METROPOLIS whirled towards him, like a sea which roars around mountains. The workman No. 11811, the man who lived in a prisonlike house, under the underground railway of Metropolis, who knew no other way than that from the hole in which he slept to the machine and from the machine back to the hole-this man saw, for the first time in his life, the wonder of the world, which was Metropolis: the city, by night shining under millions and millions of lights. He saw the ocean of light which filled the endless trails of streets with a silver, Hashing lustre. He saw the will~o'-the wisp sparkle of the electric advertisements. lavishing themselves inexhaustibly in an ecstasy of brightness. He saw towers projecting, built up",f blocks of light, feeling himself seized, over-powered to a' state of complete impotenoe by this intoxication of light, feeling this sparkImg ocean with its hundreds and thousands of spraying waves, to reach out for him, to take the breath from his mouth, to pierce him, suffocate him.... And then he grasped that this city of machines, this city of sobriety, this fanatic for work, sought, at night, the mighty counterpoise to the frenzy of the day's work-that this city, at night. Jost itself. as one insane, as one entirely witless. in the intoxication of a pleasure, which, Hinging up to all heights, hurtling down to all depths, was boundlessly blissful and boundlessly destructive. . Georgi trembled from head to foot. And yet it was not really trembling which seized his resistless body. It was as though all his members were fastened to the soundless evenness of the engine which bore them forwards. No, not to the single engine which was the heart of the motOr-car in which he sat-to all these hundreds and thousands of engines which were driving an endlessly gliding, double stream of gleaming illuminated automobiles, on through the streets of the city in its nocturnal fever. And, at the same time, his body was set in vibration by the Bre-works of spark-streaming wheels, ten-coloured lettering snow-white fountains of overcharged lamps, rockets. hissing upwards., towers of flame, bla~ing ice-cold. 43
