All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity

Berman examines Charles Baudelaire’s multifaceted engagement with modernity, illustrating how Baudelaire’s pastoral and counter-pastoral visions reflect complex attitudes toward modern life and art. Berman highlights Baudelaire’s initial embrace of the bourgeoisie in his “Salon of 1846,” where Baudelaire paradoxically champions bourgeois creativity and progress, a stance that starkly contrasts with his later denunciations of bourgeois society. This early pastoral vision portrays modernity as a realm of progress and infinite human potential, intertwining the material and spiritual modernization in an unexpectedly optimistic light.

Berman then transitions to Baudelaire’s counter-pastoral perspectives, where modernity invokes disdain rather than celebration. In essays like “The Painter of Modern Life,” Baudelaire indulges in a superficial appreciation of modern life’s aesthetic, only to later critique the modern public’s obsession with truth and reality in “The Modern Public and Photography,” viewing photography as a threat to artistic beauty. These counter-pastoral reflections express a disillusionment with modern life’s materialism and its impact on art, suggesting a desire to disconnect artistic creation from the banality of modern existence.

Berman identifies an underlying tension in Baudelaire’s work, however: Despite his criticisms of modernity, Berman claims that Baudelaire’s genius is inextricably linked to the very fabric of modern life, particularly the streets of Paris. This contradiction underscores Baudelaire’s complex relationship with modernity—one that cannot easily categorize him as either a pure critic or a celebrant of the modern condition. Baudelaire’s work instead embodies the contradictions of modern existence, wrestling with its inherent tensions and paradoxes.

Berman’s analysis reveals how Baudelaire’s exploration of modernity, through both pastoral celebration and counter-pastoral critique, lays the groundwork for a deeper understanding of the modern experience. This engagement not only highlights the dialectical nature of Baudelaire’s thought but also situates him as a pivotal figure in the discourse on modernism—one who navigates the ambivalent dynamics between the allure and the alienation of the modern world.

In this chapter, Berman explores Baudelaire’s intricate portrayal of modernity as captured in his late prose poems, specifically focusing on how Baudelaire’s Paris becomes a vibrant character that embodies the dramatic transformations of the era. Berman states that Baudelaire’s engagement with Paris during its modernization under Napoleon III and Haussmann is not just observational but deeply personal, situating him as a participant in the city’s metamorphosis. This period of upheaval provides the backdrop for Baudelaire’s exploration of modern heroism, which he contrasts with traditional notions of heroism through the everyday experiences of Parisians, from politicians to businessmen and criminals, portraying a nuanced spectrum of modern life’s complexities.

Berman highlights Baudelaire’s innovative use of the feuilleton, a popular journalistic format of the time, to communicate his visions of modernity to a broad audience. This choice of medium underscores Baudelaire’s desire to intertwine art with the pulsating life of the city, marking a departure from conventional artistic expressions and emphasizing the immediacy and relevance of his work to contemporary urban experiences. Berman presents Baudelaire’s prose poems, such as “The Eyes of the Poor” and “The Loss of a Halo,” as primal modern scenes that transcend their specific historical context, offering archetypal visions of modern existence that resonate with universal themes of alienation, transformation, and the search for meaning in the burgeoning urban landscape.

Through Baudelaire’s work, Berman articulates a dialectical understanding of modernity, where the city’s architectural and social upheavals mirror the internal tumults of its inhabitants, creating a rendering of modern life that is both heroic and harrowing. Baudelaire’s nuanced engagement with the material and spiritual dimensions of modern Paris challenges simplistic interpretations of modernism, presenting a complex vision of modernity that is as much about conflict and contradiction as it is about progress and possibility.

Berman explores Charles Baudelaire’s prose poem “The Eyes of the Poor” from Paris Spleen (1869) to illustrate a complex, multifaceted view of modernity, focusing on the profound changes in urban life and consciousness brought about by the renovation of Paris under Haussmann. This transformation creates new public spaces, like boulevards and cafes, that serve as stages for modern life, embodying both the potential for inclusivity and the stark realities of exclusion based on class.

Berman points out that Baudelaire’s piece captures a “primal modern scene” where the joy and vibrancy of the modern cityscape contrast with the underlying social and economic disparities (159). The scene described—a couple enjoying the splendor of a new cafe while a poor family looks on from the outside—symbolizes the dual nature of modernity: It offers new forms of public engagement and beauty but also highlights the deep divisions within urban society.

