Luis Ramos
Liberal Studies Program
New York University
Bridges, Train Stations and Monuments:
Location-Based Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Texts and Contexts
…aux vancus!
—Charles Baudelaire
In this paper I explore how a location-based pedagogy—one that examines the
relation between literary works and their material and spatial conditions of emergence—
offers a useful model of experiential learning across a wide range of texts and contexts.
By focusing on three authors whose urban visions offer competing images of nineteenthcentury modernity—Baudelaire’s Paris, Martí’s New York and Conrad’s London—I will
attempt to show how a pedagogical model that incorporates an analysis of city landmarks
and monuments in tandem with visual and literary works of art might bear upon a
meaningful interdisciplinary learning environment at NYU’s distinct portal campuses.
More specifically, I will reveal how each author’s urban vision lends itself to a
critical dialogue across the arts about two competing facets of nineteenth-century global
modernity: industrial transformation in the United States and Europe versus imperial
expansion in Africa, Asia and the Americas. How might we examine these two
developments less as separate or unrelated experiences and more as inextricably linked
cultural expressions in the classroom? First, I will demonstrate how an examination of
Baudelaire’s urban poetry in relation to Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay, “Paris, Capital
of the Nineteenth-Century,” offers both possibilities and limitations in terms of
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establishing connections between empire, modernity and industrial transformation in a
new age of bourgeois capitalism. I will then turn to Cuban intellectual José Martí’s exilic
reflections on New York City’s industrial transformations in relation to his growing
awareness of U.S. imperial ambitions in Latin America as offering an alternate model of
global cultural criticism. Finally, I will consider how Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
blurs the divide between two key features of nineteenth-century modernity—industrial
transformation at home and imperial expansion abroad—by drawing parallels between
urban spaces in Europe and the Belgian conquest of the Congo.
Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate how an approach to the aforementioned authors
that puts into focus their depictions of urban spaces within a transnational context lends
itself to experiential modes of knowledge. By examining city landmarks and monuments
in Baudelaire, Martí and Conrad’s works as metaphors for global cultural relations, I seek
to demonstrate how they offer a geopolitical conception of nineteenth-century modernity
that draws from student urban engagement and experience.
I. Visualizing Paris as a Capital of Modernity
Baudelaire’s “Tableaux parisiens” is a collection of poems that offers a critical
image of Paris in a new age of industrial modernity. In these poems, Baudelaire laments
the passing of an old Paris—a city he recalls as untarnished by an emergent bourgeois
cultural order. Offering an ambivalent image of the city from its marginalized sectors—
his vision of prostitutes, beggars, disabled and elderly people vacillate between empathy
and scorn—these poems reflect a vision of the city from sunrise to dusk.
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The late Jewish-German philosopher Walter Benjamin called Baudelaire the first
poet of modernity in his seminal essay on the birth of consumer culture and modern
urban experience, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth-Century.”1 Charting its
transformation from a medieval city to a modern industrial metropolis, Benjamin argues
that Baudelaire captures many of the paradoxes of nineteenth-century modernity: the
simultaneous emergence of crowds and urban anonymity, the birth of unprecedented
forms of leisure and violence, and the invention of new modes of production and
alienation.
Making the city the object of lyric poetry for the first time, for Benjamin
Baudelaire’s poetry offers an allegorical reflection of many of the critical developments
in nineteenth-century modernity. By reading Baudelaire in relation to Benjamin, in the
classroom I endeavor to offer a level of discussion that does not privilege the theorist
over the poet, but rather, reveals how a careful close reading of both authors yields
unexpected parallels and connections. How does Baudelaire’s conception of the poet as a
flâneur—that is, as an observer or chronicler of daily life—resonate with Benjamin’s
theorization of nineteenth-century urban transformation? What are some connections
between Benjamin and Baudelaire’s depictions of nineteenth-century Paris? Bearing in
mind Benjamin’s claims about the allegorical dimensions of Baudelaire’s poetry, in what
ways does each poem form part of a larger allegorical reflection of nineteenth-century
Paris? What role do city monuments and landmarks play in the author’s allegorical
vision? In turn, how does thinking about the poems together as an extended metaphor or
1
Benjamin, Walter. “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth-Century” in Reflections: Essays,
Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. New York: Schocken Books, 2007 [1955].
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allegory for nineteenth-century Paris lend itself to an image of modernity on a global
scale?
