Bohemian (culture)

The Bohemian (o) Poet de Montmartre, portrait of Erik Satie, who appears next to the Parisian Moulin de la Galette, in Montmartre), work by Ramón Casas, c. 1891

Bohemian refers to the practice of an unconventional lifestyle (departing from social norms and conventions), often in the company of like-minded people and with few permanent links. Includes musical, artistic, literary, or spiritual interests. In this context, bohemians can be nomads, adventurers or vagabonds. La bohemia is a literary and historical topos from the 19th century that situates the environment of young metropolitan artists and intellectuals—particularly those of the Latin Quarter of Paris—against a context of poverty, hunger, appreciation of friendship, idealization of art, and contempt for money. Based on this topos, the most diverse subcultures in the real world are often called "bohemian" in a figurative sense, especially (although not exclusively) if they show traits that combine economic precariousness (precariat), detachment from money and other material opportunities, great appreciation of culture, especially that which departs from the orthodox canon of each era and alternative lifestyles to the conventional ones in a given era. To be bohemian is to be alternative in lifestyle, in cultural tastes and in not prioritizing economic objectives in personal development. It is also normally linked to the consumption of toxic substances, whether legal such as alcohol (especially absinthe in the XIX century, very linked to the origin of the bohemian movement) or illegal, according to the most popular at each time (morphine, opium, amphetamines, heroin...).

This use of the word was imported from the French La bohème in the mid 19th century and was used to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors and actresses in large European cities.

Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or anti-establishment political or social views, often expressed through free love, frugality, and in some cases, living simply, using automobiles as domiciles, or voluntary poverty. A more economically privileged, wealthy or even aristocratic bohemian circle is sometimes referred to as haute bohème(literally "high bohemia").

The term bohemia appeared in France at the beginning of the XIX century, from perceived similarities between urban bohemians and the Romani (Gypsy) people. La bohème was a common name for the Gypsy people of France, who were mistakenly believed to have arrived in France in the 17th century XV from Bohemia (the western part of the modern Czech Republic). In this specific context neither bohemia, nor its adjective bohemian, are connected to the native inhabitants of the historical region of Bohemia (the Czechs).

As a name or definition of a cultural (or subcultural) group or movement, the term appears in the 19th century in the work of the romantic Henri Murger "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" (1847-1849), a kind of novel-essay, biographical fiction or autofiction that served as a guideline and inspiration for great later works in various fields of art. For example, the opera La bohème by Giacomo Puccini or even the Louise by Gustave Charpentier and Carmen by Georges Bizet. The city of Paris is considered the original setting for the socio-literary phenomenon.

Origin

Henri Murger

As a term, 'bohemian' alludes to the culture of the gypsies, traditionally called “bohemians” in France (in French: “bohémiens”) for having, supposedly but erroneously, arrived in the country from the region of Bohemia, in the current Czech Republic. In the French imagination, literary and artistic bohemians shared with gypsies being considered outsiders, removed from conventional society and little concerned with being disapproved of by it. The term bohemia therefore referred to a certain lifestyle —with a scale of values different from that of bourgeois society— that artists and intellectuals in particular adopted. The use of the term to refer to the Roma people has disappeared in French, and its modern usage in that language and others now carries a connotation of arcane enlightenment (as opposed to philistinism), as well as a less frequent pejorative connotation of being careless in matters of personal hygiene and marital fidelity.

The appearance of the word bohème in France dates back to 1659 in the work of Tallemant des Réaux, whose grave accent differs from that used to refer to the inhabitants of the Bohemian region (in French, Boheme). It was used to describe a character who lived on the fringes of society and cultivated a new form of freedom of thought, as well as an eccentric concern for clothing.

It was Balzac in 1844, in Un prince de la bohème, who gave bohemia its letters of nobility in the XIX: «This word Bohème says it all. La Bohème has nothing and lives on everything she has. Hope is her religion, faith itself is her code, charity is her budget. All these young people are greater than their misfortune, below fortune but above destiny.

The character that gives its name to Carmen (1876), a French opera set in the city of Seville, is called a «bohémienne» in the libretto by Meilhac and Halévy. The famous aria from her declares that love itself is a "gypsy child" (enfant de Bohême), going where it pleases and obeying no laws.

Henri Murger's collection of short stories Scènes de la vie de bohème (Scenes from Bohemian Life), published in 1845, was written to glorify and legitimize the bohemian lifestyle. de Murger formed the basis of Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème (1896). It was Murger's novel that brought the word into common parlance in France. Radiating from the Latin Quarter and, more specifically, from the attics of the Rue des Canettes, the bohemia, by linking itself to the world of artists, would definitively forge the legend of Rimbaud, Verlaine and Modigliani. Sometimes idealized for its freedom, other times criticized for its eccentricity, bohemian life originated in Paris under the influence of a booming artistic movement. At a time when cultural expression and art were at their peak, the poorest and most destitute took refuge in a life in which everything was taken to the extreme: bohemia. A type of philosophy or way of thinking.

