Poe to Benjamin to Gleber: The Flaneur

Edgar Allen Poe begins the "discussion" between these three writers by describing a gaslight era flaneur in his "Man of the Crowd". Walter Benjamin, citing some of Poe's descriptions, continues this timeline of flanerie through the electric light era, and Anke Gleber brings the flaneur into the modern era, placing these previous ideas, as well as some new ones, into the modern city life.

Poe's subtitle to this story is "Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir etre seul", or "The great misfortune of being unable to be alone" and he begins his short story with a description of the types of people he sees pass before him on the street as he sits inside a coffee shop in London (which would be the people who would most likely fit into his subtitle). Each type of person, the noblemen, clerks, upper clerks, pick-pockets, gamblers, women, and the "grunge of the city" (drunkards, beggars, etc.), carries with themselves a certain gait and exterior impression upon others, and each type of person interacts differently with those around them. It appeared to me, at first, that Poe here was the flaneur, sitting by idly, watching people pass with a vague interest in their appearance and character. However, as he spots one man that quite fully catches his attention, the roles are switched as if in a relay, and this elderly man becomes the story's flaneur. As Poe follows the man, he observes him in immense detail, down to attempting to distinguish the type of fabric his shirt is made of, and what sort of look sits below this man's furrowed brow. At no time does Poe make himself known to the man, so his observation is one of an uninterrupted and genuine nature. This man's composition drastically changes over the course of the night's hours. He is frail and uninterested when he finds himself alone. When he comes across a square, a busy street, or a bazaar, however, the man finds some inner youth and rushes forth. He wanders the crowd until it breaks, then continues on his journey aimlessly, once again expressing his age through his posture and gait. He enters a shop in the bazaar and gazes hollowly at and through objects inside the shop, certainly not looking to purchase anything, but simply grabbing small details and vaguely observing. Ultimately, we can see that this man is not alone when he is with people, regardless of his interaction with them, and he has no business but that of escaping from his own loneliness. This very basic definition of a flaneur gives Benjamin a running start into his addition to the term.

Walter Benjamin in his "The Flaneur" is the first to mention the actual word flaneur. The dictionary definition is as follows: an idler or lounger; one who strolls about aimlessly. This activity was not one that was in any means known until the birth of the arcades in Paris, France. These interior exteriors provided a place for people to actually walk without having to worry about being run over by carriages and other street vehicles. Their main purpose was not only to provide a place of ambulation, but to provide people with places to ambulate. The "walls" of these arcades were built of store fronts and shops, places for people to go into, move about, purchase items, and continue their stroll through the arcade. And stroll they did. Around 1840, some would walk turtles down these arcades to set their walking pace.

The first issues of this new concept of watching people pass by you as they watch you pass by them, was that this had never been done before. People didn't watch each other in public spaces (as there were no buses or subways or transportation of that sort), and Benjamin speaks that the ability to hear but not see would trump the ability to see but not hear, for looking is the awkward part, and by people burning their pupils into you they might perhaps glimpse your dark secrets. People were skeptic of being in public around strangers who may glance their way, so some Feuilleton physiologies began making claims that one could distinguish everyone they pass in a city just by their appearance. That artists would be identifiable, as would businessmen, and geniuses. This, for a short time, perhaps, kept some people's fears of public at bay, but soon enough, ideas of detectives and mysteries of the city became the hot topic in literature. The popularized idea was that somebody would disappear into the throngs of people by the hand of someone who could be described as "unknown to all others and thus does not have to blush in front of anyone", neither of which to be seen again, but that some average person would become detective and pick up on some small clue and solve the mystery. The people most likely to "come across these clues" would be the flaneurs, as they are the observers of the street, wandering aimlessly and recording details of passerbys' faces and visual forms of the crowds. As these detectives, it seemed that the idea of what would become street photography was born: "He develops forms of reaction that are in keeping with the pace of a big city. He catches things in flight; this enables him to dream that he is like an artist. Balzac claims that artistry as such is tied to a quick grasp."

 Garry Winogrand "Flip"

 Garry Winogrand "Los Angeles 1964"

Ultimately, street lamps were the answer to the feeling of safety within a city at night. These gaslights allowed people to stroll the streets when they otherwise would not be able to, and to look in shop windows by the light of the streetlamps. Baudelaire commented on Brussels that there are no shops and that the streets are unusable to the stroller because of this. The same point is made in "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" by William H. White:

whyte styles from chris woebken on Vimeo.
Storefronts are a mandatory aspect of a city to function properly in the flow of crowds. With the draw of more people to the streets, more shops began to open, and this "commodity idea" arose, with people going to and fro, observing the items and their pricetags, and moving about the objects. This new movement throughout stores gave a new sort of "location" for flaneurs, and their observations expanded. Though they were, in a way, part of the crowd, being that they are humans in a specific location, flaneurs are also people who are abandoned in the crowd. They mingle about, picking up pieces that other have left behind. I have a quote from Benjamin's reading, but am unsure that I am interpreting it correctly, so here goes:

Empathy is the nature of the intoxication to which the flaneur abandons himself in the crowd.

