This chapter draws on a network of discourses including the picturesque and flâneur-writing, panoramic literature on the Cris, and reflections on populist song, in order to show how different writers harmonized the glazier's cry into poetic prose. It compares Arsène Houssaye's “La Chanson du vitrier” and Charles Baudelaire's “Le Mauvais Vitrier”. It shows how Houssaye's transcriptions of the glazier's cry and his use of the cry as refrain relate to efforts by musicians such as Mainzer and Kastner to document the cry for posterity. Houssaye harmonizes the cry to exploit its pathos and, in tandem with Nerval, Gautier, or Dupont, he seeks to achieve an authenticity through the transposition of song. In contrast, Baudelaire espouses dissonance in “Le Mauvais vitrier” and evokes the sinister and demonic effects of strident noise.
Autour du sabbat Pour une sociopoétique des nuits agitées à l’époque romantique