(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

PARIS ON THE AMAZON?
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Es ist unmöglich, nicht von dem Schauspiel dieser kränklichen
Bevölkerung ergriffen zu werden, die den Staub der Fabriken
schluckt, Baumwollpartikeln einatmet, ihre Gewebe von Bleiweiß
und von allen Giften durchdringen läßt. . . . Diese Bevölkerung verzehrt
sich nach den Wundern, auf die ihr doch die Erde ein Anrecht
gibt; . . . sie wirft einen langen von Trauer beschwerten Blick auf das
Sonnenlicht und die Schatten in den großen Parks. (GS I.2:576–77)
[It is impossible not to be gripped by the spectacle of this sickly population,
which swallows the dust of the factories, breathes in particles
of cotton, and lets its tissues be permeated by white lead, mercury,
and all the poisons . . . ; this languishing and pining population to
whom the earth owes its wonders, . . . and who cast a long, sorrowful
look at the sunlight and shadows of the great parks. (SW 4:44)]
The RAP song Weekend in the Park is a South-American counterpart
to Baudelaire’s text, insofar as it presents the story of a boy from a favela,
who takes a weekend stroll through one of the few parks in the city. In the
favelas, even when they have resounding names such as Angela Garden or
Ipê Park, there are no green areas; these are a privilege of the fine residential
neighborhoods. From the outside, through the wall, the boy views a
club of rich people:
Look at that club, which is up-to-date
Look at that tennis court and that soccer field
Look, how many people
There is an ice-cream lounge, a cinema, a warm swimming pool
Look how many fine boys, how many pretty girls
There is a cart race to watch
Exactly as I saw yesterday on TV
Look at that club
Which is so up-to-date.
All this the black youth sees “from the outside”; “he is dreaming
through the wall. . . .” The text presents in miniature an example of the
entangled history of the metropolis and its periphery: the view of the
excluded and marginalized people, the “dunkle Massen” (“obscure [or
dark] masses”), toward the place of the “blendenden Massen” (“brilliant
masses”; cf. E6a,1) as representatives of the metropolitan center
and its privileges.
What the youth sees is an extract of the glamorous world of wealth
and of commodities, already presented by the Passagen-Werk in the
windows of the arcades — and, currently, of the shopping malls — this
“Urlandschaft der Konsumption” (“primordial landscape of consumption”;
A,5) with its promise of happiness. Happiness, formerly seen from
a religious viewpoint, is secularized and synthetically reproduced for