The Text of the CityPeter BrooksOscar Wilde, in one of those epigrams that cut to the heartof the matter, states our subject in broadest outline: "Balzacinvented the nineteenth century." The remark is profoundlytrue, in that the identification of an era-its shape, salientcharacteristics, itsmeaning-depends on its having beenself-consciously conceptualized and articulated. The senseof an era comes toconsciousnesswhen it becomes atext.And Balzac'sComedieHumaine ispre-eminently the textin which the nineteenth century takes cognizance of itself,recognizesitself as modernity, a new epoch governed bynew sets of laws, criss-crossed by new codes of significance.Balzac is in fact one of the first writers to be aware of theradically changed situationof literature in the new age: anage that for the first time made of literature itself a com-modity, a commercial. product which depended on the playof market forces, including advertising, journalism, and theattraction of investment capital, rather than on the oldsystem of royal or aristocratic patronage. This transforma-tion is the theme of Illusionsperdues,possibly Balzac'sgreatest novel, which has been described by GeorgLukicsas the epic of "the capitalization of spirit." Along with thecommercialization of the very medium in which he wasworking, the other inescapable phenomenon facing thewriter of Balzac's era was, not yet so much industrializa-tion-this was only 'beginning to make its impact in conti-nental Europe in the1830's-buturbanization. From thetime of the French Revolution through the 1830's, the popu-lation of Paris had nearly doubled, largely because of immi-gration from the provinces-an example of which was Bal-zac himself. The growth of the city was apparent to theobserver principally,in two ways: in the building of newresidential areas in what had previously been suburb (to theaccompaniment of considerable land speculation) and, muchmore strikingly, in a greatly increased density of inhabita-tion in the old quarters of the city, especially in theworking-class districts. The urbancrowd became a recog-nizable phenomenon and a felt presence. There was a newsense of the city as a total dynamic entity and way of life, atotal horizon bounding one's perception and one's life, be-yond which was simply the unthinkable darkness of theprovinces.As the fates of so many Balzacian charactersshow, while life in Paris may be a struggle, there are noNotice: This material may beprotected by copyright law(Title 17 U.S. Code).viable alternative worlds elsewhere.Balzac made the choice of Paris-resisting all his family'surgings to return to the provinces-and immersed himselfin its commercial, journalistic, and literary lives. Yet hisreaction to the modern urban milieu is curiously one ofnostalgia and loss. The sentiment of loss has to do with thedensity, anonymity, and uncenteredness of modern urbanlife, or, in a term I find more specifically appropriate to hisproblems as an artist, itsindifferentiation.Again andagain, we find Balzac complaining about the "platitude" ofmodern existence: its flatness, theway-it has been leveledand has lost what he believes to have been an earlier systemof traditional distinguishing characteristics and marks. Therefrain comes back repeatedly; it is perhaps most succinctlystated in the preface to one of his novels,Une Fille d'Eve(1839),where he argues that in the hierarchical society ofthe Old Regime one could tell who people were from theiroutward appearance and demeanour, even from theirclothes.Bourgeois,merchant or artisan, noble, enslavedpeasantry: all had their distinctive and defining marks.Now, however, equality has produced a world of "infinitenuances." Previously, he writes, "the caste system gaveeach person a physiognomy which was more important thanthe individual; today, the individual gets his physiognomyfrom himself." This is a lucid statement of a historical pas-sage from what a sociologist would call a system of "as-signed identity" to one of "achieved identity." Curiously,this new individual self-definition makes it more, not less,difficultto tell who anyone is, makes the process of differ-entiation infinitely more subtle and problematic. With theeclipseof the political and spiritual center of socialauthority-monarch and church-there has been a loss of aclear and accepted system of signs with unambiguous,hierarchized referents.Balzac, a self-proclaimed political reactionary, finds what hecalls the "disorder" of modern existence to be both deplora-ble and exciting. The profusion of life styles and self-definitions which it offers creates a challenge and a problemfor the novelist. The writer who turns his attention to theportrayal of modern life, particularly life in the urban land-scape,must encounter and overcome the fact of indiffer-entiation. He must find the system of nuanced distinctions,contrasts, hierarchies which will allow him to create mean-ing in a social world. that appears threatened by a loss ofmeaning. He must discover--or invent-thosecodesthatwill allow him to make sense of the grayish phenomena(blackish, in fact, since that has become the predominantcolor of male dress) before his eyes. Indeed, since meaninghas in some sense been occulted, he may have to reachbeyond the surface appearances of reality, to uncover thoselatent systems ofsignificationwhich the surfaces mask.We can witness Balzac attempting to recover meaning inthe urban landscape in such an early and apparently trivialtext as hisPetit Dictionnaire critique etanecdotiquedesEnseignesdeParis(1826)-dictionary of the tradesmen'ssigns hung above shop doors along the streets of Paris.Signed "Par unbatteurdu pave" ("By a stroller of thestreets") the Dictionary suggests already the Baudelairianfigure of theurbanj7dneur:the curious stroller or prowlerof the urban landscape.' But here the stroller is concernedto organize a systematic interpretation of legible meaningsin the urban landscape. Recording and commenting uponthe shop signs in fact becomes a "semiotic" enterprise, aconsideration of how shops' names and pictorial emblemsrelate to the interior aspects of the shops, their merchan-dise, the character of the establishment and its proprietor.TheDictionarybecomes an inquiry into one of the sign-systems which the city has created to organize and conveycertain of its meanings.TheDictionary isan early and relatively crude version ofwhat was to become an almost obsessive concern withfinding the bases of an urban semiotic: a way of