W
Walking in the Crowd: Edgar
Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire,
Walter Benjamin
Ian Fong
Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Hong Kong, China
Synonyms
Drifting; Meandering; Promenading; Rambling;
Sauntering; Strolling; Walking: san bu
Introduction
This entry focuses on the literary fascination with
the modern city articulated in the work of Edgar
Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire and Walter
Benjamin.
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was first
introduced to the work of Edgar Allan Poe
(1809–1849) through Isabelle Meunier’s French
translation of Poe’s short story “The Black Cat”
(1843) in the Fourierist newspaper La Démocratie
pacifique at the end of January 1847. This began a
period during which Baudelaire searched relent-
lessly for anything written by or about Poe
(Pichois 1989: 144–145). On Poe’s significance
for his own thinking, Baudelaire writes,
# The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
J. Tambling (ed.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_109-1
In . . . 1847, I came upon a few fragments of Edgar
Allan Poe, and felt a strange sort of shock . . .
I discovered, believe me if you will, poems and
stories that I had already thought of, but of which
I had only a vague, confused and disorganized idea,
and which Poe had managed to pull together and
perfect. (Pichois 1989: 145)
However, Poe was not well received in the
United States in his time. Baudelaire (1972a)
writes:
If you talk to an American about Poe, he will per-
haps recognize his genius, . . . but with a sardonic
and imperious tone, . . . he will go on to tell you
about the poet’s disordered life, his alcoholic breath
which would have caught alight in the flame of a
candle, his wandering habits; he will tell you that
Poe was an erratic and heteroclite being . . . I am
persuaded that Edgar Poe and his mother country
were not on a level. (165)
Subsequently, T. S. Eliot (1949) suggests to
English-speaking readers that there is a possibility
that Baudelaire, as well as Mallarmé and Valéry,
sees something in Poe that they have missed
(328).
Baudelaire’s fascination with Poe drove him to
translate Poe’s works into French – Poe’s short
story “Mesmeric Revelation” (1845) is his first
translated work, published in 1848. If Baudelaire
can read Poe in a more inspiring way than
English-speaking readers do, Walter Benjamin
(1892–1940), who translated Baudelaire’s Tab-
leaux Parisiens (a section collected in the 1861
edition of Les Fleurs du mal) into German in
1923, should also be included in any discussion
2 Walking in the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin
of Baudelaire’s works. Any discussion of Poe
must also include Baudelaire and Benjamin and
vice versa. This entry focuses on the literary fas-
cination with the modern city articulated in
the work of these writers. Charles Dickens
(1812–1870) is also mentioned occasionally, and
it is interesting to note that Poe admired Dickens’
works: his Barnaby Rudge (1841) inspires Poe’s
poem “The Raven” (1845); the two men met in the
United States in 1842, and Dickens unsuccess-
fully attempted to help Poe find publishers for
his work in England (see Quinn 1941: 366, 440).
The Modern Artist
Poe and Baudelaire were both eager to differenti-
ate the figure of the modern artist from those who
had come before. Poe says that “the man who is
not ‘irritable’ (to the ordinary apprehension) is
no poet” (Poe, “Fifty Suggestions,” S.22; qtd. in
Baudelaire 1972b: 201). “The mere imitation,” to
Poe, “however accurate, of what is in Nature,
entitles no man to the sacred name of ‘Artist’”
(2003e: 448). “A genus irritabile” is, to
Baudelaire, “the painter of the fleeting moment,”
“the painter of modern life,” as he discusses
Constantin Guys (1802–1892), a French journal-
ist, painter, and illustrator, in “The Painter of
Modern Life.” (1972c: 394). A modern artist in a
Baudelairean sense should be more than an artist
who is simply “tied to his palette like a serf to the
soil” (397). The latter has no intention of staying
in the crowd, does not want to get “irritated” by
the fleeting modern life, and cannot be considered
an artist in a modern sense. This kind of artist is
the poet who only writes classics and epic poems,
lamenting the loss of morality. Modern excite-
ments, however, are intense and transient. To
Poe, only short poems or stories carry the aesthetic
value of modernity. “The Raven” is not an epic
poem, which Baudelaire condemned (1972b:
202–203). Short stories are preferable to the
novel, as the former “leaves a far sharper imprint
on the mind than an episodic reading” (199).
Poe is a modern artist by Benjamin’s definition,
influenced by Baudelaire, that “Poe’s manner of
presentation cannot be called ‘realism’” (1997:
128). Realism does not get the soul “irritated.”
