A modern city as Paris fulling of arcades is a new symbol of bourgeoisie's luxury, with new types of transport that enable strangers sitting in the crowd but not talking to each other for even an hour, which give birth to some new forms of living--interior and observing. These kind of change among people in 20 century contain a personal life trace and physiognomy that make detective story and Bauderlaire's 'alienated man at margin in Paris' become possible.
Arcade is market place for commodity, both for businessman and customers, both for goods and literature. The city is covered by fetishism, but how does it connect to images of Poe and Bauderlaire's works? Images of Bau's poetry--women, death, and Paris.
Paris is a heaven of fashion led by history of civilisation and phantasmagoria, which also create art, making novelty. Bauderlaire's keen for art is equal to dandy for fashion.
Interpersonal relationship reformed by transport refer that eyes is more important than ears, as passengers have no sound to say carring secrets. It's eyes perponderance, yet to working class, sound from factory always grab their attention.
City life in Bauderlaire is different from a connoisseur of human nature, from the beauty to the ugly. What his philosophy is, the more uncanny a big city becomes, the more knowledge of human nature, and how I understand is the personal decoration indoor, slience in compartments, yet floushing arcades make human mind and life more mysterious, something needed to explored. Literature therefore become a function which are peculiar to the masses in a big city, as an asocial person appears in detective story, plus the relationship of observing and being observed.
Is flaneur a strolling person? In 19 century it is allusion of a whore. But in 20 century, this word become a way of keeping pace with a big city, as detect grows self-esteem, and even no result, socialising is also another way to compromise.
So that detective story appeared first in Poe's novel, and then was adopted by Bauderlaire, by means of absord some methods at the same time, but other ways of create his own genre, and how Bauderlaire inherit Poe's technique skills? Not figure out yet.
A distinct feature from Bauderlaire's To a Passer-by:
'Neither knows where the other goes or lives;
We might have loved, and you knew this might be!'
Just for impression.The relationship between the obsever and people who are obsevered. It reminds me of the transportation, why transportation mould one of the feature of modernism? People who sitting in one compartment don't talk to each other at all, they are exactly a passer-by. They may love one of them, just like the narrator in this poem may fall in love with a lady passing by, but also like the situation in the poem that they don't even have time to tell, or don't have a second chance to meet each other. The life in modern society is like the experience on a train, after getting off we become strangers whom may be forgot,or say, we do exist in the biological time, but never ever exist in others' mind.
(按:本文原刊於《詩潮》第六期二零零二年七月 ,頁50-53。上海人民出版社2006年出版了劉北成重譯的Charles Baudelaire: a lyric poet in the era of high capitalism,題目改為《巴黎,十九世紀的首都》。這個新譯本補譯了1935年提綱,並增添了一篇波德萊爾論丹蒂的附錄文章。雖然自己已讀過此書好幾次,但還是發(fā)現(xiàn)這個譯本很有助益。此書三度被譯成中文,但到了這一次,華語讀者才總算得到一個看得明白的譯本。
依據(jù)Cacciari的闡釋,齊美爾把「理智」視為「感官神經(jīng)生活」自然發(fā)展的結(jié)果,並將這一過程理解為一個全面的「精神實現(xiàn)過程」(the process of the realization of the Geist)。(Cacciari 1993:4-5)因此,齊美爾把大都會同時是金融中心的現(xiàn)象視為貸幣經(jīng)濟與「理智」統(tǒng)治內(nèi)在地聯(lián)結(jié)在一起的明證,亦即「精神實現(xiàn)過程」的明證。他認為,在都會裡,不同利益的群體必須把他們的關(guān)係和活動統(tǒng)合在一個高度複雜的組織中,而當不同的群體聚集在一起時,精確的計算便顯得非常重要。這樣一來,「現(xiàn)代精神變得越來越精於算計。貸幣經(jīng)濟所引起的現(xiàn)實生活中的精確計算與自然科學(xué)的理想相一致,亦即將整個世界變成一個算術(shù)問題,以數(shù)學(xué)公式來安置世界的每一個部分?!乖邶R美爾的構(gòu)想中,現(xiàn)代文化的發(fā)展是以一種「客觀文化」作為其基礎(chǔ)的。這種「客觀文化」的發(fā)展使人類社會演變成「大都會」這樣一個由各種事物和力量構(gòu)成的龐大組織,它割裂了個體與進步、靈性和價值的連繫,並把個體轉(zhuǎn)換成組織中的一個齒輪。(Simmel 1971:326-328, 337)
如果我們這些都市居民透過「生命體驗」所認識到的世界是一個安全的夢境世界的話,那麼本雅明的波德萊爾以其憂鬱的目光看到的則是,「理智」和「生命體驗」本身便已是一部使不同的個體步向「異化」狀態(tài)的巨大裝置。而憂鬱作為一種都會的癥狀,它所指涉的則是一種異化狀態(tài)下的無望感。安逸的夢境本身不過是地獄,文明的運作邏輯是最徹底的野蠻。這樣一來,我們才能真正理解波德萊爾的〈虛無的滋味〉(‘Le gout du neant’):(波德萊爾1994:176)
「我從上空觀看這圓滾滾的地球,
我不再去尋找一個藏身的處所!」
引用書目:
波德萊爾(C. Baudelaire)。1994?!稅褐ǎ屠璧膽n鬱》。錢春綺譯。北京:人民文學(xué)出版社。
Benjamin, Walter (1997), Charles Baudelaire, trans. Harry Zohn, London, New York: Verso.
Cacciari, Massimo (1993), Architecture and Nihilism, trans. Patrizia Lombardo, New Haven, London: Yale University Press.
Simmel, Georg (1971), On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine, Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press.