"frequently flâneuring"

At times of rather frequently despairing at both the state of the world and one’s own inadequacy -  what can one do?  

Withdraw and read Walser’s “Looking at Pictures”.

After a wonderfully wistful chapter about Watteau, Walser takes on the rather more frivolous Fragonard, but not without a delicious detour: 

“The first time I beheld a reproduction of this work, which is like a poem, I was rather frequently flâneuring my way through the city’s arcades as well as its pastoral surrounds, though I am certainly aware that one should not waste time. My conduct, perhaps, possessed something Fragonardesque, for every shop, every public square, every window told me stories and was something like music for me […] ”

 “frequently flâneuring" !!  With its irresistibly alluring alliteration! With its mocking combination of the rather frosty  ”frequent”  with the more floating “ flâneuring”.  With its zestful turning into a verb of an otherwise too static noun “flâneur”.  With its meticulous use of the pitifully vanishing “accent circonflexe”….

“frequently flâneuring” ... I frequently whisper during the day (though certainly aware that one should not waste time).   Clutching to those two words as to a talisman during days of dutiful - but despairingly futile - industry. (1)

  

    (1) And what if in German there’s no Frequently Flâneuring? What if it’s rather  Wehmütig   Wandern? Or something entirely else?     

fraying

 

"collect the little pieces so that they will not perish"

  

A spurt of optimism

Was it a momentary lull in the world’s hostilities? Or just a matter of the day’s papers publishing their backlog of harmless local updates instead of the reports of various horrors?

 In any case, this media ceasefire allowed me to temporarily lift my pessimistic guard, too. It had been a while, but now I tumbled with a spurt of cheerfulness into the day.  A day off, too.  And  a lovely, sunny day to boot, after days of incessant rain. 

As I had planned a daytrip to Cologne, I left home early.  And found such a wonderful world outside! Streets and rooftops lay scintillating in the early morning light.  At the bus stop people gave each other a friendly nod, before quietly gazing at their smartphones again. 

Everything so peaceful and still, except for the loud screeching noise of a garbage van slowly riding by. But ah, look at the speed and agility of the garbage men! And how admirably coordinated did this garbage collection process unfold!  

  

The bus arrived - almost exactly on time. All passengers duly badged, took their seats and then watched their smartphones again.  Most were dutifully going to work, probably.  I started musing enthusiastically about the amazing organisational feat of getting a city started for the day.  The whole complex logistics of public transportations shuttling people to their respective destinations! The many departments devoted to keeping streets safe and clean! The gas and electricity grid companies distributing energy in order to let people brew their tea and switch on their computers! 

 I also reflected on the goodwill and mutual tolerance of all these urban actors playing their part, on their amazing diversity, as displayed by this morning’s sample.  Deeply grateful towards all these well-intentioned people, who were ensuring such a perfect urban organisation, I got out of the bus at the metro-station stop, switched to the underground, arrived at the train station and boarded my train at the designated time. Yet another example of seamless efficiency!  

Aesthetic pilgrimage

Still basking in my untroubled state of grace I plunged into a book (1) about medieval notions of sacred time – liturgical, ‘sanctoral’ and eschatological – without any relevance whatsoever for today’s world, but nicely fitting my planned visit of the  Romanesque churches of Cologne.

It had been a while since I last was in Cologne. I didn’t remember there were that many bicycles the last time I was here?  I’m of course quite partial here  - but I do feel that having so many bikes around, instantly makes a city more welcoming  - the rhythm and intensity of traffic are slowed down, there’s less noise  and one can at least breath. (2) Not a bad setting, then, for this aesthetic pilgrim to set out on a tour-on-foot of Cologne’s churches.  Romanesque churches, not Gothic, or at least not full-blown Gothic. 