“The veil of the soul,” to Poe, “appears
indispensable in Art” (2003e: 448). “Art,” in his
definition, is “the reproduction of what the Senses
perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul”
(2003e: 448). It emphasizes that the “veil” is in
opposition to realism. Benjamin’s discussion of
the crowd helps us to read Poe’s sense of art.
Benjamin (1997) writes, “The mass was the agi-
tated veil; through it Baudelaire saw Paris” (123).
Following this, the mass was the agitated veil;
through it, Poe, together with Baudelaire, sees
Art. Bearing Poe’s critique of art, it is not surpris-
ing to see that the poet in Baudelaire’s “Loss of a
Halo” (1869) has to lose his halo on a busy bou-
levard in order to become a modern poet (see
Benjamin 1997: 152–154; Berman 1988:
155–164). Crossing the boulevard in a great
hurry, his halo slips off his head and falls into
the mire of the macadam. He dares not to pick it
up lest he will have his bones broken (Baudelaire
1970: 94). Although his aura can no longer be
kept in the experience of shock, he finds a great
pleasure in staying ordinary and going about
incognito, as well as in thinking of some bad
poet picking it up and brazenly putting it on
(Baudelaire 1970: 94). Henceforth, Dickens
“descends to the street and joins the crowd,” and
“equates himself . . . with the tramp, the houseless
wanderer of the streets, the gentleman of leisure”
(Willis 2003: 243). Dickens began to compose
Little Dorrit in the course of his London walks
(see Hollington 2010: 91). Poe, Baudelaire, and
Dickens realize the irreplaceable role of urban or
modern artist in the age of modernity. At this
point, the first part of Baudelaire’s “Les foules”
(“Crowds”) collected in Le Spleen de Paris (Paris
Spleen, 1869) is relevant:
It is not given to every man to take a bath of
multitude; enjoying a crowd is an art; and only he
can relish a debauch of vitality at the expense of the
human species, on whom, in his cradle, a fairy has
bestowed the love of masks and masquerading,
the hate of home, and the passion for roaming.
(1970: 20)
Perhaps, “Loss of a Halo” is influenced by
Constantin Guys, whom Baudelaire describes in
“The Painter of Modern Life” as a painter who
Walking in the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin
“loves mixing with the crowds, loves being incog-
nito . . .” (395). Learning to be a modern writer is
first of all learning to be a fl^ a neur (Buck-Morss
1986: 111–112).
Paradoxically, as suggested by Benjamin’s
reading of Poe and Baudelaire, modern solitude
is experienced not when one is alone, but in the
crowd (1997: 48, 50). Perhaps, modern experi-
ence is characterized by its inability to assimilate
the experience of modernity (Abbas 1988: 226).
Modern experience becomes incommunicable,
resulting in silence and privatization (Abbas
1988: 228). Solitude is the result. Being alone in
the crowd, a modern artist is therefore in a better
position to appreciate the aesthetic of modernity.
The Aesthetics of the Crowd
Poe’s short story, “The Man of the Crowd,” was
first published in 1840 and revised in 1845. At the
beginning of the story, its convalescent narrator
sits in a London coffee house. At first he feels
calm and amuses himself by “poring over adver-
tisements,” “observing the promiscuous in the
room,” “peering through the smoky panes into
the street,” and, finally, following “the man of
the crowd” when the night deepens.
The narrator may not enjoy his state of conva-
lescence if he is not able to go outside and walk.
He can be compared with the narrator’s paralyzed
cousin in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s (1776–1822) “My
Cousin’s Corner Window” (1822). The corner
window of his home, overlooking a large market
square, gives him hope and comfort. Sitting there
can be similar to sitting in a café and looking out,
as the “I” in “The Man of the Crowd” does. The
corner window acts like a silver screen on which
the cousin observes the crowd moving. It becomes
his amusement. His eyes replace his feet as his
means of wandering; even so, the significance of
walking cannot be ignored. Walking allows one to
breathe and follow the rhythm of the streets. The
convalescent “I” in “The Man of the Crowd” tells
us that “[m]erely to breathe was enjoyment”
(131). To breathe in the crowd can be treated as
the enjoyment of “a singular intoxication in the
universal communion” which is found by “the
3
solitary and thoughtful stroller” (Baudelaire
1970: 20).
