‘Il rit, le Bourgeois...’ Ménilmontant, novembre 1832 Il rit, le Bourgeois, quand il voit passer les apôtres du Père. Quand les prophètes du Seigneur passent devant sa boutique, il s’avance sur sa porte, et il rit. Quand il les voit sur ses carrefours, sur ses boulevards, il ricane et sa lèvre est dédaigneuse. Ris, bourgeois goguenard, ris de ces hommes crédules. Ils s’étaient imaginés, dans la simplicité de leur cœur, que leurs discours et leurs journaux te feraient aimer le prolétaire qui travaille et qui souffre! Ris, bourgeois, et va dans ton arrièreboutique fourbir ton sabre et ton fusil. Ris, bourgeois, de leur extravagance; et va au tir t’exercer au pistolet afin de brûler la cervelle de ton voisin s’il te regarde de travers, ou pour tuer ta femme si tu la surprends avec un homme qu’elle aime, toi qui te creuses la tête pour séduire la femme de ton ami. Ris-leur au nez, ils s’étaient persuadés que par leurs exhortations, ils te rendraient bon et indulgent, et qu’ils te persuaderaient que ce qui est bien et mal pour l’homme, est bien et mal pour la femme. Ris, bourgeois, emballé dans ta souquenille grotesque, sous tes cheveux mal peignés, dans ta peau graisseuse avec ta barbe de trois jours. Ris, et va le soir étendre auprès du corps frais et poli de la jeune femme que tu as acheté par devant notaire, ton humeur hargneuse et ton sale corps. Ris, ils ont voulu te rendre soigneux dans ta chair, et ils ont voulu que ta femme fût libre de te recevoir dans ses bras. Ris, bourgeois, quand passent les apôtres du Père, les prophètes du Seigneur. Combien sont-ils qui aient connu Saint-Simon, notre maître? Combien qui aient aimé notre Père, combien qui soient venus s’asseoir parmi les mille auditeurs de notre parole? combien qui aient repu de nos journaux leur intelligence avide, combien qui aient été atteints à la tête par cette grêle de livres que nous avons fait pleuvoir sur le globe, de Stockholm à la Véra-Cruz. Or tous ces hommes sont des semences que le Dieu vivant a prises dans sa main un jour qu’il vous vit, bourgeois, vous boucher les oreilles et vous détourner pour ni voir ni entendre. Il les écarta de vous violemment, il les jeta au loin, et ils prirent racine avant dans la Terre. Bourgeois rieur, ils étaient plus nombreux que les boulets, les balles et les biscayens qui peuplaient les campagnes après les batailles du grand Empereur. Bourgeois rieur, le Seigneur Dieu a-t-il ainsi semé la paix, ou a-t-il semé les tempêtes? Bourgeois goguenard, fourbisseur de sabres et de canons de fusils, le Seigneur Dieu pendant six mille ans s’est nommé le Dieu des armées. Pendant ce tems, vous étiez des esclaves.

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Michel Chevalier, ‘He Laughs, the Bourgeois...’ Ménilmontant, November 1832 He laughs, the Bourgeois, when he sees the Father’s apostles go past. When the Lord’s prophets pass by his shop, he stands in the doorway, and he laughs. When he sees them on his crossroads, on his boulevards, he sniggers and sneers disdainfully. Laugh, scornful bourgeois, laugh at these gullible men. In the simpleness of their hearts, they thought that their speeches and newspapers would make you come to love the suffering, labouring proletarian! Laugh, bourgeois, and go burnish your sword and shotgun at the back of your shop. Laugh, bourgeois, at their eccentricity; and go to the shooting range to practice with your pistol so that you can blow your neighbour’s brains out if he looks askance at you, or kill your wife if you surprise her with a man she loves, even while you rack your brains for ways to seduce your own friend’s wife. Laugh in their faces, they convinced themselves that through their efforts they would make you kind and generous and that they could persuade you that what is right and wrong for men is right and wrong for women. Laugh, bourgeois, wrapped in your grotesque smock, with your dishevelled hair, your greasy skin and your stubble. Laugh, and at night, lie down your foul temper and your filthy body next to the cool, sleek body of the young woman whom you bought in the presence of a lawyer. Laugh, they wanted you to care for your body and they wanted your wife to be able to take you in her arms freely. Laugh, bourgeois, when the apostles of the Father, the prophets of the Lord, go past. How many men ever met Saint-Simon, our master? How many loved our Father, how many came to take their place among those thousands who listened to our words? How many have found their hungry minds satisfied by our newspapers, how many were struck on the head by that hail of books which we have rained down on the globe, from Stockholm to Veracruz. Now all these men are seeds that the living God took up in his hand one day when he saw you, bourgeois, putting your fingers in your ears and turning away so as not to see or hear. He drew them vigorously away from you, and scattered them afar, and they took root in the Earth. Laughing bourgeois, they were more numerous than the cannonballs, bullets and muskets which filled the countryside after the Great Emperor’s battles. Laughing Bourgeois, did the Lord God sow peace or did he sow chaos? Mocking bourgeois, burnisher of swords and gun barrels, for six thousand years, the Lord God was called the God of armies. At that time, you were slaves.

