The Everlasting Bohemian
Bohemianism � to literary and cultural avant-gardes throughout the world and through time � has always been a state of mind, waiting to be rediscovered by the public, to become popularized, and thus lost again. Three literary and musical works have re-identified Bohemianism to the public imagination: La Vie de Boheme, a nineteenth century play by Henry Murger, the early twentieth century opera La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini, and the modern musical Rent by Jonathan Larson. In their respective ages, the authors, librettists and composers successfully introduced the lifestyle of the Bohemian to the already-acculturated public, adapting and including the ever-changing nuances of love, laughter and misery in each of their respective ages.
All of these works have seemed to mirror their own populations � whether bohemians, literati, moral derelicts or beatniks � yet speak of all at the same time, an understandably popular idea. The intense and very easily removable glamour of the bohemian culture stemming from this popularity kept bohemians in constant danger of succumbing to the bourgeoisie, or those who gave in �to doing [as opposed to expressing] � Only essence is real� (Gold 243). The bourgeois were the middle and higher classes who watched the stage production of Murger�s play in Paris and laughed at the romanticized vagabonds far below; who rejected yet couldn�t get enough of Toscanini�s interpretation of Puccini�s tragicomic opera; and who went en masse to Broadway to make Jonathan Larson�s musical the hit that it was and still is. For however much popularity demolished the image of the morally superior bohemian, it was very evident that the people knew all about the Bohemian subculture, and that made all the difference.
Bohemianism, that alternative lifestyle or artistic temperament, has always existed on the fringe, necessarily, as bohemianism by its own definition is only bohemianism when outside of the mainstream. It lives in �all the interstices of a society that still requires art, imagination, laziness, adventure� (Gold 11). Bohemians generally rejected society as a means to define themselves:
I�ve seen it pretty glum and fairly tough, and God�s a goat and all [society�s] teaching lies. Learning is nothing � charity is wise because she cuts out analytic stuff. And yours the wisdom and wit behind it � Mine the good fortune in my pain to find it. (Deamer 141)
It was common for the off-beat poet/writer/artiste extraordinaire to claim �pain� in his (or hers, taking into account the particular bohemian emphasis on feminine equality) search for the self (Grana 21). According to one literary critic, the bohemian tome was �a study in frustration and disappointment � of modern life, of the difficulty of achieving ambitions, fulfilling love and even of communicating� (Cantor 44). An 1861 definition gave a greater reason for disappointment: �A Bohemian is a man with � an incurable proclivity to debt� (Grana 78). Perhaps the most descriptive definitions were the less-physical ones: �It was bordered on the north by need, on the south by misery, on the east by illusion, and on the west by the infirmary� (John 34).
The Bohemian was open, and without custom. He also had to be a cosmopolite � learned and educated in the fine arts: �he had taken all the degrees the Sorbonne could give him � but [he was] without the smallest notion of applying his learning� (Huddleston 21). That notion was another characteristic. As a result of denying the legitimacy of society, bohemians tended to shy away from doing anything to express themselves within society. Kenneth Rexroth, a Jack Kerouac contemporary during the Beat Generation said that �it is impossible for an artist to remain true to himself as a man, let alone an artist, and work within the context of this society� (qtd. in Parkinson 186). To Kerouac himself, working within society with respectability was tantamount to �spiritual death� (203). Certainly, the identification of the caf� with the bohemians was true, for that was where they gathered. In 1824, the Parisian artistes met in salons serving gooseberry wine while reclining on chairs and floors: the hangout, the club, and, where one was unable to afford personal residences, the neighbourhood caf� (Easton 41). The most prominent social bohemian of the 1850s, Ada Clare, identified the greatest characteristic of the bohemian: �above all others, the Bohemian must not be narrow-minded; if he be, he is degraded back to the position of a mere worldling� (Hahn 27). Therein also lay bohemianism�s greatest problem: it needed the �worldling�s� narrow-mindness to comprehend its lofty goals and make itself popular � but that path led to respectability and acceptability, the eternal blight of the unshaven rebellious revolutionary intellectual.
