Ker je imela moč monetarne ekonomije prosto pot v metropoli in so bile njene posledice tam najbolj očitne, si je urbana moderna v drugi polovici devetnajstega stoletja hitro pridobila sloves objektiviziranega okolja, brezbrižnega do vrednosti [vrednot]. Bila je živa reklama za kulturo, ki poganja onstran vsega osebnega. Tu, v stavbah in izobraževalnih ustanovah, v čudežu in udobju tehnologije, ki si je podjarmila prostor, v ureditvah skupnega življenja in v vidnih državnih institucijah, tu se je ponujalo takšno nepremagljivo bogastvo kristaliziranega, neosebnega razuma, da osebnost, kakršna je bila, soočena z njim ni mogla vzdržati. (Georg Simmel: The Metropolis and Mental Life, 410)
Kader iz Langovega Metropolisa. Vir: klik.
Bart Keunen: Living with Fragments: World Making in Modernist City Literature. V: Astradur Eysteinsson & Vivian Liska (eds.): Modernism. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company 2007; str. 273
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Because the power of the money economy had a
free reign in the metropolis and its implications were most clearly visible
there, urban modernity during the second half of the nineteenth century quickly
gained the reputation of being an objectified environment, indifferent to values.
It was the genuine showplace of this culture which grows beyond all that is
personal. Here, in buildings and educational institutions, in the wonders and
comforts of space-conquering technology, in the formations of communal life and
in the visible state institutions, there is offered such an overpowering wealth
of crystallised, impersonalised mind that the personality, as it were, cannot
maintain itself when confronted with it. (Simmel [1950], 410)
