Balzac on the Flâneur
"To saunter is to live"
Le Balzac de Rodin (1886)
In 1846 the French Author Honoré de Balzac wrote about how much he loved going for a walk in his native Paris.
“To wander over Paris, what an adorable and delightful existence! (…) To saunter is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To saunter is to live.”
Balzac was describing what in the 19th century became known as a Flâneur, someone who spends their time walking through the city without any real purpose other than to roam.
As Baudelaire described it in his “The Painter of Modern Life”, the solitary walker is a restless soul, roaming the streets of the city looking for something which constantly eludes him.
“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.”
He even sketched this self-portrait of himself as a Flâneur (below).
Baudelaire self-portrait (1840)
Today we think of going for a walk as a good mental health practice (and indeed it is). But in the 19th century the lonesome walker was considered a romantic figure, a symptom of a restless time. The Flâneur signals the onset of a distinctly modern perspective on life, someone who documents the world around them rather than depicting an ideal. In that sense too going for a walk is crucial. It allows one to gain a different perspective, and sometimes that’s the most important thing.
Hopefully if you read this it will inspire you to become a Flâneur yourself!
Julian
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Great Julian, I’m glad to read you 🙏🏼
This is interesting: "...a distinctly modern perspective on life, someone who documents the world around them rather than depicting an ideal."
I walk daily in the countryside around my town, and take a lot of photos to capture some of what I see in nature. That seems such a "normal" thing to do, and even putting aside the modern convenience of a phone with a camera, I had never thought about this as a modern perspective on life.
As I read your statement, I thought about it in the context of various art movements. Although many modern styles became more abstract, their focus does seem to be on capturing real moments in everyday life. By comparison, while the Renaissance styles did exchange the old 2D iconography for something more realistic, they did so in a very idealistic way. Although they were striving to represent the human form in realistic detail, it was somehow akin to what we see in fashion magazines...as if every man looked like David and every woman Venus.
I'm not sure my countryside walks make me a true flâneur, but I'll take the title at least in spirit.