A flaneur in Turin: The perception of space in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin
This essay attempts to differentiate three different kinds of spatial-atmospheric experience on the basis of the theories by Hermann Schmitz and Robert Vischer. Furthermore, it connects these methods to the figure of the flaneur in Walter Benjamin's Passages as well as in the late Turin diaries of Friedrich Nietzsche. These two concepts of the flaneur can be seen as antithetic. For Walter Benjamin city strolling is a means of intellectual stimulation, focusing on impulses from the urban landscape that are then interwoven in associative, oscillating streams of thought, often commenting on the city stroller as an actor in a capitalist society. In contrast, Friedrich Nietzsches experience of architectural space can be seen as a full synthesis of inner life and outer experience, thought and motion intertwine, facilitating a new creative disposition and state of mind.