Even though Benjamin’s essay offers a fruitful point of departure for an
interdisciplinary discussion of industrial transformation in nineteenth-century modernity,
I encourage students to reflect upon its possible limitations. What other nineteenthcentury developments violently transform cultural relations across the globe? By
introducing students to the idea of imperial expansion abroad as a logical outcome and an
essential condition of industrial transformation at home, I ask them to examine how these
phenomena are inextricably linked in Baudelaire’s depiction of Paris in “The Swan:”
And so outside the Louvre an image gives me pause:
I think of my great swan, his gestures pained and mad,
Like other exiles, both ridiculous and sublime,
Gnawed by his endless longing! Then I think of you,
Fallen Andromache, torn from a husband’s arms,
Vile property beneath the haughty Pyrrhus’ hand,
Next to an empty tomb, head bowed in ecstasy,
Widow of Hector! O! and wife of Helenus!
I think of a negress, thin and tubercular,
Treading in the mire, searching with haggard eye
For palm trees she recalls from splendid Africa,
Somewhere behind a giant barrier of fog;
Of all those who have lost something they may not find
Ever, ever again! who steep themselves in tears
And suck a bitter milk from that good she-wolf, grief!
Of orphans, skin and bones, dry and wasted blooms!
And likewise in the forest of my exiled soul
Old Memory sings out a full note of the horn!
I think of sailors left forgotten on an isle,
Of captives, the defeated…many others more!2
2
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Swan” in The Flowers of Evil. Trans. McGowan, James.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993 [1857].
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Why does Baudelaire liken the transformation of Paris to previous expressions of
imperial violence in European history, both ancient and modern? What does Paris share
in common with the fate of Andromache in Homer’s Iliad? Why does Baudelaire liken
his city’s fate to a widow of a fallen hero forced to co-exist with her enemy? How does
the clash between Troy and Greece, East and West, Europe and Asia inform the poet’s
vision of his native city’s industrial transformation? Similarly, why does he imagine “a
negresse, thin and tubercular, treading in the mire, searching with haggard eye, for palm
trees she recalls from splendid Africa?” How does Baudelaire recall the transatlantic
slave trade and the traumatic legacies of the middle passage in a racialized and gendered
image of irreparable damage or loss (melancholia)? Finally, what do these two images of
female loss share in common? In other words, how does he imagine the transformation of
Paris as an inherently gendered and racialized experienced of loss?
In keeping with Baudealaire’s imagining of Paris to previous moments of colonial
violence, I ask them how his further comparison of the city to orphans, captives,
abandoned sailors as figures of defeat correspond with a global vision of nineteenthcentury modernity in the poem. How does an allegorical image of Paris as a great swan,
“pained and mad,” at the same time form part of a global vision of culture, both ancient
and modern? How does Baudelaire imagine modernity from the perspective of its
victims? Finally, how does the poet make allusion to the idea of urban space as a site of
loss and violent displacement in the poem? What significance do you ascribe to the
Louvre (the only concrete building in the poem) in the poet’s vision of modernity?
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II. Reading New York with an Eye Toward Latin America
José Martí presents teachers of literature and culture a unique set of opportunities
in terms establishing an intellectual dialogue about the relation between modernity,
empire and industrial transformation in a nineteenth-century context. A native of Cuba,
Martí lived fifteen years exiled in New York, writing crónicas or essays for various
Spanish-language newspapers in Latin America. During these years, he grew
increasingly critical of U.S. imperial ambitions in Latin America, writing some of his
most important works of poetry and criticism. These years also foreshadowed his future
struggles for Cuban independence (he dies fighting the Spanish in battle) and his larger
vision of a distinct Latin American cultural destiny, famously expressed in “Our
América.” Among those works written in exile, “Coney Island,” “The Brooklyn Bridge,”
and “Yo soy un hombre sincero” stand out for their reluctant admiration of U.S. industrial
modernity, for their aesthetic meditations on U.S./Latin American cultural relations and
for their critical denunciation of U.S. continental imperial ambitions.3
One of the challenges about teaching imperialism in a nineteenth-century context
for the American student is his or her difficulty in coming to terms with the United States
as an imperial power. American students are used to thinking about France, Great Britain
or Belgium as nineteenth-century imperial powers, but rarely do they consider that the
United States also acquired oversees colonies during this period. For these reasons, José
Martí can be a particularly challenging author for students to grapple with. At the same
time, his eloquent depictions of daily life in the U.S. industrial capital as well as his
3
Martí, José. “Coney Island,” “The Brooklyn Bridge,” “Our América” and “I am an
Honest Man” in Selected Writings. Trans. Allen, Esther. New York, Penguin, 2002. 8993. 140-44. 288-295. 272-75.