As darkness comes on, the narrator in Poe’s
“The Man of the Crowd” describes the crowd
passing in front of his eyes: it appears as “two
dense and continuous tides of population rushing
past the door,” and “the tumultuous sea of human
heads” fills him with “a delicious novelty of emo-
tion” (132). Baudelaire (1970) similarly praises
this sense of taking pleasure from the crowd. In
“Crowds,” he writes that enjoying a crowd is an
art; it is also a relishing in “a debauch of vitality”
(20). It entices the soul to give “itself entire . . . to
the unexpected as it comes along, to the stranger
as he passes” (20). This kind of pleasure, borrow-
ing from Roland Barthes (1997), constitutes
“the erotic dimension” of the city (170–171).
Baudelaire embodies this erotic pleasure brought
by modernity in the beauty of the woman. In
Baudelaire’s poem “A une passante” (“To a
Passer-by”), collected in Les Fleurs du Mal (The
Flowers of Evils, 1857), the narrator writes:
Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant,
Dans son œil, ciel livide où germe l’ouragan,
La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue.
Un éclair . . . puis la nuit! – Fugitive beauté.
Don’t le regard m’a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité? (1989: 337)
(Graceful, noble, with a statue’s form.
And I drank, trembling as a madman thrills,
From her eyes, ashen sky where brooded storm,
The softness that fascinates, the pleasure that kills.
A flash . . . then night! – O lovely fugitive,
I am suddenly reborn from your swift glance;
Shall I never see you till eternity?). (1989: 118)
Benjamin (1997) reads the erotic love for the
passerby as “love at last sight.” He puts it:
The never marks the high point of the encounter,
when the poet’s passion seems to be frustrated but in
reality bursts out of him like a flame. (45; emphasis
in original; see also 44–45, 124–125)
4 Walking in the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin
The narrator is intrigued by the modern expe-
rience brought on by the female passerby but is
incapable of grasping it.
The fleeting beauty of the crowd described by
Poe and Baudelaire reflects their understanding of
the modern condition. Each modern instance is
further described by Benjamin as a gambling
moment. He quotes from Alain to explain the
nature of gambling: “no game is dependent on
the preceding one. Gambling cares about no
assured position. . . . Winnings secured earlier
are not taken into account” (Alain, as cited in
Benjamin 1997: 134). Past, present, and future in
the age of modernity do not connect to each other.
Similarly, the narrator in Poe’s short story “The
Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842) writes:
It does not appear that the two throws which have
been completed, and which lie now absolutely in
the Past, can have influence upon the throw which
exists only in the Future. (1998: 192)
“A flash . . . then night!” This modern experi-
ence described by Baudelaire can be seen in terms
of what Benjamin (1997) calls a “shock
experience”:
The greater the share of the shock factor in partic-
ular impressions, the more constantly conscious-
ness has to be alert as a screen against stimuli; the
more efficiently it is so, the less do these impres-
sions enter experience (Erfahrung), tending to
remain in the sphere of a certain hour in one’s life
(Erlebnis). (117)
The German Erfahrung and Erlebnis, both
translated as “experience” in English, carry differ-
ent connotations: an Erlebnis is an experience
through which one has lived once; an Erfahrung
is an experience carrying a rather external quality
and leading to the formation of knowledge or
wisdom. Benjamin argues that an Erlebnis is
screened off by the self-defense mechanism of
consciousness against urban stimuli in order to
live on in phantasmagoric modernity. He com-
ments that Baudelaire places the shock experience
at the very center of his artistic work and hence
gives the weight of Erfahrung to an Erlebnis
(1997: 117, 154). The loss of the halo in
Baudelaire’s “Loss of a Halo” can be read as the
result of the modern shock (Erlebnis) encountered
by the poet in the boulevard (Benjamin 1997:
154). This shock is embodied in the widow in
Baudelaire’s “To the Passer-by”: “A flash . . .
then night!” The first encounter is already an
adieu; she can never be seen till eternity. In “The
Painter of Modern Life,” Baudelaire reads their
predecessor Constantin Guys as “the painter of the
fleeting moment” (394):
how he stabs away with his pencil, his pen, his
brush; how he spurts water from his glass to the
ceiling and tries his pen on his shirt; how he pursues
his work swiftly and intensely, as though afraid that
his images might escape him . . .” (Baudelaire, as
cited in Benjamin 1997: 118)
Baudelaire describes Guys’ works as “mne-
monic art” (1972c: 406–409). His comment on
Guys may illuminate his praise for the works of
Poe who says, “. . . through the poem, or through
the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate
glimpses” (2003d: 456). In their eyes, a city and
its myriad signs becomes an incomplete text.