Henry Murger was both accurately and inaccurately labeled the First Bohemian. It was not because he was the first to have such Bohemian ideals; actually, bands of students since the French Revolution had embodied these ideals, both political and not, and been named �Bohemian� by Balzac. To Balzac, the Bohemians were �all men of genius [who] possess nothing, yet contrive to exist on that nothing� (Hahn 6). However, to other intellectuals, and more importantly, the public, the bohemian masses were just paupers who didn�t want to work. There was no aura of creativity and youthful vigor, just a corona of dirt and ale vapor about them. Murger was special in that he presented the first romanticized version of the bohemian, in La Vie De Boheme.
He was less known for his particularly descriptive nature than for his success: �when Murger wrote La Vie de Boheme, he had no notion that he was writing the history of a social world which was to become a power within five or six years� (Grana 55). His stories were humorous sketches of his own experience, glossed over and watered down to hide his own idealism (such as his own small, ugly self reincarnated in the handsome and debonair Rodolphe) and the unpalatable truth. These sketches were finally brought together into a play and presented on November 22, 1849, to wild acclaim � making his fortune and bringing Bohemia into common speech. The public vogue during this time was for weepy romances and suffering ladies, and La Vie de Boheme had exactly what the public needed: pathos, romance, fascination, and above all, culture (Hahn 9, 10). It was a realization of everyone�s dreams, the social bohemian that was popular, witty, cultured, artistic, good-looking, and everything else one would want to be. While it was a lie, it was a welcome lie to the public and to the bohemians themselves. No longer would the public lack heroes, and no longer would the bohemians suffer from neglect and abject misery.
Murger was labeled the poet of youth, and as such, he was allowed more freedom to catalog the �direct and immediate gratification of impulses� (Grana 16). In La Vie de Boheme, Rodolphe, a literary man; Marcel, a painter; Schaunard, a musician; and Colline, a philosopher, all live together with their various loves. They are resigned to temporary poverty while they search for money, pleasure and love. For these young men, optimism is a necessary vice, so whatever the circumstance, they can smile and look forward to the next day � with a bottle of wine and intellectual discourse late into the night to help tide them over. Murger also adds in the tragic death of Mimi, the consumptive lover of Rodolphe, who dies in his arms. He knew that �laughter is all the better for having been mingled with a few tears� (Easton 121). In real life, it had been much harder for Murger. He had almost died of starvation, in the same week that four of his friends had died beside him. His own mistress died and was taken away for dissection, as all pauper�s bodies were liable to. His constant struggle for financial success and loyalty to his social roots left him prematurely exhausted, and eventually, he died as well, at 38 (122).
In the nineteenth century, France, and particularly Paris, was the unorthodox literary capital of the world. In Murger�s own words,
The real bohemian could only exist in Paris � and even there you don�t find it everywhere. The faubourg Montmartre, the passages, the rue des Martyrs, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the whole domain of the unemployed, the debauched and the useless � all this belongs to the realm of Bohemia. (John 33-4)
The rest of the world believed so. Only after one had read Murger and then been to Paris could one, in nineteenth-century France, call oneself a bohemian (Grana 18). They reveled in the belief that they were continuing an ancient tradition. In the preface to La Vie De Boheme, Murger says that �the class of Bohemians ... are not a race of today, they have existed in all climes and ages, and can claim an illustrious descent � they are the race of obstinate dreamers for whom art has remained a faith and not a profession � their daily existence is a work of genius� (translated from Scenes 4-6, 12). Sisley Huddleston, a famous early 20th century bohemian resident of Paris, recalled that �Montparnasse [on the Left Bank of Paris] became the capital of all the arts and disgraces � in it could be found the oldest and the newest things ... some of them were obsessed by art, and others by sex � it was a magic word which evoked painting and poetry and cocktails. It was at once highbrow and jazzy� (Huddleston 46). Paris glorified in its position as the bohemian capital.
Murger�s bohemian Paris has always been a by-word for mysticism as well as romance, secrecy and artistic stimulation. Balzac, Blum and of course, Murger himself had lived here, and so had Hemingway, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Charlie Chaplin, and so many of those other secret literary and artistic luminaries. They had all been labeled bohemian at some point or other, because they had sat in cafes, drank wine, talked and engaged in wild sexual explorations of the French underground. It was here in Paris that bohemianism�s sexual connotations, both homo and hetero, had arisen: �Paris [was] a kingdom of nocturnal pleasure, a playground for fantasies censored during the day.� In 1913, a word was coined for the amoral tendencies of French bohemianists � �fisicofollia,� or the joyous madness of the body (Conrad 309, 313). It was only in Paris where sunamatism � restoration of vitality and creativity through sex with a blonde and a dark woman on either side - could thrive, both in AD 800 and a millennia later (Gold 124). One bohemian was disappointed by human limitations on his artistic and independent experience in Paris: �I�d like to go to an orgy, but I�m not sure my wife would let me� (127).
In a way, Murger had also anticipated this side of bohemianism, the rough and vile side that would show itself increasingly till modern times. He had known after he had written La Vie de Boheme and again when his body was decaying (his lips had fallen off by this point), that eternal bohemianism was not good as a rule. His last words were �no music, no noise � no Bohemia, no Bohemia!� (John 40). For all his efforts, he died without the alarums of Bohemian raison d�etre calling his name. By his definition, Bohemia is �a stage in the artist�s career; it is the preface to the Academy, the Hospital, or the Morgue � unknown Bohemia is not a thouroughfare; it is a cul-de-sac.� Bohemia is a blind alley, a path to nowhere, �extinguishing the intelligence as a lamp goes out for want of oxygen.� Furthermore, �the man who stays in Bohemia is doomed, or can escape only into the neighbouring Bohemia of crime� (Easton 127).
Mostly overlooked in the era�s joyful acceptance of the work was the warning against bohemianism within the text of La Vie De Boheme. Murger had not had the best time with his situation, and these bitter closing words in an otherwise joyful tome were all the more ominous because of its reduced presence. After the girlfriend of a minor character dies of consumption, the weeping man cries out that �times are not always gay in Bohemia.� Similarly, another character dies and his friends do not attend his funeral � for �art is above all� and they must attend an exhibition instead. This is a rather twisted use of the artist�s axiom, but perfectly understandable within the circumstances of Murger�s own life. His characters, at the end of the play, do subscribe to Murger�s definition of bohemianism: those that have not died move on into the world of the bourgeoisie. Marcel says to Rodolfo that �the hour has come to go forward without looking backward; we have had our share of youth, carelessness, and paradox. All these are very fine � but this comedy of amorous follies, this loss of time, of days wasted with the prodigality of people who believe they have an eternity to spend - all this must come to an end� (Murger). It did come to an end � briefly, only, for it rose again with even more dramatic flair.
Giacomo Puccini, a full fifty years later, came across the Murger story and decided to use it for his next opera, La Boheme. Several things influenced this decision, including the fact that another composer was setting out to write an opera on the same story: Ruggero Leoncavallo, with The Bohemians. A fierce recriminatory competition ensued when it was announced they both were working on the same opera, and Puccini had to �let the public judge� (John 15). More important, however, were the strong situations he found in La Boheme, unlike the other librettos he was considering. To Puccini, only those �situations which move audiences, whether to tears or laughter, and without �excessive dialogue�� are suitable to form the main scenes in each of the acts of his operas (15). Exactly what counted as a �moving situation� was his own to decide. Giulio Ricordi, a famous Italian music producer \ publisher of the late 19th \ early 20th century, gave the task of writing the libretto to Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who fashioned the text based on Murger�s original novel, Scenes de la Vie de Boheme (10). Puccini preferred the book to the more popular stage version, as he felt it was more emotional.
La Boheme�s basis in La Vie De Boheme was far less direct than supposed. For one thing, La Vie De Boheme had �too many subplots to be a viable opera� (Schwarz). Puccini had to work closely with his librettists to fashion a tight and emotional narrative out of such a work. Throughout the textual development, there were �false starts, episodes, and even a whole act discarded� (John 10). Mimi, the character taken from Murger, was changed to become a mixture of Mimi and a minor female character in the play, Francine. Instead of a solely pitiful and dependent woman, she is �ficklehearted / always flirting with someone / Mimi�s so sickly, so ailing / Every day she grows weaker� (La Boheme Act 3, John 90). However much was changed, the melancholy yearning for the days of youth was kept just as it was in the original: �Farewell, to our dreamy existence! ... and all its bitter sadness � Ah, that our winter might last forever!� (92, 94). The final act proved the most heartwrenching. While the semi-climax had seen the friends drift apart, the death of Mimi as the closing scene proved the bonds of bohemian love. Audiences grew to love and romanticize this part; bohemianism was never more appealing than in this pathetic and tragic end.
