… the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world ‘picturesque.’
- Susan Sontag
An adventurer must be willing to travel through realms without maps, exposing themselves to danger and chance, in the name of all things extraordinary and unknown.Walking down a dirt road in the mountains of southern Spain, I once encountered a two-headed dog. Traveling the Mediterranean this fall, I only relied on church bells for the time. In Brooklyn, the best bars to go to are often the ones with no names. I’m no veteran here, but as a walker and a stranger and a rider of trains, I know that to discover a place, it behooves us to become flâneurs, to shed all direction and purpose, and just get lost.
A “flâneur” is something that doesn’t exist in English. The word itself stems from the French verb “flâner,” which literally means, “to stroll.” But beyond the word there is a concept, a derived meaning invented in the 1800s by the poet, Charles Baudelaire, who, in response to the growing bourgeois ideal sweeping industrialized Europe, advocated that the artist immerse himself in the metropolis and become a “botanist of the asphalt.”* It is fitting then that there is no certain translation, as a flâneur describes a fleeting thing, a sort of “wanderer,” or, as the poet originally put it, “a person who walks the city in order to experience it.”
True to the spirit of wandering and adventure, flâneurs never fully have their feet on the ground, playing a meaningful part in defining the city but remaining detached observers all at once. In Paris this idea has even transcended into architecture. The mere existence of balconies on almost every building tells us this is a city designed for people who enjoy the view, who take the time to see what is around them, whether on close examination or aimless passing.
Constructions such as Les Passages Couverts, the many covered passage ways found throughout Paris, were built in direct response to the advent of the flâneur as a sort of lost parallel to the tourist, making it possible to leisurely walk the streets in rain or shine. Despite it’s ancient roots and monotonous beauty, Paris is still a city that nods to a world of things to be experienced in passing, a place for dreamers and drifters and wanderers to be sure.
Photograph of a covered passage near the Grands Boulevards,from a Robert Doisneau exhibit at the Monnaie de Paris in January, 2010.
It was in this way that I stumbled upon La Rue des Veilles Rêves (the Street of Old Dreams), in Grasse, a small town on the Cote Azure, where perfume was invented. It was smaller than you’d imagine a street with such a name to be—just a brief ally way left untended, a few crumbling steps that lead nowhere, a broken window exposing the darkness inside a house. A group of neighborhood thugs stood loitering at the end of it, bumping music from a boom-box on a pile of shattered glass, staring at me as I passed, like wolves over meat. The rest of Grasse is unmercifully perfect, a postcard town full of flower boxes, and open doors wafting heavenly scents. This one stretch of land exists in shadow, rundown and derelict…a place befitting of old dreams.
There are over 6000 streets in the city of Paris. Some are only narrow alleyways, dark and cobbled, and lost in obscurity, others sweep the city in classical glory, as tree-lined avenues gilded in gold. The beauty of Paris draws from many sources, often most marked by the details in the landscape: the woman hanging laundry from the open window, the old man carrying a loaf of bread, the statue of the goddess tangled with the fawn, the child running in circles over a windy vent in the square, the fat pigeon cooing on a rooftop, the thread of overheard conversation that leaks from a balcony onto the breeze.
Aside from the countless avenues named after generals, authors, inventors, architects, presidents, artists, and saints, etc., there are a number of more mysterious streets with rather curious names. Here is a list of some notable ones, a collection of walkways both humorous and poetic, some well known, others rarely traveled:
Rue des Innocents (Street of Innocents)
Passage des Princes (Passage of Princes)
Impasse du Boeuf (the Beef Impasse)
Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle (Blvd of Good News)
Avenue des Gobelins (Avenue of Goblins)
Rue des Mauvais Garçons (Street of Bad Boys)
Passage des Singes (Passage of Monkeys)
Rue du Chat qui Pêche (Street of the Cat Who Goes Fishing)
Rue des Oiseaux (Street of Birds)
Rue aux Ours (Street of Bears)
Rues des Petits Péres (Street of Little Fathers)
Rue de la Lune (Street of the Moon)
Rue du Roi-Doré (Street of the Golden King)
Rue des Bons Enfants (Street of Good Children)
Passage des Orgues (Passage of Organs)
Rue de la Lingerie (Street of Lingerie)
Rue de Cherche Midi (Street that Searches for Noon)
Terrasse de Champagne (Champagne Terrace)
Rue Mademoiselle (Street of the Mademoiselle)
Rue des Filles du Calvaires (Street of the Calvary Girls)
Rue des Boulets (Street of Meatheads/ Douchebags)
Rue des Blancs Manteaux (Street of White Coats)
Rue du Moulin-des-Lapin (Street of the Rabbit’s Windmill)
Rue des Belles Feuilles (Street of Beautiful Leaves)
Rue des Martyrs (Street of Martyrs)
Rue des Roses (Street of Roses)
Passage des Eaux-Vives (Passage of Living Waters)
Rue des Entrepreneurs (Street of Entrepreneurs)
Cité des Fleurs (City of Flowers)
Rue des Solitaires (Street of Solitaires)
Passage du Souvenir (Passage of a Memory)
Rue du Papillion (Street of the Butterfly)
Rue de la Tour-des-Dames (Street of the Spinning Dames)
Passage de la Main d’Or (Passage of the Golden Hand)
All of this describes a fantastical place, full of fairy tale imagery and Medieval myth, surrealist concepts and spiritual connotations, woodland creatures and risqué women, savory foodstuff and poetic homage…a metropolis well endowed with imagination.
