Untitled

Esther Leslie
qualifications of a Flâneur. Nor is he an “Observer;” for this would imply the concentration
of his faculties towards a definite aim and in a certain direction. The true
Flâneur has a horror of all definite aim; he never seeks – he trusts to chance. His mind is
like sensitive blank photographic plate, ready for any impression which may present
itself. 2
Intensity of experience, openness to coincidence, a dread of all intention: these
are all characteristics in many descriptions of flânerie. The photographic metaphor
is noteworthy. The flâneur has a camera-eye, as befits an archetypal inhabitant of
the century of optical devices, and in Paris, a prime location for their invention.
The flâneur was able to flourish as species only after the French Revolution.
His existence is inseparable from the changes in urban public space, post-1789,
that accompanied the establishment of bourgeois rule: industrialization, commodity
production and democratization. The burgeoning arenas of bourgeois life
– notably shops, public parks, cafés and then, later, railway stations, museums,
exhibition halls – are essential for the flâneur’s leisured and curious inhabitation
of the urban realm. These are the “despised everyday structures” which attract the
flâneur, places where the masses enter the stage of history, sites to scrutinize,
spaces to hide in a crowd, open to chance encounters and always with one foot in
the salon and an ear to the ground, from where all noteworthy commotion swells
up. 3
After the revolution, the new citizen of France acquired political interests,
which, in turn, bred the desire for discussion and a curiosity about public affairs.
A bourgeois public sphere took shape. Until the 1830s newspapers, available only
on subscription, could be read otherwise in the cafés, among gamesters and
smokers. And, since the revolution, many chefs having lost their aristocratic
retainers, opened restaurants in Paris. Such were the places where a person might
kill time, not detached from the world, but participating in its novel forms of
citizenship. The flâneur inhabits these locations of modernity. And now his star
rises, at least in certain interested circles, for he becomes, according to the
periodical Le Livré des cent-et-un, not merely the “premier need of an advanced
age” but also “the highest expression of modern civilisation.” 4 The 1830s are the
flâneur’s golden years. The favored spots for haunting, the arcades, are built, for
the most part, in the decade and a half after 1822. These covered walkways were
lined with trading outlets and were a development out of the Galeries of the Palais
Royal. With their jumble of diverse commodities from across the Empire, they
offered much in the way of display. A guide from 1852 describes each glass-roofed
and marble-lined passageway as “a city, a world in miniature.” 5 They were perfect
sites in which to linger.
The arcades gave way in time to department stores. Modes of purchase, ways
of shopping were being reinvented through the century. On the way to the café or
62