Flaneur: A City Wanderer (French)
Walking as a state of rebellion
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Henry David Thoreau
We started on the intellectual path of walking, a very basic human action, with the word "wayfarer" last week, and today we're going to take it a step further.
Walking is an ideal "mode of thinking" because it brings us into fresh new physical and physiological situations even after just a few steps. Walking appears to be a savior whom we can approach as soon as we put on our shoes and step outside because, while walking, all of our body parts, emotions, and mind work in perfect harmony, causing us to improve for the better.
Ghandi, Thoreau, Nietzsche, and other thought-makers took transformative and long walks in nature as a way of thinking. This week, however, we'll be discussing city walks and walkers.
I’m a lover of cities. I was born in the city and have lived here my entire life. Except for brief visits, I've never lived in the countryside. Even though I'm getting more acquainted with nature as I grow older, I wouldn't trade my city walks for anything. Being away from the city sounds unbearable for someone like me, whose greatest passion is to observe, reflect on, and write about human nature and human states.
Walking in the city allows you to freely observe people and their various states of existence. Young women in stilettos sipping an afternoon drink in their work clothes, sandwich shops on the corners of high-rise buildings, a little girl happily strolling around with a bouquet of flowers, old couples walking slowly in the city park holding hands, and little students lining up like ducklings in their special uniforms are only a few of the matchless scenes of urban landscapes.
Of course, I visit museums and famous landmarks in all the cities, and I enjoy doing so, but I also enjoy sitting in a cafe in a crowded and lively square and watching the people of that city. I imagine all their lives, what kind of characters they are, how they live their lives, what they despise, what makes them laugh the most, do they snore while sleeping, or how they behave when angry. All these are endlessly interesting for me. You may call this insane, and I can't say "no, I’m not", but this is my innate curiosity and interest.
City life has “a lot” to offer.
In French, a flaneur is someone who wanders aimlessly around the city. A flaneur walks through the city streets, not trying to get to a specific destination but with a desire to look around curiously and observe everything.
Wandering with no specific goal. It doesn't sound like it would be of much interest to fans of productivity, does it?
In fact, flaneur was a sardonic term for unemployed and aimless people. However, things changed when Charles Pierre Baudlaire, the well-known French poet, essayist and art critic turned the flaneur into a literary figure with a new meaning in his 1864 essay "The Painter of Modern Life."1
In his essay, "The Painter of Life," Baudlaire describes a gentleman, a painter codenamed Monsieur G2, whom he apparently admires. He describes this person as having a great ability to think and behave differently. He is a flaneur, a gentleman with fun, curiosity, and a free spirit who wanders around the city, even the world with eyes full of pleasure.
Monsieur G is defined as "a man of a world" by Baudlaire because of his ability to see and approach issues from a broad perspective, even broader than an artist's comprehension. He also refers to Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Man of the Crowds," drawing an analogy with the character, who is a man in a convalescence phase, sitting in a cafe and looking out the window at city life. He carefully examines and interprets the human landscapes he sees through the window. At the same time, he is a curious character who can’t help chasing after a strange old man on the streets. Baudlaire emphasizes the character's sense of curiosity, saying that “Curiosity has become a fatal, irresistable passion!”
Then, Monsieur G, the flaneur, is a keen observer and passionately curious.
According to Baudlaire, a flaneur can also feel comfortable in crowds, almost like at home. The peculiar movement of the city, its flow, surrounds him. He also shows real harmony with this flow. He is in front of the eyes but hidden. In the middle of the crowds but isolated. He has limits, but he's free at the same time. He is not seeking approval, because he does not require it.
From Baudlaire’s The Painter of Life:
“The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebband flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home anf yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world-such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define.”
This is a portrait of a truly free-spirited individual, an artist, and a true creative.
As you can see, flaneur has gained much more respect, uniqueness, and even enviable characteristics as a result of Baudlaire's The Painter of Life and Monsieur G.
The flaneur then got caught in the lens of the German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin. Benjamin discusses the concept of a flaneur in his book "The Arcades Project", which he wrote based on his observations about Parisian society and the life in the "arcades" that started to be seen in the city during the years he spent in Paris, where he took refuge in order to escape from Hitler's Germany.
