The Flâneur (Benjamin's Arcades)

Basic to flânerie, among other things, is the idea that the fruits of idleness are more precious than the fruits of labor.  The flâneur, as is well known, makes 'studies.'  On this subject, the nineteenth-century Larousse has the following to say:  "His eyes open, his ear ready, searching for something entirely different from what the crowd gathers to see.  A word dropped by chance will reveal to him one of those character traits that cannot be invented and that must be drawn directly from life; those physiognomies so naively attentive will furnish the painter with the expression he was dreaming of; a noise, insignificant to every other ear, will strike that of the musician and give him the cue for a harmonic combination; even for the thinker, the philosopher lost in reverie, this external agitation is profitable: it stirs up his ideas as the storm stirs the waves of the sea...Most men of genius were great flâneurs - but industrious, productive flâneurs...Often it is when the artist and the poet seem least occupied with their work that they are most profoundly absorbed in it.  In the first years of this century, a man was seen walking each and every day - regardless of the weather, be it sunshine or snow - around the ramparts of the city of Vienna.  This man was Beethoven, who, in the midst of his wanderings, would work out his magnificent symphonies in his head before putting them down on paper.  For him, the world no longer existed; in vain would people greet him respectfully as he passed.  He saw nothing; his mind was elsewhere." Pierre Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire universal, Paris 1872, v. 8, p. 436, 'Flâneur'

cited by Benjamin, section M, The Flâneur, p. 453 in: