Aural Flânerie

Abstract

The diverse body of primary literature on flânerie supports a multisensory interpretation of urban spectatorship, one in which hearing is especially keen. Walter Benjamin’s influential approach to the flâneur has tuned out or toned down the aural dimensions of flânerie following Georg Simmel’s sociology of the senses which privileges the eye over the ear in the modern metropolis. Resituating the figure of the flâneur within the framework of ‘sound studies’ enables us to investigate alternative tropes for some of the prevalent visual constructs in flâneur theory: the city as readable book, ‘capital of signs’, and as kaleidoscopic spectacle. Writings on the flâneur, Honoré de Balzac’s Physiologie du mariage and especially Victor Fournel’s Ce qu’on voit dans les rues de Paris represent the city in aural terms as musical score, and as harmonious or cacophonous concert. They describe walking in the city as a multisensory embodied experience rather than a disengaged spectatorship, making the artist’s contact with the sounds of the city a formative creative experience. A theory of the flâneur conceived as bathed in a multitude of sounds and sights rather than as untouchable mobile gaze can, I hope, enrich our definitions of modernity.

Keywords:

• flâneur
• sound
• hearing
• street life
• street musicians
• Victor Fournel
• Walter Benjamin

Notes

1 Although I do not use the expression in this way, Susan Buck-Morss uses this term in relation to Theodor Adorno: ‘It was Adorno who pointed to the station-switching behavior of the radio listener as a kind of aural flânerie’ (1989: 345).

2 Anti-noise campaigns did not begin in earnest until the twentieth century; for more on the history of the perception of noise as nuisance, see Bijsterveld, 2008: 57; Corbin, 1995: 156. For more on Lessing, see Baron, 1982.

3 On Simmel’s and Lessing’s conception of the bodily imaginary, see Cowan, 2006.

4 On Poe and the kaleidoscope, see Hayes, 2002.

5 It is worth remembering, however, that some diorama spectacles had a sonic component. Walter Benjamin has many entries on the music performed in diorama, panorama, and the like, casting doubt on the uniquely visual experience of spectatorship in these spaces.

6 Burton (1988) outlines the myth of detachment, but recently Lauster (2007a) and Margaret Rose (2007) have shown that the myth of detachment is not grounded in a meticulous reading of the text and images.

7 Jonas (1954) argues that spatial distance is a distinctive feature of sight.

8 On the badaud, see Huart, 1841: ch. 13, especially p. 96. The sharp flâneur/badaud distinction in the pre-1850s literature weakens in the second half of the century. By the time Victor Fournel defines the badaud he has evolved into a more attentive and thoughtful figure (261); while the flâneur remains in full possession of his individuality, the badaud can lose himself in the crowd that intoxicates him (1858: 261, 263).

9 It is worth remembering, however, that Bernadille (aka Fournel) found Impressionists such as Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas crude (Clark, 1999: 97).

10 Fournel, however, did not show the same appreciation for the café concert (Clark, 1999: 230–33).

11 In Balzac’s Gambara, the eponymous musician and his wife end up performing on the Champs-Élysées to make ends meet.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aimée Boutin

Aimée Boutin, an Associate Professor of French at Florida State University in Tallahassee, is the author of a monograph entitled Maternal Echoes: The Poetry of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Alphonse de Lamartine (Delaware University Press, 2001) and an edition of Desbordes-Valmore’s Les Veillées des Antilles (L’Harmattan, 2006). She has published articles on Charles Baudelaire, Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, and nineteenth-century women poets. She is currently working on a book on soundscapes in nineteenth-century France.

Correspondence to: Aimée Boutin, Associate Professor of French and French Division Coordinator, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee FL 32306-1540, USA. Email: [email protected]