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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: flâneur

De Ambulandum

01 Fri Apr 2016

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Society

≈ Comments Off on De Ambulandum

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Aeneid, Aristotle, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Charles Baudelaire, Cicero, Copenhagen, Dante Alighieri, De Officiis, De Tranquillitate Animi, Edmund Husserl, Epistulae ad Atticum, flâneur, Frank O'Hara, Franz Hessel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Geoffrey Chaucer, Geographica, Greece, GWF Hegel, Henry David Thoreau, Honoré de Balzac, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Bunyan, John Milton, Königsberg, Martin Heidegger, Miguel de Cervantes, Phaedrus, pilgrimage, Romantic, Rome, Søren Kierkegaard, Seneca, shukel, Socrates, sprezzatura, Stürm und Drang, Strabo, tefillah, Thomas Malory, Thomas Mann, Venus, Virgil, Virginia Woolf, walking, Walt Whitman, Walter Benjamin, William Wordsworth

Salve, amici! Every visit to the doctor these days seems to come with an exhortation to walk more. In the midst of a global obesity epidemic, the virtues of simple, low-intensity workouts like walking have seen a remarkable comeback, especially for the older among us and those with joint trouble. Walking comes to us almost as naturally as breathing, so naturally, in fact, that we think of it only in its absence – illness – or as a quiet act of solitary rebellion against the mechanisation of society. Whether by sheer numbers or necessity, the present association of walking with health has become so strong that we forget what an important part such a simple activity held in our cultural and intellectual development.

flaneurBefore health concerns came to dominate our physical activity scenario in the post-fast food age, walking was seen as a joyous pastime that promised liberation from the humdrum. The mid- 19th century saw the birth of the flâneur in Paris, the urban stroller who explored boulevards and arcades, parks and cafés. Bourgeois intellectuals sauntered through the city, in imitation of the greats like Honoré de Balzac, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Charles Baudelaire, Franz Hessel, observing yet not participating in the ebb and flow of urban life. Walter Benjamin writes that it was fashionable to take turtles for walks in the 1840s; the chelonians would set the pace for the flâneurs.

The act of walking was at once of observing and being observed. It was an economic statement – that one could afford the idle luxury of a jaunt – as well as a cultural one, taking a bird’s eye view of city life, micro-history, and fashion; the city was a book to be read by walking. In the transience of walking was found a solitude of the crowded street, a detachment amidst the throngs, as Søren Kierkegaard sought in Copenhagen, and Immanuel Kant in Königsberg before him.

The urban walker, however, has been a bit of an endangered species in modern times. Whether due to the Stürm und Drang intellectuals, the Romantics, or some other intellectual movement, the spirit of the age as been to wander in the wilderness. Civilisation was to be found in pristine nature rather than the trinkets of man. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among the first who turned an intellectual gaze upon the humdrum activity of walking, according it the status of a conscious activity and ascribing significance to walking for its own sake. Until then, walking had certainly been held in high regard but rarely in isolation. Rousseau came at the beginning of an intellectually turbulent, uncertain time, and after him, the next century and a half turned his less-travelled path into a well-worn road – GWF Hegel, Edmund Husserl, William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Frank O’Hara, and others added theories or anecdotes to the reflection upon walking.

Nature was the venue for these philosophes, away from the din and smog of the rapidly modernising cities of Europe and America. Clean air, unpredictable breaks in the horizon, solitude, and the slow rhythmic pace were thought to rejuvenate mind and soul as the increasing popularity of Alpine resorts declared. There is surely something to the persistent claim that the bodily rhythms of walking somehow correspond to mental processes; think, for example, of how Jews shukel while learning the Torah or during tefillah. Perambulatory mechanics serve a similar purpose, though on a significantly more expansive scale and in pursuit of secular perspicacity.

Walking was seen as a deeply meditative practice perhaps marginally inferior to reading; to walk was to wander in the mind as much as on land, as to read was to journey in the mind and on the page. For some, like Woolf, walking activated melancholy and gloom while others, like Thoreau, found their muse in their rhythmic steps. To walk was to unchain the mind from the strictures of convention to let it revel in the barely plausible. As the activity of philosophers and poets, walking was seen as an eminently intellectual pursuit rather than physical exercise. Walking was clearly associated with health as it is today, but it was more of a psychological, perhaps even spiritual, tonic rather than a physical one.

