ENGL 510: The City in the 19th Century

In the “Invisible Flaneur”, Wilson picks up the theme that has followed us throughout the quarter, starting with Simmel.  Where Simmel discusses the self-isolation that city folks use to preserve their sense of self in the overwhelming anonymity of the city, Wilson shows us the complementary argument.  The flaneur’s gaze and his intense involvement in urban space seem to have self-destructive results.  Wilson claims that the flaneur is annihilated by anonymity which destabilizes him and leads to transgressive desires (perhaps as a way of asserting one’s will or individuality?).  Wilson assures us, however, that this is not the inevitable end of the flaneur: the heroism of living in the city “lies in the ability to discern among the massed ranks of anonymity the outline of forms of beauty and individuality appropriate to urban life.  The act of creating meaning, seemingly so arbitrary, become heroic in itself” (110).  I am not entirely reassured.  I have trouble finding meaning in the final passages of Wilson’s essay.  I can’t tell what is meant by “creating meaning” or “the outline of forms of beauty.”  Beauty seems clear enough, but these are only forms of beauty, and only outlines of those forms.  Discerning these outlines hardly seems to provide any reliable understanding of anything.  It seems possible that in an urban environment, these outlines of forms become empty vessels to be filled up with meaning.  Like Simmel’s city-dweller, the flaneur seems to shut out others in order to keep himself from annihilation.  This creation of meaning then might merely be a projection of personal desires into a person who is hardly perceived as a person at all.  This is perhaps not sexual objectification—it is perhaps not the same as turning someone to stone, but I still find it somewhat creepy.

If I have read Wilson correctly, then there is something to be said about a couple of the Symons poems as well.  In “To a Dancer”, the narrator describes a woman (a flaneuse?) dancing for an audience.  He says that “The eyes of all that see / Draw to her glances, stealing fire / From her desire that leaps to my desire; / Her eyes that gleam for me!” (ll. 4-7).  Although he is only an anonymous member of the crowd, he protects himself from anonymity by imagining that she is performing solely for him.  If all of the other “eyes” are doing the same, then every individual makes himself an individual in the audience by making a public show into a private one.  All are projecting their desires into a single woaen, creating a shared cultural delusion.  –Sounds like what has become a typical Hollywood icon.

Perhaps the more disturbing example is in the following poem, “Renee.”  The first four stanzas focus largely on her beauty, which is in line with the sexual objectification that Wilson discusses.  But this is no such reduction of meaning: The narrator says that Renee approaches him: “Renee, who waits for another, for whom I wait. / To linger a moment with me” (ll. 19-20).  The final assertion that Renee is thinking about him at all suggests a creation of meaning.  It seems much more likely that Renee is walking by.  I think if Renee is lingering at all, it is only as a consequence of waiting for someone else.  The lingering one, the narrator seems to project this lingering into Renee as though he were the one being pursued.