"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. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are or are not—to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life."
Wrote Charles Baudelaire, in 1863, quoted in the Wikipedia entry "Flâneur."
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So "flaneur" is French for "pretentious jackass?"
So "flaneur" is French for "pretentious jackass?"
Only when he tips into dandyism.
Show me a flâneur, and I'll show you a circumflex.
De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater has nice prose. Also Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.
"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. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world"
See, that's what happened on January 6. Except for the hidden part.
It is de rigueur for a flaneur to avoid stepping in manure!
The days when the big question was: Wagner or Brahms.
Trilbyana. Associated affliction. You cannot move at all but are hypnotized into singing like an accomplished artist.
19th century people used to worry about their kids getting into this stuff, not without justification. But the starvation and the syphilis kept the numbers down.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb sees flaneuring as the ideal life.
"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."
First thought: That is the worst, most over-the-top misinterpretation of Joe Biden I have ever read.
Second thought: Uh, maybe this isn't about Joe Biden.
The flâneur phenomenon has much to do with city centers being the center, the beating heart, of the country and the world, a whole universe in a few square miles.
We are at two or three removes from that mentality. First, because of the automobile and the suburbs and the shopping malls. Second, because of the internet and home delivery. And third because of COVID and the shutdowns. Downtown isn't what it used to be. The center is somewhere else, or it is nowhere or everywhere.
Also, the classic flâneur really didn't have a job or an occupation or was only very loosely associated with regular work, so he (and yes, it usually was a he) could stride along the boulevards with a carnation in his lapel and take in the varied scenes as he passed. If you are tied down with a job you usually have some place to be and can't enjoy the show. Everybody else has something to do and someplace to be as well. The hawkers and peddlers of past years are gone as well, though maybe you could get a hot dog or a pretzel if you're lucky.
Flaneur clearly comes from 'flan,' a custardy desert found in Spain.
The original flanuers were great connoisseurs of flan, but were also makers of flan. They carried flan in their knapsacks to Paris over the Pyrenees.
There is even lore of flaneurs working all hours in the holds of New World ships. Upon arrival, the tense greeting with natives would be as cool and delicious as a first bite of flan passing down the gullet
Friends?
There used to be writer for The New Yorker who used the pen name of Janet Flaneur. She wrote Letters from Paris for that magazine which were highly regarded by sophisticated and knowledgeable people. I can't say that nowadays she's completely forgotten because I just remembered her.... I always thought flaneurs were gentlemen of leisure who wore flannel outfits with sharp creases. So now I learn that they were gentlemen of leisure who liked custard.
Janet Flanner, friend William. Pseudonym "Genet."
I'm not a great fan of CB's, but that's a wonderfully observant and beautifully written description of a representative social type from a bygone culture.
Narr
Fan of flan
Thanks for the correction. Janet Flanner, not Flaneur. Still, someone who writes letters from Paris under the pen name of Genet is most likely a flaneur... I suppose it's hard for a flaneur to achieve lasting fame. They're too much in their moment. Was Guy DeMaupassant a flaneur? He had the kind of name that would be consistent with flaneurism.
I first became aware of the term 'flâneur' from Russell Roberts' EconTalk podcasts - the word is almost a term of endearment over there.
Oh, and regarding 'flan' - yum! Many years ago living in Paris, I always enjoyed being offered an after-dinner treat of Flanby, purchased typically from the Auchan in Plasir. Flanby came in little cups with the flan in the top, and the caramel in the bottom. You would turn it upside down and press a little button molded in the bottom of the cup, which released the flan onto your plate, and the caramel would flow down over it perfectly. Again, yum!
Addison wrote The Spectator - an early blog. It came out every day, arriving at the best houses by eleven am when the women got up and came down to the parlor. It gave them something to read and discuss for the rest of the day. The Spectator was English and not a flâneur. see below, Spectator, March 12, 1711 (note even in 1711 they tracked readership numbers)
"It is with much Satisfaction that I hear this great City inquiring Day by Day after these my Papers, and receiving my Morning Lectures with a becoming Seriousness and Attention. My Publisher tells me, that there are already Three Thousand of them distributed every Day: So that if I allow Twenty Readers to every Paper, which I look upon as a modest Computation, I may reckon about Threescore thousand Disciples in London and Westminster, who I hope will take care to distinguish themselves from the thoughtless Herd of their ignorant and unattentive Brethren. Since I have raised to myself so great an Audience, I shall spare no Pains to make their Instruction agreeable, and their Diversion useful. For which Reasons I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways find their account in the Speculation of the Day. And to the End that their Virtue and Discretion may not be short transient intermitting Starts of Thought, I have resolved to refresh their Memories from Day to Day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate State of Vice and Folly, into which the Age is fallen. The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture. It was said of Socrates, that he brought Philosophy down from Heaven, to inhabit among Men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables, and in Coffee houses."
Hear! Hear!
Narr
Wench! Another cup!
I'll have what he's having.
The flâneur had jauntiness or buoyancy or unflappability that people find it hard to manage nowadays. Everybody has their anxiety and aggravation nowadays. A columnist like Jimmy Breslin could explore the city like a 19th century flâneur, but he had to be careful to tug at the readers' heartstrings often enough to keep his public engaged.
I would have thought of a flâneur as ironically detached, but for Baudelaire he sounds more like an enthusiast. I had a professor who lectured on the flâneur and the dandy, and I'm not sure where one ends and the other begins.
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