C3 Cendrars, Corbusier, Chevrolet An Essay on Modern Times and Urbanism Made in La Chaux-de-Fonds Hans-Peter Meier-Dallach Paper to be published in the book: La Chaux-de-Fonds–Chandigarh–Brasilia. Utopie et réalité de lʼurbanisme au XXe siècle, dirigé par K. Imesch 2013

Rue de lʼAvenir, La Chaux-de-Fonds1 Le texte noir Blaise Cendrars explored the banlieue around Paris, Robert Doisneau made his famous photos enlightening the hidden life of these wild progenies around Paris, the venerable excellency of urbanism. Blaise Cendrars provided besides the four essays the legends to these photos and added a special note: ..”malgré le dégradé de la mise au point et la puissance des objectifs, lʼoeil photographique ne pénètre pas partout et quʼune certaine zone dʼombre justement lui est interdite. Cʼest pourquoi mon texte est plus noir que les photos quʼil est censé éclairer…”2

Did he foresee the victory of the artist of the camera, Doisneau, over the writer Cendrars, the actual overflow of pictures, images and visual signs? He defended the shadow-power of the word over the light-power of pictures.

1 Copyright of all illustrations oft he article: cultur prospectiv. 2 Blaise Cendrars, La Banlieue de Paris, vol. 12, nouvelle édition des oeuvres, Paris: Edition Denöel, vol 12, 372.

1 How much light do cities tolerate in order to express its secrecy? Which dark words are capable to enlighten the life of cities behind its skylines, architectural faces, often misleading to the abuse of cameras?

This methodological note seems essential to me as sociologist swimming in the sea of papers, clean words, listings, rankings and statistics about cities and modern urbanism in the era of globalisation. The reading of these materials suffers under the overexposing of the surface, facts and figures, i.e. it misses “texte noir”, the dark life of cities.

Blaise Cendrars, rhapsode of mythic modernism This role takes Blaise Cendrars, one of the pioneers and contemporaries of modernisation starting from La Chaux-de-Fonds (LCF), the small but unique town embedded in the Jura landscape. Blaise Cendrars (1887 – 1961) is the speaker of urbanism pure; modernism was for him the early flight to Paris and later his love for travelling physically and mentally through various cities, continents and periods; he liked excursions to the Middle Ages and to mythology3. The global passenger. We get on the Transsibérien, an impressive and popular exploration of modernism, where unexpected “mots noirs” surprise even at the beginning of the poem: “En ce temps-là j’étais en mon adolescence J’avais à peine seize ans et je ne me souvenais déjà plus de mon enfance J’étais à 16 000 lieues du lieu de ma naissance J’étais à Moscou, dans la ville de mille et trois clochers et des sept gares Et je n’avais pas assez des sept gares et des mille et trois tours Car mon adolescence était alors si ardente et si folle Que mon coeur, tour à tour, brûlait comme le temple d’Ephèse ou comme la Place Rouge de Moscou Quand le soleil se couche. Et mes yeux éclairaient des voies anciennes

3 See the excellent comments to the volumes of the new edition by Claude Leroy, Blaise Cendrars, op. cit., and the biography written by his daughter: Miriam Cendrars, Edition Balland, Paris, 1984 (in German: Blaise Cendrars, Lenos Verlag, Basel, 1986).

2 Et j’étais déjà si mauvais poète Que je ne savais pas aller jusqu’au bout.4

Blaise Cendrars celebrates himself as “world passenger”. He starts like a rocket leaving LCF and the trip is an ecstasy addressing the borderless mobility, the speed, and Moscow, a megacity. In the poem we learn more than his youth work; his life is a struggle between imagination (“le monde est ma représentation”), and the impressions and notes of his trips through the different cities and places of Europe and of the world. He was a unique combination between an observer, the journalist and a film maker reading the journals. He liked the cameras but simultaneously and even more intensively the dark words. He creates images revealing him as a phantasmagorical, sensualist and mystic personality.

4 Cited from Blaise Cendrars, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, Lenos Verlag, Basel, 16 (French/German texts and the impressing illustration by Sonia Delaunay).