This seems to me to be describing flaneurs as having been once in the crowd, and realizing its monotony and sameness, and therefore breaking from this crowd as an individual, empathizing with what they once were, but enthralled with how they see the world as a flaneur. There is quite a long quote by Friedrich Engels on pages 57-58 of the Benjamin reading, so I will not quote it, but to sum it up, Engels describes how people move about with disregard toward others and an air of ignorance regarding everything but themselves and their destinations. They do not realize that everybody around them is also a human being, regardless of race, class, or appearance, and they become trapped in this tunnel vision flow of the city's movement. The more that someone sees themselves as just another in a crowd, the less interest they take in feeling anything toward others. Flaneurs, however, are still vaguely interested in the crowds around them, and at least acknowledge that there is not a drawn out path to take, but will be affected by external elements that they really don't have control over, but will accept with interest. They understand that enjoyment of a society is far greater and more rewarding than enjoyment in a society. This idea of a flaneur's freedom seems metaphorical of A Christmas Carol, where day to day life passes by and people go on their way walking through streets and buying things and going home, and repeating this pattern continuously until they, well, die. But Scrooge is then given the opportunity to observe these patterns and watch, with the freedom of movement and ideas, how these events may play out. As an outsider not fully involved in the activities before him, his senses are able to pick up more than they were able to as a participant, particularly the visual sense.

Anke Gleber speaks highly of the visual stimulus, quoting Benjamin's reading regarding the choice for comfortability of hearing over sight, but laying out just how visually based a city is. Her running definition of a flaneur seems to shift a bit over these twenty or so pages in her "The City of Modernity". At first, Gleber pegs a flaneur as "disinterested, yet highly visually invested in the perception of the style of others", as well as an outsider, an observer, someone devoid of class, indifferent, free to move, perceptive to stimuli and associations, and one who gives attention to details and images. There are two other types of social characters in modernity as well:

1. eccentricity and sophistication that can be aligned to a dandy's exterior habits.
2. blase urbanity; snob.

So as the snobs and eccentric and sophisticated people go about their business with their noses in the air and their eyes inward instead of forward and outward, the flaneurs drink in the visual stimulants that create the city around them. However, as the reading presses forward, Gleber seems to mesh "the crowd" and flaneurs into one large glob of people. She makes it clear that as time and technology move forward, and electric lighting comes in to play, that the city becomes more and more visual, until it is all about optical stimuli for this "modern city survival". I disagree. Maybe as posters (public, accessible art) was coming in to play and expanding was the crowd more aware visually of their surroundings, but I believe that in general, especially after time and in this modern city, people have come to ignore these things as well. Sure there are always slight visual attractions that may draw some of the crowd from their beaten path, but in general, people can still map out their route to the number of steps they take, and end up passing the same people every day, though they do not know this because they do not actually see these people. The distinction between who was a flaneur and who was not became very blurred in the last half of Gleber's writing (or I guess, what a flaneur was in this modern urban space).

With railroads creating live cinema out their windows for those inside, Gleber "argues" that people are then more attuned to details and to watching the world around them. But as she says this, she compares this real life movement outside to a cinema, which is nothing more than artificial reality and not a step further from the "crowd's" daily routine. The fleeting details beyond the windows are essentially the same as the fleeting faces of passersby. The flaneur's however are basking in photographs and drinking in the detail that they can capture. Cinema is not of interest to them so much as still images are, with the frozen piece of world created for the purpose of looking, for scopophilia. Gleber then claims that flaneurs devote specific attention to certain detail, but it had been stated earlier that flaneurs do not specify their attention. They have no path and no goal, and do not narrow down their observations. The distinction I finally made between the crowd and the flaneur in Gleber's reading was comparable to a part in the movie WALL-E, whereas WALL-E would be the flaneur, and the location and other people (and maybe machines/robots as well) as the crowd. The "city" is full of visual stimuli, but people become enthralled in what only applies to them. Their paths are predetermined and they move with a logical flow of traffic. Go on green, stop on red. Do not collide. WALL-E breaks through this flow of traffic and freely goes where he wishes and is even intrigued by some of the people around him: