Bohemianism Outside Paris
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2 ARS 2/201 Authored mainly by Slovak historians of the post-Communist era and edited by Mikuláš Teich (Robinson College in Cambridge), Dušan Kováč (Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava) and Martin D. Brown (The American International University in London), this collection of essays is the first book written in English that covers the history of Slovakia from the Middle Ages to the establishment of independent Slovak Republic on January 1, 1993. Ivan Gerát’s new book (in Slovak) bears witness to a continuation of his research of metamorphoses of the legends of saints in the area of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary in the European context – after the book on St. Elisabeth of Hungary (2009), he looks now closer at the holy warriors, St. George and St. Ladislas. Beside a number of quality and illustrative figures, the book is also [ ] equipped with a catalogue of narrative image cycles of the saints preserved in Slovakia (description, [ ] locality, present state), altogether 35 sites. ars 2012 Ročník / Volume 45 Číslo / Number 2 Obsah / Contents ÚVOD / INTRODUCTION Katarzyna MURAWSKA-MUTHESIUS Bohemianism outside Paris. Central Europe and Beyond (87) Bohéma mimo Paríža. Stredná Európa a ďalej ŠTÚDIE / ARTICLES Karen TURMAN Bohemian Artists and “Real Bohemians”. Life as Spectacle in Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris and Gautier’s Les Jeunes-France (94) Bohémski umelci a „skutoční bohémi“. Život ako divadlo v Hugovom románe Notre-Dame de Paris a Gautierovej zbierke poviedok Les Jeunes-France Campbell EWING Liszt’s Involvement in Manet’s Gypsy Images (108) Lisztova účasť na Manetových obrazoch Cigánov Stefan MUTHESIUS The Rule of Art. A Short Introduction to the Munich Art World in the Nineteenth Century (126) Vláda umenia. Stručný úvod k problematike mníchovského umeleckého života v devätnástom storočí Roman PRAHL Bohemians in Prague in the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century (143) Bohémi v Praze ve druhé polovině devatenácteho století Eleanor F. MOSEMAN The “Bohemian” in Prague. Bohumil Kubišta as Social Critic (155) „Bohém“ v Prahe. Bohumil Kubišta ako kritik spoločnosti György SZÜCS Bohemians in Hungary, Hungarians in “Bohemia” (170) Bohémi v Uhorsku, Uhri v „Bohémii“ Katarzyna MURAWSKA-MUTHESIUS The Myth of Bohemianism in Nineteenth-Century Warsaw (183) Mýtus bohémy vo Varšave v devätnástom storočí Urszula KOZAKOWSKA-ZAUCHA Decadents, Pessimists and Neo-Romantics, or, Young Poland and Bohemianism in Krakow (202) Dekadenti, pesimisti a neoromantici alebo Mladé Poľsko a bohéma v Krakove Marc S. SMITH New York Bohemianism in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century (212) Newyorská bohéma v druhej polovici devätnásteho storočia The editorial board thanks Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius for guest-editing this issue. Redakcia ďakuje Katarzyne Murawskej-Muthesius za zostavenie tohto čísla. ÚVOD / INTRODUCTION ARS 45, 2012, 2 Bohemianism outside Paris. Central Europe and Beyond Katarzyna MURAWSKA-MUTHESIUS The term “bohemian”, as well as the geography against the existing social norms and aesthetic rules. and history of bohemianism are ambiguous and The emerging attitude of bohemianism, linked to the infinitely expandable. Bohemia, first of all, refers notion of exceptional creativity, dissidence, eccen- to the lands of the Czechs. Since the 15th century, tricity and sexual outrage, has become a shorthand however, the French term bohémiens was used also as for transgression, for the defiance of authority and a synonym for Gypsies, commonly believed to have power, as well as a synecdoche for modern art and lived in this area of Central Europe.1 From the end modern identities. Although the “historical” capital of the eighteenth century, in French, the term was of la bohème was the Quartier Latin of pre-Hauss- applied to “drifters living by their wits”2 and members mann Paris, as immortalised by Murger and Puc- of the criminal underclass, to be associated by the cini, since the later nineteenth century, bohemian 1830s with informal communities of artists, poets, communities and districts have kept emerging in musicians, philosophers and journalists, living on the further parts of Paris, as well as in other major cities fringes of the urban economy. The disappearance of of Europe and America, such as in London’s Soho, the old forms of patronage in the nineteenth century, Munich’s Schwabing, New York’s Greenwich Village, as well as the ensuing commodification of culture Venice Beach in California, but also in