3

Louis Chevrolet and the acceleration

Is it accidental that our second personality has been born in the same time in LCF like Blaise Cendrars? Louis Chevrolet (1878 – 1941) is the Argonaut of high speed and motor technologies. LCF celebrates him by “Place Louis Chevrolet” as well as by “Rue Louis-Joseph, Constructeur dʼAutomobiles”. He was not a writer but a maker. He lived and worked at the frontier of the most relevant revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, the motorisation of towns, cities and villages. His life is not a poem but the practice of acceleration and speed, the new sector of production, inventing and management. Chevrolet explored the physics of locomotion, Cendrars its metaphysics. Chevrolet started with races on bicycle and advanced to a master of car races in America. His intellectual ability was invested into the development of motors for cars and later for planes. As sociologist one is fascinated that LCF, this wonderful context, is linked to the glance and harms of homo faber in the early era of modernisation. Let us mention the points joining the carrier of Chevrolet5 with that of his cultural compatriot. Cendrars was a passionate driver of cars and he experienced the feeling of speed as modern poetic sequences. – Poetry and car races are today two absolute separate worlds while Cendrars drived with only one arm through the valley of the Rhône to the Provence.

5 Martin Sinzig is the author of a biography about Louis Chevrolet: Der Rennfahrer, der Konstrukteur und der Mensch, edited 2011. See also: Aude Saunier, Louis Chevrolet, un nom, une légende, illustrated brochure.

4

World-Citizen The world passenger Cendrars is simultaneously the poetic explorer of global cities. The first place is Paris, which fascinates him during his whole life.

Paris „Ville de la Tour unique du grand Gibet et de la Roue“ 6

The global city is mirrored by three metaphors: the Eiffel Tower – the illuminated city, the great gallows – the darkness of revolution and the wheel – the explosion of mobility. Blaise Cendrars is a good guide through the megacities of world society. The metaphysical „runaways“ on the Transsibérien let expect that he will be a versatile observer looking attentively and liking the unexpected.

..„O Tour Eiffel Peu d’artifice géant de l’Exposition Universelle!... Tu es tout Tour Dieu antique Bête moderne Spectre solaire Sujet de mon poème Tour Tour du monde Tour en mouvement.“7

The illuminated city, Paris. The Tour Eiffel is the light-tower of Paris; in the poetic text it starts from the world exhibition and undertakes a tour through the world regions and even history. It is a fantastic prevision of the most important field of modern urbanism. Cities are illuminated spaces where all light towers are concentrated, celebrated and diffused as worldwide symbols and design. The illuminated city parts use the glance of past, of buildings, of the potentials as global market location as well as of outlooks and perspectives for future. The illuminated city is generated by the competition of cities on a global

6 Blaise Cendrars, Transsibérien, op. cit., 64. 7 Blaise Cendrars, vol 1, op. cit., 69.

5 range, i.e. the impact of the trend to an “urban mainstream” transcending nearly all borders and continents8. In each city one finds a similar design of these options, mainly the grand gestures, the tower-buildings, the vast places, the glass and illumination design, the attractions for visitors and its infrastructures for economy, leisure and culture.

The chaotic city, Saint Paul. Now, we are in Sao Paulo, in Brazil, a significant place for the explorer of modern world:

„J’adore cette ville Saint Paul est selon mon coeur Ici nulle tradition Aucun préjugé Ni ancien ni moderne Seuls comptent cet appétit furieux cette confiance absolue cet optimisme cette audace de travail ce labeur cette spéculation qui font construire dix maisons par heure de tous styles ridicules grotesques beaux grands petits nord sud égyptien yankee cubiste Sans autre préoccupation que de suivre les statistiques prévoir l’avenir le confort l’utilité la plus-value et d’attirer une grosse immigration Tous les pays Tous les peuples J’aime ça Les deux trois vieilles maisons portugaises qui restent sont des faïences bleues”9

The ambiguity of modern cities is sketched. Close or more in distance to the illuminated city, we find the melting pot with the vision of multi-ethnic cohabitation. Anything goes. It is a parallelism of all possible buildings, old and modern, high and low speed traffic and mobility, various groups and activities. The regulation and order dominating the illuminated parts give way

8 This „urban mainstream“ is the relevant stream of research and debates in social science since the 90ties, see for instance: Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, in: Jamies Simmie (ed.), Innovative Cities, Spon Press, London / New York. Raffaele, Paloscia, INURA, The Contested Metropolis. Six Cities at the Beginning oft he 21st century, Birkhäuser, Basel, Boston, Berlin. The INURA international conference (2010) Zurich addressed the mainstream thesis as one of the most relevant issues of global cities. 9 Blaise Cendrars, vol 1, op. cit., 233.