Before the philosophers came the pilgrims. In the Middle Ages, walking was the subject of poets, and pilgrimage was one of the fundamental forms walking could take. The view was neither physical exercise nor intellectual stimulation, but a quest for self-transformation as much of the literature of the era, from Geoffrey Chaucer to John Bunyan, from Dante Alighieri to Thomas Malory, and from Miguel de Cervantes to John Milton, reveals. Whether it is Virgil and Beatrice guiding Dante, Christian, or Persiles, the journey – walk – itself is central to the narrative and the protagonists are passively passing through.

The sanctity of a pilgrimage had diminished considerably by the 15th century as pilgrims had become notorious for their chicanery and hence objects of mockery and suspicion. This is at the root of the subtle ridicule  Chaucer, Cervantes and others expose their bawdy and playful protagonists to. However, in the early Middle Ages, pilgrimages were difficult and fraught with danger, truly an act of penance.

Yet it was only in the Greco-Roman world that walking was not just a show, an intellective lubricant, or exercise but a marker of civilisation and even divinity. Of course, walking was all those other things too but it was much more. In his Geographica, the Greek geographer narrates an anecdote about an early interaction between the Romans and the Vettonians, a local Iberian tribe. Upon seeing a couple of Roman generals out for a stroll between the tents, the Vettonians were puzzled and tried to lead them into comfortable seating quarters since they thought that one should remain seated if not engaged in some utilitarian task. This is amusing to Strabo because the “barbarians'” response betrays their lack of culture. So strong is this view that it lasted even until the Age of Empire when the imperial portrayal of Orientals as indolent implied their inferiority on the civilisational scale.

To Romans, walking was a profoundly social activity; to be seen strolling with someone marked him as a good friend. The assumption of a constant audience made even the smallest of acts markers of identity and character. Though Cicero accepts the contemplative aspects of walking in De Officiis, he makes it clear in his letters to Atticus (Epistulae ad Atticum) what the true importance of walking was – company and conversation as a symbol of friendship. In fact, it is rare to find flâneurs in Latin literature.

woman who walksHow one walks was also very important to Romans – one’s gait was a mirror to one’s mind and character. A remarkable sample of the value of one’s gait is seen in Book Six of Virgil’s Aeneid, when a young Aeneas asks his father about the character of several heroes as they walk through the city. Earlier in the Aeneid, when Aeneas and Achates have been shipwrecked and separated from their men, they chance upon a strange woman – the goddess Venus, incognito – who tells them the story of the land they have found and its queen. Virgil writes, “…et vera incessu patuit dea” (and the goddess was revealed by the way she walked). Iris is similarly revealed in Book Five of the Aeneid when she appears in disguise to urge the Trojan women to burn their ships.

The intense focus on gaits meant that considerable effort was spent in teaching the children of the elites how to walk properly. The delicious paradox is that the gait was considered a natural indicator of character and here were the elites, training to be natural! Men walked differently from women, slaves from free men. Within the polis,  elite Romans inevitably walked in groups; just two noblemen with their bodyguards was enough to comprise a small group, and the companion and the guards indicated wealth, status, and ties.

Unlike the Romantics, the Greco-Roman world was also quite hostile to walking in nature. A telling exchange can be found in Plato’s Phaedrus, when the eponymous protagonist tries to urge Socrates out of the city walls. The Greek philosopher replies, “You’ll have to forgive me, my friend. I’m an intellectual, you see, and country places with their trees tend to have nothing to teach me, whereas people in town do.” Of course, the Peripatetic philosophers are the more commonly known example of this attitude; Aristotle believed that to leave the polis would be the act of either a god, unmoved by wild nature, or a beast. Seneca, however, reveals an ambiguity in the Roman mind towards nature in his De Tranquillitate Animi: they are at once interested in it and yet have a negative opinion of it.

So next time you go for a walk, remember – you are not only going to get some exercise but also to contemplate, meditate, display yourself, and participate in an act of civilisation. Go ahead, reveal the divinity in you!

