Testing the Flâneur Image in Roberto Bolaño’s Exile Writings: A Study of the Theory through the Example of B in “Vagabond in France and Belgium”

Nankai University, College of Foreign Languages, 300071 Tianjin, China

^* Corresponding author: 2010932@mail.nankai.edu.cn

Abstract

Flâneur, in Walter Benjamin’s essays on the Second Empire of France, refers to the image of a wandering intellectual or petty bourgeoisie who indulges himself in the modern phantasmagoria on the streets of Paris. The complexity and fluidity contained in this concept make possible its denotative expansion in later literary texts. Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s short story “Vagabond in France and Belgium” can serve to test and develop the theory, for the protagonist B inherits the basic characters of a flâneur, and meanwhile, the exile background endows him with some new faces in terms of the identity of places, the drive of behaviours, and attitude towards the void of (post-) modern life. By expanding the notion of flâneur into a Latin American post-modern context, this paper not only clarifies the relationship between flânerie and exile in Bolaño’s works but also contributes to the expansion and enrichment of the denotation of flâneur on a critical basis.