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PARTISAN REVIEW
makers), starting with the Impressionists in the 1860s, would nourish
themselves on the life and energy that flowed along the boulevards. By
the 1880s, the Haussmann pattern was generally acclaimed as the very
model of modern urbanism. As such, it was soon stamped on emerging
and expanding cities in every corner of the world, from Santiago to
Saigon.
What did the boulevards do to the people who came to fill them?
Baudelaire shows us some of the most striking things. For lovers, like
the ones in "The Eyes of the Poor, " the boulevards created a new
primal scene: a space where they could be private in public, intimately
together without being physically alone. Moving along the boulevard,
caught up in its immense and endless flux, they could feel their love
more vividly than ever as the still point of a turning world. They could
display their love before the boulevard's end less parade of strangers–
indeed, within a generation Paris would be world-famous for this sort
of amorous display-and draw different forms of joy from them all.
They cou ld weave veils of fantasy around the multitude of passersby:
who were these people, where did they come from and where were they
going, what did they want, whom did they love? The more they saw
of others, and showed themselves to others-the more they participated
in the extended "family of eyes" -the richer became their vision
of themselves.
In this environment, urban realities could easi ly become dreamy
and magical. The bright lights of street and cafe only heightened the
joy; in the next generations, the coming of electricity and neon would
heighten it still more. Even the most blatant vulgarities, like those cafe
nymphs with fruits and pates on their heads, turned lovely in this
romantic glow. Anyone who has ever been in love in a great city knows
the feeling, and it is celebrated in a hundred sentimental songs: "The
great big city's a wondrous toy/ Made for a girl and boy,/We'll turn
Manhattan into an isle of joy." In fact, these private joys spring directly
from the modernization of public urban space. Baudelaire shows us a
new private and public world at the very moment when it is coming
into being. From this moment on, the boulevard will be as vital as the
boudoir in the making of modern love.
But primal scenes, for Baudelaire as later on for Freud, cannot be
idyllic. They may contain idyllic material, but at the climax of the
scene a repressed reality creaks through, a revelation or discovery takes
place. " .. . a new boulevard, sti ll littered with rubbl e ... displayed its
unfinished splendors." Alongside the glitter, the rubble: the ruins of a
dozen inner-city neighborhoods-the city's oldest, darkest, densest,
