THE MAN OF THE CROWD Edgar Allan Poe
"The Man of the Crowd" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe about a nameless narrator following a man through a crowded London. It was first published in 1840.
link https://youtu.be/QF-lr4y3FaY
A note of interes: At the time of the story's publication, Poe's reputation in the United States was mixed, but his reception among many French modernists, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry, was enthusiastic. Charles Baudelaire discusses "The Man of the Crowd" in "The Painter of Modern Life";[19] it would go on to become a key example in Walter Benjamin's essay "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire", which theorizes the role of the crowd in modernity.
link https://youtu.be/F_La3wKr2c8
The Man of the Crowd - Wikipedia
Listen to Poe's THE MAN OF THE CROWD
link https://youtu.be/_kLLBeRY7e8 TEXT: The Man of the Crowd by Edgar Allan Poe
WHAT WAS POE TRYING TO TELL US
When I read “The Man of the Crowd,” I felt that Poe was trying to convey how a clear mind can slip into a quiet, obsessive delirium focusing on the one unreadable face that suddenly appeared out of this tidal wave of faces, fracturing that equilibrium of a joyful peace of mind that my sanity depended on. If we followed the man through corners, it was not for answers but because the not knowing gripped me in a craze frenzy, sharpening into a dark, macabre ecstasy that haunted in a disturbingly lucid state of mind. His shifting expression keeps drawing me through the city until I see the truth: the chase was never about him. It was about my need for the world to stay decipherable. Poe leaves me with the fact I resist — some people remain opaque, and some mysteries stay in the crowd because they were never meant to be solved.
