Bohemianism is a social and cultural movement that has, at its core, a way of life away from society's conventional norms and expectations. The term originates from the Frenchbohème and spread to the English-speaking world. It was used to describe mid-19th-century non-traditional lifestyles, especially of artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities.
Bohemian is a 19th-century historical andliterary topos that places the milieu of young metropolitan artists and intellectuals—particularly those of theLatin Quarter in Paris—in a context of poverty, hunger, appreciation of friendship, idealization of art and contempt for money. Based on this topos, the most diverse real-world subcultures are often referred to as "bohemian" in a figurative sense, especially (but by no means exclusively) if they show traits of aprecariat.
Bohemians were associated with unorthodox oranti-establishment political or social viewpoints expressed throughfree love,frugality, and—in some cases—simple living,van dwelling orvoluntary poverty. A more economically privileged, wealthy, or even aristocratic bohemian circle is sometimes referred to ashaute bohème[1] (literally "Upper Bohemian").[2]
The termbohemianism emerged in France in the early 19th century out of perceived similarities between the urban Bohemians and theRomani people;La bohème was a common term for theRomani people of France, who were thought to have reached France in the 15th century viaBohemia (the western part of modernCzech Republic).Bohemianism and its adjectivebohemian in this specific context are not connected to the native inhabitants of the historical region of Bohemia (theCzechs).[3]
Literary and artistic bohemians were associated in the French imagination with the rovingRoma people, often pejoratively referred to as "gypsies". Romani were calledbohémiens in French because they were believed to have come to France fromBohemia.[3][4]
The title character inCarmen (1875), a French opera byGeorges Bizet set in the Spanish city ofSeville, is referred to as abohémienne in Meilhac and Halévy's libretto. Hersignature aria declares love itself to be a "gypsy child" (enfant de Bohême), going where it pleases and obeying no laws.
The term bohemian has come to be very commonly accepted in our day as the description of a certain kind of literary gypsy, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits .... A Bohemian is simply an artist or "littérateur" who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art.
— Westminster Review, 1862[3])
Henri Murger's 1845 collection of short stories,Scènes de la vie de bohème (Scenes of Bohemian Life), was written to glorify and legitimize the bohemian lifestyle.[5] Murger's collection formed the basis ofGiacomo Puccini's 1896operaLa bohème.
In England, bohemian in this sense initially was popularised inWilliam Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 novelVanity Fair. Public perceptions of the alternative lifestyles supposedly led by artists were further molded byGeorge du Maurier's romanticized best-selling novel of Bohemian cultureTrilby (1894). The novel outlines the fortunes of threeexpatriate English artists, their Irish model, and two colourfulCentral European musicians, in the artist quarter of Paris.
In Spanish literature, the Bohemian impulse can be seen inRamón del Valle-Inclán's 1920 playLuces de Bohemia.
In his song "La Bohème",Charles Aznavour described the Bohemian lifestyle inMontmartre. The 2001 filmMoulin Rouge! also imagines the Bohemian lifestyle of actors and artists in Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century.
In the 1850s, Bohemian culture started to become established in the United States via immigration.[6] In New York City in 1857, a group of 15 to 20 young, cultured journalists flourished as self-described bohemians until theAmerican Civil War began in 1861.[7] This group gathered at a German bar on Broadway calledPfaff's beer cellar.[8] Members included their leaderHenry Clapp Jr.,Ada Clare,Walt Whitman,Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and actressAdah Isaacs Menken.[8]
Similar groups in other cities were broken up as well by the Civil War and reporters spread out to report on the conflict. During the war, correspondents began to assume the title bohemian, and newspapermen in general took up the moniker. Bohemian became synonymous with newspaper writer.[7] In 1866, war correspondentJunius Henri Browne, who wrote for theNew York Tribune andHarper's Magazine, described bohemian journalists such as he was, as well as the few carefree women and lighthearted men he encountered during the war years.[9]
San Francisco journalistBret Harte first wrote as "The Bohemian" inThe Golden Era in 1861, with this persona taking part in many satirical doings, the lot published in his bookBohemian Papers in 1867. Harte wrote, "Bohemia has never been located geographically, but any clear day when the sun is going down, if you mountTelegraph Hill, you shall see its pleasant valleys and cloud-capped hills glittering in the West ..."[10]
Mark Twain included himself andCharles Warren Stoddard in the bohemian category in 1867.[7] By 1872, when a group of journalists and artists who gathered regularly for cultural pursuits in San Francisco were casting about for a name, the term bohemian became the main choice, and theBohemian Club was born.[11] Club members who were established and successful, pillars of their community, respectable family men, redefined their own form of bohemianism to include people like them who werebons vivants, sportsmen, and appreciators of thefine arts.[10] Club member and poetGeorge Sterling responded to this redefinition:
Any good mixer of convivial habits considers he has a right to be called a bohemian. But that is not a valid claim. There are two elements, at least, that are essential to Bohemianism. The first is devotion or addiction to one or more of theSeven Arts; the other is poverty. Other factors suggest themselves: for instance, I like to think of my Bohemians as young, as radical in their outlook on art and life; as unconventional, and, though this is debatable, as dwellers in a city large enough to have the somewhat cruel atmosphere of all great cities.