6 to unexpected and chaotic interactions; spontaneous life overwhelms linearity, rules and strict behaviour.10

The wild city, New York. We find Cendrars, early in his youth, in New York, where he describes the third part of modern urbanism, the wild districts. It is a nice example of “mots noirs”, the walker meets a piece of apocalypse.

„Les rues se font désertes et deviennent plus noires. Je chancelle comme un homme ivre sur les trottoirs.

J’ai peur des grands pans d’ombre que les maisons projettent. J’ai peur. Quelqu’un me suit. Je n’ose tourner la tête.

Un pas clopin-clopant saute de plus en plus près. J’ai peur. J’ai le vertige. Et je m’arrête exprès.

Un effroyable drôle m’a jeté un regard Aigu, puis a passé, mauvais, comme un poignard.

Seigneur, rien n’a changé depuis que vous n’êtes plus Roi. Le Mal s’est fait une béquille de votre Croix. .... Seigneur, l’aube a glissé froide comme un suaire Et a mis tout à nu les gratte-ciel dans les airs.

Déjà un bruit immense retentit sur la ville. Déjà les trains bondissent, grondent et défilent.

Les métropolitains roulent et tonnent sous terre Les ponts sont secoués par les chemins de fer.

La cité tremble. Des cris, du feu et des fumées.

10 The ambiguous, chaotic city-areas have fluid borders to wild city zones; see for instance, Teresa Caldeira, City of Walls. Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo, University of California Press.

7 Des sirènes à vapeur rauquent comme des huées.

Une foule enfiévrée par les sueurs de l’or Se bouscule et s’engouffre dans de longs corridors.

Trouble, dans le fouillis empanaché des toits Le soleil, c’est votre Face souillée par les crachats“11 Wild situations can fascinate and Cendrars describes them as surprising and unexpected experiences. It is a horrible picture of the megacity New York. The fascination in face of the splendid greatness of central districts mutates into impressions of wild and horrible scenes. The megacities have been and are risk-societies and spaces of insecurities where the governance is not guaranteed. There exist parallel orders and rules, legal and illegal ones. Wild city districts produce fear and are avoided by visitors as well as inhabitants. But the words used in the poem reveal the metaphysical reading of the megacity, which transcends the “sociological” aspects of wild urbanism.

The silent city, Marseille. Cendrars has written strange stories on going in big cities, mainly in “Bourlinguer”. He loved especially Marseille with its atmosphere of the Mediterranean sea, as a very old town, simultaneously full of vitality and people. „Marseille est une ville selon mon coeur. C’est aujourd’hui la seule des capitales antiques qui ne nous écrase pas avec les monuments de son passé. Son destin prodigieux ne vous saute pas aux yeux, pas plus que ne vous éblouissent sa fortune et sa richesse ou que ne vous stupéfie par son aspect ultra-ultra (comme tant d’autres ports up do date) le modernisme du premier port de France, le plus spécialisé de la Méditerranée et l’un des plus importants du globe. Ce n’est pas une ville d’architecture, de religion, de belles-lettres, d’académie ou de beaux-arts. Ce n’est point le produit de l’histoire, de l’anthropogéographie, de l’économie politique ou de la politique, royale ou républicaine. Aujourd’hui elle paraît embourgeoisée et populacière. Elle a l’air bon enfant et rigolarde. Elle est sale et mal foutue. Mais c’est néanmoins une des villes les plus mystérieuses du monde et des plus difficiles à déchiffrer.12

11 Blaise Cendrars, vol 1, op. cit., 10, 12,13. 12 Blaise Cendrars, vol 5, op. cit., 50.

8 Cendrars characterises – liking the role of an observer using prose – Marseille as body preserving its secrets. It is / or was a silent city, a town of obscurity, one of the most mysterious of the world. It lives without the grand gestures of illuminated buildings, palaces and design. It frees itself from history, economy and politics. Marseille is “one of the most difficult cities to decode.”13 For Blaise Cendrars, the observer and mystic, this silent context is a paradise to recover the unexpected, to imagine the world looking back into the archaic past, speculating about the future and consuming the present in bars.

