第二章 巴黎的古代地下水道
试想巴黎像揭盖子一样被揭起，从鸟瞰角度观察，地下的下水道网络将在河岸上勾勒出一种巨大的树枝形状，这些树枝嫁接在河流上。在右岸，环城下水道构成这棵树枝的主干，次级管道构成枝杈，而那些没有出口的管道则构成小枝。
这幅图景仅是一种粗略的近似，因为这种地下分支系统惯常的直角形态，在植物生长中极为罕见。
要更准确地想象这个奇特的几何图形，不妨设想自己正凝视着某种古怪的东方字母表，其复杂程度如同灌木丛，在阴影的背景下，那些畸形的字母似乎混乱地相互焊接，有时通过它们的角，有时通过它们的尖端，仿佛纯属偶然。
在中世纪、东罗马帝国以及古老的东方，污水池和下水道扮演了重要角色。民众对这些腐败的巢穴、这些死亡的怪异摇篮，怀着近乎宗教性的恐惧。贝拿勒斯的虫豸沟渠与巴比伦的狮子坑同样令人目眩。根据犹太教典籍，提格拉特帕拉沙尔曾以尼尼微的污水沟起誓。明斯特的下水道曾让莱顿的约翰制造出他的假月亮，而东方神秘主义者莫坎纳、霍拉桑的蒙面先知，则是从凯克谢布的粪池中升起了他的假太阳。
人类的历史映照在下水道的历史中。日耳曼尼亚叙述了罗马。巴黎的下水道自古便是一个可畏的事物。它曾是墓地，也曾充当避难所。罪行、智慧、社会抗议、思想自由、盗窃，凡人类法律所追捕或曾追捕的一切，都藏匿于那个洞穴之中：十四世纪的棍棒党人、十五世纪的剪径贼、十六世纪的胡格诺派教徒、十七世纪莫兰的“光照派”、十八世纪的土匪。百年前，夜间的匕首出击来自那里，身陷险境的小偷溜进那里；森林有其洞穴，巴黎有其下水道。流浪，这种高卢式的小偷行径，将下水道视为“奇迹宫廷”的附属，到了夜晚，他们便通过莫布埃出口，凶悍而狡黠地返回那里，如同回到卧室。
那些以死胡同Vide-Gousset（空口袋）、或Coupe-Gorge街（断喉街）为日常活动场所的人，夜晚将chemin-Vert的涵洞或于尔普瓦的集水坑作为居所，这是再自然不过的事。由此产生了众多回忆。各类幽灵出没于这些漫长而孤寂的廊道；处处是腐烂与瘴气；这里那里有通风孔，维永在内与拉伯雷在外交谈。
古老巴黎的下水道，是所有耗竭与所有尝试的汇聚之地。政治经济学在其中窥见废料，社会哲学则从中发现残渣。
下水道是城市的良知。万物在那里汇聚、对峙。在那惨白之地，有阴影，却再无秘密。每样事物都呈现其真实形态，或至少是其最终形态。垃圾堆的优点在于不说谎。天真在那里找到了避难所。巴西尔的假面在那里，但你能看到它的纸板、绳线、内里与外表，并被诚实的污泥所衬托。斯卡平的假鼻子就是它的邻居。文明的所有污秽，一旦失去用途，便落入这条真理的沟渠，巨大的社会滑移在那里终结。它们被吞没，但也在那里展现自身。这种混合物是供词。在那里，再无虚假表象，无法涂脂抹粉，污秽脱下衬衫，绝对的赤裸驱散所有幻觉与幻影，剩下的只有真实存在之物，呈现终结事物的阴森形态。在那里，瓶底表明酗酒，篮柄讲述家务事；曾怀有文学见解的苹果核变回苹果核；大苏上的肖像坦率地生满铜绿，该亚法的唾沫与福斯塔夫的呕吐相遇，赌场的金路易与上吊者的绳头旁边的钉子相撞。一具惨白的胎儿翻滚而过，包裹在追悔星期二曾于歌剧院舞动的亮片之中；一顶曾对人施以判决的帽子，在曾是玛戈同裙裾的腐烂物旁打滚；这不止是亲如兄弟，简直是以“你”相称。所有昔日涂脂抹粉的东西，都被洗刷干净。最后一层面纱被撕去。下水道是个犬儒派。它诉说一切。
污秽的真诚令人愉悦，亦使灵魂安息。当人在地上终日忍受着国事理由、誓言、政治智慧、人类正义、职业诚信、严酷处境、廉洁官袍所摆出的种种傲慢姿态时，进入下水道并目睹与之相称的污泥，倒是一种慰藉。
同时这也富有教义。我们刚说过，历史穿过下水道。圣巴托罗缪大屠杀的血滴，在石板缝间一滴滴滤过。大型公开谋杀、政治与宗教屠杀，穿过这条文明的地下通道，将它们的尸体推进那里。在思想者眼中，所有历史上的杀人犯，都跪在那可怕的半明半暗中，以裹尸布残片当围裙，阴郁地擦拭着他们的罪行。路易十一与特里斯坦在那里，弗朗索瓦一世与杜普拉在那里，查理九世与他的母亲在那里，黎塞留与路易十三在那里，卢瓦在那里，勒泰利埃在那里，埃贝尔与马亚尔在那里，刮着石头，试图抹去他们行动的痕迹。在这些拱顶下，可以听见幽灵的扫帚声。那里充溢着社会灾难的巨大恶臭。角落里可见暗红反光。一条可怕的溪流流淌其中，血淋淋的手曾在里面洗濯。
社会观察者应进入这些阴影。它们构成其实验室的一部分。哲学是思想的显微镜。一切皆想逃离它，却无一能逃脱。推诿是无用的。逃避时展现的是自身的哪一面？是羞耻的一面。哲学以目光追寻，审视罪恶，不让它遁入虚无。在消失之物的湮灭中，在消逝之物的凝视中，它辨认出一切。它从破布中还原紫袍，从衣裙碎片中还原女人。从粪池中，它重构城市；从污泥中，它重建风尚；从陶片推断双耳罐或水壶。凭指甲在羊皮纸上的印记，它辨认出犹太巷犹太区与隔都犹太区之间的区别。它在残留物中重新发现所曾是的一切：善、恶、真实、宫殿的血迹、洞穴的墨渍、妓院的汗滴、经受的考验、欢迎的诱惑、抛出的狂欢，性格堕落时所呈现的形态，灵魂中因粗鄙而变得可能的卖淫痕迹，以及罗马门房衣衫上墨萨莉娜臂肘的印记。
Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover, the subterranean
network of sewers, from a bird’s-eye view, will outline on the banks a