Eastern Eu- in a society dominated by the bourgeoisie brought rope, Latin America, Asia, and in many other places about the loss of the immediate social function of all over the world. the cultural producer, and, in turn, the emergence of The centrality of the bohemian counterculture the bohemian artist who, liberated from the impera- for the emergence of modernist aesthetic autonomy tive to glorify the patron, had turned the condition and the avant-garde spirit of non-conformity and of alienation into that of an autonomy and rebellion revolt3 attracted a number of scholars, who ap- 1 I would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief of Ars, Prof. Ján Towards Analysis and Definition]. In: Pamiętnik Literacki Bakoš, for inviting me to edit an issue of this journal on the [Literary Journal], 29, 1932, pp. 75-93. topic of my choice and for his unfaltering approval of the topic of bohemianism. My sincere thanks are also due to 2 DARNTON, R.: Bohemians before Bohemianism. Den Haag the Ars Editor Miroslav Hrdina for his continuous support 2006, available online at http://www.nias.knaw.nl/Content/ during all stages of this project. On the history of the term, NIAS/Publicaties/KB%20Lectures/kb3.pdf. The text has and on the relationship between bohemians and Tsiganes, also been published as DARNTON, R.: Introduction. In: see TREPS, M.: Comment on nomme le Bohémiens et les The Bohemians (1790), a novel by Anne Gédéon Lafitte, Marquis de Tsiganes. In: MOUSSA, S. (ed.): Le mythe des Bohémiens dans Pelleport. Philadelphia 2010. la littérature et les arts en Europe. Paris 2008, pp. 21-38. See also RYKWERT, J.: The Constitution of Bohemia. In: Res: 3 On this particular issue, see COTTINGTON, D.: The For- Anthropology and Aesthetics, 1997, No. 31 (The Abject), pp. mation of the Avant-Garde in Paris and London, c. 1880 109-127; and KLEINERMAN, S.: Cyganerja i cyganowanie. – 1915. In: Art History, 35, 2012, No. 3, pp. 596-621, esp. pp. Próba charakterystyki i definicji [Bohemia and Bohemianism. 601-610. 87 proached the phenomenon of bohemianism from a the Gypsy nomadic life, the naming error, which variety of perspectives, often interdisciplinary, com- identified the Gypsies with the inhabitants of the bining literary studies, visual arts, popular culture, territory of Bohemia, begs further questions about film studies, as well as music, and, not unfrequently, both the metaphorical and the real geography of arriving at conflicting conclusions. If for Arnold bohemianism. It suggests an inquiry into the latent Hauser, writing about Courbet, “bohemianism is and Central/Eastern European connotations of Parisian remains an heir of aesthetisizing romanticism”, for T. J. bohemianism, which are inherent in the association Clark, “Bohemia in mid-nineteenth-century Paris was a real of the cradle of bohemianism with Bohemia, the social class, a locus of dissent”, while for Jerrold Seigel, exotic and remote land on the margins of Europe, bohemianism is inseparable from the ideology of inhabited by strangers. Seen in this light, the bohe- the bourgeoisie.4 Recently, Lisa Tickner looked at mian myth lends itself to further investigation as a bohemianism through the prism of Bourdieu’s very specific manifestation of Orientalism (the issue theory of the cultural field, addressing also the addressed in Marc Smith’s text below), the one which much neglected issue of gender.5 Marilyn Brown – analogous to Primitivism – is propelled by desire and Sandra Moussa investigated the affinities of rather than disgust, and which, accordingly, appropri- the nomadic bohemian artist with Gypsies, while ates the constructed markers of cultural alterity as Mary Gluck pointed to its engagement with popu- the imagined subject position for the new rebellious lar culture and commercial entertainment.6 Step- Self. Inevitably, the arbitrary appropriation of the ping outside the magic circle of Paris and the long term “Bohemian” is followed by its transcription nineteenth century, Elizabeth Wilson explored the into “bohemian”, which transposes the geographi- patterns of discursive construction of the bohemian cal identity with a socio-cultural one, attributed to myth, upholding again the belief in its social and Gypsies and vagabonds, thus displacing the territory political intransigence, transnational adoptions and with the nomadic body and relocating both of them contemporary endurance.7 Mike Sell, writing about to Paris. But even if the “original” (albeit erroneous) film, raised the long-avoided issue of the racial un- spatial identification of the signifier “Bohemian” has derpinning of bohemianism, while Daniel Hurewitz, been rendered invisible