Ross and Rimbaud

Reclaiming the City

US academic, Professor Kristin Ross spent periods of travel research in Paris in the 1980s (Ross 1988) to develop a new method of inquiry to link literary text and urban space.  Her findings will be used here to explain some of the key aspects of social space in French cities. 

She chooses poetry as her data source quite deliberately, giving a challenging rationale for this decision.  Whilst the study of narrative prose in the nineteenth-century novel is conducted in French Studies departments of British and American universities with an unexplained assumption that these texts are a social production of reality, Ross argues that verse is considered to be 'a desiring production that is mere fantasy or wish fulfilment' (Ross, 1988, 11).  Her study values poetry as a discursive practice that can yield data on the social developments of an era.  Her key argument, or finding, from her textual analyses is that social space was transformed during the period of the Prussian's Siege of Paris, the Commune and the decade of the 1870s in France. Daily routines initially broke down under the privations of the siege but then:

In the midst of this disintegration sprang up new networks and systems of communication solidifying small groups: local neighborhood associations, women's clubs, legions of the National Guard, and, above all, the social life of the quartier' (Ross 1988, 41).

Literary Visitor Attractions

In French society today, when, for example, we examine the complex management arrangements of literary visitor attractions we can still see the authority that communal groups can hold and use to achieve collective aims.  Ross argues that the working class and skilled artisan class seized the opportunity to reclaim the city centre.  Urban development had been removing workers to the north-eastern peripheries of the city (Ross 1988).  She proposes that sites of authority, for example the Louvre Palace were now made more open by the group who had assumed power.  Some accessibility to public buildings remains to this day, creating a freedom for visitors to wander freely around the imposing buildings of central Paris, for example, the Louvre, originally a heavily guarded palace. In contrast to Ross, Colette Wilson contests this position, arguing that the incursion into the city centre was only a temporary, Bahktinian carnivalesque moment and that the changes of the Commune were too short-lived to take hold (Wilson 2004).  Interestingly for literary trails in fiction, Wilson traces the route of an excursion taken by working-class characters in Zola's novel, L'Assommoir following the rue Saint-Denis and ending at the Louvre.

The Louvre, Paris on the rue de Rivoli, looking south-east. Photo: C. Mansfield, fieldwork 11h51 Sun 16 Jun 2019

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The Right to Laziness

A second part of Ross's findings is the right to laziness that the poet Rimbaud gives voice to.  It is tempting to see this as the stirrings of a desire for leisure time by the working classes but Ross counsels against this, 'It is crucial in this context […] not to mistake laziness for leisure' (Ross, 1988, 61).  This laziness can instead be understood as the state of authenticity that even the urban dweller has, a state normally attributed to some fictional local group when gazed upon by the visitor in a non-urban holiday location.  Further, this state is a catalyst for moving between métiers (occupations or professions), the stirrings of social mobility.  Arguably, nineteenth century literature is useful for critical writers and for the enthusiast because it portrays the different social classes.  It provides the visitor an imaginary space where access to other social classes is possible.  Normally, the tourist cannot visit private homes nor engage with locals.

590 words.

Ross has a new paperback out in May 2023 with Verso Books if you would like to keep up with her research on social space and French Studies

Please cite and share this article as:

Mansfield, C. (2022). Ross and Rimbaud, Travel Writers Online ISSN 2753-7803 <travelwritersonline.blogspot.com> [Accessed date].