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ambivalent fascination with American culture offer students a unique perspective on late
nineteenth-century New York City. Students in my previous class, for example, were
struck by his description of the Brooklyn Bridge “as a hyphen between the Old and the
New Gospel” and by his image of the city as a ravenous iron monster.
The reactions of students of Latin American and Caribbean descent tend to differ
from their U.S. counterparts. A Jamaican student of mixed Indo-African descent, for
example, wrote in a paper for my class that she found Martí’s championing of the
common man and his vision of cultural and political solidarity across the Americas ideals
that many people in the Caribbean still share to this day. Similarly, a Haitian-American
student argued in another class that Martí ‘s fears of U.S. imperial ambitions in late
nineteenth-century Cuba resonate strongly with Haiti’s twentieth-century experience.
Because an author like Martí presents students across a wide range of nationalities
a unique set of challenges and opportunities, I highlight his complex relation both to the
United States and its neighboring countries. How does Martí’s doubly marginal status in
New York—that is, as an exiled Cuban and a colonial subject of Spain—inform his
perspective of the United States? In what ways does his status as an outsider make him an
unusually keen and insightful observer of late nineteenth-century U.S. culture?
For example, how does José Martí capture the emergence of a mass consumer
culture in his essay “Coney Island?” Along similar lines, in what ways does Martí
imagine the Brooklyn Bridge as signaling a new stage of industrial capitalism? Finally,
how do these two spaces—Coney Island and the Brooklyn Bridge—represent in Martí’s
imagination both the dangers and promises of capitalism, both the pitfalls and
opportunities of modernity? In contrast, how does his vision of Latin America differ
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from his depictions of the United States in his essay “Our América?” How does Martí
champion a vision of Latin American political and cultural autonomy? Moreover, how is
his critical vision of the United States increasingly shaped by his growing suspicion of its
imperial ambitions in Latin America? Finally, how does Martí’s emphasis on the
downtrodden and poor people both in “Our América” and in his poem “Yo soy un
hombre sincero” reflect a broader anti-imperialistic poetics?
As an extra credit assignment, I recently asked students to investigate how Martí’s
dream of an independent and unified Latin America are reflected in New York City
today. In other words, I asked them to locate the city landmark that commemorates
Martí’s legacy in New York City. I asked them to write a brief response paper analyzing
the statue’s significance both in terms of its location and in terms of its representation of
Martí. As some of you may be aware, his statue is located in front of the south entrance
of Central Park, right in front of Avenue of the Americas. Martí appears on top of a
galloping hoarse, as if frozen in battle. He is situated between two other Latin American
liberators: Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín. [What is the significance of this
landmark’s location? Why does he appear as if charging in battle? Why is he situated
between two other Latin American revolutionary heroes?]
III. Imagining London as an Imperial Metropolis
Whereas Martí’s critical vision of U.S. imperial ambitions in Latin America
presents a particular set of challenges to American students of nineteenth-century culture,
Conrad’s depiction of the Belgian conquest of the Congo in Heart of Darkness offers a
different set of problems for instructors: How do you approach a text with an ambiguous
and uncomfortably close relation to a discourse of racial violence it also condemns? By
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exposing students to the critical controversies that surround the novel—namely, Chinua
Achebe’s claims that the novel ultimately offers a racist depiction of Africa—and by
encouraging them to draw conclusions of their own through a careful and sustained close
reading of key passages, I strive to challenge students to think about its use of racial
discourse beyond easy dichotomies.
More specifically, I ask students to examine the novel’s use light versus dark
imagery. What special significance do metaphors of enlightenment hold in the novel?
What does its juxtaposition of light and dark imagery suggest about European imperial
aims in Africa? In what ways does the novel undo the very binaries that distinguish
Europe from Africa, reason from madness and civilization from barbarism? How does the
novel reveal how the discourse of enlightenment has been historically utilized for
imperialist aims? In short, where does the novel’s so-called heart of darkness ultimately
lie—in Europe or in Africa, in London or in the Congo?