But since Cendrars description the actual Marseille is strongly challenged by the masterplan “Euro-Méditerranée”, to evolve as light-tower city at the sea in face of the global mainstream. The trend to the illuminated city is strong while the silent city, the life of markets, streets and places of the inhabitants survive.

The tracks of modern urbanism

Cendrarsʼ texts mirror the cities of the early to the medium periods of the 20th century. He uses strong and dark words but stimulates to reconsider the four images of big cities as frame of a theory14. The urban inhabitant or visitor lives in all the four faces of city life, in the illuminated, chaotic, silent and maybe wild city. There is a vertical axis, the floodlight versus shadows, the lucidity versus vagueness, the panorama versus obscure niches. The horizontal dimension opposes the order versus the ambiguity, rational planning versus spontaneous actions.

13 A nice historical portrait of Marseille mirrored in texts of writers since the Renaissance is published in: „Ils ont écrit sur Marseille“, Marseille, Mars 2011, No 232. The texts provide a rich puzzle of urban scenes of silent, wild, chaotic and illuminated facets. 14 This frame will open an understanding of cities in a wide spectrum starting from visual sociology rather than from specialised approaches, for instance emphasising the economic production, urban culture, the socio-spatial system, the city as ideology or way of consumption, the city as special political economy or ecological formation. See to such approaches: Peter Saunders, Soziologie der Stadt, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt /New York, 1987.

9

The four fields characterise (i) each city addressing the particular features of the four city-worlds and (ii) the relevance and expansion of the four fields. What follows from it?

The hidden urban world society. Each world city embraces the four parts but in very different kinds and extensions. Frequently the scientific maps embrace global cities exclusively as illuminated ones. Thereby world society as an urban one is defined by the set of illuminated parts and gestures of global cities. Hence the image of the urban part of world society is biased; it mirrors those segments, which are driven by the urban mainstream, the efficient parts of global urbanism. It would be hard to find again “mots noirs” by a follow up like Cendrars who found them.

The other face of global urbanism, the vital parts, are mostly hidden, but much more relevant for world society. The silent city occupies nearly the whole town in Southern and Eastern megacities. In African big towns one finds probably an illuminated Hilton, some small state buildings but the most extended spaces are the silent and wild districts, streets and places, areas of huts. In the megacities of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) the illuminated cities are ambitious and splendid signs of the new economies aspiring the leadership of world society in future. In these cities the borders to chaotic spaces are fluid, the new and old parts, modern and traditional ways

10 are close to each other. Anywhere in these megacities one finds wild parts, which hinder the overall governance of the city. There are cases where dark areas are much bigger than the illuminated, official ones. The most extensive area is the silent city. The majority of inhabitants are living there, which is forgotten or missing under the skylines of illuminated city15.

15 An interesting essay contributes Bruno Latour, Zoom auf Paris, Lettre international, 2011, No 92, 52-53. The virtual technics and gestures, a part of illuminated city, are never capable to embrace the invisible (silent) city.

11 A walk through Marseille 2010 Illuminated city, business, visitors, Ambiguous city, the memory of past and commerce, capitale Euroméditerranée. stone open to the sea and world.

Silent city, peopleʼs everyday, normal, Wild city, the shadows fall on the streets, it secret, happy and unfortunate life. is narrow, worries.

12 Le Corbusier and archaic modernism

“Bâtie sur les pilotis en lʼair la ville”

Le Corbusier (1887 – 1965) is the third explorer of modernity, a contemporary of Cendrars. In these few words two motives meet each other, the archaic poetry of architecture exploring the air, the light, the elegance and the fascination of cities, the modern settings, buildings and raw materials, styles of life. Le Corbusier freed the built environment, houses and settlements, from the chthonic era. Piles allow to elevate the buildings over the humid earth: “La maison sur les pilotis. La maison sʼenfonçait dans le sol: locaux obscures et souvent humides. Le ciment armé nous donne les pilotis. La maison est en lʼair, loin du sol; le jardin passé sous la maison, le jardin est aussi sur le toit.”16 The famous architect, much more celebrated than Cendrars or Chevrolet, has a multiple competence of constructing, painting and verbal expression. So he addresses in his famous graphs the aura of Jura and Alpine landscapes, in texts Rousseauʼs revolution of nature and society, and in planimetric design and figures the archaic texture of buildings recovered in the Alps, in the pile dwellings at the lake of Neuchâtel, observations from his trips through several world regions and cities17.

