/lit/ - Literature

i'm a lurkeur, thats enough idleness

I think the Situationists have a word which is like a flaneur, only cool. Until someone remembers it, I will be a "surrealist urban dervish".

>>2999421

dérive

Just let go.

>try to be a flaneur
>get bored after 10 minutes
>my legs hurt
>i'm going home
>I'll be a dandy instead

>>2999448
cool, thx.

>>2999415
But I am. I just need to move to a decent city again and get some proper clothes to go full flâneur.

>tfw Heraclitean Mystic flâneur

Benjamin is my favourite aesthetic ghost story writer

artworks have 'auras' lol OOGA BOOGA BOOGA 2spooky4me

>>2999499
>be dandy
>need to maintain my slim figure
>go walk
>accidentally flâneur

Flaneur is a posh way of saying a billy no mates

There was a thread just like this one that fell off the board two days ago.

Is there honestly a person here obsessed with flãneurs, or is this considered culturally important to some group?

>>3003025
Does having friends imply the absence of legs? Also, who needs friends when you've got a mulatto mistress?

>>3003047
Flâneurs, dandies, decadents and bohemians are the new thing on /lit/. Which it should be. It's what we are all at heart, but daren't be in the world.

>>2999415
>flâneur

so how much does one have to walk to be elegible for flaneur status?

can you walk in regular clothes or do you need to dress up? because fancy shoues can warp your feet.

>>3003165
If we rely on Walter Benjamin, then the flâneur is:
* Rich
* Overdressed
* Over-groomed
* Idle
* Views the latest in commercial retail enterprise
* Explores the retail section of the city for leisure.

The contemporary flâneur is the rich mall-rat.

Enjoy being Paris Hilton. OTOH—Sexy Walter Benjamin has been transported through time and now inhabits Paris Hilton's body. He needs you to fuck him out of her.

>>3003179

the flâneur hopes to stand out in a culture of mall rats

>>3003179
Well according to Baudelaire:

"The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world - impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are or are not - to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life."

>>3003179
"For Benjamin, the flâneur met his demise with the triumph of consumer capitalism."

He wouldn't agree.

>>3003231

I didn't suggest the flâneur met his demise, I'm suggesting he received a forcible sex change and became, like the bourgeoisie he is, "declassed" by the very capitalism that upholds his economic position.

Consider, if you will, Bateman as the flâneur.

>>3003234
He isn't really. He's frantically trying to fit in, which is very different from the gentle detachment of the flâneur who mostly strolls around idly and observes. The flâneur is above all a gentleman of leisure as far as I'm concerned, often with some interest in the arts. And with a taste for the fine things in life, as long as they don't require labour. If anything, he's a gentleman bohemian with an appetite for loafing about town. He might as well be destitute as rich though.

>>3003220
That's all fine and dandy until one gets cold and hungry while hour grows late. I'd like to see how's that 'everywhere at home' concept working for him then.

>>3003179
I'd say that definition relies too much on being able to remain idle; nowadays it's much easier to be sufficiently groomed and idle while not being rich at all. Then again it sound suspiciously like hipster. I prefer Baudelaire's hypocritical definition to Benjamin's.

>>3003691
The hipster is at best a hollow middle class echo of the flâneur, lacking the true capacity for detachment and instead being _enthusiast_. Sadly, most hipsters are proletarian, even if labour aristocrat, and so are incapable of being flâneur by definition.

>>3003691
>That's all fine and dandy until one gets cold and hungry while hour grows late. I'd like to see how's that 'everywhere at home' concept working for him then.
He's not being literal here. It's more in the sense of an psychological state I think. He's no Diogenes of course.

>I'd say that definition relies too much on being able to remain idle; nowadays it's much easier to be sufficiently groomed and idle while not being rich at all.
That's an interesting point. While it's much more within people's reach nowadays, you don't see many well clad men of leisure strolling around town at all hours of the day, renting a few modest rooms somewhere near the outskirts of town. Which is perfectly doable of course. There's plenty of lazy bums, but none which strive to make it an artform like the flâneur, dandy or the bohemian.

>Then again it sound suspiciously like hipster.
I agree with this guy: >>3004266 Most hipsters are incapable of the gentle detachment towards society. They lack the eye of the observer and perhaps the writer and are trying to get smack in the middle of some bustling scene.

I think leisure is becoming more and more of an art these days. Most people are becoming incapable of just going for a stroll without any ulterior motive. Genuine idleness is a virtue worth preserving, as far as I'm concerned.