The opera, named La Boheme after it was completed, started off badly. Reviewers in New York at the turn of the 20th century called the opera �foul in subject, and fulminant but futile in its music� (John 7). Another reviewer in London called the music �not stimulating enough to be heard often� (7). Also, Italian audiences were used to opera buffa � serious opera with plenty of clownish comedy � and not the relatively less-humorous and tragic drama found in La Boheme. The tenement studio setting and the lower-class urban activities of the characters were all alien to the opera-going and opera-affording public. However, the tide changed, and audiences began to appreciate it. The twenty-three performances done were well beyond the initial amount of performances scheduled. The fact that Puccini had combined the Italian vogue for verismo or truth, and made identifying with the characters so easy � who only desired warmth, love and high spirits � played no small part in its popularity. Mimi, Rodolfo and Marcello had sympathizers in the workers behind the social unrest breaking out across Italy, as their democratic and romanticized depiction of poverty (9). La Boheme is still popular, as shown by its place as �one of the three or four most popular operas in the repertory� (qtd. in Schwarz).
Its mass popularity directly contrasted with the heretofore public perception of bohemianism. Just before La Boheme was released, the original view of bohemianism with its paupers striving for love and laughter had been lost (Hahn 39). In its place, George du Maurier�s Trilby had popularized the image of the bohemian as a rich socialite who drops out of society to pursue the same ends. He mass-marketed Trilby just as a Mickey Mouse or a Harry Potter would be today. People had forgotten about Murger, but with La Boheme, the �fake� view of bohemianism (after all, Trilby had contradicted a century�s worth of bohemian style and tradition) was cast aside and the old view taken up again.
La Boheme had stirred what was already a growing passion: becoming a bohemian. Everybody, it seemed, wanted to be one. It was especially so in America, where bohemian wannabes in New York shaped their own picture, however chaste, of the ideal European bohemian:
She cares not for lovers, as most of them do. She laughs at them all, both at me and at you � She cares not for fashion, for style not a sou. She�s a thorough Bohemian, through and through. (Parry 106)
Americans hastened to Paris to adopt their bohemian ideals; most insisted on �beards � they hastened to learn Parisian slang�Was I not a Bohemian in Paris?� The American visitors were remarkably uninformed (114). They were still searching for the gaiety and intellect of an age long gone. The real bohemians had moved on, following the winds of change and contemporary style. James Laver, before the rush of foreign tourism, mentioned that �Bohemian life could be enjoyed with added zest, but it was not yet the shoddy fake which artistic quarters become so very rapidly in the modern world� (115).
By the post-World War II period, Bohemianism had lost much of its edge. Is popularity remained only in America, where it waxed political on college campuses, particularly along the West Coast (Gold 217). Murger�s image of the bohemian as a jovial, take-life-as-it-is apolitical animal was a thing of the past. Into the 50s and 60s, primitivism became the new Bohemianism. While this period didn�t have such a magnetic work as La Boheme or La Vie de Boheme to point out the movement, a bohemian alternative presented itself in the Beat Generation, led by pop icons Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (217-9). Primitivism appeared throughout Beat poetry, bebop music, bop language, and to a greater extent in love, friendship and sex, especially through the 70s 225). Racial equality became most accepted by Bohemians during this time in response to the prevalent racist attitude of middle class Americans. Other ideals included the idea of salvation by the child, self-expression, paganism, living for the moment, liberty, changing place, psychological adjustment (Grana 135). The obsession with sex was a reflection of �freedom from conventional moral standards� and a keen emphasis on performance (aka �good orgasms�), according to the hipster�s Bible, Kerouac�s On The Road (Parkinson 205). Nevertheless, the fascination that they conjured in the imaginations of youth throughout America�s suburbs was amazing. �The image of Bohemia still exerts a powerful fascination � nowhere more so than in the suburbs, which are filled�with men and women who�think of themselves as conformists and of Bohemianism as the heroic road� (202). This movement soon died out. Not for long though, for Bohemianism found yet another savior, its popularity besting both La Boheme and La Vie de Boheme.
