Arrival & abandon – or the town as erotic figure

From Christian Norberg-Schulz, The Concept of Dwelling, opening to chap. 2:

To settle in the landscape means to delimit an area, a place. We stop our wandering and say: Here! Then we create an "inside" within the encompassing "outside." The settlement is therefore a point of arrival. Still we may somewhere have the fine experience of approaching a settlement which waits for us like a "thing." First we may grasp the main outline and perhaps a dominant element, such as a steeple. Getting closer, the shape becomes more articulate, and begins to suggest something about what is hidden inside. Depending on where we come from, the experience varies. If we come through the forest it is different from coming across the fields or over the sea; but always we have the sense of having reached a goal. Like a magnet it attracts us, and arouses our expectations.
    How, then, does a settlement become a goal? The very experience of arrival implies a relationship to what is left behind. A goal does not exist in a vacuum; it is only a goal in relation to its environment. . . .
    To serve as a goal, a settlement has to possess figural quality in relation to the surrounding landscape.

From Madame Bovary:

Gradually the four benches filled up, the coach rattled along, row upon row of apple trees flashed by; and the road, lined on each side by a ditch of yellow water, stretched on and on, narrowing toward the horizon.
    Emma knew every inch of it: she knew that after a certain meadow came a road sign, then an elm, a barn, or a road-mender's cabin; sometimes she even shut her eyes, trying to give herself a surprise. But she always knew just how much further there was to go.
    Finally the brick houses crowded closer together, the road rang under the wheels, and now the Hirondelle moved slowly between gardens: through iron fences were glimpses of statues, artificial mounds crowned by arbors, clipped yews, a swing. Then, all at once, the city came into view.
    Sloping downward like an amphitheatre, drowned in mist, it sprawled out shapelessly beyond its bridges. Then open fields swept upward again in a monotonous curve, merging at the top with the uncertain line of the pale sky. Thus seen from above, the whole landscape had the static quality of a painting: ships at anchor were crowded into one corner, the river traced its curves along the foot of the green hills, and on the water the oblong shaped islands looked like great black fish stopped in their course. From the factory chimneys poured endless trails of brown smoke, their tips continually dissolving in the wind. The roar of foundries mingled with the clear peal of chimes that came from the churches looming in the fog. The leafless trees along the boulevards were like purple thickets in amongst the houses; and the roofs, all of them shiny with rain, gleamed with particular brilliance in the upper reaches of the town. Now and again a gust of wind blew the clouds toward the hill of Sainte-Catherine, like aerial waves breaking soundlessly agains a cliff.
    A kind of intoxication wafted up to her from those closely packed lives, and her heart swelled as though the 120,000 souls palpitating below had sent up to her as a collective offering the breath of all the passions she supposed them to be feeling. In the face of the vastness her love grew larger, and was filled with a turmoil that echoed the vague ascending hum. All this love she, in turn, poured out — onto the squares, onto the tree-lined avenues, onto the streets; and to her the old Norman city was like some fabulous capital, a Babylon into which she was making her entry. She leaned far out the window and filled her lungs with air; the three horses galloped on, there was a grinding of stones in the mud beneath the wheels; the coach swayed; Hivert shouted warningly ahead to the wagons he was about to overtake, and businessmen leaving their suburban villas in Bois-Guillaume descended the hill at a respectable pace in their little family carriages.
    There was a stop at the city gate: Emma took off her overshoes, changed her gloves, arranged her shawl, and twenty paces further on she left the Hirondelle.
    The city was coming to life. Clerks in caps were polishing shop windows, and women with baskets on their hips stood on street corners uttering loud, regular cries. She walked on, her eyes lowered, keeping close to the house walls and smiling happily under her lowered black veil.
    For fear of being seen, she usually didn't take the shortest way. She would plunge into a maze of dark alleys, and emerge, hot and perspiring, close to the fountain at the lower end of the Rue Nationale. This is the part of town near the theatre, full of bars and prostitutes. Often a van rumbled by, laden with shaky stage-sets. Aproned waiters were sanding the pavement between the tubs of green bushes. There was a smell of absinthe, cigars and oysters.
    Then she turned a corner. She recognized him from afar by the way his curly hair hung down below his hat.
    He walked ahead on the sidewalk. She followed him to the hotel; he went upstairs, opened the door of the room, went in — What an embrace!