Bohemia: The Underworld of Art

Abstract

B OHEMIA, meaning 'the home good, was name, originally, a Balkan state whose members were scattered about Europe following Hussite Wars (I4I9-I43 I). Because these wanderers, bohemian became synonymous with gypsy and beggar. It was in latter sense that Scott used word in Quentin Durward,2 so it is probable that Balzac, when he introduced term in his Prince Bohemia,3 intended it as an epithet to be translated as: vagrant students Latin Quarter. However, word was promptly adopted as filling a need. Murger confirmed usage in his Scenes de la Vie de Boheme and in its new connotation word quickly became part vocabularies Europe and America. Its success and permanence indicate that group thus described was sufficiently unique and important to require a title, and that its relationship with other groups was so ambiguous as to prevent its inheriting or borrowing a name. There was in fact a new group. It was a coalition several types individualists following fortuitous formation a highly favorable psychical, social, and economic milieu on part artists. The pleasure-seeking type found a new province anonymity and unconventionality. Dissenting liberals and romantics discovered an asylum and headquarters; and this asylum was shared by psychopaths who saw in bohemia a camouflage for their eccentricities. The esthetic group desired intimacy with creative activities; for here, necessity, were artists who had established this mode life, together with dealers, poverty-stricken, and purveyors who were indigenous. Finally, there were the professional bohemians and curiousity seekers, who for one reason or another flocked to this environment with which they had no true affinity, and to whose make-up they contributed little. Altogether, this particular combination atmosphere, philosophy and types was decidedly unique. But it was more than a social group: bohemia itself is an ideal and a legend. It is a literary tradition, a dreamland El Dorado Youth, an intellectual pose artistic lamb, a philosophy composed one part idealism, one part eccentricity and one part opera bouffe heroics. It was explored by Henri Murger, Du Maurier and Balzac; yet it is 1 Conclusions drawn in this article are result study several hundred cases. 2 Chapter VI How! no country? repeated Scot. No, answered Bohemian, of none. I am a zingaro, a Bohemian, an Egyptian or whatever Europeans in their different languages choose to call our people. But I have no home. 3 Honore de Balzac, Un Prince de Boheime (I840).