Until next time, stammi bene.


This article first appeared in the April 2016 print edition of Swarajya as part of the column, Sprezzatura.

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The Weekend Flâneur

18 Sat Jan 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Society

≈ Comments Off on The Weekend Flâneur

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badaud, Battery Park, brunch, Central Park, Central Park Zoo, champagne, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Charles Baudelaire, Chelsea Pier, Cherry Walk, Elmo, flânerie, flâneur, flâneuse, Franz Hessel, Gilles Deleuze, Guy Beringer, haeccity, Honoré de Balzac, Hudson waterfront, Hungarian Pastry Shop, Kazuza Lounge, Lafayette, Loeb Boathouse, Manhattan, mimosa, Minetta Tavern, New York, Pampano, Pierre-Félix Guattari, Riverside Park, Russian Tea Room, St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral, Statue of Liberty, Tertulia, The Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, Walter Benjamin

There used to be a time when laziness was classy and required work. Flânerie connoted wealth, intellect, an active idleness, and perhaps a tinge of hedonism. In the 16th century, the term meant strolling, with an implication of idle curiosity. However, the 19th century saw flânerie rescued by several French intellectuals such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and Charles Baudelaire. The German Franz Hessel popularised the idea in his heimat via his famous collection of essays, Spazieren in Berlin. In this period, flânerie became not only a sophisticated practice but also an object of scholarly study and its taxonomy was better explored – as one dictionary described it, there were mindless flâneurs and intelligent flâneurs, there were flâneurs of boulevards, parks, cafés, and arcades.

flanerieI will spare you a philosophical inquiry into the writings of 19th century proponents of flânerie, even a fascinating discussion of flânerie and the modern condition by Walter Benjamin, and instead ask you to consider a 21st century bourgeois version of flânerie – weekend flânerie. More and more people can afford to engage in the enriching experience of idle intellectual curiosity than before, at least on the weekend, but it is to my eternal chagrin that the age of reason, technology, and globalisation has made us not flâneurs but badauds, passive recipients of micro-history rather than actors. Laziness has unfortunately come to mean staying in bed all day or turning into a zombie before the idiot box.

While the great cities of Europe seem designed keeping flânerie in mind, there are a few elsewhere that come close to them. In fact, most half-way decent cities allow for some casual, intellectual strolling. More than size, it is about culture, diversity, and public spaces. So what would a flâneur – or a flâneuse – do in, say, New York on a Sunday?

The first thing to remember is that New York is famous for its brunch, a fabulous excuse to start drinking early in the day without people calling you an alcoholic. It is also a time to get your new friend’s name and number if you wish, or simply recover from the previous night’s festivities. City laws do not allow the serving of alcohol before 11 00, so perhaps you might be interested in visiting a nice little Armenian church beforehand – the St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral. It’s on the lower east side, but a quick crosstown tube ride will put you in the heart of the brunch district.

st vartanThough consecrated in only 1968, St. Vartan’s is the first cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church to be consecrated in the United States and resembles Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the world’s first cathedral, built around 303 CE by Gregory the Illuminator. St. Vartan’s has all the trappings of a typical Orthodox church, saints on a golden background, stained glass windows, and beautiful liturgies. Its stone cross, the priest told me once, was brought from Armenia and is from the 15th century, and the chandeliers are reconstructed modes of 7th century fixtures found back home. An excellent and quick read on Armenian Christianity would be the first volume (maybe second too) of Jaroslav Pelikan’s five-volume masterpiece, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.

Okay, so why visit a church? Well, unless you’re a vampire, you won’t burst into flames if you enter one. But more seriously, brunch is a very old Christian custom of a somewhat largish post-church meal – especially as Catholics and some Orthodox fast before mass. The portmanteau, ‘brunch’ was first used by a British writer named Guy Beringer in 1895, but the tradition has been around for much longer. A traditional brunch meal contains Eggs Benedict and champagne, but let’s be libertine, I say, and not fear to go wild with the menu!

russian tea roomOn to the mimosas! Lower Manhattan is a packed with dozens of spectacular brunch places. I particularly like Elmo for the truffle fries (you begin to understand why the Italians and French have fought so many battles over truffle fields in the Piedmont) and because Chelsea just has a nice feel, the Russian Tea Room (just don’t ask them about the Simorgh on the wall!), Lafayette for everything on the menu, and Minetta Tavern for the drinks.

