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Esther Leslie
boulevards which seem empty in spite of the crowd, that general resemblance of houses
and shops so well calculated to strike at first sight and impress with an idea of grandeur,
all contribute to benumb every sense after a short time, and to produce a kind of halfconscious
stupor equally unfavourable to receiving impression or making observations.
Almost without perceiving it, the flâneur branches off into one of the sidestreets, and a
feeling of relief comes over him instantly. 34
Perhaps then, at this point, the flâneur detaches himself from the progress of
modernity, seeking instead the mud and the turmoil of the still remaining alleyways.
In these back-streets the crowd is not a listless mass, but alert, mastering its
path through the streets, rather than traipsing down them, subjected to the brutish
blows of modern life.
In Baudelaire the crisis of the flâneur and the pedestrian (as well, indeed, of
modernity) finds aesthetic shape. The crisis that the flâneur comes to experience
and register in his writing (in Baudelaire’s case in his poetry and prose poems) is
a shock experience, the crushing impact of city provocations, the elbowing of the
crowd and the violence of market relations. Jostled by the urban crowd, the city
dweller is forced to develop an exhaustingly vigilant stance, a military on guard
that screens and judges and evaluates stimuli. But in this case, such city negotiation
is less the dull street-traipsing that the 1862 observer noted and more a nervous
watchfulness that forbids reflection or procrastination or leisured strolling. A prose
poem from the late 1860s called “Loss of a Halo” expressed the new tensions well
and cheekily. In the prose poem “Perte d’auréole” from Petits poèmes en prose
(1869) Baudelaire mocks the idea of the aloof Romantic poet who muses on
beauty. Instead the new poet must find material in his city dwelling. He must
translate into poetry the streets, brothels, tarmac, traffic, noise, and commotion.
He comes to this realization after a dangerous encounter while crossing the busy
road. This causes him to drop his halo – his poetic laurel – onto the “mire of the
macadam.” He refuses to go back and reclaim it, happy now to walk incognito
and be vulgar. Such a demotion can become burdensome. The poet-flâneur pays
for his everydayness by becoming a wage-laborer like any other. He sells his
poems. The streets are his routes to moneymaking. Eventually, notes Benjamin,
the product – the poem, the feuilleton contribution – will be unnecessary, once the
very act of walking becomes the way to earn some cash: as a sandwichman with
an advertising board weighing on his shoulders, elevating the commodity he
advertises while burdening the human being.
The major metropolises of the world had changed over a century and continued
to change. Order gradually replaced disorder. In 1882 New York City, for example,
was darkened by ugly bundles of overhead wires on wooden poles along all the
main thoroughfares. The communication circuits of rival telegraph and telephone
companies, burglar alarms and other amenities were strung without restriction or
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