(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

PARIS ON THE AMAZON?
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mologische Spekulation” (“a cosmological speculation”): “Die kosmische
Weltan sicht, die Blanqui darin entwirft, indem er der mechanistischen
Naturwissenschaft der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft seine Daten entnimmt,
ist eine infernalische” (“The cosmic vision of the world which Blanqui
lays out, taking his data from the mechanistic natural science of bourgeois
society, is an infernal vision,” D5a,6). It is infernal insofar as, according
to Blanqui, the universe on Earth “se répète sans fin” (“repeats itself
endlessly”) on other stars, “jou[ant] imperturbablement . . . les mêmes
représentations” (“perform[ing] — imperturbably — the same routines,”
D7; D7a). What we call “progress,” explains Benjamin, is just a phantasmagoria;
it is not possible for humans to change their destiny by making
history. Thus, “résignation sans espoir, c’est le dernier mot du grand
révolutionnaire” (“resignation without hope is the last word of the great
revolutionary,” GS V.1:76; AP, 26). Although it seems that Benjamin here
somehow comes close to Blanqui’s position and to Nietzsche’s idea of
“eternal return,” he finally opposes them in the name of a “dialektische[r]
Begriff der historischen Zeit” (“dialectical conception of historical time,”
D10a,5). According to Benjamin, the course of history is not predetermined
but may be changed by humans.
Charles Baudelaire’s representations of hell are also important here.
“Les fleurs du mal sont l’enfer du XIXe siècle” (“Les fleurs du mal is the
Inferno of the nineteenth century,” J11,4) writes André Suarès in 1933,
also alluding to Dante. Comparing Baudelaire to Victor Hugo, Alcide
Dusolier (1864) places the former, who “écroua réellement dans la prison
d’enfer l’homme moderne, l’homme du dix-neuvième siècle” (“actually
incarcerated modern man — the man of the nineteenth century — in the
prison of hell”), highly above the latter, who “avait fait de la ‘diablerie’
un décor fantastique à quelques légendes anciennes” (“made la diablerie
a fantastic setting for some ancient legends,” J42,1). On the other hand,
a deprecating observation of Baudelaire on Musset, on his “impudence
d’enfant gâté qui invoque le ciel et l’enfer pour des aventures de table
d’hôte” (“spoiled-child’s impudence, invoking heaven and hell in tales
of dinner-table conversations”), is refuted by a quotation of Brunetière’s
referring to Baudelaire: “Ce n’est qu’un Satan d’hôtel garni, un Belzébuth
de table d’hôte” (“He is just a Satan with a furnished apartment, a
Beelzebub of the dinner table,” J13a,5).
This is a point that makes us pay more attention to the strong literary
stylization and high degree of abstraction in Baudelaire’s and other
authors’ representations of hell. In Baudelaire’s famous tale “Le joueur
généreux,” where the poet meets with Satan in his subterranean dwelling,
an ambience of high comfort and luxury, the poor are completely
eclipsed. The metropolis of the excluded, on the other hand, appears in a
poem of Shelley’s, of whom Benjamin says that “[er] beherrscht die Allegorie,
Baudelaire wird von ihr beherrscht” (“[he] rules over the allegory,