To Wander ...

A photograph and a few words

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.

from Charles Baudelaire's 'The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays'

I have for many years seen myself as a flâneur. Indeed, many of my weekly offerings reflect my propensity to wander and wonder. But what exactly is a flâneur, you may ask?

In George Orwell's, 'Six Rules of Writing,' he offers, "Never use a foreign phrase … if you can think of an everyday English equivalent". Good advice (that I am guilty of not always taking), but there are some activities that only a foreign word can describe.

Flâneur is such a word for an activity that does not have an exact English equivalent. It is nigh impossible to find a word in English that conveys the spirit of a flâneur. Most English dictionaries define a flâneur as someone who strolls, loafs, or idles. Indeed in 'De Profundis', Oscar Wilde wrote of his regret, "I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flâneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds."

But the true meaning in French is more of a highly observant urban wanderer who takes in everything they see as they seek experiences that fuel their creative minds.

In a short story called 'The Man of the Crowd', Edgar Allen Poe was the first to describe someone who appears to stroll aimlessly through the bazaars and shops of London's streets—buying nothing but merely observing. Poe does not use the word flâneur, but the concept inspired French poet Charles Baudelaire, who translated Poe's story into French.

The word flâneur derives from the Old Norse verb flana, which meant to wander with no purpose and, in the 16th Century, came to mean idle strolling to waste time. However, Baudelaire reshaped the word's meaning to one who is of an artistic soul that better understands the relationship between the individual and a city. In his essay, 'The Painter of Modern Life', Baudelaire established the flâneur as the "gentleman stroller of city streets" and a "passionate spectator". Other writers had seen flâneurs as unmotivated, indecisive men, but Baudelaire held the flâneur in high esteem. Walter Benjamin took this further, seeing the flâneur as an investigator and decipherer of city life.

Being retired, I can now indulge much more in 'deciphering city life' and fall into Edmund White's interpretation below. White wrote a modern guidebook of Paris that takes the reader around the city through the eyes of a poetic flâneur.

"[The flâneur is] by definition endowed with enormous leisure, someone who can take off a morning or an afternoon for undirected ambling since a specific goal or a close rationing of time is antithetical to the true spirit of the flâneur."

Retirement allows me to take a morning, afternoon, evening or even an entire day to enjoy travelling, wandering, and observing. Just as some relax when on country rambles, I feel comfortable, and 'at home' in the middle of an urban environment. Even in those towns and cities with which I am not familiar. I enjoy the 'busyness' of that environment and have no fear of crowded tumult. I am in my autumn years, so I look more to the immediate and have no future goals other than inner contentment. The sort of contentment that I find in exploring a city or town. And from my urban explorations come stories. I've always been a teller of tales.

It's not just in storytelling that Flâneurs appear. For example, in TS Eliot's wonderful poem, 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock', the protagonist takes the reader through his city like a flâneur.

Flâneurs feature much in one of my favourite Art Movements, Impressionism. For example, Degas', 'Place de la Concorde', 'In the Loge (At the Opera)' by Mary Cassatt and Caillebotte's, 'Paris Street, Rainy Day'. Indeed, one might view Monet as a flâneur afloat, given he spent much time drifting and painting through the Argenteuil Basin on the boat he converted into a 'floating studio'.

Street photography also falls into the realm of flâneurs. That master of candid photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson, was also the quintessential flâneur. Agnès Sire wrote of Cartier-Bresson that he "loved nothing so much as the grey poetry of the street". Then there's American photographer Ruth Orkin and her famous photo series 'American Girl in Italy'. These and many others achieve that separation from, but keen observers of, the urban environment. I do not put myself in their talented ranks, but I like this photo I took on one of my meanders around Newcastle that I feel is in the spirit of a flâneur. 

And where next, I wonder where I'll wander?