A Philosophy of Walking (19 page)

For the art of walking to be practised to the full, Schelle specifies, a number of external conditions have to be present. If you promenade in public places, wide paths or walks are needed, so that passers-by are not perpetually obstructed by others, and the crowd should be neither too dense nor too thin: if there are only a few other strollers you
will be tempted to seek recognizable faces and peer at them (is that him?), which will bring you back to your social roles. If there are too many, you will be discouraged by the torrent of multiple images which will overburden your capacity for synthesis. If you choose the countryside, you need a landscape containing mountains, valleys, streams, plains and woods, to entertain the imagination with a diversity of colours and shapes, and preferably a radiant sun, for without it the play of the imagination may be weighed down with gloomy representations.

Apart from all that, it's absolutely essential to alternate urban and country walks, without favouring one over the other. For while they share a common basis (free play of the imagination in recomposing impressions), their qualities are different: walking on pavements and park alleys involves a casual approach, giving access, via the diversity of humanity and of the behaviour of our fellows, to detailed small discoveries, enchanting to the mind; walking alone in the company of streams and trees is more likely to produce a dreamy state, very far removed from the stresses of systematic introspection, but by the same token, fertile: as if, gently distracted by the sight of flowers and skylines, the soul could forget itself for a while, and thus become aware of some facets of its own that ordinarily stay hidden.

The secret of the promenade is that availability of the mind, so rare in our busy, polarized lives, imprisoned in our own stubbornness. ‘Availability' is a rare synthesis of abandon and activity, deploying all the charm of the mind
during a walk. The soul becomes as it were available to the world of appearances. It has nothing to explain to anyone, and no obligation to be coherent. And in that game without consequences, it may be that the world yields more of itself to the whimsical saunterer than to the serious and systematic observer.

These discoveries and joys can only be given to those who stroll with an open mind. They should never be sought deliberately for themselves, as if sauntering were a method. They will come spontaneously to one who, summoned by spring sunshine, joyously abandons his work just to get a little time to himself. One who goes out with a light heart, and a wish to put aside for a moment his labours and his fate. Only thus – with no expectation of a specific profit from the outing, and with all cares and worries firmly left behind in desk drawers – will a stroll become that gratuitous aesthetic moment, that rediscovery of the lightness of being, the sweetness of a soul freely reconciled to itself and to the world.

Of course the art of strolling is a recreational technique. But that sort of recreation can also be a literal
re-creation
, particularly in town. Usually people walk the streets in a thoroughly practical manner, to go for bread, to the shops, to the bus or subway, to drop in on a friend. Then, streets are just corridors. People walk with their heads down, recognizing only what they need to. They look at nothing, they navigate, perceiving only the functional minimum: turn right at the green pharmacy sign, that big brown gateway means the bakery is on the next corner. Thus the street
becomes a mere tissue of feeble, twinkling signs, with its spectacle largely extinguished.

One needs to give oneself the treat – unusual but easy – of walking in one's own neighbourhood, walking there with a hesitant, irregular pace, deciding to take a stroll there for no reason, slowly, with eyes raised for once. That is when the prodigy happens. Just walking, without rush, without any set purpose, makes the town look a little as it might have looked to one seeing it for the first time. With no focus on anything in particular, everything is offered in abundance: colours, details, shapes, aspects. Strolling, walking alone and without purpose, restores that vision: the colour of those shutters, the slash of colour they make on the walls; the delicate black arabesques of window grilles; the comically differing houses, tall and narrow like stone giraffes or low and broad like stout turtles; the construction of windows, bright orange reflecting the sunset against mottled grey façades. One can plunder the streets delicately like that for ages.

Public Gardens
 

T
here is one circumstance, however, that makes a stroll collapse back into worldly artifice, instead of unveiling the aesthetic essence of streets or countryside. I refer here to the sort of gallant, stylish saunter taken mainly to be seen. Its Parisian symbol is unarguably the Tuileries Gardens, which Corneille referred to as ‘the land of fine folk and gallantry' (The Liar). Nature is absolutely dominated there: dead-straight, clipped box hedges, rectilinear walks, strictly pruned trees, artificial fountains, lascivious statues.

Originally only high society was allowed in, entry being denied to the rabble and the crowd of cursing lackeys waiting at the entrance for their mistresses to finish playing
the sweetie-pie among swooning suitors. Still, ‘milliners' – working-class good-time girls – were admitted so long as they were well-dressed, pretty or in respectable company. In summer, people stayed there until late, in the orange light and violet reflections, the sweetness of the evening advancing on tiptoe, and the dust thrown up by thousands of footsteps. The trees are still scarred with women's names, carved by sad lovers.