Bibliography v For ease of reference the bibliography is divided into the following sections: Books, chapters and articles relating to utopia Studies of the prose poem Texts by Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians Secondary sources with specific reference to Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonianism Texts by Gautier Secondary sources with specific reference to Gautier Texts by Baudelaire Secondary sources with specific reference to Baudelaire Texts by Rimbaud Secondary sources with specific reference to Rimbaud Books, chapters and articles relating to cultural and historical context

Books, chapters and articles relating to utopia Untitled, Le Charivari, 12 July 1848 ‘Aux Ouvriers’, Le Charivari, 10 March 1848 ‘ “Lettres d’un f lâneur”: les affiches de Paris’, L’Illustration, 8 April 1848 Abensour, Miguel, L’Homme est un animal utopique: Utopique (Paris: Éditions de la nuit, 2010) —— ‘Le Nouvel Esprit utopique’, Cahiers Bernard Lazare, 128–30 (1991), 132–64 Augé, Marc, Non-lieux: introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (Paris: Seuil, 1992) Ballanche, Pierre-Simon, La Ville des expiations, ed. by Amand Rastoul (Paris: Presses françaises / Les Belles-lettres, 1926) Barthes, Roland, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Paris: Seuil, 1971) —— Œuvres complètes, IV, ed. by Éric Marty (Paris: Seuil, 2002) Benjamin, Walter, The Arcades Project, trans. by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999) Bloch, Ernst, The Principle of Hope [1959], trans. by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995) —— The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. trans. by Frank Mecklenburg and Jack Zipes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996) De Certeau, Michel, L’invention du quotidien: arts de faire (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1980) Choay, Françoise, L’Urbanisme, utopies et réalités: une anthologie (Paris: Seuil, 1965) Cioran, E. M., Histoire et utopie (Paris: Gallimard, 1960) De la Motte, Dean, ‘Utopia Commodified: Utilitarianism, Aestheticism, and the Presse à Bon Marché’, in Making The News: Modernity and the Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France, ed. by Dean de la Motte and Jeannene M. Przyblyski (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), pp. 141–59 Dufrenne, Mikel, Art et politique (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1974) Foucault, Michel, Utopies et hétérotopies. INA Mémoire vive collection. CD IMV056

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Freeden, Michael, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Furter, Pierre, and Gérard Raulet (eds), Stratégies de l’utopie (Paris: Galilée, 1979) Goetz, Benoît, La Dislocation: architecture et philosophie (Paris: Éditions de la Passion, 2001) Harvey, David, Paris, Capital of Modernity (London: Routledge, 2003) —— Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000) Kellner, Douglas, ‘Ernst Bloch, Utopia and Ideology Critique’, in Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch, ed. by Jamie Owen Daniel and Tom Moylan (London: Verso, 1997) Kelly, Michael G., Strands of Utopia: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France (London: Legenda, 2008) —— ‘Immanence and the Utopian Impulse: On Philippe Jaccottet’s Readings of Æ and Robert Musil’, in Exploring the Utopian Impulse: Essays on Utopian Thought and Practice, ed. by Michael Griffin and Tom Moylan (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 207–24 Kumar, Krishan, Utopianism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991) Leprevots-Bonnardel, Anne-Françoise, and Laurent Portes, ‘Satire des idées nou­ velles’, in Utopie: la quête de la société idéale en Occident, ed. by Lyman Tower Sargent and Roland Schaer (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France / Fayard, 2000), pp. 220–21 Levitas, Ruth, The Concept of Utopia (Hemel Hempstead: Philip Allan, 1990) Marin, Louis, Utopiques: jeux d’espaces (Paris: Minuit, 1973) Rancière, Jacques, Le Partage du sensible (Paris: La Fabrique, 2000) —— ‘Sens et usages de l’utopie’, in L’Utopie en questions, ed. by Michèle Riot-Sarcey (SaintDenis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2001), pp. 65–78 Régnier, Philippe, ‘La Satire de l’utopie et des utopistes dans Le Charivari en 1848: batailles de représentations et luttes de classes littéraires dans un journal satirique illustré’, in 1848, une révolution du discours, ed. by Hélène Millot and Corinne Saminadayar-Perrin (Paris: Éditions des cahiers intempestifs, 2001), pp. 61–92 Ricœur, Paul, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. by George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) Sargent, Lyman Tower, and Roland Schaer (eds), Utopie: la quête de la société idéale en Occident (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France / Fayard, 2000) Sylvos, Françoise, L’Épopée du possible ou l’arc-en-ciel des utopies (1800–1850) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008)

Studies of the prose poem Bernard, Suzanne, Le Poème en prose de Baudelaire jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Nizet, 1969) Haxell, Nicola-Anne, Reflections of the Revolution: Poetry and Prose for the Second French Republic (Durham: University of Durham Press, 1993) Illouz, Jean-Nicolas, and Jacques Neefs (eds), Crise de Prose (Saint-Denis: Presses Uni­ versi­taires de Vincennes, 2002) Monroe, Jonathan, A Poverty of Objects: The Prose Poem and the Politics of Genre (London: Cornell University Press, 1987) Riffaterre, Michael, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978) Terdiman, Richard, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (London: Cornell University Press, 1985) —— Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (London: Cornell University Press, 1993) Vincent-Munnia, Nathalie, Les Premiers Poèmes en prose: généalogie d’un genre dans la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle français (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996) Vincent-Munnia, Nathalie, Simone Bernard-Griffiths and Robert Pickering (eds), Aux origines du poème en prose français (1750–1850) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003)

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Secondary sources with specific reference to Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonianism D’Allemagne, Henry-René, Les Saint-Simoniens, 1827–1837 (Paris: Grund, 1930) Baroli, Marc, Le Train dans la littérature française (Paris: Éditions N. M., 1964) Behrent, Michael C., ‘The Mystical Body of Society: Religion and Association in Nineteenth-Century French Political Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 69.2 (April 2008), 219–45 Crossley, Ceri, French Historians and Romanticism: Thierry, Guizot, the Saint-Simonians, Quinet, Michelet (London: Routledge, 1993) De Liefde, Carel Lodewijk, Le Saint-Simonisme dans la poésie française entre 1825 et 1865 (Harlem: Drukkerij Amicitia, 1927) Desroche, Henri, ‘Notes sur quelques fragments d’Utopie’, Communications, 25 (1976), 128–37 Goldberg Moses, Clare, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984). Gouvard, Michel, ‘Le Problème du langage dans Le Livre nouveau des saint-simoniens’, in

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Secondary sources with specific reference to Baudelaire Benjamin, Walter, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, trans. by Harry Zohn and Quintin Hoare (London: New Left Books, 1973) —— Illuminations (‘Schriften’), (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1955; repr.: London: Pim­ lico, 1999) Baer, Ulrich, Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000) Berman, Marshall, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Harmonds­ worth: Penguin, 1982) Brague, Rémi, Image vagabonde: essai sur l’imaginaire baudelairien (Chatou: Transparence, 2008) Burton, Richard D., The Context of Baudelaire’s ‘Le Cygne’ (Durham: University of Durham Press, 1980) —— The Flâneur and his City (Durham: University of Durham Press, 1994) —— ‘The Unseen Seer, or Proteus in the City: Aspects of a Nineteenth-Century Parisian Myth’, French Studies, 42.1 ( January 1988), 50–68 Evans, Margery A., Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) Friedman, Geraldine, ‘Baudelaire’s Theory of Practice: Ideology and Difference in “Les Yeux des pauvres” ’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 104.3 (May 1989), 317–28 Hiddleston, J. A., Baudelaire and the Art of Memory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) Hirt, André, Il faut être absolument lyrique: une constellation de Baudelaire (Paris: Kimé, 2000) Howells, Bernard, ‘ “La Vaporisation du Moi”: Baudelaire’s Journaux intimes’, French Studies, 42.4 (1988), 424–33 Labarthe, Patrick, Petits poèmes en prose de Charles Baudelaire (Paris: Gallimard, 2000) Labrusse, Rémi, ‘Baudelaire et Meryon’, L’Année Baudelaire, 1 (1995), 99–132 Leakey, F. W., Baudelaire: Collected Essays, 1953–1988, ed. by Eva Jacobs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Maclean, Marie, Narrative as Performance: The Baudelairean Experiment (Routledge: Lon­ don, 1988) Mauron, Charles, Le Dernier Baudelaire (Paris: José Corti, 1966) Mercer, Colin, ‘Baudelaire and the City: 1848 and the Inscription of Hegemony’, Literature, Politics and Theory: papers from the Essex conference 1976–84, ed. by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen and Diana Loxley (London: Methuen, 1986) Murphy, Steve, Logiques du dernier Baudelaire: lectures du ‘Spleen de Paris’ (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003) —— (ed.), Lectures de Baudelaire: ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2002)