Cendrars dedicated “Utopialand” to Le Corbusier, his compatriot of LCF. It seems that both persons are quite different, the first writer, the second architect. However, on the first glance, both combine a passion for modernity, for the city, with inclinations toward archaic forms and life patterns. There is a second congeniality – probably to examine more detailed – both share

16 There is a rich literature on Le Corbusier – for the restricted aims of this essay, we used the articles of „Le Corbusier, La Suisse, Les Suisses“, Rencontres de la Fondation Le Corbusier, Edition de la Villette, Paris, 2006 (responsible: Marc Bédarida, Claude Prelorenzo). 17 See especially Adolf Max Vogt, Le Corbusier, le Bon Sauvage, vers une archéologie de la modernité, infolio éditions, Gollon, 2003.

13 synesthetic styles of creation. Corbusier combined architecture, painting, writing; Cendrars searched for dense verbal metaphors for his “représentation du monde” but he tried also to complete the texts by film- and radio-technics. Hence, Cendrars shared the drive for synesthetic practice with Corbusier but he was more limited in doing that. Corbusier was more successful and passes as a master of synesthetic practice.

Corbusierʼs utopian plans of modern cities could not been realised on a big scale. His work covers singular, however, big buildings at different places and city districts. He left a mosaic of modernism; its particles are projects, which have been realised and can be visited until today. A more ambitious than only mosaic modern city design was facilitated in new towns like Chandigarh or Brasilia. In fact, only new towns became fields where the program could evolve larger and comprehensive projects of modernism. In established cities radical modern programs and projects of modern architecture were stopped, for instance even in Moscow at the beginning of Stalinʼs return to monumental planning in Soviet towns.

Corbusier was optimistic, he imagined megacities integrating various city worlds. Maybe he would have rejected the four field theory of modern city, its divide into wild area, chaotic, silent and illuminated ones. Brasilia was a project targeting the illuminated city in a unique location but developed to a large metropole of fragmented parts18 like other new towns in emerging markets, for instance, Chandigarh. It is in fact a more diversified picture of urbanism than the modernisers of the first half of the 20th century planned and foresaw. Their time period was dominated by “high ideologies”, capitalism, socialism, fascism, driving the megacity as a homogeneous body freed from old patterns like “Versailles”. But the homo faber of modern cities was defeated by the devils of Chevrolet, the homo mobile, the huge increase of private and motorised traffic, which became the strong barrier in planning cities as Giedion already notes in the 50ties19.

The modern projects of city development entered the period of bifurcations,

18 Marcello, Balbo, Urban Planning and the Fragmented City of Developing Countries, Third World Planning Review 1993, 15, 23 – 35. 19 Sigfried Giedion, Raum, Zeit, Architektur, Artemis Verlag, Zürich, 1976, 484 – 488.

14 abrupt increases of population, flight from rural areas, producing strong contradictions between the different city-worlds. The current critics of modernism emphasise the social and cultural problems touching whole societies, its urban as well as its rural parts. In the meantime post-modern forms emerged without offering responses to these problems; they remained decorative exercises or delivered design solutions to the illuminated objects, which never could contribute to the cohesion of the fragmented parts. Big planning is not longer possible without new solutions for social problems, for the cityʼs Babylonian divide and state of affairs in megacities20. The social architecture gets more relevant than the physical one. The agenda for big cities is challenged by a new generation of “societal architecture.”21

Swiss urbanism and LCF The three explorers of modernism fled all from Switzerland, “as soon as possible”, although they have been born nearly in the same time in a wonderful and extraordinary place, in La Chaux-de-Fonds. However, it seems that just this flight tells something about urbanism under local conditions. We are used to look directly into the large world and to forget that urbanism takes place on the ground too. So Switzerland did never evolve megacities but preferred moderated urbanism, a fact similar to the Romandie, Swiss-German speaking cantons and Ticino. Until today many urban planners, architects and intellectuals suffer under this deficit; they are ashamed to lie behind the global city rankings. The Swiss association of cities has chosen an efficient solution; it referred to nearly all big villages and small towns as cities, which are ranked every year; LCF ranked on the position 121 of 129 Swiss “cities”. The urban lobby transformed the whole country into a megacity despite the fact that Switzerland does not have one global city until today. There is another strategy: the isolated historical cities embrace the surrounding municipalities as part of metropolitan areas; such urban fictions mediate the impression that Switzerland is jumping to the family of global megacities22. But behind this

