Topical Guide 781
Mark Dorset
Allusion
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 68:
I’ve found an interesting way to think about myself in relation to the rest of the world, to everything, in fact, that is not my self, but especially to the people who have been and ever will be the audience for that work, my self, if it’s ever finished, and here it is: I am not the center of the universe, but I am the center of my universe. […] Where I’m headed, there will be nights when I can allow myself to see, or convince myself that I can see, the true transparency of my universe. I will have a splendid model laid before me there—the vast, starry sky, the distant horizon, the arcing edge of the earth—and there, on a quiet night, I think I will really know that I am at the center of my universe—off in a corner of someone else’s, perhaps, but at the center of mine. I will set up house in the heart of it all, with the ebb and flow around me, in the midst of my world, at the center of my world, and yet I will be hidden from the world—independent, by myself.
Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” translated by Jonathan Mayne:
For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, and yet remain hidden from the world—such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, . . . .
See also:
Allusion; Quotation TG 140, TG 455, TG 462, TG 502, TG 506, TG 532, TG 559, TG 583, TG 592, TG 626, TG 654, TG 657, TG 714, TG 735, TG 736, TG 738, TG 780
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