The Dog that Holds Your Hand and Leads You Outside

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin 

VI and VII

Benjamin first starts as if to develop a genealogy of liturature's capturing of the crowd. He starts with Poe and a character that recovers from an illness and finds himself behind a cafe window watching people pass by. Benjamin says this man ultimately gets drawn into the crowd but maybe still possessing this sense of an individual in this sea of other people. There are some other examples sited where a character is struck dumb by the flow of strangers.

Much like how the ocean has this sense of calm the flowing of strangers makes this nauseating feeling. And we progress from someone who observes from behind a window to one who walks among them. This is some dialectic relationship of being alienated but being part of the crowd. This person himself takes the position of the moving observer but of course someone else viewing him moving about would feel the same way--like a french new wave film where two lovers become partners in crime.

St. Thomas, Apostle The Golden Legend Jacobus De Voragine

These folk tales are constantly neurotic--a god that nurtures a chosen one but assures his gruesome death, weddings and people deserting their husbands for god, and at the same time dogs carrying severed hands. All these peculiarities seem to converge as if one thing because it is more or less a myth. A myth that has an over all sense of aggression to it and despite it's badge of piety it contains mostly sadism.

The strangest theme is also the most interesting. The image of a dog carrying a severed hand closely followed by a lecture in earthly possessions being inadmissible to heaven. The dog here is some guide to the underworld who is wild but relating a message. This message is also a contrary message to a wedding that is celebrating the joining of people rather then the severing of one particular person. The sense is the God of this story is not in defence of order but one whose word is chaos.