species of large branch grafted on the river. On the right bank, the
belt sewer will form the trunk of this branch, the secondary ducts will
form the branches, and those without exit the twigs.
This figure is but a summary one and half exact, the right angle, which
is the customary angle of this species of subterranean ramifications,
being very rare in vegetation.
A more accurate image of this strange geometrical plan can be formed by
supposing that one is viewing some eccentric oriental alphabet, as
intricate as a thicket, against a background of shadows, and the
misshapen letters should be welded one to another in apparent
confusion, and as at haphazard, now by their angles, again by their
extremities.
Sinks and sewers played a great part in the Middle Ages, in the Lower
Empire and in the Orient of old. The masses regarded these beds of
decomposition, these monstrous cradles of death, with a fear that was
almost religious. The vermin ditch of Benares is no less conducive to
giddiness than the lions’ ditch of Babylon. Teglath-Phalasar, according
to the rabbinical books, swore by the sink of Nineveh. It was from the
sewer of Münster that John of Leyden produced his false moon, and it
was from the cesspool of Kekscheb that oriental menalchme, Mokanna, the
veiled prophet of Khorassan, caused his false sun to emerge.
The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. The
Germoniæ58 narrated Rome. The sewer of Paris has been an ancient and
formidable thing. It has been a sepulchre, it has served as an asylum.
Crime, intelligence, social protest, liberty of conscience, thought,
theft, all that human laws persecute or have persecuted, is hidden in
that hole; the _maillotins_ in the fourteenth century, the _tire-laine_
of the fifteenth, the Huguenots in the sixteenth, Morin’s _illuminated_
in the seventeenth, the _chauffeurs_ [brigands] in the eighteenth. A
hundred years ago, the nocturnal blow of the dagger emerged thence, the
pickpocket in danger slipped thither; the forest had its cave, Paris
had its sewer. Vagrancy, that Gallic _picareria_, accepted the sewer as
the adjunct of the Cour des Miracles, and at evening, it returned
thither, fierce and sly, through the Maubuée outlet, as into a
bed-chamber.
