"The 'holy prostitution of the soul' compared with which 'that which people call love is quite small, quite limited and quite feeble' [Baudelaire] really can be nothing else than the prostitution of the commodity-soul --if the confrontation with love retains its meaning. Baudelaire refers to 'that holy prostitution of the soul which gives itself wholly, poetry and charity, to the unexpected that appears, to the unknown that passes', it is this very poésie and this very charité ; which the prostitutes claim for themselves. They had tried the secrets of the open markets; in this respect commodities had no advantages over them. Some of the commodity's charms were based on the market, and they turned into as many means of power . As such they were registered by Baudelaire in his 'Crépuscule du soir':

Against the lamplight, whose shivering is the wind's,
Prostitution spreads its light and life in the streets:
Like an anthill opening its issue it penetrates
Mysteriously everywhere by its own occult route;
Like an enemy mining the foundations of a fort,
Or a worm in an apple, eating what all should eat,
It circulates securely in the city's clogged heart.'

Only the mass of inhabitants permits prostitution to spread over large parts of the city. And only the mass makes it possible for the sexual object to become intoxicated with the hundred stimuli which it produces." 1938

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