The Art of Walking. Lisboa: Quetzal Editores

Some authors, over the past few years, have dedicated their attention, directly or indirectly, to an association: city + walking.

Walter Benjamin speaks, in Berlin Childhood, Around 1900 (1938/2013), about the need to get lost in a city. Edgar Allan Poe, in The Man of the Crowd (1840/2013), reveals a unique capacity for attentive observation when walking through city space following the steps of a character. It can also been remembered here Charles Baudelaire, in The Painter of Modern Life: Modernity (1863/2013), who makes the same association: observing the urban space, customs, daily life, phantasmagorias… all while walking.

Erling Kagge, in his walks around the world, reveals in The Art of Walking (2018) the same connection. According to the author, “walking sometimes means undertaking an inner journey of self-knowledge”, but not only. “When I walk, I can stop whenever I feel want. Look around. And then continue”.
Finally, the author reveals that in his topographic investigations, he learned that walking must be carried out “full of love and with all attention. The man who walks must study and observe every small living being”.

ANO

2018

AUTORES

Erling Kagge