Review of Marc Auge’s In the Metro
“Auge reminisces about how different stops and train routes have held special significance for him at different points in his life. Auge writes, ‘In that way my itineraries resemble those of others with whom I rub shoulders every day in the subway without knowing where they went to school, where they lived and worked, where they are at, and where they are going, while at that very instant our glances meet and turn away after sometimes lingering for just a moment. They too are possibly drafting an inventory or making a summary – who knows? – contemplating a change of life, and by extension, a change of subway lines.’ Auge’s mention of the ‘passing glance’ points to his interest in riding the metro as both an act of solitude and an inescapably social experience. Metro riders with heads buried in newspapers or with thoughts consumed by their own concerns are nevertheless sharing space with others…”
The City from Imaginary to Fiction by Marc Auge
“Each day a great many people take the same subway, they change lines at the same terminals, they get off at the same stations. These daily trajectories create a kind of familiarity between people who have the same schedules, and an even larger familiarity between the passengers and the names of stations (by now memorized like a nursery rhyme!). These names are often connected to those of the city’s surface which, most of the time, constitute a direct or indirect reference to historical facts. The metro in Berlin had a singular poetic aura, of course, because two Berlins existed and because it travelled to a mysterious border that separated two worlds, but also because names of certain inaccessible stations (Franzoesische strasse) alluded to the surface geography and to a removed history. A sort of metropolitan ‘no man’s land’ between the two Germanys.
The subway is doubly exemplary because it is also a place of personal memories. A person who today uses a certain metro line probably followed other routes in the past, transferring at other terminals, because he or she had a different professional, family, or love life. In the oldest subway lines the larger history and minute histories mix their voices and their names, creating a type of intermediary and fixed memory. The memory of the subway is enriched by memories of events that are a part of collective memory, but that some individuals might remember having personally lived, such as the fall of the Berlin wall or the Liberation of Paris.”
(Metro photos via the eyebeam reblog)