Unlit cigarette Symbolism
As seen in Édouard Manet’s Plum Brandy (ca. 1877), the unlit cigarette marks a pause before action, aligning the motif with modern leisure and suspended time. Its unlit state turns a tool of activity into a sign of delay, focusing attention on interiority within a public setting.
Unlit cigarette in Plum Brandy
In Plum Brandy (ca. 1877), Édouard Manet crystallizes an urban interval of suspended action through the figure’s idle tilt, the presence of an unlit cigarette, and a glass cradling a plum in amber liquor. Framed by the boxed-in café interior—the marble table, red banquette, and decorative grille—the unlit cigarette reads as a held intention, reinforcing the work’s staging of solitude within public life and the sensation of time briefly stopped.
