The Soul of the Homeless Writer
I saw this article, "Diesmal, ein Bettler schreibt ein Roman," in English "A Street-Beggar writes a novel," in the October issue of Cicero. Cicero writes to literate people and does not apologize for referring to historical characters and literary works, without bothering to say anything about them. Instead, it snobbishly expects the reader to know already. If the reader does not know, he can jolly-well look 'em up!
In bookstores, Cicero occupies a shelf for high-end readers, along with several other magazines of similar literate stature. As an American accustomed to America's dumbed-down, tendentious media, discovering high-end periodicals in Germany made my day! Americans looking for an intellectual oasis need to learn to speak German.
The "Street-Beggar" article appearing on Cicero's "Der Flaneur" page was written by Stefan aus dem Siepen. His family name "aus dem Siepen" suggests aristocratic ancestry. He has named his column "Der Flaneur," a term that entered the French vocabulary during the 19th century, thanks to artistic types with drug problems like Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe. "Flaneur" refers to educated, unattached men of means who stroll through city streets observing things.
Der Flaneur writes that the subject of a homeless-writer came to him from a stroll along the Seine River in Paris. He saw an apparently homeless writer scribbling away on a novel behind a piece of cardboard that let passersby know, "I am writing a novel. Some spare change and a cigarette would be welcome. Merci!"
The author Siepen uses another French word "Clochard," a term used to describe people who give up a bourgeois existence in order to live unattached and usually homeless, often with an anti-social agenda and substance abuse. Siepen describes them as the "poète maudit," the cursed and wretched poets.
In describing them, Siepen starts with the sneakers, which he calls the "weltweiten Einheits 'Look'," the classless attire of young Europeans. Wikipedia describes them as "affluent, stylish, or socially-pretentious." Then Siepen describes their "zerlöcherten Hosen," or "destroyed jeans." He writes that tourists in Paris make a point of touring the Seine in order to watch the "verwildeter Intellectueller" who live along its banks. They find the homeless writers as photogenic as the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral.
For one thing, they "unterhalten sich mit imaginären Gesprächspartner" or hold conversations with imaginary friends. I am a writer, and I admit, I do that, too. I especially like conversing with the late John le Carré and Robert de Niro in one of his many incarnations. Maybe the tourists crusing the Seine don't know any writers and see them as a curiosity; but I believe that even established writers hold fantasy conversations as a matter of course.
The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, was sort of an extreme case. He seldom bathed, lived in a wine cask or under a wheel-barrow, and founded his own philosophical school, named the Cynics. Like Poe and Baudelaire, maybe Diogenes used mind-altering substances to escape his minimalist physical reality.
I have also fantasized about a homeless, existentially "free," and creative life, with role-models like Henri Dunant, the founder of the International Red Cross, or Jean Valjean, the hero of Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables. Maybe that kind of longing comes with the turf—literary people fantasizing about an unattached or homeless life, to inspire them and give them situational awareness.
My classmate at Furman University Tommy Hays published a novel in 1992 called Sam's Crossing. Tommy writes that Sam cannot get past writer's block, in the course of which he loses out with his girlfriend Kate and goes to a costume party dressed as a homeless person. "Spare change?" he asks the other guests. None of them recognize him, and they want to throw him out.