Coincidental Correspondences (or: the Russians are coming!)

Braving Hail & Rain!

It was a dangerously vacant April Sunday – I was in between books and had felt too drained after the work week to briskly plan for any outings. C, sprawled out on the coach, did not brim with energy either and looked dubiously at the blackening sky when I suggested a walk in the country side.

The weather had been capricious all day – hail storms and gushing outpours alternating with brilliantly sunny intervals. Hmmm – so think of the dramatic skies above Brussels ... Think of the whole range of light effects, the hazy counter light, the glistering & blistering refractions and reflections: on pavements & in gutters, in window-panes & on rooftops.... Think of the smells – all the lingering exhaust fumes at last vacuumed out by rainy humus vapours!

Yes!!! Exit the worn out bank employee – enter the hard core flâneur (1), ready to reclaim her city and the drowsy Sunday afternoon. So an orange rain jacket (along with watertight overshoes, trousers and gloves) was put on, chain & pedals of the mountain bike were oiled and a helmet was securely fastened on the head.

The timing was perfect – the first heavy drops started falling just when I set out, and soon enough rain was lashing out, having me sputtering & snorting while swooshingly racing down a hill. By the time the sun broke out again, I was strenuously pedalling & panting , climbing to one of the higher spots in Brussels, “altitude 100”, where a nearby park offers a grand view of the tumultuous skies above and the city below.

The City Below ...

The city below .... so different from the residential neighbourhoods above.
The city below, adjacent to former industrial areas, spreading out along the railway, with its boroughs struggling against poverty and various stages of neglect. But these neighbourhoods have also been given a boisterous new lease of life by the successive waves of immigrants that have turned Brussels into such a melting pot of minorities. In these streets rooftops and balconies have blossomed into a surreal forest of white satellite discs and the air is filled with unfamiliar accents & intonations ( Arabic? Slavic?) .
Luckily, a cycling flâneur can insouciantly revel in this avalanche of urban sensations and contrasts, while a reflective citizen must rather worry about how all these different new strands are to be woven in one cohesive whole.

But no time to brood, because by then I had already reached the South station where cars honked and slalomed amongst the remains of the Sunday morning market. I slalomed likewise and took pride in beating them all in the last straight line to the traffic lights. At a more leisurely pace I then rode through an amazingly mixed part of town, in between the poor and overpopulated canal zone and the historical city centre. There you can see tea-houses filled with gesticulating bearded men as well as trendy cafés with relaxed male and female youngsters sporting i-pads. There you cycle by run-down garages with shady going ons while on the next corner you can find an über-hip contemporary art gallery.

Closer to the centre you at last get to the areas where more traditional Belgian-Brussels trades & customs assert themselves – be it fish restaurants, traditional beer-and-cheese shops, elegant antique shops & galleries or the full-blown tourist attractions at and near the Grande Place.

Coincidental Correspondences

I was getting tired, legs cramping and brain overflowing with stimuli, when my eyes were arrested by a shop front.
It was an up-market antique shop and its main window displayed a painting in a gilded frame, something 18th Century French perhaps, showing a finely dressed lady playing the piano in a lavish interior, with a man reverently gazing at her. “Contemplation” said the title-sign on the frame . It was a curiously anachronistic sight after my wild ride through Brussels’ contemporary cityscape. Anachronistic, curious – and yet, tand yet... the picture did strike a chord ....

But before I could explore whatever memories & associations were drifting up, my attention was caught by the lettering on the wall above the shop window. What kind of alphabet was that? The shop was called l’Egide and sported 2 helmeted Greek heads on its sign board ... but this was not the Greek alphabet, was it? Rather Cyrillic Russian or something? Russian letters on a Brussels antique-shop? Why Russian??? Russian owners? Or Russian signs in deference to superrich Russian oligarchs descending upon Brussels to buy expensive antiques and 18th Century frivolous French paintings? No idea.

But so, getting back to that painting – stripped of its French frivolous niceties & innuendo’s , it did remind me of another, beloved picture. A pensive, melancholy painting that was, showing a bourgeois interior in which a woman, seen from the back, is playing the piano and a man, sitting in a chair with his legs crossed and his head slightly turned, listens almost devoutly. It was by Ensor, from an early period when he was still doing these haunting interiors in which dusty light is dimly refracted, as if it were gnawing at the material world.
What was its title again...? Something with music. Musique... Musique russe? – Russian music, yes!

Russian letters - reminiscences of “Russian music”. How utterly amusing – trapped in a fragmented world which tosses up an uncontrollable variety of sensations and meanings, my own plodding mind neatly weaves correspondences (2), however accidental and unrelated.