Reading a city becomes a never-ending activity.
Only rough sketches function as the possible
means for Guys to approach Paris. Even if Guys
does not leave what he experiences in his
sketches, it is still left in his memory, particularly
the unconscious. A modern artwork as “mne-
monic art” is capable of awakening a forgotten
Erlebnis.
Poe might not be able to survive in the shock
experience of the modern city. He breaks the
shock defense through art. This leads to disastrous
consequences, as what Baudelaire observes: “He
could not resist the desire to recapture the marvel-
ous or terrifying visions [. . .]. A part of what is
today the source of our enjoyment is what killed
him” (1972a: 184). Poe fell into a coma on
3 October 1849, and died 4 days later
(Rapatzikou 2003: xv; see also Silverman 1992;
Quinn 1941). As a modern artist like Poe,
Baudelaire met a similar fate. He suffered a stroke,
which led to paralysis before his death on
31 August, 1867 (Richardson 1994: 445–465).
We might say that modernity shortens their hyper-
sensitive lives. It does not allow aging artists. The
life of a modern artist, as epitomized by Poe and
Baudelaire, embraces the spirit of modernity.
Poe is an alcoholic artist. Baudelaire comments
that Poe “did not drink greedily but like a
Walking in the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin
barbarian . . . as though he were accomplishing a
homicidal act, as though he had within him some-
thing to kill” (1972a: 182). He does not attribute
Poe’s drunkenness to literary grudges, metaphys-
ical anguish, domestic grieves, or poverty (182).
Rather, Baudelaire believes that, in many cases,
“Poe’s drunkenness was a mnemonic means, a
method of work, an energetic and deadly method,
but one that fitted his passionate nature” (184). To
Baudelaire, Poe drinks just as “a careful man of
letters applies himself to the exercise of note-
taking” (184). Drinking, to Baudelaire, is the exer-
cise of taking notes of the overflowing signs
encountered in phantasmagoric modernity. This
exercise can break the shock defense in order to
let urban impressions that have been lived through
enter into experience (Erlebnis).
To Baudelaire, a child “is always ‘drunk’” and
“sees everything as a novelty” (1972c: 398). He
reads Guys as “a man-child,” “an eternal conva-
lescent,” and “a man of the world” (399, 396). His
praise of Guys leads to his discussion of Poe’s
“The Man of the Crowd” in “The Painter of Mod-
ern Life” (397–402). The beginning of “The Man
of the Crowd” tells us that the narrator is in con-
valescence, which is “like a return to childhood”
(1972c: 397). He behaves as a drunken child with
“an insatiable passion” (399) for dwelling in the
crowd. He “felt a calm but inquisitive interest in
everything” (Poe: 2003a: 131). Poe is also a man-
child. Eliot saw him as having “a powerful intel-
lect . . .: but it seems to me the intellect of a highly
gifted young person before puberty. The forms
which his lively curiosity takes are those in
which a pre-adolescent mentality delights”
(1949: 335). Baudelaire might agree with Eliot.
Poe was eventually killed by his drinking
(1972a: 184). Perhaps, without the influence of
alcohol, a modern artist would be prone to melan-
choly. According to Ackbar Abbas, there are two
types of melancholy: one kind will betray the
world for the sake of knowledge (see Benjamin
1996: 157); the other one stems from a refusal to
betray the world and a fascination with the world
in disarray (Abbas 1989: 62). Poe, who refuses to
betray the world in which the crowd dwells, is the
latter.
5
For Baudelaire, Poe’s melancholy is insepara-
ble from his work: “His strangeness, his fascina-
tion, these are the hall-marks of his being, which,
like his works, was stamped with an indefinable
seal of melancholy” (1972a: 177). Poe’s short
story “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” and his
poem “The Raven” (1845) show how melancholy
results from adieu. In “The Mystery of Marie
Rogêt,” the narrator writes, “I fear that I shall
never see Marie again” (Poe 1998: 177). The
question of never seeing someone again is also
seen in “The Raven.” This poem describes the
unnamed narrator’s sorrow over the death of
Lenore. He asks the raven if he will see her
again in Heaven, but it only responds with,
“Nevermore.” Poe deliberately uses the refrain,
“Nevermore,” at the close of each stanza. In his
discussion of his poem, Poe writes that the “sono-
rous consideration and protracted emphasis” leads
him to “the long o as the most sonorous vowel, in
connection with r as the most producible conso-
nant.” (Poe 2003c: 435). Only the long repetition
is the result; and melancholy recurs. The raven
seems to serve as a modern prophet outpouring
the evil of modern beauty. “The Mystery of Marie
Rogêt” and “The Raven” set the melancholic tone
for Baudelaire’s “To the Passer-by.” The appear-
ance of the female passerby in the poem is
“nevermore.” Poe’s melancholy precipitates
Benjamin’s appreciation of Baudelaire’s poetry.