20 Istanbul is a caleidoscope of these developments; see the series of articles: Istanbul Reigen, Weltbasar am Bosporus, Istanbuls Öffnung, Türk Müsigi, in: Lettre International, 2010, Nr 88, 74 – 93. 21 See for instance: Worldwatch Institute, State of the World. Our Urban Future, WWW. Norton & Company, London, New York, 2007. Peter Hall, Ulrich Pfeiffer, Urban Future 21: A Global Agenda für Twenty-first Century Cities, Routledge, London, 2000. 22 The debate on urbanism in Switzerland is currently intensive but was always a relevant issue in history, the problem of urban-rural divide and integration. In the last period the federal offices are clearly committed to more „coordination“, i. e. an indirect strategy to become „bigger“ or even metropolitan areas. See for instance, Statistiques des ville suisse, Union des villes suisses, 2010.

15 constructed Swiss metropolitan dream lies a further fact: even within the districts of bigger cities villages or communes form small circles rather than a city comparable with world cities. Swiss city culture is biased by Rousseauʼs vision of small is equal to “good space”, communitarian life. In other words: Switzerland is rather a grand village than one city23.

LCF is an excellent case illustrating the double faced type of city, a modern small town simultaneously remaining a societal body with a special cohesion and public life. And LCF shows a special variant of this combination – the modern urban part is extraordinarily innovative and visible by its geometry of places, buildings and streets, its traditional life including nice cafés and vital customs of inhabitants. Therefore we have to complete our LCF triple by another contemporary, Charles F. Ramuz, who describes Swiss rural regions as a cosmos, a part of the world.

Poetry of rural cosmos, Charles F. Ramuz There is a nice contrast to Blaise Cendrars although Charles F. Ramuz (1878 – 1947) emigrated to Paris as well and highly suffered under the “besoin de grandeur” in small countries. But he returned. He created a work describing the regional life, mainly the rural sites of that period, located in the Alps and along the valleys of the Rhône. He is not a rural writer. Like Cendrars he is in search of universal models readable in the life of cities and villages.

Chant de notre Rhône. Cendrars is on the locomotive, a high speeded European, the world passenger. Ramuz is a walker, a cosmic passenger; he follows the nice landscape of the Rhône. „Je regarde tout le temps le Rhône. Ici à présent est son berceau: je regarde bouger

23 It was described and analysed: Hans-Peter Meier-Dallach, Susanne Hohermuth, Stadtkultur im Grossdorf Schweiz – La culture urbaine et le microcosme Suisse, SFN, Bern, Bericht 47, NFP Stadt und Verkehr, 1994 and Hans-Peter Meier-Dallach, Susanne Hohermuth, Therese Walter, isola elvetica, Das Bild der Schweiz im Zeitalter der Globalisierung, Verlag Rüegger, Zürich/ Chur 2003.

16 le berceau, avec ses rives en bordure. La savoyarde, la vaudoise... L’ouvrage n’est pas tellement régulier qu’il ennuie, le bon ouvrier n’ennuie pas, le bon ouvrier ne fait pas trop égal, le bon ouvrier s’amuse à des différences. La savoyorde, la vaudoise.“24

„..Sur ce fond plat était la route, sur ce fond plat était la véritable route, sur ce fond plat était la voie ferrée; sur ce fond plat était cette autre fausse route, plus large, plus tortueuse, avec ses volontés, beaucoup plus large, avec ses fantaisies, prenant en travers de la plaine tout à coup, puis faisant un détour, puis de nouveau serrée tout contre la montagne, comme si elle cherchait l’ombre, puis de nouveau allant droit devant soi“.25

The Rhône contradicts to the lines of railways and roads, to linearity, it is a river like a living being, loving the curves and turns, telling stories, communicating with the local people living at the banks. And the Rhône is transnational but creating a cosmic cycle and bond between its origins and ends.