19th Century annotations to a 21st Century post

(1) There is the dandy-esk, elegant Flâneur, gingerly leaving his carriage to stroll, armed with cane, umbrella & hat, along elegant tree-lined avenues in 19th century Paris. And then there is the hard-core 21st C urban flâneur who
a) needs to cover larger distances in sprawling cities ,
b) also passes through rougher neighbourhoods not a priori designed for bourgeois strolling and
c) must be attentive to a variety of menaces on the road: such as stray glass shards & bottles and, especially, far too many & too speedy cars.
Therefore, though still graceful in the deepest of her thoughts, this hard core flâneur has had to shed all pretence to elegance in both means of transport and clothing in order to adapt to her environment.

(2) Baudelaire – extrait de “Correspondances” (EN in note 3):
“La Nature [ou plutôt la ville, dans ce cas-ci] est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,[…]"

(3) Baudelaire – extract from “Correspondences” (translated by William Aggeler)
“Nature [or rather the city, in this case] is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes give voice to confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.
Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a deep and tenebrous unity, [...]”

From Bandstands to Baudelaire (blogging about "Kiosques à Musique"/"Muziekkiosken")

How I felt let down by the English language, and by Google, and by Wikipedia and by the whole worldwide web. There I sat, longing for images of romantic 19th century summer parks, with elegant cast-iron pavilions sheltering brass bands playing invigorating music... Full of nostalgic expectations I had typed “Music Kiosk” , the literal English transcript of a most charming Dutch word. But ach, Google promptly led me to a horrendous collection of gleaming digital music vending machines. Wikipedia did mention “Kiosks” as open garden pavilions in ancient Persia and India but then brutely switched to kiosks as banal sales booths in more recent times. When trying “Music pavilion” instead, Google threw up some futuristic Arkansas music stage.

An ordinary dictionary brought help : “Bandstand” was the word! “Bandstand” .... what an utterly disappointing word, so entirely without grace.
Just as dull and basic as the stingy page that Wikipedia devotes to bandstands.
So is this then a mainly continental European enchantment? At any rate, not only are the Dutch ("Muziek Kiosk") and French words ("Kiosque à Musique") far nicer – the subject also seems to raise more affectionate interest on the European continent than in Anglosaxon regions. The French Wikipédia page about Kiosques & Kiosques à Musique is as instructive as Wiki comes (1). And I found many Dutch and French webpages testifying of impassioned individual initiatives to save local Kiosques à Musique/Muziekkiosken from sad neglect and disrepair.

Thus, for the briefest of moments I pictured myself, travelling all over Europe, on a exalted mission to photograph and document all those charming 19th century kiosques à musiques / muziekkiosken/ music kiosks (2). But my ailing employer needn’t worry about losing a diligent (albeit disheartened) worker to so frivolous a project. Because the project is no longer needed: a comprehensive kiosk-inventory has already been put on line – please see “kiosques du monde” for a brief history , a bibliography, literary references and many many pictures. On that site I furthermore learned that the ultimate book about kiosques à musique has also already been written, by Marie–Claire Mussat: La Belle Epoque des Kiosques à Musique (3)

Whence this sudden infatuation with “kiosques à musiques / muziekkiosken/ music kiosks” (2), the puzzled reader may ask. Not sudden at all, and obviously much more durable than an infatuation. It is part of my fascination for the 19th Century – so materialistic and positivist and ruthless an age – and yet, how tangible its architectural heritage, how exalted still its reverence for culture, how aesthetically minded its engineers and architects (whether they were building sturdy railway stations, bridges, or rather more frivolous bandstands).

And then, last week, I happened to be moved by an endearing example of such a bandstand, while wandering about in Tournai, a sleepy provincial Walloon town - with however a grandiose past, as witnessed by its formidable Romanesque cathedral, its bulky 19th Century railway station and various other remaining civil buildings and public spaces. Tournai is also home to one of the most charming museums I know (4).
On my way to this museum, I strolled through an austere looking public park, surrounded by dignified though worn-out neo-classical buildings, the whole looking rather desolate with the flowerbeds still empty and the fountains dead. In an adjacent, wooded public garden the trees still looked very wintry, and there, through the bare branches, I caught a first glimpse of it.

This kiosk (2), so rusty and decaying, so abandoned - and yet, by its sheer form and materiality evoking blissful summers past, careless gaiety and frivolous garden pleasures enlivened by arousing brass music ...

