Benjamin inspired by Baudelaire Inspired by Poe

 

The birth of the flâneur

Parisian artist Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) was an eclectic: poet, writer, literary critic, art critic, journalist, philosopher, and translator of English.

His work as a translator brought him to know the work of Edgar Allan Poe. 

Poe, a Boston writer, in his short story "The Man of the Crowd", in 1840, describes an unnamed protagonist who tells the story of himself as he follows a man through the streets of London. 

Hundred and forty years later, a similar plot will be created by the photographer Sophie Calle in her "Suite Venitienne" of 1980.

The protagonist coincides with the narrator: sitting in the café of one of the busiest streets in London, he observes passers-by and describes them trying to guess their professions and their social position. 

"...At first my observations took an abstract and generalizing turn. I looked at the passengers in masses, and thought of them in their aggregate relations. Soon, however, I descended to details, and regarded with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage, and expression of countenance...."

(Poe, Edgar Allan, "The Man of the Crowd" (pp.3-4). AB Books. Kindle Ed."

Businessmen, professional players, prostitutes, scammers, and pickpockets take turns in front of his personal scrutiny until he sees an old man who interests him precisely because he cannot understand his nature, actually mysterious and disturbing.

He then decides to follow him and the two wander around the city. 

The theme of the flaneur and his contradictory personality emerges from this mysterious character who, on the one hand, seems to be afraid and eager to isolate himself, and on the other seems to be afraid of loneliness. wanting to go home: all it does is try to stay in the crowd all the time. 

Then the protagonist, exasperated and exhausted, finally stands in front and stares at him in the face but the man remains completely indifferent and continues to walk without paying any attention to him. 

The protagonist then realizes that he will never be able to obtain further information on that man; he understands how useless it is to continue to follow him and how he would not be able to know anything about him in any case. 

"He is the man of the crowd" he thinks, he doesn't want to be alone.

At one point in the story, the follower defines the followed as a "wanderer". At that moment, the two characters of the story merge and become one. Who follows becomes who is followed, and vice versa.

".....With a gesture of impatience, the wanderer passed into a by-street comparatively deserted....."

(Poe, Edgar Allan, "The Man of the Crowd" (p. 16). AB Books. Kindle Ed.)

 

"At no moment did he see that I watched him..."

(Poe, Edgar Allan, "The Man of the Crowd" (p. 17). AB Books. Kindle Ed."

".......I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing...."

(Poe, Edgar Allan, "The Man of the Crowd" (p. 21). AB Books. Kindle Ed."

The obsessive stalking by the narrator has the characteristics of that of a follower of a mystery. It winds through the centre and suburbs of London, day and night, without, finally, arriving at a clear ending.

"And, as the shades of the second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death, and, stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation."

(Poe, Edgar Allan, "The Man of the Crowd" (p. 22). AB Books. Kindle Ed."

For this reason, this story takes on the characteristics of aimless wandering, but, in reality, it is the ending that connotes a story that, otherwise, would have been, as in the usual Poe narrative, a story of mystery.

Baudelaire is inspired by this work to introduce for the first time, in his essay "The Painter of Modern Life", the figure of the "Flaneur", which, however, in the text, he calls "Dandy".

"......Today I want to talk to my readers about a singular man, whose originality is so powerful and clear-cut that it is self-sufficing, and does not bother to look for approval.......

....M. C. G. loves mixing with the crowds loves being incognito, and carries his originality to the point of modesty......

Do you remember a picture (for indeed it is a picture!) written by the most powerful pen of this age and entitled The Man of the Crowd?......

In the end he rushes out into the crowd in search of a man unknown to him whose face, which he had caught sight of, had in a flash fascinated him. Curiosity had become a compelling, irresistible passion......

The child sees everything as a novelty; the child is always 'drunk'....

But genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.....

The crowd is his domain, just as the air is the bird's, and water that of the fish. His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd. For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite..To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions....."

(Baudelaire, C. P., 1863, "The Painter of Modern Life", from Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Literature trans. P.E. Charvet (Viking 1972) pp. 395-422.)

The figure of the flâneur is adopted and expanded by Walter Benjamin, who portrays him as perfectly suited to a particular part of the city of Paris, "Les Arcades", on which he wrote the work "The Arcades Project" (Das Passagen-Werk, 1932 ). 

The dandy-walker-solitary-flâneur Baudelaire expresses himself in contemplation, in individualism, in isolation. 

However, he loves crowds, which is why Benjamin assigns him to an area where he can cross paths with as many passersby as possible.

"Baudelaire loved solitude, but he wanted it in a crowd.....

....the flaneur who goes botanizing on the asphalt....

Strolling could hardly have assumed the importance it did without the arcades.....

It is in this world that the flaneur is at home...."

(Benjamin, W., "Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism", Verso, 1933)

"THE CITY IS THE REALISATION OF THAT ANCIENT DREAM OF HUMANITY, THE LABYRINTH. IT IS THIS REALITY TO WHICH THE FLÂNEUR, WITHOUT KNOWING IT DEVOTES HIMSELF." 

WALTER BENJAMIN, DAS PASSAGENWERK

Reflections

There is an objective difficulty, as mentioned previously, in defining the figure of the Flaneur fully and uniquely, since, in a period of one hundred years, many have appropriated it and have enriched it with, sometimes contradictory, meanings. 

Indeed it is a contradictory figure, sometimes detached from its surroundings, sometimes involved, lonely, but in the crowd. Individualist, but with the attitudes of those who care about the judgment of others.

I have thought for a long time about how I should decline this figure on myself, during my drifting. 

Initially, I thought that even the clothing and equipment that I normally use for my photographic missions are certainly not suitable for a dandy who wanders aimlessly and timelessly. 

Then I thought about how this figure should be interpreted nowadays, and I thought that the smartphone and a disenchanted and playful use of this tool can be functional to the flaneur photographer of the 2000s.

This could be the method I will use in one of the next drifts.