„...le vieillard revient à son enfance et il faut que le cercle soit complètement refermé. O Méditerranée d’alors, n’est-ce pas qu’il convient que tu ressemble au berceau même? Le berceau seulement plus petit, le tombeau plus grand.“ 26

„...et il (le Rhône) nous revient chaque jour, comme s’il s’agissait d’un corps, avec une circulation de sang, comme s’il s’agissait d’un royaume, un royaume non politique, mais où il y aurait tout de même un roi, c’est-à-dire un législateur, un enregistreur des moeurs et des coutumes, une autorité qui décide des actions, qui décide des paroles, qui décide des gestes.“27

The river becomes a living body creating a kingdom but a non political one, creating a cohesion of people. The passenger of Ramuz is a mystic walker who disappears as how he appeared.

„Passage du poète“: Il n’y a plus eu que la nuit partout devant vous et derrière vous; il n’y a plus que la nuit là où il y a avait l’eau, les grandes eaux, le mont, les deux rivages. La nuit de ce qui a été, derrière celui qui s’en va, tandis que devant lui est la

24 C. F. Ramuz, Oeuvres Complètes, Editions Rencontres Lausanne, 1967, tome 10, 15. 25 C. F. Ramuz, op. cit., 12. 26 C. F. Ramuz, op. cit., 24, 25. 27 C. F. Ramuz, op. cit., 25.

17 nuit de ce qui n’est pas encore; – contre quoi il s’avance, et persévère s’avançant, et contre ce grand talus d’ombre, parce que là les forêts commencent: alors lui-même disparaît, et sa personne disparaît, allant plus loin dans rien du tout, afin que quelque chose soit.“28

The gesture of the world in the village. In Switzerland each village had or has an attractive railway station. We find Simon, a common citizen, reflecting about the world, he has not to get on a train, his gestures with the pipe are sufficient. „..Simon tend la main; il trace avec le tuyau de sa pipe une ligne dans l’air; il a dit: – Londres... Boulogne... Paris...

Ah! Quand communiquerons-nous librement, par toute la terre? quand sera ce? mais qu’on écoute seulement, pour le moment, venir, comme si la terre venait, un pan de monde venait à vous, bien qu’il n’y ait pas autre chose encore que ce sourd grondement... „...les fumeurs de cigares, de cigarettes, de pipes, les buveurs de vin, ceux de bière; ceux qui parlent fort et beaucoup, ceux qui parlent bas et presque pas. ... Et, de nouveau, le tuyau de sa pipe: – Londres... Boulogne... Paris... De nouveau, sa tête qu’il porte en arrière et Simon a fermé les yeux: – Hein! vous avez vu? ça va vite!... Paris... Milan... Brindisi... Etant en même temps là-bas et ici, mêlant là-bas et ici. „… il crée de l’espace à nouveau, il le prolonge, il l’agrandit; – sous la peau de son front, l’os de dessous la peau, c’est là d’abord que ça se passe; puis le voilà qui a repris: – Londres – Paris... Paris – Milan... Milan – Brindisi... Et c’est comme s’il tenait à présent ce grand corps, comme s’il le ployait devant vous. Ployant ce grand corps qui se laisse faire, le renversant comme l’amoureux en arrière, le tenant serré étroitement contre lui, le faisant céder tout entier; – et alors ces autres ont vu, parce qu’ils y ont été forcés. Tout qui revient pour eux par lui, et des pays et encore des pays. Et quand on croyait que c’était fini, tout l’espace qui recommence. Sa robe qui lui est ôtée, sa peau qui vient avec son odeur, ses couleurs; – sans cesse une partie nouvelle de toi découverte et connue, ô vaste terre; – c’est toi, c’est toi de plus en plus, c’est toi toute par lui; et Simon: – Milan... Brindisi... Et Simon: – Brindisi... la mer... 29

