The changes in the public domain.\ The past in the present

"The history of the words "public" and "private" is a key to understanding this basic shift in the terms of Western culture. The first recorded uses of the word "public" in English identify "public" with the common good in society; in 1470. for instance, Malory spoke of "the emperor Lucyos.... dictatour or procurour of the publyke wele of Rome." Some seventy years later, there was added a sense of "public" in his Chronicle of 1542 "Their inwarde grudge could not refrayne but crye out in places publicke, and also private." "Private" was there used to mean privileged, at a high governmental level. By the end of the 17th century the opposition of public and private was shaded more like the terms are used now. Public meant open to the scrutiny of anyone, whereas private meant sheltered region of life defined by one's family and friends." p 16

"... we get excited when conservative French president has diner with a working-class family, even though he has raised taxes on industrial wages few days before, or believe an American President is more "genuine: and reliable than his predecessor because the new man cook his own breakfast. This political "credibility" is the superimposition of private upon public imagery, and, again, it arose in the last century as a result of behavioral and ideological confusion between these two realms." p 25

"How can a view of social ills or the vision of a better society ever signify in and of itself, and motivate sustained action, if its believability depends on how much an audience at a given moment sympathizes with the character of the man who champions the cause? Under these conditions, the system of public expression became one of personal representation; a public figure presents to others what he feels, and it is this representation of his feelings which arouses belief." p 26

"If one can;t help showing what one feels, and if the truth of any emotion, statement, or argument in public depends on the character of the person speaking, how are people ever to avoid being fathomed? The only sure defense is to try to keep oneself from feeling, to have no feelings to show. ..... (about Victorian times) For instance, people tried to their characters from others by wearing as little as possible jewelry, lace, or trimmings of an unusual kind, so as not to draw attention to themselves" p 26

(about mid-19th century London and Paris)
"There grew up the notion that strangers had no right to speak to each other, that each man possessed as a public right an invisible shield, a right to be left alone. Public behavior was a matter of observation, of passive participation. pf a certain kind of voyeurism. The "gastronomy of the eye", Balzac called it. "

"Strolling is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live." Honoré de Balzac

"The pardaox of visibility and isolation which haunts so mucg of modern public life originated in the right to silence in public which took form in the last century. Isolation in the midst of visibility to others was a logical consequence of insisting on one's right to be mute when one ventured into this chaotic yet still magnetic realm."

p. 27