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Between Poetry and the Visual Arts: The Flaneur and the City

The trope of flanerie, a narrative device for the writers’ vision of the public spaces and places in the city, marks the work of Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921), Mstislav Dobuzinskij (1875-1957) and Elena Guro (1877-1913). Their way of expressing the fragmentary city scene is a way of mediating “the sensation of the new” (“la sensation du neuf”, Baudelaire [1859] 1961:1038). Not surprisingly, given the writers’ visual emphasis, we detect both painterly and film techniques in their works (Williams 1973: 242). By avoiding any polemic, moreover, the authors simply record the scene, thereby allowing their record of the scene itself to equal authorship. They do so, however, through a suggestive play that alerts us to their own presence, their own point of view. Such an aesthetic stance, whereby the writers directly record their perceptions of the city streets, overrides any other direct ethical message, whether political or religious. The writers present no direct argument, no plea, nothing overtly polemical. Their ethical role is thus limited to that of “observers”. We are therefore moved to ask: What kind of new and captivating power is gained by letting the scene speak for itself?

Blok; Guro; Dobuzinsky; flaneur

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