For all the splendour and architectural bravura of high Gothic churches, I have come to appreciate the earlier specimens even more.  Not the dark, oppressive early Romanesque churches that have barely risen out of the dark depths of underground crypts, but those in-between churches with their sober elegance: lighter and more graceful than the militant early churches, simpler and purer than the later Gothic cathedrals.   Already espousing rib vaults and pointed arches – injecting rhythm, illuminating space –but as yet without soaring haughtiness (3).   

 The rhythm of lines and curves, the strength of pillars, the grace of light streaming in : what more would a soul need to feel both sheltered and exalted, to take flight?  

Of the 12 Cologne churches, the St Andreas church has perhaps the most perfect balance of lightness and gravitas. The others impress too, but not without a certain oppressiveness.

Collecting fragments

A case apart is the Schnütgen-museum of medieval art  housed in the St Cecilia church. Showing fragments – pieces of stained glass, sculptures – that are no longer part of a once sacred  whole, but dispersed witnesses of a bygone art, a bygone world.   And a flâneur hunting for fragments,  can only be grateful to this Mr Schnütgen who carefully gathered these remains.  

“Sammelt die Stücklein damit sie nicht untergehen” was Alexander Schnütgen’s maxim ( “collect the little pieces so that they will not perish “)

The rest of the afternoon I spend wandering around Cologne -  how laid-back and agreeable a city this has become .....  especially on this late August say, lulled by an end-of-summer calm.

The truce has ended

Waiting at the station to catch the train home, I look up at one of those screens with continuous newsfeeds. The (perhaps illusionary) media truce has ended and I learn about the day’s bombings and beheadings. 

During the long trip home, my pessimist self is back on duty. So I cannot help brooding. About the world in general, and, egoistically, about my hometown, Brussels, in particular.  History and current affairs show how quickly things can go awry. How quickly goodwill and mutual tolerance can evaporate.  45% youth unemployment in some Brussels boroughs, that makes for quite a reserve of idle and frustrated youth. How easy is it to seduce youngsters with the heroics of horror? I don’t know. 

Then again, perhaps "we" (all BXLs citizens) do feel that we have too much at stake, perhaps we all do realize what a great good a peaceful, well-functioning city is. And so we can just go on, as we do now quite successfully, to live and let live in all diversity.

(But worried I am.)      

Notes about books, bicycles and churches

1.    Jacques Le Goff – "A la recherché du temps sacré";  a book about a 13^th century  book ," La légende dorée" by Jacques de Voragines, a book full of acpocryphal stories about the lives of the saints that has inspired many a medieval painting.  “L’entreprise de Jacques de Voragine était : en s’appuyant sur le temps, enchanter, sacraliser le monde et l’humanité".
2.       Ok I admit,  I just love to have them around, bicycles - it makes me feel relaxed – whether they wheeze by or even when they’re just parked (in which case I have taken up the obsessive habit to always checking out how and with what kind of lock they are attached).
3.     Much as George Duby writes about the Cistercian churches: "L’église cistercienne est incarnée. Mais elle est aussi décharnée, réduite à la musculature, au squelette. Et c’est bien là ce qui nous touche en elle, au plus profond." 
   

Hopper at the dougnut stall

A room filled with mirrors and ominous orbs of light .... gloomy hues ranging from yellowish white over beige & brown to black ... sturdy women standing behind a counter, each confronting the viewer with a steady but enigmatic look .... an inscrutable atmosphere ....

A fascinating painting, this cross between Hopper and Spilliaert.

The kind of deliciously melancholy image a flâneur of course is irresistibly drawn to, on an intensely grey day, strolling through the streets in the drizzling rain. Yes, I could only see this image, un-swayed by the orgy of colours and smells emanating from the “smoutebollen-kraam” (the doughnut-stall) it was painted on.

frivolous perspectives

 frog's perspective

One obviously imagines a Flâneur as a quintessentially bipedal and upright creature. Slightly stooped and with a cane could still be acceptable.
But seated on a little foldable chair!!! And yet, dear blog readers, this is the position in which the (blurred) picture to the right has been shot (clandestinely and thus without flash) – from a frog’s perspective as it were.