At this point, amateurs may make the mistake of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters, or some such lovely place. However, flânerie is about watching, not doing; You want to engage, even intellectually, but not be completely drawn into the object of scrutiny – that would ruin flânerie. To molest a phrase from Gilles Deleuze and/or Pierre-Félix Guattari, watching is the haeccity of flânerie. Sailing or museums and galleries require work, and we just want to be lazy in style!

Freshly refuelled, you might consider heading over to Chelsea Pier. You can get a nice ride on a schooner there, taking you by Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty; you get a good river-side view of the New York skyline. To be sure, there are several places along the riverfront where you can grab a cruise, but Chelsea Pier is also a nice place to walk around before or after your cruise.

The Hudson waterfront is a great place for a leisurely stroll; there’s a nice park you can saunter through. But remember – flânerie is about observing and quick reflections. People, places, objects, all form a Denkbild to re-experience later. Head north towards Central Park. Those nice floral summer dresses you might encounter on the way just lift your moods 🙂 Around 64th Street, you have the option of leaving the river and heading east to the Central Park Zoo; the polar bears and turtles are especially cute, and the species of penguin they have aren’t too bad either.

loeb boathouseIf you choose to skip the zoo, you have another lovely excursion opportunity around 72nd Street for the Loeb Boathouse in Central Park. If you like the water, you might enjoy taking a rowboat out to the centre of the lake and watching people pass by from there. There is a topless book club (NSFW) that meets in the vicinity but sadly, I’d rather read postmodernist and psychoanalysis tracts than their list.

Alternatively, you can keep walking as 72nd Street is where Cherry Walk, a segment of Riverside Walk, starts. It is named for the cherry trees found further north, near Columbia University, but Riverside Park is nonetheless a scenic landmark.

hungarian pastry shopIt’s evening by now, and you’ve probably worked off your delectable brunch with a good 80-block walk. That sounds like a lot, but taking the day to stroll down a beautiful stretch and watch your fellow urbanites probably made it seem much shorter. Nonetheless, if you are a cookie monster, you are close to one of my favourite pastry shops in the area (Morningside Heights) – the Hungarian Pastry Shop. The area is certainly a little dingy but not too bad by New York standards. Some might try to do the Parisian café routine but it’s closer to one of Bangalore’s darshinis. If you’re feeling peckish, you might want to try out the tiramisu or hazelnut torte and a cup of coffee. The tiramisu, by the way, has a delightfully promiscuous history you might want to look up.

kazuzaConversely, you can catch the tube and head back towards downtown for dinner. Tertulia and Pampano both offer a lovely Spanish cuisine but more importantly, they have sangria on tap. Pampano has several kinds of sangria and you will just have to come back. Note – these restaurants are a little on the pricier side, so you might prefer to grab a quick bite to eat from a street vendor and end the evening at Kazuza Lounge with a ghalyoon and black Arabic tea. The food is not so great, so eat before you get there. Kazuza is in Alphabet City but is, in my opinion, the best place for a ghalyoon in New York – for me, New York is Manhattan until Columbus Circle, and the suburbs extend up until maybe 100th Street but no more than 120th Street).

Flânerie is not about hitting tourist attractions; if that is what you wanted, you’ve wasted a day. Such jaunts are about amplifying and savouring Dasein. Big cities allow many variations of food, drink, people, and sights, but even smaller towns might have some avenues to explore one’s productive laziness – most places have their unique flavour. Chances are, in our daily grind, we don’t notice our dwellings until we’ve left and then we reminisce when we meet someone else from there who is also busy missing the simpler joys.

One might even say that in some ways, flânerie forces us to slow down our pace and pay attention to our lives. Via mobile phones, e-mail, and social media, we are at the world’s beck and call, responding to stimuli elsewhere and on someone else’s schedule. Flânerie brings us back to hereness; for me, that itself is worth the trouble.

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