28 C. F. Ramuz, op. cit., 252. 29 C. F. Ramuz, op. cit., 99 – 102.

18 The rural space, the village as cosmos is great: „...Chez nous, ce qui se voit des maisons n’est pas tout, et le mont qu’on voit n’est pas tout: il y a encore ce qui est sous les maisons, il y a ce qui est sous terre: ces dix et douze vases, dix et douze mètres de tour, dix et douze mille litres l’un. On vient, on s’assied; on s’assied pas toujours, on reste quelquefois debout; trois verres au guillon à l’un des vases, trois verres au suivant, et trois verres et encore trois, et lentement vidés parce qu’on ne boit pour boire. On tient le petit verre, on élève le petit verre devant la flamme de la bougie, on regarde au travers; et c’est tout le pays qu’on voit, tout le pays qu’on boit ensuite, avec sa terre, son sucre, avec son odeur et sa sève, un goût comme quand on bat le briquet et comme quand on a soufré et un goût aussi de sulfate; toutes les choses du pays et du sol, considérées, goûtées ensuite dans la substance de son vin. Dans le verre se tient le ciel, se tient le climat, se tient le pays, on se tait devant le pays quand on l’élève dans le verre. La belle saison dure ici (sous terre) toute l’année; ici on vient pour être au chaud; mais ce n’est pas seulement le corps, c’est le coeur qui est au chaud, dans ces cavernes de dessous la terre, qu’on ouvre avec la grosse clé; et à la voûte ronde, tachée de moisi blanc, une grosse main noire va prendre le cigare, redescend avec la cigare.“30

Charles F. Ramuz reads the villages as small microcosm of world society. They have a long experience and collective memory of how to integrate the outside world. The vertical axis is the church and its tower; it rises to the firmament, to the light, announces the time, in its underground rest old relicts of the past. It complements the theory of urbanism derived from Cendrars city tour. The railway station is the horizontal axis, the place where the great world, all the megacities can be captured and reflected as parts of the village. It brings order, linearity, the roadmaps, the codes for reading the news, and, it allows to speculate and imagine the chaos produced outside but domesticated by the gestures of villages and its people.

The two models of world society communicate with two faces: the world giga- city is a giant looking over the endless countryside and he is sure that he conquers the planet. The rural face is mystic and shows the traits of an angel who will not say “good by”.

30 C. F. Ramuz, op. cit., 18 – 19.

19 Summary

Is the fact accidental that three personalities have been born in the same location, La Chaux-de-Fonds, and time period, last quarter of 19th century, and started as original missionaries of modernity from here? The essay explores how the three carriers indicate and describe an enthusiasm for modern urbanism. But despite of common motifs the three contemporaries of La Chaux-de-Fonds follow different and original roads to future. The three tracks of life stories look like foresights of developments, which we can evaluate from an outlook after half of century of modern urban developments. Thereby the most pervasive force of modernization is the mobility rush of Louis Chevrolet who was the ingenious constructor and pilot of car races in the USA. He seems to be like an personification of the mechanics of speed and mobility, which are imagined by the poetry of Blaise Cendrars, a rapsode of mythic modernism and world passenger, for instance in his “Transsibérien”. Comparing the three agents of modern urbanism different roads and visions are obvious: Louis Chevrolet fits a mono linear trajectory to modernity, i.e. the predominance of speed, mobility and traffic systems all over the world. Opposite to him Le Corbusier elaborates a multiple trajectory; in his work modern urbanism and architecture are also shaped by the memory, i.e. archaic forms of habitations and settlements. Le Corbusier freed the habitations from its chthonic conservatism, mutating its grounding in the earth into a paradise like life in the air. But the fascinating figure is Blaise Cendrars who plays a rich repertoire of images in various locations, between Western, Eastern Europe and Brazil, as well as time horizons, looking back to Middle Age, to modern history and events as well as myths. – In Swiss culture a further contemporary, Charles F. Ramuz, contrasts by his poetry of the rural cosmos, for instance in “Chant de notre Rhône”. The cleavage between modern planimetric logics of planning of future cities, on the one hand, and the poetry of space, on the other hand, is a challenge for actual spatial projects. Planners should reflect their master-plans through the lenses of poetry and of artists and undertake more efforts to shape the future urbanism rooted in culture and in the imagination of its pioneers.

Vita Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Meier-Dallach, born 1944 in Quarten, Switzerland, founded the institute cultur prospectiv and World Drives Association, a transnational network promoting research and projects and acted as president and member of the World Society Foundation. Meier-Dallach initiated a series of research projects addressing local and regional issues as well as transnational and global objectives, mainly in cooperation with Eastern European teams and projects. He published various articles and books focusing on the image and cohesion of nations and regions, for instance, CH-Cement (1980), and looking at the global society, for instance, Weltgesellschaft (2007). Meier-Dallach evolves an approach of Kultursoziologie and operates as curator of international exhibitions building bridges between science and public audiences.

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