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—— ‘Au lecteur (bribes de problématiques en guise d’introduction)’, in Lectures de Baudelaire, as previous, pp. 9–32 Poulet, Georges, La Poésie éclatée: Baudelaire/Rimbaud (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980) Raymond, Marcel, De Baudelaire au Surréalisme (Paris: José Corti, 1940) Richard, Jean-Pierre, Poésie et profondeur (Paris: Seuil, 1955) Robb, Graham, La Poésie de Baudelaire et la poésie Française, 1838–1852 (Paris: Aubier, 1993) Sanyal, Debarati, The Violence of Modernity: Baudelaire, Irony and the Politics of Form (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) Sartre, Jean-Paul, Baudelaire, pref. by Michel Leiris (Paris: Gallimard, 1947) Scott, David, ‘Le Poème en prose comme symptôme de crise littéraire: hétérogénéité et déconstruction dans Le Spleen de Paris de Baudelaire’, L’Esprit Créateur, 39.1 (Spring 1999), 5–14 Scott, Maria C., Baudelaire’s ‘Le Spleen de Paris’: Shifting Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) Stephens, Sonya, Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics of Irony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) —— ‘L’Expérience urbaine et l’évolution d’un genre: le cas du poème en prose baudelairien’ in Le Champ littéraire 1860–1900: études offertes à Michael Pakenham, ed. by Keith Cameron and James Kearns (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 39–47 Thélot, Jérôme, Baudelaire: violence et poésie (Paris: Gallimard, 1993) Ward, Patricia A. (ed.), Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2001)

Texts by Rimbaud Illuminations, ed. by André Guyaux (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1985) Œuvres, ed. by Suzanne Bernard and André Guyaux (Paris: Bordas, 1991) Œuvres complètes, ed. by Pierre Brunel (Libraire Générale Française: 1999)

Secondary sources with specific reference to Rimbaud Bersani, Leo, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature [1969] (London: Marion Boyars, 1978) Dupré, Michel, Autres Rimbaud (Paris: E. C. Éditions, 2000) Evans, David, Rhythm, Illusion and the Poetic Idea: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004) Giusto, Jean-Pierre ‘Après le Déluge: l’écriture des êtres de rêverie et la parodie’, Parade sauvage, 2 (1985), 72–79 Harrow, Susan, The Material, the Real and the Fractured Self: Subjectivity and Representation from Rimbaud to Réda (London: University of Toronto Press, 2004) Kittang, Atle, Discours et jeu: essai d’analyse des textes d’Arthur Rimbaud (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble; Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1975) Little, Roger, The Shaping of Modern French Poetry: Reflections on Unrhymed Poetic Form, 1840–1990 (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1995) Macklin, Gerald, A Study of Theatrical Vision in Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Illuminations’ (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993) —— ‘Epiphany, Identity, Celebration: Towards a Definition of the Rimbaldian poèmefête’, Neophilologus, 82.1 ( January 1998), 19–31 —— ‘Perspectives on the Role of Punctuation in Rimbaud’s Illuminations’, Journal of European Studies, 20 (1990), 59–72

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Marcotte, Gilles, La Prose de Rimbaud (Montreal: Boréal, 1989) —— ‘Une Ville appelée Rimbaud’, Études françaises, 27.1 (1991), 49–61 Murphy, Steve, Stratégies de Rimbaud (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004) —— ‘ “Rimbaud et la Commune”?’, in Rimbaud Multiple: Colloque de Cerisy, ed. by Alain Borer, Jean-Paul Corsetti and Steve Murphy (Paris: Éditions Bedou & Touzot: 1986), pp. 50–66 Rancière, Jacques, La Chair des mots: politiques de l’écriture (Paris: Galilée, 1998) —— ‘Préface’ and ‘Les Voix et les corps’, Le Millénaire Rimbaud, ed. by Alain Badiou, Michel Deguy and others (Paris: Belin, 1993), pp. 5–10 and pp. 11–33 Raybaud, Antoine, Fabrique d’‘Illuminations’ (Paris: Seuil, 1989) Reynolds, Dee, Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Richard, Jean-Pierre, Poésie et profondeur (Paris: Seuil, 1955) Rolland de Renéville, André, Rimbaud le voyant (Paris: au Sans Pareil, 1929; repr. Paris: Vieux Colombier, 1947) Ross, Kristin, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988) Scott, Clive, Translating Rimbaud’s ‘Illuminations’ (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006) Scott, David, ‘La Structure spatiale du poème en prose d’Aloysius Bertrand à Rimbaud’, Poétique, 59 (September 1984), 295–308 Spencer, Michael, ‘A Fresh Look at Rimbaud’s “Métropolitain” ’, Modern Language Review, 63.4 (October 1968), 849–53 Todorov, Tzvetan, Les Genres du discours (Paris: Seuil, 1978) Treharne, Mark, ‘Unstable Objects: Acropole and Barbarie in Rimbaud’s Villes I’, in French Literature, Thought and Culture in the Nineteenth Century: A Material World, ed. by Brian Rigby (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 169–83

