The Flaneur

Dandyism

THE FLÂNEUR

Gustav Temple on the flâneur’s leisurely entry into society and why we should make sure he sticks around

Charles Baudelaire may not have been the

first man or woman to wander the streets of his city with no particular destination, and no purpose other than to absorb his surroundings, muse on whatever took his fancy and end up somewhere interesting, but he was the first to give it a name: the flâneur.

The word comes from the 17th century term flânerie – to stroll or idle without purpose. Baudelaire was not alone in his flânerie. Many of his 19th century literary peers celebrated the art of flânerie, including Balzac, Anaïs Bazin (who declared that “the true sovereign of Paris is the flâneur”) and Louis Aragon. All agreed that there was more to being a flâneur than simply wandering the streets. By deliberately avoiding the end point of a destination, the flâneur throws himself open to whatever he or she might encounter.

This was further expanded by André Breton, who in his 1928 novel Nadja advised the reader always to be in a state of disponibilité – “the availability, the waiting, the opening to the unpredictable which breaks the frozen crust of

“The great reminiscences, the historical frissons are all so much junk to the flâneur, who is happy to leave them to the tourist; he would be happy to trade all his knowledge of artists’ quarters, birthplaces, and princely palaces for the scent of a single weathered tile”

existence, and finally the change.” So the flâneur is actually in search of something while he wanders, yet he doesn’t know what it is until he finds it. This is not unlike when one is on holiday and goes out in search of a bureau de change and ends up buying an expensive embroidered rug.

Sainte-Beuve wrote that to flâne is the very opposite of doing nothing. Just as an idler attaches

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