Reading the classics is an essential step in initiating the art of flânerie. For this list I have chosen the 10 indispensable books, privileging the variety of styles and languages. I have excluded even very great authors, about whom I reserve the right to write in the future, and have limited myself to books ranging from the origins to the 1970s.
1. BALZAC, Facino Cane (1837)
Choosing a single book from Balzac's "Scenes of Parisian Life" is challenging. The protagonist of this tale, perhaps a pseudonym of the author, represents the breaking point between the simple stroller observing the Parisian panorama and the newborn character of flâneur. He is endowed with a "second sight" that leads him to analyze the faces of the crowd and "read" the text of the city.
2. ALLAN POE, The Man of the Crowd (1840)
This short story, set in London, is a crucial text for understanding the ambivalence of the literary figure of the flâneur: somewhere between the detective, who uncovers the riddles of the modern city, and the man of the crowd, who seeks to dissolve his self in the urban landscape.
3. HUART, Physiologie du flâneur (1841). Physiology of the Flâneur
Inspired, like all Physiologies, by the positive sciences and the physiognomic studies of Gall and Lavater, Huart's book is inscribed within the French "panoramic tradition." It describes the flâneur as a human type and one of the symbols of nineteenth-century Paris. It is perhaps the first text I would recommend to anyone who wants to understand who the flâneur is.
4. BAUDELAIRE, Le peintre et la vie moderne (1863). The Painter of the Modern Life
I could have opted for Spleen de Paris, but this essay seems even more fundamental because it illustrates like no other before the aesthetic beauty of the modern city. Moreover, it establishes a clear relation between flânerie and artistic production. Baudelaire fixes here, through the portrait of Constantin Guy, the prototype of the artist-flâneur.
5. BRETON, Nadja (1928)
The classic of Surrealist flânerie: an autobiographical novel inspired by a chance encounter between the author and a passerby on the streets of Paris. The city appears as a forest of symbols, a crossroads of possibilities, where pure randomness plays a key role. A "wandering soul," Nadjia is one of literature's first and most famous flâneuses.
6. BENJAMIN, Das Passagen-Werk (1927-1940). The Arcades Project
Benjamin's magnum opus was published posthumously in 1982: its fragmentary structure - alternating quotations, collection of notes, and illuminations by the author - mimics, on the page, the very action of flânerie. It is the starting point for anyone who wants to study 19th-century Paris, particularly the character of the flâneur.
7. VIRGINIA WOOLF, Street Haunting (1930)
It is an introspective exploration of the thoughts and sensations that arise when one takes a solitary walk through a city. The sensory experience dominates the essay. Therefore, the narrator's thoughts and observations are presented in a seemingly random, unstructured way, with the stream-of-consciousness style of writing: a mental state which can be connected with flânerie.
8. DEBORD, Théorie de la Dérive (1956). Théorie of the Derive
In this article, the founder of the Situationist movement describes the experience of urban drift, defining the connection between flânerie and psychogeography. The method presented here for the first time, and later developed, allows for the study of the precise effects that places have on people's minds and behavior.
9. SANSOT, Poétique de la ville (1971). Poetic of the City
A little-known work, but very original. It has the structure of a philosophical treatise, while the style is more reminiscent of classic prose poems. The author considers the city a purely aesthetic object and examines aspects and situations that a lone walker may encounter: from arriving at a train station in a small town to nocturnal drift, from the atmosphere of suburbia to walking in the rain. Detailed, exhaustive, monumental.
10. CALVINO, Città invisibili (1972). Invisibles Cities
The book consists of a series of descriptions of fantastical cities, each with unique character and qualities, presented in the form of conversations between the traveler Marco Polo and the emperor Kublai Khan. Through a combinatorial technique inspired by Oulipo avant-guard, the author tries to exhaust all the possibilities urban spaces can offer. The structure of this book forces the reader to become a flâneur, proposing both a chronological and thematic order.