Books, chapters and articles relating to cultural and historical context Andrews, Naomi J., ‘Utopian Androgyny: Romantic Socialists Confront Individualism in Nineteenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies, 26 (Summer 2003), 437–57 Belhoste, B., F. Masson and A. Picon (eds), Le Paris des polytechniciens: des ingénieurs dans la ville (Paris: Délégation à l’Action artistique de la Ville de Paris, 1994) Bénichou Paul, Romantismes français, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 2004) Benoist, Charles, ‘L’Homme de 1848’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 July 1913 Blanchot, Maurice, L’Entretien infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1969) Boileau, Louis-Auguste, Nouvelle Forme architecturale (Paris: Gide & J. Baudry, 1853) —— Histoire critique de l’invention en architecture (Paris: Vve C. Dunod, 1886) Bowie, Karen (ed.), La Modernité avant Haussmann: formes de l’espace urbain à Paris, 1801–1853 (Paris: Éditions Recherche, 2001) Brooks, Peter, ‘Romantic Antipastoral and Urban Allegories’, Yale Review, 64.1 (Autumn 1974), 11–26 Buchez, Philippe, Introduction à la science de l’histoire, ou science du développement de l’humanité (Paris: Paulin, 1833) Cabet, Étienne, Voyage en Icarie, pref. by Jacques Attali (Paris: Bureau du Populaire, 1848; repr. Paris: Dalloz, 2006) Charton, Édouard, Mémoires d’un prédicateur saint-simonien (Paris: Bureau de la Revue encyclopédique, 1832) Chevalier, Michel, L’Exposition universelle de Londres considérée sous les rapports philosophique, technique, commercial et administrative au point de vue français (Paris: L. Mathias, 1851)

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—— ‘Le Fer et la fonte employés dans les constructions monumentales’, Journal des débats, 1 June 1855 Croiset-Veyre, Dominique (ed.), Ipoustéguy: L’Œuvre sculpté. Catalogue raisonné, 1938–2000 (Paris: Éditions de la différence, 2001) De Quincey, Thomas, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater [1821] (Ware: Wordsworth, 1994) Donald, James, Imagining the Modern City (London: Athlone Press, 1999) Engels, Friedrich, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (London: Bookmarks, 1993) Foucart, Bruno, Essais et mélanges en l’honneur de Bruno Foucart, 2 vols (Paris: Norma, 2008) Goetz, Benoît, La Dislocation: architecture et philosophie (Paris: Éditions de la Passion, 2001) Guérard, Albert Leon, Napoleon III (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943) Hamon, Philippe, Introduction à l’analyse du descriptif (Paris: Hachette, 1981) Hugo, Victor, Œuvres complètes. Politique, ed. by Jean-Claude Fizaine (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1985) Kerr, David S., Caricature and French Political Culture, 1830–1848: Charles Philipon and the Illustrated Press (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) Marrey, Bernard (ed.), La Querelle du fer: Eugène Viollet-le-Duc contre Louis Auguste Boileau (Paris: Linteau, 2002) Michaud, Éric, ‘La Construction de l’image comme matrice de l’histoire’, Vingtième siècle, 72 (Oct–Dec 2001), 41–52 Mortelette, Yann, Histoire du Parnasse (Paris: Fayard, 2005) Nancy, Jean-Luc, La Ville au loin (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 1999) Ory, Pascal, L’Expo universelle (Brussels: Complexe, 1989) Ozouf, Mona, La Fête révolutionnaire 1789–1799 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) Papayanis, Nicholas, Planning Paris before Haussmann (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) Prendergast, Christopher, Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) Robichon, François, ‘Le Panorama, spectacle de l’histoire’, Le Mouvement social, 131 (April–June 1985), 65–86 Schneiderman, Richard S., The Catalogue raisonné of the Prints of Charles Meryon (London: Garton, 1990) Schwarz, Vanessa, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (London: University of California Press, 1998) Scott, David, Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; repr. 2009) Simmel, Georg, La Tragédie de la culture et autres essais, trans. by Sabine Cornille and Philippe Ivernel (Paris: Rivages, 1988) Sloane, Joseph C., French Painting between Past and Present: Artists, Critics and Traditions from 1848 to 1870 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951) Vaillant, Alain (ed.), Écriture/Parole/Discours: littérature et rhétorique aux XIXe siècle (SaintÉtienne: Pinter, 1997) —— (ed.), Ecrire/Savoir: littérature et connaissances à l’époque moderne (Saint-Etienne: Pinter, 1996) Vigny, Alfred de, Œuvres Complètes, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1950)