It was quite natural, that those who had the blind-alley Vide-Gousset,
[Empty-Pocket] or the Rue Coupe-Gorge [Cut-Throat], for the scene of
their daily labor, should have for their domicile by night the culvert
of the Chemin-Vert, or the catch basin of Hurepoix. Hence a throng of
souvenirs. All sorts of phantoms haunt these long, solitary corridors;
everywhere is putrescence and miasma; here and there are
breathing-holes, where Villon within converses with Rabelais without.
The sewer in ancient Paris is the rendezvous of all exhaustions and of
all attempts. Political economy therein spies a detritus, social
philosophy there beholds a residuum.
The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and
confronts everything else. In that livid spot there are shades, but
there are no longer any secrets. Each thing bears its true form, or at
least, its definitive form. The mass of filth has this in its favor,
that it is not a liar. Ingenuousness has taken refuge there. The mask
of Basil is to be found there, but one beholds its cardboard and its
strings and the inside as well as the outside, and it is accentuated by
honest mud. Scapin’s false nose is its next-door neighbor. All the
uncleannesses of civilization, once past their use, fall into this
trench of truth, where the immense social sliding ends. They are there
engulfed, but they display themselves there. This mixture is a
confession. There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is
possible, filth removes its shirt, absolute denudation puts to the rout
all illusions and mirages, there is nothing more except what really
exists, presenting the sinister form of that which is coming to an end.
There, the bottom of a bottle indicates drunkenness, a basket-handle
tells a tale of domesticity; there the core of an apple which has
entertained literary opinions becomes an apple-core once more; the
effigy on the big sou becomes frankly covered with verdigris, Caiphas’
spittle meets Falstaff’s puking, the louis-d’or which comes from the
gaming-house jostles the nail whence hangs the rope’s end of the
suicide. A livid fœtus rolls along, enveloped in the spangles which
danced at the Opera last Shrove-Tuesday, a cap which has pronounced
judgment on men wallows beside a mass of rottenness which was formerly
Margoton’s petticoat; it is more than fraternization, it is equivalent
to addressing each other as _thou_. All which was formerly rouged, is
washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells
everything.
The sincerity of foulness pleases us, and rests the soul. When one has
passed one’s time in enduring upon earth the spectacle of the great
airs which reasons of state, the oath, political sagacity, human
justice, professional probity, the austerities of situation,
incorruptible robes all assume, it solaces one to enter a sewer and to
behold the mire which befits it.
This is instructive at the same time. We have just said that history
passes through the sewer. The Saint-Barthélemys filter through there,
drop by drop, between the paving-stones. Great public assassinations,
political and religious butcheries, traverse this underground passage
of civilization, and thrust their corpses there. For the eye of the
thinker, all historic murderers are to be found there, in that hideous
penumbra, on their knees, with a scrap of their winding-sheet for an
apron, dismally sponging out their work. Louis XI. is there with
Tristan, François I. with Duprat, Charles IX. is there with his mother,
Richelieu is there with Louis XIII., Louvois is there, Letellier is
there, Hébert and Maillard are there, scratching the stones, and trying
to make the traces of their actions disappear. Beneath these vaults one
hears the brooms of spectres. One there breathes the enormous fetidness
of social catastrophes. One beholds reddish reflections in the corners.
There flows a terrible stream, in which bloody hands have been washed.
The social observer should enter these shadows. They form a part of his
laboratory. Philosophy is the microscope of the thought. Everything
desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it. Tergiversation is
useless. What side of oneself does one display in evasions? the
shameful side. Philosophy pursues with its glance, probes the evil, and
does not permit it to escape into nothingness. In the obliteration of
things which disappear, in the watching of things which vanish, it
recognizes all. It reconstructs the purple from the rag, and the woman
from the scrap of her dress. From the cesspool, it reconstitutes the
city; from mud, it reconstructs manners; from the potsherd it infers
the amphora or the jug. By the imprint of a finger-nail on a piece of
parchment, it recognizes the difference which separates the Jewry of
the Judengasse from the Jewry of the Ghetto. It re-discovers in what
remains that which has been, good, evil, the true, the blood-stain of
the palace, the ink-blot of the cavern, the drop of sweat from the
brothel, trials undergone, temptations welcomed, orgies cast forth, the
turn which characters have taken as they became abased, the trace of
prostitution in souls of which their grossness rendered them capable,
and on the vesture of the porters of Rome the mark of Messalina’s
elbowing.