While this movement has been around since the late 17th century, it was at the beginning of the XX when it reached its zenith. Paris was then famous for its bohemian culture, in particular for sites such as Montmartre, the Moulin Rouge, the café d'Harcourt, rue de la Tour d'Auvergne and rue des Martyrs, or the Quai aux quay. Fleurs on the Ile de la Cité.

In England, the term bohemian in this sense was first popularized in the novel Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, published in 1848. Public perceptions of the alternative lifestyles allegedly led by artists were further shaped by George du Marier's popular novel Trilby (1894), which romanticized culture Bohemia. The novel chronicles the fortunes of three expatriate English artists, their Irish model, and two colorful Central European musicians, in the artistic quarter of Paris.

In Spanish literature, the bohemian impulse can be found in the play Luces de bohemia by Ramón del Valle-Inclán, published in 1920.

In his song La Bohème, Charles Aznavour described the bohemian lifestyle in Montmartre. The film Moulin Rouge! (2001) also depicts the bohemian lifestyle of actors and artists in Montmartre at the turn of the century XX.

Topical and mythification

The bohemian topic shows an individual, traditionally a male with a vocation as an artist, with a carefree appearance, striking but disorderly appearance, oblivious to the guidelines of behavior, etiquette, aesthetics and material obsession of traditional bourgeois society, aspects that the bohemian usually considers superficial and, from a romantic perspective, barriers to his freedom. In the best of cases, the bohemian defends his permanence in the world of ideas, knowledge, artistic creation, intellectual enrichment, interest in other realities or cultural manifestations.

Social movement

Antonio Espina's definition, "Bohemianism is nothing more than misery concealed with a certain beauty, hunger borne with humor" could be valid for all bohemians, before and after the classic model coined in Paris. True is that individuals who, living in society and feeding on it, "depart from social norms and conventions" —as the academic definition points out—, there have been them at all times, as one more model of the social alternative.

In an interview published in La Esfera on December 4, 1915 —within the section titled «Our visits», Emilio Carrere, singular opportunist of the Madrid bohemia, 'confessed& #39; to The Bold Knight (pseudonym of José María Carretero Novillo):

"The open soul over the anguish of the flesh and the spirit, and a protest against that aggravation of the natural pain of life, which is the social pain created by selfishness and stupidity. I'm more interested in literature, chemistry, mathematics, medicine. All at certain heights, at the tops, is poetic emotion. "

Emilio Carrere (1915)

Bohemian in Spain

In the Spain of the last third of the XIX century and the first of the XX century, as a self-marginalized group of &# 34;Silver Age of Spanish Literature", an artistic and literary bohemia addicted to cafes and nightlife met in Madrid, whose members (largely disintegrated by definition) coexisted with the great figures of realism, naturalism, the Generation of 98, the Noucentismo and the Generation of 27. In the historical context of the Spanish capital, both left their mark and their legacy in the newspapers and editorials of a Madrid "bright and hungry& #3. 4;. With different fortunes, destiny, as Ramón del Valle-Inclán wrote, was a blind and merciless goddess with the literary illusions of the bohemian rebels.

The base of that bohemia was formed by modernist decadent writers, such as Francisco Villaespesa, Emilio Carrere, Alejandro Sawa, Armando Buscarini, Dorio de Gádex, Alfonso Vidal y Planas, Eliodoro Puche, Eduardo Zamacois, Rubén Darío or Ramón María del Valle -Inclan.

The world of Spanish bohemia has been recreated in the novel The Masks of the Hero, by Juan Manuel de Prada.

Some cultural models

Original poster of 1896 La bohème by Adolfo Hohenstein.

In the novel

• Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851), novel by Henry Murger.
• Manette Salomon (1867), novel by the Goncourt Brothers.
• Homo Sapiens (1895), novel by Stanisław Przybyszewski.

In poetry

• Ma Bohème (1870), poem by Arthur Rimbaud.

At the theater

• Bohemia life (1849), Theodore Bàrriere and H. Murger;
• Bohemia lights (1924), Ramon María del Valle-Inclán;
• Rent (1996), Broadway musical.

At the opera

• La bohème (1896), opera in four acts of Giacomo Puccini.
• La bohème (1897), opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo.
• Das Veilchen vom Montmartre (1930), kalman's opera.
• Bohemians (1904) zarzuela de Amadeo Vives and libretto by Guillermo Perrín and Vico and Miguel de Palacios.

At the movies

• La Vie de bohème (1945), Marcel L'Herbier's film.
• The Life of Bohemia (1992), Aki Kaurismäki film.

In music

• Loca Bohemia (1928), tango by Francisco and Julio de Caro
• Bohemian Rhapsody (1975), Queen's theme.
• La Bohème (1966), Charles Aznavour ballad.
• Bohemio (2013), album by Andrés Calamaro.
• The Bohème Life (2006), Venezuelan rock band.
• Suburban Bohemia (1992-), alternative rock band from Guatemala.
• Bohemian Like You (2000), alternative rock band song The Dandy Warhols.