INDEX ❖ 1848 revolution 2, 17, 97, 102, 184, 197, 198 Abensour, Miguel 206, 219 n. 2 architecture 9, 18, 39–41, 52, 54, 58, 86, 96–111 Arnoux, Charles Albert d’, see Bertall Amoros y Ondeano, Francisco 46, 47 Baer, Ulrich 112 Ballanche, Pierre-Simon 78, 97, 158 La Ville des expiations 151–52 Balzac, Honoré de 83–85, 105–06, 110, 113 n. 31 Banville, Théodore de 119, 132, 136 Barker, Robert 37, 115 n.76 Barrault, Émile 42, 43, 44, 45, 69 n. 3, 174 Barthes, Roland 110, 207, 209 n. 6 Baudelaire, Charles: on aesthetic systems 123–24 on Chenavard 115 n. 84 on lyric poetry 10, 119, 122, 134, 135, 136–37, 141 panoramic modes of observation in 117 on phenakistoscope 118–19 on rhapsodie 117–54 on surnaturalisme 127–28 on the crowd 120, 121, 124, 125, 126, 143, 144, 145, 148 on the dandy 91, 122 on windows 137, 149–50 ‘Symptômes de ruine’ 132–34 Les Fleurs du mal 124, 133 ‘Correspondances’ 127 ‘Rêve parisien’ 133–34, 140 ‘Paysage’ 133 Fusées 10, 127, 137, 151 Les Paradis artificiels 22, 119, 127–35 Le Peintre de la vie moderne 120–25, 145, 150 Le Spleen de Paris 22, 23, 25 n. 25, 117–54, 155, 200, 207 ‘Any Where out of the World’ 139 ‘La Soupe et les nuages’ 137–38 ‘Le Confiteor de l’artiste’ 130, 131 ‘Le Crépuscule du soir’ 135 ‘Le Fou et la Vénus’ 148 ‘Le Joujou du pauvre’ 136 ‘Le Mauvais Vitrier’ 135 ‘Le Temps et l’amour’ 148 ‘Le Vieux Saltimbanque’ 120, 142–44, 146 ‘Les Tentations’ 138 ‘Les Yeux des Pauvres’ 139

‘Perte d’Auréole’ 136 ‘Un cheval de race’ 148 ‘Un Joueur généreux’ 148 ‘Un plaisant’ 135, 138, 146, 150 visual sources for 144–51 Salon de 1859 125, 149 Bénichou, Paul 20, 80, 208 Benjamin, Walter 9, 92, 112 Bernard, Suzanne 180 Bertall (Charles Albert d’Arnoux) 198, 202 n. 55 Bloch, Ernst 206, 209 n. 4 on citoyen 73 n. 63 on latency 10 on ‘surplus’ 67 Boileau, Louis-Auguste 96, 99–111 Chevalier on 115 n. 78 dispute with Viollet-le-Duc 115 n. 72 and ecclesiastical architecture 115 n. 76 Histoire critique de l’invention en architecture 115 n. 71 Nouvelle forme architecturale 99–102 Brague, Rémi 152 Brooks, Peter 8 Buchez, Philippe 70–71 n. 21, 73 n. 61, 99–104 Boileau on 115 n. 71 Introduction à la science de l’histoire, 100 Burton, Richard D. E. 117 Cabet, Étienne 192–93, 197, 205 Camp, Maxime du 66 Cassagne, Albert 80–81, 83 Certeau, Michel de 11, 12, 16 Chambers, Ross 91, 111, 116 n. 99 Charton, Edouard 153, n. 9 Chenavard, Paul 96–111, 114 n. 62, 115 n. 81, 115 n. 84 La Palingénésie sociale 96–99, 104–05, 111 Chevalier, Michel 28, 29, 39, 65, 66, 68, 72 n. 45, 91, 93, 96, 102, 126, 205, 206, 207, 208 on Boileau 115, n. 78 on Mediterranean 49 reports on Universal Exhibitions 54–56, 72 n. 43 views on electricity 71 n. 41 ‘Il rit, le bourgeois’ 64–66, 236–37 ‘Le Temple’ 50–56, 58, 64, 65, 67, 73 n. 57, 99, 104, 109, 210–19 Delacroix, Eugène 127 Demeny, Paul 7, 155, 160

