Bruges as Symbolic Capital

Abstract

This article proposes a new reading of the relationship between place and symbolic capital, arguing that certain loci are able to consecrate literary works through inspiration rather than reception, publication and circulation. Taking the city of Bruges as an exemplar, it examines its representation by Baudelaire, Rodenbach and Rilke, arguing that Rilke’s poetic transformation enables it to transcend its status as a ‘dead city’ and Decadent trope. By combining the expressive possibilities of Symbolism with elements of the realist chronotope, Bruges can also be read as a future city that performs itself. It thereby provides a different illustration of Pierre Bourdieu’s argument that habitus can function as a form of symbolic capital. If, as Pascale Casanova argues, Brussels was the ‘capital of Symbolism’, in this reading Bruges constitutes an alternative Symbolist capital: another example of the capital and its double.