The boulevard, as Berman elucidates, is a key symbol of modernity. It is not only an architectural innovation that opens up the city, making it more navigable and vibrant, but also a space where different social classes intersect in new and often uncomfortable ways. These intersections challenge the characters in Baudelaire’s poem to confront their own complicity in the social systems that create such disparities.

Berman argues that Baudelaire’s work reflects the internal contradictions of modern individuals, torn between a desire for connection and an impulse toward exclusion. This internal conflict is mirrored in the urban landscape itself, which is at once a site of communal possibility and a reminder of societal fragmentation.

Through Baudelaire’s eyes, Berman reveals how modernization simultaneously unites and isolates, creating a shared public sphere that is both inclusive and exclusionary. This duality, Berman suggests, is at the heart of the modern urban experience, making Baudelaire’s Paris a microcosm for exploring the broader dilemmas of modernity. Berman claims that the transformation of Paris under Haussmann, with its broad boulevards and public spaces, symbolizes the ambivalent promise of modern urban life: the potential for greater openness and democracy on the one hand and the persistence of social inequalities on the other.

Berman probes Baudelaire’s prose poem “Loss of a Halo” from Paris Spleen, unfolding the complexities and ironies of modern urban life through the lens of an individual’s confrontation with the rapidly modernizing city. The poem, set against the backdrop of the newly constructed boulevards in Paris, underscores the profound shift in the urban experience, marked by the overwhelming presence of modern traffic and the resultant “moving chaos.” Berman interprets the loss of the poet’s halo not merely as a personal mishap but as a metaphor for the broader desacralization inherent in modern life, where the forces of modernization and capitalism destabilize traditional sanctities and hierarchies.

Berman emphasizes the dual nature of the boulevard as both a site of dazzling public life and a zone of existential peril, where the individual must navigate the anarchic energy of the streets. This navigation requires sudden, adaptive movements—a metaphor for the larger adaptations demanded by modernity itself. In doing so, the individual, much like Baudelaire’s poet, discovers a paradoxical form of freedom in the relinquishment of traditional sanctities, embracing the raw materiality and flux of modern urban life.

Through the poem, Berman observes, Baudelaire critiques the romanticized notion of the artist as a sanctified figure, separate from the vulgarities of everyday life. The halo’s loss symbolizes the artist’s entry into the realm of the ordinary, where art must engage directly with the textures of modern existence. Berman points out the irony that this desacralization does not eliminate the poetic or spiritual but relocates it within the very fabric of modern urban experience.

The dialogue between the poet and the “ordinary man” in the poem, according to Berman, highlights the collapsing distinctions between the artist and the masses as both navigate the complexities of the modern city. The adoption of macadam—a symbol of modern infrastructure and global cultural exchange—mirrors this blurring of boundaries, which flattens social hierarchies even as it opens up new avenues for artistic exploration.

Berman suggests that the poem anticipates the collective actions of the urban populace, as seen in historical moments of revolt and barricade building, where people harness the chaotic energies of the city for communal resistance and transformation. “Loss of a Halo” thus serves as a profound meditation on the ambivalences of modernity, where loss and disorientation are counterbalanced by the possibilities for new forms of creativity and solidarity within the urban maelstrom.

Berman examines the transition from the vibrant, chaotic urban life depicted in Baudelaire’s 19th-century Paris to the more ordered, compartmentalized urban spaces designed in the 20th century. He contrasts the boulevard, a space that facilitated encounters and fostered the dynamic interplay of social forces, with the highway, a modernist invention designed to segregate and streamline movement, effectively diluting the chaotic essence of city life.

Berman identifies a significant shift in modernist thought and urban planning, marked by figures like Le Corbusier, whose visions for the city emphasized efficiency, order, and separation over the organic, interconnected chaos of traditional urban life. This new urbanism, characterized by the “tower in the park” concept and extensive highway systems, sought to mitigate the complexities and contradictions of modern urban existence by physically restructuring the urban landscape.

However, Berman notes a paradox in this approach: While aiming to simplify and sanitize city life, 20th-century modernism inadvertently stripped away the rich, spontaneous interactions that give cities their vitality. He critiques this version of modernism for its failure to engage with the underlying social and spiritual conflicts of urban life, suggesting that it represents a retreat into an idealized, controlled environment rather than a genuine resolution of modernity’s challenges.

Despite the widespread implementation of these modernist urban designs, Berman observes a resurgence of interest in the messier, more chaotic aspects of city life, as exemplified by the work of Jane Jacobs and others who champion the value of dense, interactive urban spaces. This revival reflects a desire to reclaim the city as a space of human connection and complexity, challenging the sterilizing tendencies of 20th-century urban planning.