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Le Fl​â​neur Dans La Foule (for Charles Baudelaire)

from Avant (​+​2 Digital Booklets) by Nas Hedron

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Charles Baudelaire (France, 1821-1867).

Baudelaire was a French poet and essayist. He is widely considered–along with Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont), and a few others–to be one of the “ancestors” of the dadaists and surrealists (while he, in turn, saw in Edgar Allen Poe an ancestor of his own). His best known work is the poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (“The Flowers of Evil“), and his essay “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863), shaped the very idea of what a “modern” artist could and should be.

This track imagines the precise but dreamlike point of view of the “flâneur” or “flaneuse” (often translated into English inadequately as “idler” or “lounger”), who stands in a crowd, a fixed point in the middle of a vortex of human movement.

In his essay “The Painter of Modern Life,” Baudelaire describes the flaneur as a “passionate spectator”–an observer of human culture who is in their element in the urban crowd, and who feels at home everywhere. (The idea was later elaborated by critic Walter Benjamin, who distinguished the flâneur from the “badaud.” The former always retains his or her individuality, distinctiveness, and criticality, while the latter loses them in the mob.)

lyrics

Dans le courant de la foule
Au milieu de cent remous
Dans ce monde d’instantané
Je touche mais je ne suis pas touché.

Je vois, mais je ne suis pas vu
Dans la foule si chaude et douce
Sur ma langue il y a le goût
D’humanité et ses tabous.

La foule est une chose vivante
Énergique et captivante
La foule poursuit et la foule chasse
Dévore la vie, laisse la carcasse.

** Translation: The Flâneur In The Crowd **

In the current of the crowd
In the middle of a hundred eddies
In this world of the snapshot
I touch but I’m not touched.

I see, but I’m not seen
In the crowd so hot and sweet.
On my tongue there is the taste
Of humanity and its taboos.

The crowd is a living thing
Energetic and captivating
The crowd pursues and the crowd hunts
Devours life, leaving the carcass.

credits

from Avant (​+​2 Digital Booklets), released September 28, 2018

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Nas Hedron Toronto, Ontario

“An artist who gives a fresh new and startling meaning to the word interdisciplinary.”
-- Donald Brackett, author of "Back to Black: Amy Winehouse's Only Masterpiece" and "Fleetwood Mac: 40 Years of Creative Chaos."

Nas Hedron divides his time between his native Canada and Brazil. ... more

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