Flâneur is a French term meaning ‘stroller’ ‘observer’ or ‘loafer’ used by nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire to identify an observer of modern urban life. With high observational skills, a flâneur, usually a man, is able to see things that others fail to see. He wanders but remains detached from the world he encounters and generally, the world he sees conceals a story.
On the Adriatic Sea, a small quaint town of Polignano a Mare in Italy, showcases its own flâneur who writes poems and poetries on doors, walls, and stairs. Nobody erases his thoughts, he writes about love and life, he quotes classical authors, philosophers, and great thinkers.
On this door, the flâneur writes a W.Shakespeare’s phrase:
“Love runs to meet love with the same joy pupils run from their books; love that separates from its love has the same sad face the pupils have when they return to school”.
On this door, he quotes R.Tagore:
“The butterfly doesn’t count the year, it counts the seconds, that’s the reason its brief life is sufficient”.
Here the flâneur quotes Torquato Tasso, an Italian poet of the 16th Century:
“Lost is all the time that is not spent in loving”.
Here he wrote one piece of poetry from satirist Giuseppe Parini:
“May the morning raises in the company of dawn, in front of the sun that large appears on the far horizon to make happy animals, plants, the fields, and the waves”.
Many of the flâneur’s writing can be seen on the doors of this quaint town, and many are his own expressions on life. I hope you get a chance to visit.
Doors are the anticipation of what they conceal. This Thursday Doors Challenge hosted by Dan Antion is a fun opportunity to understand how people live, their dreams, their business, and their social status. Ciao,
Valentina
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Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion consultant, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon and Barnes&Noble
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