The Art of Flânerie
Never have I thought or experienced, been more myself than when walking alone. There is something about walking which animates and enlivens my ideas; when immobile I am hardly capable of thought, to set my mind in motion I must first get my body moving. Country views, a succession of pleasant prospects, good air, the good appetite and good health that I gain by walking, the ease of the outdoor cabaret, far away from everything which makes me feel my dependence—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The social and urban changes of the late XVIII and throughout the XIX century emerged a new class of city dwellers who enjoyed exploratory strolls through cities. This new type of city beings had been named flâneur, from the French verb flâner, which itself is of Nordic origin [1]. Providing a precise translation is rather complicated, if not impossible, as many have already argued. Still, the closest English equivalent is the word stroller – a person who is enjoying a slow, relaxed walk [2]. As we will see later, flâneur is an explorer, a philosopher of the streets – someone who observes and notices what others seem to overlook. Therefore, the world stroller does not consist of a one-to-one replacement as it strips the flâneur of a deeper meaning.
With time the meaning of the word flâneur obtained extensions appropriate to the social, urban, and technological changes. These are, for example, digital flâneur. In this article, I will not focus on these more contemporary concepts. In this post, I will focus on the past and the art of walking. Indeed, in this first article, I will touch on the idea of flânerie – the art of city exploration. In the following articles, I will then try to answer whether the classical art of flânerie is a dead concept in modern cities that tend to be polluted with cars and uncontrolled tourism.
A pinch of history
The primary motivation behind the way the city has been explored and walked through has been connected to the urban arrangement of the cities. The medieval like-cities, such as Paris before the Haussmannian restoration (which started in the 1850s and was finally concluded in 1927), were often places where one would not find any pleasure wandering about. Indeed, the pre-Hausmannian Paris was a maze of shady, narrow, crowded streets, often filled with litter. The old, sometimes medieval buildings were not adapted to the ever-growing population. In short, Paris before the 1850s was not a city where living was enjoyable. Let me use for an illustration of the situation the following quote from Victor Considerant [5]
Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year.
I also read that in 1739 Voltaire wrote to the King of Prussia:
I saw the fireworks which they fired off with such management; would rather they started to have a Hôtel de Ville, beautiful squares, magnificent and convenient markets, beautiful fountains, before having fireworks.
Unfortunately, I do not have a source of that quote at hand.
Yes, a similar picture could have been drawn based on other cities at the time in Europe. Yet to give you a better understanding of the problem, let me tell you that there is a second river passing by Paris called la Bièvre [4]. This tributary of the Seine during the Haussmann work was put into the city’s sewer system. The reason behind it was simple – pollution from the local tanneries, which operated in the city until they were banned during restoration.
Many associate the appearance of flâneur with the Haussmannian renovation of Paris and claim that flâneur could not possibly emerge before the renovation or in another city than Paris. Yet the trends started to change earlier even in Paris after the demolition of the city walls and the creation of the first boulevards during the reign of Louis XIV at the end of the XVII century [6]. In addition, researchers studying the topic have discovered that similar types of city explorers have occurred before or at the same time in other cities such as, for instance, London and Madrid [3]. The figure below is an engraving by Pellicer, which illustrates walkers on the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid around 1876.
 on any given afternoon in 1876. Engraving by Pellicer. The Spanish and American Enlightenment](https://flaneurs.cafe/uploads/art-of-flanerie/grabado-pellicer.webp)
Yet, in each city where the art of walking the streets was practiced, one could identify differences. Let’s dig into, e.g., Madrid:
What happens in Spain’s main city does not occur in any other promenades [in Berlin, Constantinople, London, and Paris]. The person who goes to the Tuileries, only goes to stroll, to listen to the music played every afternoon by the military bands; if they run into an acquaintance, they are surprised. In Spain’s promenades, one of the most attractive features - if not the main attraction - is the fact that one will find friends or acquaintances. If this only occurred in the provinces, it would not be remarkable, but it also happens in Madrid. [3 (see p. 155 and footnote 56 therein)]
On the contrary, flânerie could not be or, in a limited sense, be enjoyed in some cities such as Brussels [3] (see Chapter XIV). The question is, then, what kind of attributes must a city possess to be suitable for flânerie? Let us leave this question for another article.
Nevertheless, what is essential to note in this place is the fact that one of the main differences between the past and now is the fact that people of all classes and genders can now enjoy flânerie, which was not the case in the past, for example, the social standards imposed on woman, which limited their ability to become a flâneur, flâneuese or passante, with the two later being female versions of the word flâneur with passante coined by Marcel Proust and flâneuese being introduced by scholars in the XXI century.
I will finish the article here and leave the exploration of the details for another time. In the next posts, I will try to focus on the two following questions:
- is the art of flânerie dead?
- what makes a city suitable for a flânuer?
References
- Définitions : flâner. (n.d.). In Dictionnaire De Français Larousse. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/flâner/34028
- Definition: stroller. (n.d.). Oxford Dictionary. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/stroller?q=stroller
- Wrigley, R. (Ed.). (2014). The Flâneur abroad: Historical and international perspectives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
- Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris. (n.d.). National Gallery of Art. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2013/marville.html
- De Moncan, P., & Heurteux, C. (2002). Le Paris d’Haussmann. Editions du Mécène.
- Turcot, L. (2015). The rise of the promeneur: walking the city in eighteenth-century Paris. Historical Research, 88(239), 67-99.