“Their leaves have the appearance of dark-green frosted glass near the street lamps.” (516)
“‘The old Gothic cloaca still cynically showed its jaws.’” (524)
Back in my dark apartment.
“A desperately clear consciousness of gathering crisis is something chronic in humanity.” (846)
The heroic gambler; he is in the very beginning—starting—stark and staring—on page 489, bound for Avernus, arm in arm with the first prostitute who slinks over to his whistle. In those “eyes whose steady calm is frightening” an element of the demonic visage, imp-like wantonness of Poe’s man of the crowd—who we assume is a criminal, convict, madman—he was after all hiding a glimmer, a sliver of the moon, the pimp’s blade bled the Irish playwright. And his eyes call to the moons—two moons—one referent and two telescopic senses—the moon always hanging out, idling in the second act, latecomer, lagging culpably and superbly, as only that milk muddied crinoline can. And pigeons, parrots, and the like in the skeletal structure supporting all those ruffles—which are history—which is basic.
--Quotations from Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin.
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