It was a place much favoured by young girls in the flower of beauty, married women on the lookout for adventure, and widows seeking consolation. For it is an unspeakable bore to a woman to have but a single man – her husband – before her eyes. The gardens answered that need as noted by Charles Sorel in his 1648 tale,
Polyandre
: ‘Most women of spirit greatly loved the Cours and walking in the Luxembourg or the Tuileries, being well content to see new men there every day.' It was the height of bad taste to go there as a couple, husband and wife.

People dawdled in the wide main walks of the gardens, stopping (or rather striking a pose) from time to time, but not through any political resistance to speed. It was more that only slowness enabled people to ogle at their leisure, display their finery and charms, and show how much wit they had. Of course, meticulous care was lavished on
appearance (for nothing could be forgiven, nothing could be got away with: ‘The faces there are masterpieces of art / in which nature has often had not the least part', according to the Harlequin Evaristo Gherardi), and companions carefully chosen (to avoid tiresome individuals who might spoil gallant encounters), and off they went: Parisiennes in all their glory.

Why did they walk? La Bruyère thought he knew: ‘to show off a beautiful fabric and reap the fruits of their toilette'. The real beauties trailed murmurs of rapture in their wake. But what they did couldn't really be called walking; it was more a sophisticated gait, a studied swaying. As recommended by a servant addressing her mistress in Gherardi's 1695
Promenades de Paris:

So we could start with the Grande Allée, the Great Walk, which is like the main stage on which people fight to see and be seen, judge and be judged:

But there were other small stages, transverse walks each with its own speciality: on the east side was a row of benches where people could ‘slander at their ease' (the critics' and curmudgeons' walk), while other more shadowy walks were known for secret rendezvous, and yet others seemed gentle and sad, welcoming to melancholics.

The variety of showcases made the Tuileries into a play in which all were actors and spectators. As in a theatre, all types could be seen there: the beauty obsessed with her outfit, the ridiculous ladies' man, the pompous and arrogant magistrate, the strutting officer, the pseudo-intellectual, the bourgeois, the young fop, the former seminarian, the rumour-spreading ‘gossipmonger' from whom the latest lie could be heard, and then of course a few drunkards. But everyone stood as tall as possible, displayed their wares, meagre or sumptuous, and glanced discreetly about to see what effect they were producing on others. People wore false calves to disguise skinny shanks, put on false faces, flashed their diamonds, raised their voices.

In that permanent merry-go-round people sought, ignored and assessed one another, and strove to have an air (happy or sad: but you had to have one). Behind the differences, as the poem says, they were ‘all alike'. Meaning, once
again, that they were all exchanging extravagant compliments while secretly despising one another, mocking one another reciprocally:

And in that concert of murmured banter, intrigues were set up: people made appointments, pretended to have met by chance, followed girls they didn't know, got into conversation; women dropped their gloves, young fellows ran to kneel at their feet … It was the great ‘time of the Tuileries'.

The Urban Flâneur
 

I
n his reflections on Paris, Walter Benjamin spotlighted the character of the flâneur, far removed from the ogling Tuileries gallant. He analysed, described and captured him from a rereading of Baudelaire –
Le Spleen de Paris
, the ‘Tableaux parisiens' in
Les Fleurs du mal
, the sketches in
Vie moderne
. This form of strolling presupposes three elements, or the presence of three conditions: city, crowd, and capitalism.

The urban flâneur does experience walking, but in a way far removed from Nietzsche or Thoreau. Walking in town is torture to the lover of long rambles in nature, because it imposes, as we shall see, an interrupted, uneven rhythm. But the fact remains that the flâneur
walks
, unlike the
mere loafer, always stopping to see the attraction or stare entranced into shop windows. The flâneur walks, he makes his way even through the crowd.

Strolling requires those urban concentrations that developed in the nineteenth century, so dense and unbroken that you can walk for hours without seeing a piece of country. Walking through these new megalopolises (Berlin, London, Paris), you passed through districts that were like different worlds, separate, apart. Everything could vary: the size and architectural style of the buildings, the quality and scent of the air, the way of living, the ambiance, the light, the social topography. The flâneur appeared at a time when the city had acquired enough scale to become a landscape. It could be crossed as if it were a mountain, with its passes, its reversals of viewpoint, its dangers and surprises too. It had become a forest, a jungle.

The second element behind the appearance of the flâneur was the crowd. He strolled among the crowd and through it. That crowd in which he developed had already become
the masses
: labouring, nameless, bustling. In the great industrial cities, those people on the way to or from work, going to business meetings, rushing to deliver a package or get to a rendezvous, were representatives of the new civilization. This crowd was
hostile
, hostile to all its members. Everyone was in a hurry and everyone else was in their way. The crowd transformed the other instantly into a competitor.