“Shall I never see you till eternity?” is a lament
for the disappearance, or “modern death,” of the
woman in “To the Passer-by”: the first encounter
is already the last one.
Poe says:
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme develop-
ment, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the
poetical tones. (2003c: 434)
“The Raven” is a mourning poem for Lenore.
To Poe, the death of a beautiful woman is the most
poetical topic in the world (2003c: 436). Poe
writes that it is “a poem which deserves its title
only as much as it excites, by elevating the soul.
The value of the poem is the ratio of this elevating
excitement. But all excitement is, through a psy-
chical necessity, transient” (2003d: 449). In Poe’s
6 Walking in the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin
terms, the woman in “To the Passer-by” frustrates
the poet by elevating the soul. She fascinates and
frustrates the narrator at the same time. She was
carrying “the flower of evil” which is brought by
modernity. This kind of evil can be read as what
Benjamin calls “love at last sight” (1997: 45, 125).
It lures a modern poet to go “botanizing on the
asphalt” (Benjamin 1997: 36). We can see that
“the erotic beauty of the transient” puts one into
self-torture if one needs to appreciate it (Tambling
2007: 133–136).
To clasp what has been repetitively lost should
not be seen as a nostalgic attempt. An urban artist
is capable of appreciating the beauty of the tran-
sience. As Benjamin points out, Poe, unlike Hugo
and Engels, did not offer any sociopolitical
critique of modernity (1997: 57–58, 60–66).
“Beauty,” to Poe, “is the sole legitimate province
of the poem” (2003c: 433). Following Poe,
Baudelaire writes, “poetry will be seen to have
no other aim but itself; it can have no other, and no
poem will be as great, as noble, so truly worthy
of the name ‘poem’ as the one written for no
purpose other than the pleasure of writing a
poem” (1972b: 203).
Modern melancholy is not read as the inability
to do nothing in a Freudian sense, but rather
nurtures a poetic ability like that which created
Paris Spleen – a collection of melancholic prose
poems. “The Man of the Crowd” ends with a
German sentence: es lässt sich nicht lesen (“it
does not permit itself to be read”). This conclud-
ing sentence returns to what is written at the
beginning of the story. Rereading cannot provide
any more understanding. Similarly, returning to
the same cityscape, a different crowd is encoun-
tered; it cannot be fully described; no orderliness
of knowledge can be established; only a modern
sublime remains.
Night Walking
Benjamin (1997) writes that the invention of gas
lamps led to increased safety and made the crowds
feel at home in the open streets, even at night (50).
This facilitates night walking, and opens up the
fascination of the night crowd to Poe. Most of
“The Man of the Crowd” is set at night. Apart
from Poe, writers like Charles Dickens, Edward
Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), and Thomas de
Quincey (1785–1859) are also fascinated by
night walking. To the narrator in Bulwer-Lytton’s
novel Eugene Aram (1832), “[o]ne of the greatest
pleasures is not only to walk alone, but also to
walk at night (while they are yet crowded),
through the long lamp-lit streets of this huge
metropolis” (1865: 118). Dickens’ The Old Curi-
osity Shop (1840–1841) begins: “Night is gener-
ally my time for walking”; there is a chapter in his
The Uncommercial Traveller (1875) called “Night
Walk.” The narrator in de Quincey’s Confessions
of an English Opium Eater (1821) writes, “I feel
always, on Saturday night, as though I also were
released from some yoke of labour, had some
wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to
enjoy” (De Quincey 1986: 106).
