Flâneur, Aimless Walking of the French

1 day ago
5 min read

Written by Seçkin

Sometimes, ideas come at the most random and unprecedented of occasions. May it be walking around in your house, on the way to your school, or even deep in thought, lying on your bed. Dostoyevsky’s “Dreamer” in The White Nights, for example, defined his life as a pursuit of thoughts and ideas that come to him in the dead of the night or the dreams of the day. Archimedes, also, found his most important of findings about water density and volume, who made him the great physicist we know now, in his bath. Then, what is the best way to form ideas and thoughts that can give us these “Eureka” moments? 19th-century Frenchmen had a solution for that: “Boulevardiers”, or more commonly known as “Flâneurs”.

A flâneur(masc.), or passante(fem.) is what can be most effectively understood as a “wanderer”. It’s first usage as a word is from the Grand Larousse du dix-neuvième, described as a type of person equal parts lazy and curious, with many different “species” such as the Boulevard Flâneurs, Arcade Flâneurs, Café Flâneurs, and so on. Many writers and critics widely used the term, calling it the exact opposite of doing nothing; with Balzac stating that “He (the flâneur) is gastronomy to the eye.)” [1]

However, the one who paved the way for the flâneur to enter the literary world was Poe. In his short story, “The Man of the Crowd” the narrator follows a peculiar man throughout the streets of London. Stopping at multiple marketplaces, bazaars and shops, he accompanies the man through the most crowded parts of the city, just for him to do nothing at all except look around and leave at day’s end.

Poe’s short story inspired French essayist and poet Charles Baudelaire to describe and truly give meaning to the flâneur; be it his poems, small writings, and even his essay over Poe’s book, which Baudelaire named “The Painter of Modern Life”. During Paris’ rebuilding under Napoleon’s reign, Baudelaire presented a memorable portrait of the flâneur as the modern artist and poet of metropoles. In Baudelaire’s own words:

“The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.”

The historical feminine equivalent of the flâneur, the passante, appears prominently in the work of Marcel Proust. He portrayed several of his female characters as temporary, passing figures, who tended to ignore his obsessive and sometimes possessive view of them. Increasing freedoms and societal changes such as gender equality later allowed the passante to become an active participant in the 19th century city, as women's social roles expanded from the domestic and the private, and into the public and urban parts of the world.

In the eyes of many, spending your day walking around and barely doing anything can seem to be a waste of precious time. However, for journalist and literary critic Victor Fournel, there was nothing lazy in flânerie, the act of flâneuring. It was, in his own words, a way of understanding the rich variety of the city landscape, like "a mobile and passionate photograph of urban experience”.

Drawing on the statements of Fournel, and on his analysis of the poetry of Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin described the flâneur as the essential modern urban spectator figure, an amateur detective and investigator of the city, and incentivized 20^th century scholar’s interest in the flâneur as the archetype of the urban, modern experience in his book: The Arcades Project(Das Passagen-Werk). After Benjamin, the flâneur has become an important symbol for scholars, artists, and writers alike.

Also, in literature, there is a similar to the flâneur in terms of characteristics, but instead of being a spectator of life, they are spectators of occasions: The Badaud. Even though their meanings are close to each other, in most texts, the flâneur is seen as the complete opposite of the badaud, which usually means “gawker” or a “bystander”. In the Grand Larousse du dix-neuvième, badaud refers to someone who gets surprised by anything he sees, someone who amuses themselves with the abnormal, and one who blindly trusts everything that is said only for the sake of entertainment. Fournel states that the flâneur is in possession of his own individuality, whilst the badaud is merely a cog in the wheel, his individuality disappears when in a public space, since the badaud only exists as itself when there is a crowd, and an unusual sight taking place that formed the crowd in question. [2]

Even though the societal systems that we are accustomed to claim that we must always thrive to improve, to gain more, to grow as a person ourselves; flâneurism rejects this idea, being the idle, spectating individual, bearing no purpose other than to satiate their own curiosity. This begs the question: Is it still possible to be a flâneur in this ever-growing world that stops for no one?

Truthfully, and thankfully, there is, in a sense. However, it is exceptionally hard and time-consuming to become a flâneur at heart. The fact that you are throwing away hours, if not days, for an aimless wander, feels atrocious to the human psyche. Furthermore, detaching from social interaction is difficult in this modern world that prioritizes it as a means to improve one’s self through the means of another.

However, we might be able to acquaint ourselves with the personality of the flâneur by adapting it into the modern world. Instead of lying around and spending hours on social media; we could go outside, breathe in the fresh air all around, and just enjoy the gift of life as it was intended. Not like a badaud, trying to strain every bit of interaction with the public, from the crowd, from the mimes and puppeteers of Champs-Élysées; but as an individual themselves, immersed more in the view more than the folk.

By the end of this article, you must be intrigued, with questions such as: “When should I flâneur? How can I find time for it? What could it possibly help me with?”. For the former two, you will have to find the answers yourselves. Everyone has different schedules, so you must be careful while trying to find leisure time to flâneur, even though the streets are always open for the occasional Flâneur and Passante. But the answer to the latter, you already know. You find yourself walking around your school, the streets, your house, trying to find an idea all the time; but you have not yet acknowledged that those little strolls count as flâneur as well. Flâneiré is the best way to find new ideas and thoughts, since your brain works curiously with every shop, every person, every view you see from the real, outside world.

Though, one thing is certain. If one finds themselves walking along their favorite street, at their favorite time of day, whilst their favorite memories are playing over and over in their mind, that is when they will understand the comfort and serenity that flaneiré brings to one’s self; just like what Joe Dassin says about Paris’ beautiful Champs-Élysées in his song:

Aux Champs-Élysées, Aux Champs-Élysées

(At Champs-Élysées, at Champs-Élysées)

Au soleil, sous la pluie, À midi ou à minuit

(Under the sun and the rain, every hour, every minute)

Il y a tout c'que vous voulez

(Every dream can come true)

Aux Champs-Élysées

(At Champs-Élysées)