248

Index

Descombes, Vincent 15 on utopia as ‘delocalization’ 12–14 Desroche, Henri: on ‘organic’ and ‘critical’ epochs in SaintSimonianism 34 Dufrenne, Mikel 183–84 Dupont, Pierre 120 Dupré, Michel 177, 179 Duveyrier, Charles 35, 44, 45, 46, 68, 126, 174, 175, 177, 205, 206, 207, 208 Gautier on 115–16 n. 89 ‘Au Père’ 64, 67, 107, 168 ‘La Ville nouvelle ou le Paris des Saint-Simoniens’ 56–61, 66, 72 n. 47, 107, 220–35 ‘Travaux Publics — Fêtes’ 144 Enfantin, Barthélémy-Prosper 29, 36, 41, 42, 44, 47, 52, 56, 57, 62, 63, 65, 69 n. 3, 107, 115–16 n. 89, 168, 174, 179 on architecture 39–41 on eternal life 34–35 on linguistic ‘materiality’ 43 Evans, David 180 Evans, Margery A. 138–39 Foucart, Bruno 102, 104 Foucault, Michel 173–74, 202 n. 29 Fourier, Charles 2, 20, 73 n. 61, 78, 114 n. 62, 152 n. 5, 158, 172, 174, 179, 180, 197 Franconi, Antonio 46, 47 Freeden, Michael 63, 66, 206 Gall, Franz Joseph 35–36 Garnerin, Jacques-André 46–47 Garnier, Charles 85 Gautier, Théophile 2, 19, 21, 22, 42, 67, 69, 73 n. 61, 74–116, 122, 205, 208 on architecture 85–112, 113 n. 40 on Balzac 83–85, 105–06 on Baudelaire’s prose poetry 76 on Indian design 93–94 on journalism 77–85, 112 n.5 on prose 77–81 on Saint-Simonians 77, 78, 115–16 n. 89 on train travel 88 on Universal Exhibitions 91–95 ‘Cherbourg: Inauguration du bassin Napoléon’ 87, 89 ‘Exposition de Londres’ 92 ‘Le Nouvel Opéra’ 85 ‘Paris futur’ 96, 102–12 ‘Plastique de la civilisation’ 85 ‘Un tour en Belgique et en Hollande’ 88, 114 n. 44 ‘Une journée à Londres’ 88 Émaux et Camées 74, 79, 80, 81, 87, 91, 94, 112, 113 n. 41, 116 n. 99 ‘Après le feuilleton’ 80

‘Nostalgies d’obélisques’ 75 ‘Vieux de la vieille’ 113 n. 41 Histoire du Romantisme 79 Mademoiselle de Maupin 22, 79–81, 92, 96 Giusto, Jean-Pierre 167 Goetz, Benoît 141 Goncourt, Edmond and Jules de 75–82, 108 Grange, Juliette 33, 70 n. 7 Guépin, Ange 35 Guyaux, André 180 Guys, Constantin 10, 25 n. 26, 121, 122, 125, 126, 144–46, 150, 154 n. 26 Cent gardes à la revue 144–45 Haines, Barbara 32, 70n. 7 Hamon, Philippe 76–77 Harrow, Susan 163, 166, 175 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 97 Hiddleston, James 145, 152 n. 6 Hirt, André 142 Howells, Bernard 151 Hugo, Victor 42, 91 ideology 3, 4, 33, 38, 63, 66, 187, 206 as ‘decontested’ meaning 63–64 and ‘surplus’ 67 Ipoustéguy, Jean-Robert: L’Homme aux semelles devant 177–78 Izambard, Georges 156, 159, 201 n. 9 James, Henry 109 Kearns, James 97, 114 n. 68 Kelly, Michael G. 172, 182, 201 n. 26 Kerr, David S. 185 Kittang, Atle 164, 181 Kumar, Krishan 205 Labrusse, Rémi 146 Lavaud, Martine 86 Leprevots-Bonnardel, Anne-Françoise 198 Liszt, Franz 129 Lodewijk de Liefde, Carel 66 Lorenz Van Zanten, Ann 50 Machereau, Philippe-Joseph 175 Macherey, Pierre 27–28 Macklin, Gerald 163, 167, 173, 199 Marcotte, Gilles 185, 202–03 n. 56 Marin, Louis 1, 2, 15, 24, 207, 208 Martin, John 109 McWilliam, Neil 37, 47, 70–71 n. 21, 71–72 n. 41, 101 Meryon, Charles 121, 146–50 Collège Henri IV (ou Lycée Napoléon) 247, 154 n. 26 La Pompe Notre-Dame 146, 149 Le Pont-au-change 147