“Normal” business closes at night. Night-
walkers are different from businessmen who
only follow a “strict utility relationship with their
business interests” (Baudelaire 1972c: 406). The
night strips away the utilitarian way of reading a
city and offers a chance to experience a city in
a non-habitual or amateur way. Night qualifies a
walker as a Baudelairean dandy who can be free
from any profession; he is an “uncommercial
traveler,” establishing a new kind of aristocracy
that cannot be attributed to work or money (for
Baudelaire’s discussion of the dandy, see
Baudelaire 1972c: 419–422). The convalescent
narrator in “The Man of the Crowd” is not greatly
excited by those conducting business upon their
own responsibility (such as the commercial trav-
elers), nor by noblemen, merchants, attorneys,
tradesmen, or stockjobbers (132–133). He is
more erotically attracted by the heterogeneity of
the night crowd. When the gas lamps gained
ascendancy as the night deepened, the convales-
cent narrator can examine in the changes of the
general character of the crowd the “individual
faces” of “pickpockets,” “gamblers,” and “drunk-
ards” (133–135). Night “illuminates” to him the
heterogeneity of the city “buried” or repressed
by daylight. “All was dark yet splendid” (Poe
2003a: 135).
Walking in the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin
Conclusion
The eyes of the Parisian police in Poe’s two short
stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
(1841) and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” are
that of, borrowing from Virginia Woolf, “a
miner, a diver, a seeker after buried treasure”
(Woolf 1995: 257). The police are never satisfied
with the surface of a city. They read Paris contrary
to C. Auguste Dupin (who foreshadows Sherlock
Holmes), a French detective appearing in
Poe’s three detective stories “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie
Rogêt,” and “The Purloined Letter” (1845). In
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Dupin helps
the police to investigate the titular murders. Dupin
tells the narrator, “Truth is not always in a well. In
fact, as regards the more important knowledge,
I do believe that she is invariably superficial” (Poe
2003b: 156). The story’s murdered turns out to be
an orangutan, who has killed Madame
L’Espanaye and her daughter, Mademoiselle
Camille L’Espanaye, without a motive. Dupin
continues:
I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts
the blundering idea of motive, engendered in the
brains of the police by that portion of the evidence
which speaks of money delivered at the door of the
house. (166)
The Parisian police cannot let the eye float
“smoothly down a stream; resting, pausing, the
brain sleeps perhaps as it looks” (Woolf 1995:
257). They should take heed of what Siegfried
Kracauer (1995) writes:
The position that an epoch occupies in the historical
process can be determined more strikingly from an
analysis of its inconspicuous surface-level expres-
sions than from that epoch’s judgments about itself.
Since these judgments are expressions of the ten-
dencies of a particular era, they do not offer conclu-
sive testimony about its overall constitution. The
surface-level expressions, however, by virtue of
their unconscious nature, provide unmediated
access to the fundamental substance of the state of
things. Conversely, knowledge of this state of
things depends on the interpretation of these
surface-level expressions. The fundamental sub-
stance of an epoch and its unheeded impulses illu-
minate each other reciprocally. (75)
7
Apart from Kracauer, they should also learn
from Benjamin the idea of “profane illumination,”
a “materialistic, anthropological inspiration”
(1986: 190) (Benjamin 1978: 179).
When the eye becomes a miner’s eye, the het-
erogeneity of the city escapes. The Parisian police
read less than Dupin does. Dupin works less for
order and for money than for amusement. He
behaves like a Baudelairean dandy while also
demonstrating a Benjaminian sense of modern
heroism: “not the heroism of ancient times, as in
the figure of the gladiator, but rather a heroism of
little deeds, whose figures include the traveling
salesman, the ragpicker, the collector as well as
the writer, the purveyor of images” (Abbas 1989:
46). “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” shows that
Dupin is enamored of night walking: he
sallied [with the narrator] forth into the streets, arm
and arm, . . . or roaming far and wide until a late
hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of
the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement
which quiet observation can afford. (145)
His walking can be compared with the narrator
in Woolf’s “Street Haunting,” who prefers eve-
ning walks says:
With no thought of buying, the eye is sportive and
generous; it creates; it adorns; it enhances. Standing
out in the street, one may build up all the chambers
of an imaginary house and furnish them at one’s will
with sofa, table, carpet. . . . Our merrymaking shall
be reflected in that thick round mirror. But, having
built and furnished the house, one is happily under
no obligation to possess it; one can dismantle it in
the twinkling of an eye, and build and furnish
another house with other chairs and other glasses.
(260)
A modern hero walks as a modern nomad. He
can read a city more than the propertied class.
Policing and possessing a city aims at building
up knowledge for city experience, cannot get
access to Erlebnis, and disqualifies an artist to be
a modern one. This entry has introduced how a
modern artist can appreciate the aesthetics of the
heterogeneous crowd, itself a product of phantas-
magoric modernity.
8 Walking in the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin
Cross-References
▶ Benjamin, Walter
▶ Phantasmagoria
▶ Walking the City: A Chinese Perspective
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