Benjamin, a Marxist, defines the flaneur as a character who rebels against the capitalist order. Frederic Gros, in his book A Philosophy of Walking, explains3 that Benjamin's view of the flaneur emerged depending on three factors. The city, the crowd, and capitalism.
As the first element, in cities that have grown immensely, the flaneur passes through districts that have been transformed into alienated worlds. The city, which has turned into a forest of buildings, has taken the place of the nature's forests that one passes through while walking in the countryside. The second element, the crowds, is a set of individuals rather than a tied society. A flaneur walks and observes in crowds of individuals who do not know each other and do not have a collective purpose, each with a different purpose and goal. As for the last element, capitalism, William describes it as the reign of the commodity. Arcades, which he observes and writes about, are already the forerunners of today's shopping malls, which are the flags of capitalism.
According to Benjamin, the flaneur is a character who rebels against the order. It resists productivity and the utilitarianism that he thinks is behind it. According to him, a flaneur is an observer, a reporter, or even a journalist.
Benjamin’s characterization gives flaneur a rise to a different stage in society and assigns him a more influential role.
Thus, the flaneur occupies a unique place in the worlds of literature and philosophy.
When we come to today, we see that Lebanese-Amarican essayist and thinker Nassim Taleb talks about a new concept in the form of “rational flaneur” in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Taleb, like Baudlaire and Benjamin, is an author who has lived in France and observed French society, particularly Parisians. He emphasizes that the flaneur explores the city, but by making choices, making decisions, and succeeding in being logical while remaining in motion. He also considers himself to be a rational flaneur.
From “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”:
“Rational flâneur (or just flâneur): Someone who, unlike a tourist, makes a decision opportunistically at every step to revise his schedule (or his destination) so he can imbibe things based on new information obtained. In research and entrepreneurship, being a flâneur is called “looking for optionality.”
Finally, we can finally talk about the flâneuse, which is the female version of the flaneur, which has been male most of this time. It may seem no surprise that flâneuse is not mentioned much, since walking freely on the roads has been an activity seen as a right for men for most of history. After all, a woman's place is at home, and the primary world of men is outside!
Lauren Elkin discusses female explorers in her book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2017. I haven't had the chance to read it yet, but as a firm believer in and supporter of women's empowerment, I will definitely have it soon.
From from the book's introduction:
Lauren Elkin defines her as ‘a determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk’.
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From nineteenth-century novelist George Sand to artist Sophie Calle, from war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to film-maker Agnes Varda, Flâneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed woman encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.
I have to mention a quite significant character before leaving the concept of flanerie, particularly being a flâneuse: Mrs Dalloway
The first person that came to my mind when I heard of being a flâneuse was Virginia Woolf's most famous character. Throughout the pages of the novel, she describes the parks, streets, people, buses, and all the flow of life in a beautiful rhythm by blending them with what she has in mind (going back and forth in time, evaluating her own situation). As everything flows in the stream of consciousness, the city unfolds before our eyes like a huge stage in Mrs. Dalloway's flâneuse eyes.
Naturally, the flâneuse is bolder—because it takes twice as much effort and boldness to be a free spirit in a male-dominated world. With the innate power of womanhood, the flâneuse is also sensitive, good at observing details, and experiences emotions more deeply.
Walking is always beautiful; it reminds one to be alive and strong. In the city or in nature, in an environment that the human spirit needs, we can reveal our biggest rebellion against life by constantly moving forward in rhythm with our own spirit. This is no small thing.
Next week, we will continue to wander around the idea of traveling and the need for and desire to travel.
See you next week!
Thanks for reading!
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The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, by Charles Pierre Baudlaire. Translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne, Phaidon Press.
Monsieur G is Constantin Guy, who is a war correspondent, painter and illustrator.
A Philosophy of Walking, by Frederic Gros. “The Urban Flaneur” chapter.
Thank you for this wonderful reflection on the essence of urban wandering and its artistic/ cultural heritage. I am inspired to look up the Poe essay and Gross's book.
I first learned about the Flaneur from Benjamin, so I'm glad you gave a shout-out to his amazing Arcades Project. But, flâneuse is my new favorite word.