— Parry, 2005[12])
Despite his views, Sterling associated with the Bohemian Club, and caroused with artist and industrialist alike at theBohemian Grove.[12]
Canadian composerOscar Ferdinand Telgmann and poetGeorge Frederick Cameron wrote the song "The Bohemian" in the 1889 operaLeo, the Royal Cadet.[13]
The American writer and Bohemian Club memberGelett Burgess, who coined the wordblurb, supplied this description of the amorphous place called Bohemia:
To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the best of the present moment—to laugh at Fortune alike whether she be generous or unkind—to spend freely when one has money, and to hope gaily when one has none—to fleet the time carelessly, living for love and art—this is the temper and spirit of the modern Bohemian in his outward and visible aspect. It is a light and graceful philosophy, but it is the Gospel of the Moment, this exoteric phase of the Bohemian religion; and if, in some noble natures, it rises to a bold simplicity and naturalness, it may also lend its butterfly precepts to some very pretty vices and lovable faults, for in Bohemia one may find almost every sin save that of Hypocrisy. ...
His faults are more commonly those of self-indulgence, thoughtlessness, vanity and procrastination, and these usually go hand-in-hand with generosity, love and charity; for it is not enough to be one's self in Bohemia, one must allow others to be themselves, as well. ...
What, then, is it that makes this mystical empire of Bohemia unique, and what is the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no roads in all Bohemia! One must choose and find one's own path, be one's own self, live one's own life.
— Ayloh, 1902[14])
In New York City, the pianistRafael Joseffy formed an organization of musicians in 1907 with friends, such asRubin Goldmark, called "The Bohemians (New York Musicians' Club)".[15] Near Times Square,Joel Rinaldo presided over "Joel's Bohemian Refreshery", where the Bohemian crowd gathered from before the turn of the 20th century untilProhibition began to bite.[16][17][18][19]Jonathan Larson'smusicalRent, and specifically the song "La Vie Boheme", portrayed thepostmodern Bohemian culture of New York in the late 20th century.
In May 2014, a story onNPR suggested, after a century and a half, some Bohemian ideal of living in poverty for the sake of art had fallen in popularity among the latest generation of American artists. In the feature, a recent graduate of theRhode Island School of Design related "her classmates showed little interest in living ingarrets and eatingramen noodles."[20]
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The term has become associated with various artistic or academic communities and is used as a generalized adjective describing such people, environs, or situations: bohemian (boho—informal) is defined inThe American College Dictionary as "a person with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior".
Many prominent European and American figures of the 19th and 20th centuries belonged to the bohemiansubculture, and any comprehensive "list of bohemians" would be tediously long. Bohemianism has been approved of by somebourgeois writers such asHonoré de Balzac,[citation needed] but most conservative cultural critics do not condone bohemian lifestyles.[citation needed]
InBohemian Manifesto: a Field Guide to Living on the Edge, author Laren Stover breaks down the bohemian into five distinct mind-sets or styles, as follows:
Aimée Crocker, an American world traveler, adventuress, heiress, and mystic, was dubbed the "queen of Bohemia" in the 1910s by the world press for living an uninhibited, sexually liberated, and aggressively non-conformist life in San Francisco, New York, and Paris. She spent the bulk of her fortune inherited from her fatherEdwin B. Crocker, a railroad tycoon and art collector, on traveling all over the world (lingering the longest in Hawaii, India, Japan, and China) and partying with famous artists of her time such asOscar Wilde,Robert Louis Stevenson,Mark Twain, theBarrymores,Enrico Caruso,Isadora Duncan,Henri Matisse,Auguste Rodin, andRudolph Valentino. Crocker had countless affairs and married five times in five different decades of her life, each man being in his twenties. She was famous for her tattoos and pet snakes and was reported to have started the first Buddhist colony in Manhattan. Spiritually inquisitive, Crocker had a ten-year affair with occultistAleister Crowley and was a devoted student of Hatha Yoga.[citation needed]
Maxwell Bodenheim, an American poet and novelist, was known as the king ofGreenwich Village Bohemians during the 1920s and his writing brought him international fame during theJazz Age.
In the 20th-century United States, the bohemian impulse was famously seen in the 1940shipsters, the 1950sBeat generation (exemplified by writers such asWilliam S. Burroughs,Allen Ginsberg,Jack Kerouac, andLawrence Ferlinghetti), the much more widespread1960s counterculture, and 1960s and 1970shippies.
In 2001, political and cultural commentatorDavid Brooks contended that much of the cultural ethos of well-to-do middle-class Americans is Bohemian-derived, coining theoxymoron "Bourgeois Bohemians" or"Bobos".[22] A similar term in Germany isBionade-Biedermeier, a 2007 Germanneologism combiningBionade (a trendy lemonade brand) andBiedermeier (an era of introspective Central European culture between 1815 and 1848). The coinage was introduced in 2007 by Henning Sußebach, a German journalist, in an article that appeared inZeitmagazin concerning Berlin'sPrenzlauer Berg lifestyle.[23] The hyphenated term gained traction and has been quoted and referred to since. A GermanARD TV broadcaster used the titleBoheme and Biedermeier in a 2009 documentary about Berlin'sPrenzlauer Berg.[24] The main focus was on protagonists, that contributed to the image of a paradise for the (organic and child-raising) well-to-do, depicting cafés where "Bionade-Biedermeier sips fromFair-Trade".[24]
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