« Pour entendre un de ces concerts, riches de cuivre,
Dont les soldats parfois inondent nos jardins,
Et qui, dans ces soirs d'or où l'on se sent revivre,
Versent quelque héroïsme au coeur des citadins. »(5)

B-notes
(1) Britannica: One can only wonder how the formidable Encyclopedia Britannica and Larousse Encyclopédie would treat the subject. Not on-line I mean, but in their heavy weight book version. I bet they’d illuminate the reader with nice little époque drawings of “kiosques à musique” and with cross references to lemma’s about light music and about military music and about “belle époque” leisure habits? But alas, recently a news flashed by on the internet announcing the end of the Brittanica as a book . This is what The Independent writes: “On a sad day for knowledge, metaphors, and door-to-door salespeople, Encyclopaedia Britannica announced last week that it will no longer publish its print edition, and henceforth it will only be available online and as an app.”
(2) Bandstand: The word, alas, is “Bandstand” - OED: “ a covered platform outdoors, where musicians, especially a brass or military band, can stand and play”
(3) Belle Epoque - the hunt is open to find a physical copy of this book - Marie-Claire Mussat: La Belle Epoque des Kiosques à Musique
(4) Beaux Arts : Le Musée des Beaux Arts de Tournai was built early in the 20th Century by the art nouveau architect Horta, displaying a fascinating mix of styles, hesitating between sinuous art nouveau and much sterner and geometric art deco. When you push open the heavy doors of this outwardly rather austere looking building, you cannot but gasp from sheer delight and happiness. There you are welcomed by sheltering spaces, lavish ceiling light and many an enchanting perspective. It’s a museum with a small but beautiful collection ranging from a Madonna by the local painter Roger de la Pasture (aka Rogier van der Weyden) to some famous impressionist paintings.
(5) Baudelaire

what I was thinking about ...

“that philosophy and poetry were indeed closely related; they were not identical but sprang from the same source – which is thinking” (1)

At some stage, both poetry and philosophy did hope to find truth. But then, they always have been confronted with the infuriating gap between words and reality…. With the frustrating powerlessness of words to grasp the workings of the world and of the creatures of this world .
However abstract & 'un-wordly', mathematics at least get to reveal the laws of nature.

But words …., the very medium in which we think..., words have proven so inadequate to produce scientific knowledge, all they have produced are Great Metaphysical Fallacies and Untrue Stories.

Just as “poetry makes nothing happen” (2), thinking “does not bring knowledge as do the sciences” nor “does it produce usable practical wisdom”(3).

But then, as humans we crave meaning. And meaning is about thinking. And thinking is about meaning, not about knowing .

[…] thinking and knowing are two altogether different concerns, [corresponding] with meaning in the first category, and cognition in the second. […] The need of thinking is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning . And truth and meaning are not the same. “ (4)

Religion (allegedly (5)) reveals both truth and pre-ordained meanings, sanctioned in hallowed formulas & ready-made rituals, shared by a community. All very comforting & soothing & unchanging. No exhausting thinking needed. And only one Book to read.

Poetry & philosophy – ah, no truth is revealed, nothing’s pre-ordained, much less is sanctioned (even the Canon of writers has crumbled). So much thinking to do for so elusive a morsel of meaning.

But is the alternative then to go without individual thinking, to go without this dialogue with the many tentative stories woven throughout the ages? What kind of meaning-less society would that produce? (6)

“Stories constitute together, and referring to each other, the proof of our presence “ (6) (7)

Thinking inevitably produces footnotes:
(1) Hannah Arendt – The Life of the Mind
(2) Says the Poet: W.H. Auden
(3) Confesses the Philosopher: Heidegger
(4) Hannah Arendt – The Life of the Mind
(5) Allegedly – such a lovely word!
(6) Marc Reuyebrink
(7) It’s only in a footnote that I would dare to quote Baudelaire’s pathetic outcry in “les phares” (about how the great artworks troughout the ages are « ardent sobs”, and the best testimony of human dignity): “car vraiment seigneur, c’est le meilleur témoignage que nous puissions donner de notre dignité, que cet ardent sanglot qui roule d’âge en âge et vient mourir au bord de votre éternité »

S. Swann, Private Investigator (1)

It was one of those days …. I had sat idling at my desk for hours, smoking and watching the shadows of the venetian blinds advancing ever so slowly on the opposite wall. But nobody had called. Nobody needed the services of S. Swann, Private Investigator. Well, I would wait for those creeping shadows to reach the right hand corner of the wall, and then I’ d just call it a day. Cheered by this virile resolve, I started tapping an expense note for the last client I ‘d had - last month or so. Tap. Tap. Tap. This typewriter sure made a lot of noise. Tap. Tap. Tap . Then I looked up and saw a shadow behind the smoked glass door, a shadow knocking like hell on the glass….