The novel’s opening scene offers a productive point of entry into a discussion of
its blurring of the divide between dark and light imagery, and between European and
African spaces. By continuously juxtaposing symbols of industrial might and
innovation—ships and steamboats—over moving bodies of water (namely, the Thames
and Congo Rivers), I ask students to examine how Conrad critically re-imagines relations
between Europe and Africa:
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the
sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being
bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of
the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an
interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together
without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting
up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked,
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with gleams of varnished spirits. A hazed rested on the low shores that ran out to
se in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and further back still
seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest,
and greatest, town on earth.4
How does an image of a sailboat (a cruising yawl) bound to the Thames River
foreshadow the novel’s depiction of imperialism? How does imperial expansion depend
on a logic of traversing and overcoming unstable and unpredictable conditions?
Moreover, how does an image of the Thames River itself—a body of water that at once
divides and unites London—as “an interminable waterway” reflect the novel’s image of
nineteenth-century British imperial ambitions? How does the use of contrasting imagery
(light versus dark colors) to depict the Thames River reflect the novel’s own critical
vision of British imperial aims? Moreover, why does an image of an increasingly dark
sky appear to cast a sinister and uneasy spell over London? Why is London described as
“the biggest and greatest, town on earth?” In other words, how is London imagined as
both an industrial (biggest) and imperial (greatest) capital?
Whereas I emphasize the significance of the novel’s blurring of light and dark
imagery in European urban spaces in relation to its critique of imperial ideology, I call
attention to its use of symbols of industrial warfare and destruction to describe the
conquest of the Congo. By asking students to think critically about how the novel inverts
the divide between two key features of nineteenth-century modernity—industrial
transformation at home and imperial expansion abroad—I encourage them to re-imagine
nineteenth-century texts and contexts beyond Eurocentric models.
As the following passage demonstrates, Conrad often uses images of industrial
violence and destruction to capture European imperial efforts in sub-Saharan Africa. As
4
Conrad, Joseph. Heard of Darkness. New York: Penguin, 2007 [1899]. 3.
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the narrator initially leads us slowly into the interior of Africa, he recalls seeing once a
French warship in another journey, highlighting both the paradoxical quality of European
vessel’s presence—how do you wage a war against an unarmed enemy?—and its use of
technology for widespread and serialized violence:
Once I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There
wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had
one of their wars going on there-abouts. Her ensign drooped limp like a rag; the
muzzles of the long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy,
shiny swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the
empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing
into a continent. Pop, would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame would
dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give
a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a
touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and
it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a
camp of natives—he called them enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere.5
How does the narrator appeal to our senses—in particular, to the sights and sounds of
industrial warfare—to convey to us as readers the experience of colonial violence? How
does the narrator use contrasting imagery to characterize relations between instruments of
modernity versus bodies of land and water, and between foreign aggressors and native
inhabitants? How does the narrator’s use of diction and language serve to create a sinister
tone and environment? Finally, how does an image of a warship “firing into a continent”
offer a metaphor for the European conquest of Africa? How was the contest imperial
supremacy between European imperial powers understood as an industrialized mode of
death and violence?
In this paper I have sought to explore how experiential modes of knowledge—the
sights, sounds and smells of cities—offer a model of student engagement beyond the
5
Conrad, Joseph. Heard of Darkness. New York: Penguin, 2007 [1899]. 16.
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classroom and into the various global sites they live in and study. Moreover, I have
sought to demonstrate how an incorporation of city landmarks—bridges, train stations,
amusement parks and rivers—into student engagement with nineteenth-century texts an
context offers a compelling model. Viewed as metaphors for global cultural relations in
the works of Baudelaire, Martí and Conrad, city landmarks and monuments at the same
time offer students opportunities for urban engagement and experiential learning both
within and beyond the classroom.
More specifically, by demonstrating how each of the aforementioned authors reimagines the relation between two defining features of nineteenth-century modernity in
their depiction of urban spaces—industrial transformation at home and imperial
expansion abroad—I have sought to bear upon a conception of the nineteenth-century
that moves beyond provincial models. By adopting a critical approach that is mindful of
the victims as well as the victors of modernity and by engaging in reading practice that is
attentive to the margins and centers of power, scholars and teachers are well positioned to
offer a more global—and dare I say, more exciting—vision to nineteenth-century studies.
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