Walking in Brussels : Misadventures and surprises of the flânerie from Charles Baudelaire to William Cliff

The link between Brussels and the literary flânerie is not an obvious one. Unlike Paris, Brussels has not given birth to great literary myths, expressed in memorable novels or poems. From the eighteenth century until today, the Belgian capital seems to have had a rather bad reputation among writers and intellectuals. It is said to lack everything that makes a city interesting and is especially faulted for having no proper identity. This would suggest that flânerie in Brussels is an unlikely activity and hardly worthy of literary expression. To redress this misconception, first of all, I develop a theory of the different significations that can be attributed to walking. Against this background, I provide a survey of a few of the French flâneurs, such as Nerval, Baudelaire and Huysmans, and their generally negative reflections on Brussels, which are clearly marked by a Parisian bias. In counterpoint to this French perspective, I will consider the literary merits that Brussels holds for francophone Belgian writers. Through a reading of various authors, including the surrealist Marcel Lecomte, the writer Georges Thinès and the poet William Cliff, I show that walking in Brussels, despite the rather modest or even unsympathetic surroundings, offers an inherently literary experience based on ‘profane illumination’ or the quest for personal identity.