history January 6, 2023  

The Art of Flânerie

By Budgie Perruche

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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 century and throughout the XIX century gave rise to a new class of city dwellers who enjoyed exploratory strolls through cities. This new type of city dweller was named the 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 enjoying a slow, relaxed walk [2]. As we will see later, the flâneur is an explorer, a philosopher of the streets – someone who observes and notices what others seem to overlook. Therefore, the word stroller is not a one-to-one replacement, as it strips the flâneur of its deeper meaning.

With time, the meaning of the word flâneur was extended to reflect social, urban, and technological changes – for example, the digital flâneur. In this article, I will not focus on these more contemporary concepts but on the past and the art of walking. 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, which tend to be overrun by cars and uncontrolled tourism.

A pinch of history

The way cities have been explored and walked through has always been closely connected to their urban layout. Medieval-like cities, such as Paris before the Haussmannian renovation (which started in the 1850s and was finally concluded in 1927), were often places where one would not find any pleasure in wandering about. Indeed, pre-Haussmannian 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. To illustrate the situation, let me use the following quote from Victor Considerant, written in 1845 [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 young Frederick, the future 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 for that quote at hand.

A similar picture could have been drawn of other European cities at the time. Yet, to give you a better understanding of the problem, let me tell you that Paris once had a second river, la Bièvre [4]. This tributary of the Seine was gradually covered over during the second half of the XIX century, and by 1912, its entire Parisian course had become part of the city’s sewer system. The reason was simple – pollution from the tanneries, dyers, and other workshops that lined its banks.

Many associate the appearance of the flâneur with the Haussmannian renovation of Paris and claim that the flâneur could not possibly have emerged before the renovation or in a city other than Paris. Yet things had 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 in the late XVII century [6]. In addition, researchers studying the topic have discovered that similar types of city explorers appeared before or at the same time in other cities, for instance, London and Madrid [3]. The figure below is an engraving by Pellicer, which shows walkers in the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid around 1876.

Yet, in each city where the art of walking the streets was practiced, one could identify differences. Let’s take a closer look at Madrid, for example:

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)]

In contrast, in some cities, such as Brussels, flânerie could be enjoyed only to a limited extent, if at all [3] (see Chapter XIV). The question, then, is what attributes a city must possess to be suitable for flânerie. Let us leave this question for another article.

Nevertheless, it is essential to note that one of the main differences between the past and now is that people of all classes and genders can enjoy flânerie today. This was not the case in the past: for example, the social standards imposed on women limited their ability to become a flâneur. The female counterparts of the flâneur are the passante, a figure known from Charles Baudelaire’s poem “À une passante” (1857) and associated with the works of Marcel Proust, and the flâneuse, a term taken up by scholars from the late XX century onwards (for example, in Janet Wolff’s 1985 essay “The Invisible Flâneuse”).

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 following two questions:

• is the art of flânerie dead?
• what makes a city suitable for a flâneur?

References

1. Définitions : flâner. (n.d.). In Dictionnaire De Français Larousse. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/flâner/34028
2. Definition: stroller. (n.d.). Oxford Dictionary. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/stroller?q=stroller
3. Wrigley, R. (Ed.). (2014). The Flâneur abroad: Historical and international perspectives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
4. Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris. (n.d.). National Gallery of Art. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2013/marville.html
5. De Moncan, P., & Heurteux, C. (2002). Le Paris d’Haussmann. Editions du Mécène.
6. Turcot, L. (2015). The rise of the promeneur: walking the city in eighteenth-century Paris. Historical Research, 88(239), 67-99.