At the same level as the two mysterious frogs (toads?) on this engraving of the allegorical dame “Dialectica”.

She sure has attitude, this Dialectical Dame. How self-confidently is she counting off the arguments on her fingers! Not to mention the exquisite nonchalance with which she rests a foot on a pile of venerable books (Aristoteles, Zenon, Gorgias, Lucianus)...


(This is but one of over 200 delightful prints and engravings on show at an exhibit featuring the output of a prolific 16th Century Antwerp print-shop "The Four Winds" , which was exploited with both commercial shrewdness and artistic insight by an endearingly entrepreneurial couple, Hieronymus Cock and Volcxken Diericx.)






street perspective

 
Awaiting dazzling spring-light effects and pending the vibrant pulse of sprouting buds (in woods that are anyway not crutch-friendly), one cannot but courageously chase signs of grace in dull streets.


But it does happen, apparently, dancing in the streets. For instance, when you press the shutter just when a person takes off to cross a doorstep.

To the Hotel Admiral

Arriving at night at a Western airport is quite a standardized affair. There’s the man in orange vest assigning taxis to the scarce queuing travelers. There’s the taxi duly speeding to a notorious business hotel. Though standardization does have its limits: the taxi-man guessed my language wrong (and somehow a hearty ”Gruss Gott” does not make one feel particularly welcome in non-German speaking country).

And then there’s the landscape one gets to admire through the taxi-window : desolate highways and uniform glass buildings with on top the neon-signs of all the global brands of the world (ah how reassuring, they have Nokia here too, and Samsung!, and Philips!).

One is dropped off in front of a hotel, makes one’s way to the reception. Where one is greeted by smiling hotel staff – their professional friendliness in my case mixed with a hint of cautiousness and surprise. Well it’s true, I don’t particularly dress the business part. And whenever I do try to act like a self-important business-person, something horribly exposes me as a fraud: either the lack of credit card as such (which happened on my first business trip) or the sheer lack of decorum (once when I smugly drew my credit-card in a restaurant, my companion giggled “oh, is that your bus-pass?” upon seeing the neat blue plastic card holder).

In the hotel-room a flickering screen announces “Welcome Mrs XXX” . One takes a shower and then, finally, the day’s duties fulfilled, one can let slacken discipline. Lying stretched out on the bed, escaping from worldly worries and oneself in a hesitating, groping, and ultimately redeeming Bruckner-symphony (blessed be portable CD-players, yes, mine is a Philips :))

In the morning one pulls the curtains and is surprised to look out over a harbor – rippling water, a luminous grey sky tinged with an orange glow. And oh yes, what a nicely renovated room, with those wooden beams, and hey is that a true ship’s chest.

Clearly, here’s a hotel that does play its part, as stated on their website
“ With its exposed beams and thick walls, Admiral Hotel’s listed warehouse building from 1787 creates a unique setting for exquisite cuisine, a lounge designed in international style and rooms with a true atmosphere of timeless quality.”

Breakfast in the restaurant at first does not feel very timeless, what with all those keen early-rising businessmen taking in calories and caffeine to fight their business-battles. But hey, isn’t that a little canon there in the corner? A replica or real one? How cute. Would I be allowed to pat it on its back? This little canon surely is there to remind us of the “barrage of British naval attacks” the hotel’s brochure mentioned when describing the site’s momentous history.

Over breakfast I browse though the TS Eliot book I smuggled in. And chance upon an essay on Tradition in the arts. How moving, poetry’s outstanding modernist pleading for “the historical sense”, involving “a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”. So yes, now I begin to understand how the postmodernist attitude differs utterly from the early 20th century modernist sensibility. Modernists like Eliot and Proust were radical innovators, but intimately familiar with the traditions whose passing they mourn .

Whereas postmodernism merely plays with the fragments of the past – frivolously quoting without empathy, and certainly without mourning.
Postmodernism is a renovated hotel “decorated in international style” , with a few rustic beams here, a canon in a corner there.