Index Le Pont-Neuf 146, 149, 150 Tourelle, rue de l’École de médicine, 22 148 Monroe, Jonathan 6, 8 Motte, Dean de la 77 Murphy, Steve 22, 156 Nancy, Jean-Luc 16 Newton, Isaac 29, 31, 69 n. 4 Ory, Pascal 68 Ozouf, Mona 142 panorama 53, 115 n. 76, 117 visualizing effect 37–38 Picon, Antoine 28, 35, 36, 41, 44, 45, 47, 49, 54 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 132, 153 n. 13 Portes, Laurent 198 Poulet-Malassis, Auguste 148 prose poem: and city 8, 10, 22, 23–24, 121, 151, 205 critical posture 3, 5, 10, 11, 22, 23, 68, 69, 200, 206 generic status 6–8, 18–19, 24 as non-coalescence 61, 111 and ‘poetic prose’ 19, 20 and prose journalism 21 prospective bearing 11 punctuation 23, 56, 60, 167, 168, 199, 200 and utopian ‘surplus’ 3 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 123, 197 Quincey, Thomas De 129, 131, 133, 153 n. 13 Rancière, Jacques 3–6, 65, 156, 158–59, 174–75, 183, 200 Raybaud, Antoine 165, 169, 173, 181 Régnier, Philippe 20, 26 n. 45, 61–63, 66, 67, 69 n. 3, 71 n. 28, 73 n. 54, 73 n. 60 Reynolds, Dee 157, 195 rhapsodie: see Baudelaire definition of 128, 131 Richard, Jean-Pierre 23, 121 Ricœur, Paul 1–2, 4, 66, 109, 157, 206 Riffaterre, Michael 7 Rimbaud, Arthur: and Paris Commune 156 on poet as ‘multiplicateur de progrès’ 161 and the body 159, 166–80 and the fête 163, 173, 183–84 and prophecy 155–61 ‘lettres du voyant’ 155, 159–66 as ‘utopian’ project 155–57 Illuminations: ‘Being Beauteous’ 172–77 ‘À une Raison’ 174, 179–80 ‘Après le Déluge’ 154 n. 26, 159, 166–68, 201 n. 25

249

‘Départ’ 185, 199 ‘Enfance’ 7, 23, 166–71 ‘Jeunesse’ 23, 171–72 ‘Les Ponts’ 23, 194–95 ‘Matinée d’ivresse’ 63 ‘Métropolitain’ 23, 50, 159, 186–88 ‘Parade’ 159, 182–85, 189 ‘Scènes’ 180–82, 185 ‘Solde’ 159, 195–99, 202 n. 56 ‘Vies’ 171–72 ‘Villes’ (‘Ce sont des villes !’) 188, 190–94 ‘Villes’ (‘L’acropole officielle...’ 154, 188–90 Poésies: ‘Les Reparties de Nina’ 174, 183 ‘Vénus Anadyomène’ 175 ‘Sensation’ 175 Une Saison en enfer: ‘Alchimie du verbe’ 163–64 ‘Adieu’ 165–66 Robichon, François 38, 49 Ross, Kristin 157, 175 Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin 121, 131 Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de: concepts of corps brut and corps organisé 32, 41 concepts of fluidiciens and solidiciens 29–30 concept of dynamic equilibrium 30–32 historical understanding of subjectivity 33–35 importance of physiology in thought of 70 n. 7 theory of gravitation 29–31 understanding of body 31 Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIXe siècle 29–31 Mémoire sur la science de l’homme 31, 70 n. 7 Saint-Simonianism: aesthetics of 36–37 architecture in 39–41 dispersed model of subjectivity 35 during Second Empire 54, 68–69, 123 and Haussmannisation, 152–55 limits of aesthetic theory 62–64 nouveau christianisme 70 n. 19 ‘organic and critical’ epochs in 25 n. 22, 33–34 theory of language in 41–44 urbanism 72 n. 47 view of literature in 72 n. 45 Doctrine de Saint-Simon. Exposition. Première Année.33 L’Organisateur 36, 63 Le Globe 36, 37, 38, 41, 45, 47, 58, 59, 153 n. 9 Livre nouveau des Saint-Simoniens 41–44, 52, 64, 69 n. 3 Le Producteur 36, 37, 41, 67 Saqui, Madame 47 Sartre, Jean-Paul 133–34, 140–41 Schwarz, Vanessa 37 Scott, Clive 7–8, 11, 167, 170, 203 n. 58 Scott, David 26 n. 49, 114 n. 48, 157, 164, 167, 201 n. 25

250

Index

Scott, Maria C. 139 Simmel, Georg 194 Sloane, Joseph C. 99, 114 n. 61 Soufflot, Jacques-Germain 97 Sylvos, Françoise 47 Terdiman, Richard 6, 74, 91 Treharne, Mark 188, 190 utopia: connection with the urban 8–12, 205 connection to temple architecture 50–56, 96–102 and crisis 1–3, 112, 153 n. 9 critique of as ‘delocalization’ see Descombes, Vincent as de-realization 5, 120, 201 n. 26, 209 n. 2 function of image in 9, 18, 47, 105, 117, 177, 205

hyperbole within discourse of 17, 67, 153 n. 9, 199 and ideology 3–4, 20, 61–67, 206 and linguistic trop plein 207 link to Universal Exhibitions 54–56, 68, 91–95 and questions of expediency 111, 206 status of body in 31, 35–36, 73 n. 65, 173–77, 202 n. 29 status of lieu in 4, 5–6, 12–16, 18 as ‘surplus’ 3, 15, 61–67, 73 n. 63, 206–07 as synthesis of contradictions 1–2, 205 and utopian socialism 4, 27, 73 n. 65, 77, 206 Vigny, Alfred de 2, 66 Vincent-Munnia, Nathalie 19, 21, 26 n. 39 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 102 Wagner, Richard 135