At this point a stunning lady, clad in black, wearing a veiled hat, should enter. Upon which our cynical private eye falls in love precipitously and embarks on a tumultuous investigation fraught with danger, deceptions & double-binds. After having disentangled all kinds of plots and subplots, our private eye then finds himself again alone in his office , bruised but unbroken, smoking.

I absolutely adore these classical noir detective stories , with their wise-cracking, melancholy private eyes and their scheming, stunning ladies in black. In younger days I have devoured all the books by Chandler, Hammett, … . And nothing like those 40s and 50s black &white film versions ( ah, the iconic Humphrey Bogart with hat, trench coat , and cigarette dangling from his lips …). From the classics I then soon branched out to even tougher stuff: the mono-syllabic Mickey Spillane, the Goodis-tales from the gutter, JH Chase’s and William Irish’s dark spells and, later on, James Ellroy’s almost baroque, violent LA stories.

My living quarters of the time reflected this infatuation: they of course had blinds instead of curtains and I even had a Fedora-hat lying about on a cupboard (though I did not go as far as wearing it in public). Not to mention my youthful smoking mannerisms which sure drew upon PI theatrics. And then there were my lonely city rambles walking hours and hours on end, seeking out seedy districts, shady station neighborhoods, river quays, decaying industrial towns ), as well as my then predilection for disreputable “gin-joints” …

Well, I have curtains instead of blinds now, I quit smoking, I do not walk into gin-joints anymore and art and philosophy books have almost crowded out crime on my book-shelves. But mind you, I did pick my philosophical allegiances carefully! And my reverence for Walter Benjamin, the most poetic and urban of all philosophers, has everything to do with the redemptive narrative he offered for those days of yore, those many days spent in aimless reading and wandering.

Here was a philosopher who linked the modern city’s avalanche of sensations, its crowds of anonymous persons to the birth of the detective story. « Man is increasingly unable to assimilate the data of the world around him by way of experience », he is bombarded by sensations and bits of information without any connection. When walking the streets we encounter numerous anonymous people, all wrapped up in their private stories and interests. People can disappear into the crowd, so many things could happen at any turn of the street. But though we all share the same cramped sidewalks and undergrounds, we do not share a common experience or story, we do not know each others’ tales or secrets.

So enter the detective story, with the urban detective … who “walks these mean streets” (2) , who follows the traces, disentangles the secrets… Or enter the flâneur, the observing flâneur, who can legitimize his idle loitering & strolling by becoming a detective. “No matter what trail the flâneur may follow, every one of them will lead him to a crime”. (3)

Now I don’t know whether Benjamin has ever read any Chandler or Hammett. In any case, his discourse about detectives and flâneurs goes back to the 19th century, to Edgar Allan Poe and to Baudelaire.

Yes, to Baudelaire…. the 19th century urban poet by excellence, and whose poem “à une passante” , “to a passer by” (4) evokes the hustle and bustle of a street scene , and how, suddenly, amidst the crowd one can come under the spell of a passer by , a radiating presence , a fleeting & fatal beauty that strikes and then, is gone forever …… "For I know not where you flee, you know not where I go"

Benjamin comments: “this is the look of the object of a love which only a city-dweller experiences, which Baudelaire captured for poetry, and of which one might not infrequently say that it was spared, rather than denied, fulfillment.” (5)

This, of course, is also the kind of fatal collisions with femme fatales which Chandler & co captured for the gritty detective novel.

And the kind of collision amidst a whirling urban crowd which Edith Piaf sang about in her captivating, roiling song
“La Foule” / “The Crowd”


Read on for accompanying lyrics in the notes
(1) The kind of blog-post you get when people start talking about Chandler and philosophy (blame Phoenix!)
(2) Chandler - The Simple Art of Murder: “But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man … He is a relatively poor man or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.”
(3) Walter Benjamin, “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire”
(4) Baudelaire - Les fleurs du mal « à une passante »
La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
Une femme passa […]
Un éclair … puis la nuit! Fugitive beauté
Dont le regard m’a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d’ici ! Trop tard ! Jamais peut-être!
Car j’ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
O toi que j’eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !
(English Translation from Benjamin’s “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”
The deafening street was screaming all around me.
Tall, slender, in deep mourning – majestic grief –
a woman made her way […]
A lightning-flash … then night! – O fleeting beauty
Whose glance all of a sudden gave me new birth,
Shall I see you again only in eternity?
Far, far from here! Too late! Or maybe, never?
For I know not where you flee, you know not where I go,
O you I would have loved (o you who knew it too)
(5) Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”
(6) les paroles de La Foule