In the end, Paris is a city of antiquity and history. But despite its old age and relative stubbornness, its beauty is remarkably maintained. Many of these streets have been renamed over time. But others remain as they were, continuing to exist with or without connection to their namesakes.
The Passage d’Enfer is a street that literally means the “Passage through Hell.” I won’t say exactly where it is, because my speaking of it too precisely almost ruins its existence. Like many of these streets, it’s a place to be chanced upon. And like the Street of Old Dreams, the Passage Through Hell is not what one would immediately expect. There are no seedy characters peering from the windows, no demons or flames or shadows. The passage through hell is an empty corridor, no doors, no sound, no people. It is eerily quiet and empty of life.
View from the entrance of the Passage d’Enfer.
The whole quartier was once called the Bois d’Enfer, named so for its notoriety as one of the worst neighborhoods in Paris. While the cemetery of Montparnasse and the entrance to the catacombs are not far off, still lending a sense of morbidity to the district, the Passage d’Enfer is all that remains of that original “bad name.”
La Rue du Chat qui Pêche (Street of the Cat who goes Fishing), is the narrowest street in Paris. It measures a mere 1,80 meters. Lined with hanging lanterns and reeking with the smell of cat pee, the end of it is reached in a matter of strides. Only in Paris is a place so inconsequential and unsavory still given such a name.
La Rue du Chat Qui Pêche, as photographed by Robert Doisneau circa 1950.
The story behind it is debated, but dates back to a legend from the 15th century, of a black cat that was often seen disappearing down the alley way with a fish in it’s mouth, having just emerged from the near by bank of the Seine. As the street isn’t far from a notable church, a group of ecclesiastical students eventually came to believe the cat was the devil, and one day strangled and drowned it in the river…And that was the end of the cat who goes fishing.
Rue des Blancs Manteaux (Street of White Coats), is now a harmless little thoroughfare in the Marais, housing a library, a school, and a slough of chic shops. Named in the late 13th century for the order of the Servants of Mary from the nearby convent, the street was once bustling with monks in long white robes scurrying in and out the doors of the church, walking ceremoniously with books in their hands.
Map of the district during the 18th century, showing the convent of Les Blancs Manteaux on the right.
There was also a famous song called Dans La Rue Des Blancs Manteaux, written by Jean Paul Sartre in the 1940s, and sung by Juliet Greco, which spoke of the executions that took place there during the French Revolution.
A few blocks from Blancs Manteaux is the infamous Rue des Mauvais Garçons (Street of Bad Boys). Ironically, it is in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Paris and is no more than a block long…if you blink, you’ll miss it.
The small restaurant at the end of Rue des Mauvais Garçons
Today the street boasts little more than a restaurant and a small hotel, which in the Dark Ages served as a haven for squirely thugs, as Sir Peter de Caen and his henchmen used it as a hideout before carrying out famous assassinations.
A painting of Rue Des Mauvais Garçons by Charles Meryon circa 1854,
The Frick Collection
Strangers in Paris have trouble finding the bad neighborhoods because all the buildings are so beautiful. The danger lies in the beauty, and is driven by more than lights and emptiness, hooded figures or derelict façades.
Having lived in rougher parts of rougher towns, I can say with experience that there certainly are streets worthy of being wary of, but I’d venture a greater argument to the effect that a neighborhood is only really “bad” or “dangerous” if you don’t know it…and more importantly don’t know how to walk it. The best defense is to learn the way, to be willing to enter the landscape despite known risks… only keep your head about you.
In New York, you know immediately whose lands you are walking through. It’s a city with such defined identities, you understand its image, though perhaps not its true essence, the moment you step off the boat, whether arriving from Tupelo or Siberia. The borders are unspoken but clearly present…when you cross one you will know it. From block to block things change immensely.
Paris, while breathtaking, is more monochromatic. The buildings get fancier, larger, more elaborate, but they all evolve from the same foundation…a template for the picturesque. The population changes, but it happens more gradually.
Every city has a different pace. The pace of walking often echoes the speed of business, growth, movement, change.
In New York everyone walks quickly, even when there is nowhere to go. As a newcomer it seems outrageous at first to be swept along in a sea of black coats and skirt suits on your way to who knows where, but, as they say in Russian fairy tales, “in a long time or a short time,” you find yourself irrationally aggravated by the old lady hobbling in front of you. In many ways, this is the moment of becoming a “New Yorker.”
The narrow sidewalks of many Paris streets dictate a slower pace. It is a city of promenades and leisurely strolls, of sitting down to a meal for a whole afternoon or whiling away the hours at some cafe.
But considering the fact that Paris is pretty empty of any grand sense of urgency or panic, it does manage to be a fairly productive place. The destination is still reached, but the way is not always direct…these are ponies that saunter, not horses that gallop. The moment of becoming a “Parisian” is much more leisurely, perhaps arrived at with a flamboyant hand gesture, a debonair shrug, or a taste for turning water into wine.
Cities come in different shapes. Sometimes their forms are recognizable, resembling strange creatures or abstract symbols. New York is a grid. Paris is a spiral. It is a collection of monuments, by which any young girl can find her way after dark.
In our wanderings through town, we may have learned that all of the city’s gold is kept beneath the Palais Royal, or that there are 6 million skeletons buried under Monparnasse from the overflowing cemeteries. But what is it exactly that lies at the center of the maze…
In the spirit of aimlessness and adventure, I encourage us all to be flâneurs.
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Featured image: Handonhip.wordpress.com
* Walter BENJAMIN “Die Gemächlichkeit dieser Schildereien passt zu dem Habitus des Flaneurs, der auf dem Asphalt botanisieren geht », “Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire” (On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, 1939)