Pop culture in America found a sudden, sweeping appeal in bohemianism after the premiere of Rent, a musical based on La Boheme. It was 1996, and Jonathan Larson, Rent�s writer and composer, felt that it was time to rejuvenate the American musical. For his topic, he took his artistic ideals � a search for self-identity � and fit pop culture, fringe attractions, personal experiences and historical accounts into it. His characters, all Bohemian artists struggling for life, laughter, and a chance to know themselves, were pulled from the modern melting pot and implanted into Murger�s and Puccini�s original characters. Instead of simple poets, musicians and artists, Larson created the songwriter/ex-junkie, the AIDS-ridden stripper, the diva, the public service lawyer, the computer-age philosopher, the drag queen street performer and the video artist (Cyberland). Starvation and homelessness transferred themselves over the years into panhandling and squatting. Tuberculosis and the idea of the consumptive artist had become venereal diseases in gays and lesbians, addicts and whores. Philosophy had become grassroots protest. Rent was modern bohemianism in a nutshell.
While it was wildly popular and did reach down to the public, Rent did express the tenets of bohemianism without romanticizing too much. During the course of the writing of Rent, Larson �attempted to create believable characters that would stand the tests of time� by inserting the personal nuances of his friends, who lived the modern bohemian lifestyle alongside him (Mary). The plot presented equality strongly; the different lifestyles and races pictured attest to that. He combined the caf� atmosphere with the tenement ambiance. His musical numbers combined rock and roll with Broadway � the songs of the modern balladeer. The optimistic attitude of the bohemian (in general, as some bohemians were very pessimistic) shone through in one of the most personal songs in the whole musical:
I can't control my destiny�there�s only us, there�s only this. Forget regret or life is yours to miss�my only goal is just to be. There's only now, there's only here. Give in to love or live in fear. No other path, no other way, no day but today (Larson 72-7).
Though the main emotional points of the musical were indeed bleak and depressing, the bohemian philosophy of living life for the moment brought a certain ironic joy to everything. The characters grin and bear death, hunger, homelessness and utter poverty, and still have energy left over to sing of �five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes so dear � how do you measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights � in laughter, in strife � how about love?� (63-4).
The familiar concept of togetherness, of a bond between men, was particularly emphasized. Near the end of the musical, the characters start breaking up. In the midst of doing so, they reflect on the past year, realizing that they had had their best times during their bohemian years � their hours of friendship. Now, however, they are moving on into society and coping with bigger things: �all this misery pays no salary, so let�s open up a restaurant in Santa Fe � one song to redeem this empty life� (Larson 48, 61-2). Fortunately, it is not the end of an era for Rent�s tragicomic heroes. Following Murger�s warning, all of them have passed the bohemian stage of development and are now looking toward the rest of their lives, but at least they will have had those moments of utter freedom and artistic independence (Dominguez). The inherent message to themselves and to the Broadway-going public is that today is as good a day as any to be true to oneself and be free, mentally, physically, and any other way imaginable.
The bohemian lifestyle, an ever-present expression of cultural and artistic integrity in opposition to the artificiality of society, has been and will always be celebrated because of its underdog image. Though bohemianism has always been around, the general understanding and defining of the invented word �bohemian� only existed through the 19th century to today. The fickle public forgot movements (and through them, physical expressions of bohemianism) and relearned them quickly. Popular figures, from Murger to Hemingway to Kerouac, formed an integral part of the culture of bohemianism, drawing converts from around the world into bohemian centers. From these �pockets� would come spirited debate, philosophical entreaties, art movements, musical masterpieces, extreme poetic license, and of course, alcohol and drug abuse.
These, however, were the underground attributes of bohemianism; the public face was presented over and over again to a willing public through the masterpieces La Vie de Boheme, La Boheme and Rent. The popularity of these works helped the bohemian community thrive.
Against self-doctrine, the Bohemian could only thrive on social acceptance of their work and they relentlessly worked to integrate themselves into their own miniaturized society. No matter the aim, it was Bohemia�s eternal message of optimism that helped it along as a movement and as a public icon, through dramatic means � musicals, operas and plays � and more subtle means.
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