BOHEMIANISM.

Otago Witness, 14 December 1893, Page 42

BOHEMIANISM.

11 Bohemianism " is a term the application of which has amused, while its derivation has long puzzled, the ordinary "man in thestreeb." In the new play at the Comedy Theatre, Mr Sydney Grundy makes the heroine speak ot her eariy days, with tbeir many and strangß vicissitudes, as "life in Bohemia." This allusion prompts the Pdil Mill Gazette t j ask whether the phrase was in current use in tho England of 1833. Most of us who know anything of French literature know that it was in vogue in Franca at an earlier period. It is found in the writings both of Saint Simon and Madame deSevigD 6, but it only came into anything like popular language when it was adopted by Balzac and Hanii Murgar. Bjlz\c'd "Ua Piince de la Bobfime' belongs to 1840, and Murger's " Scenes de la Vie de Boheme" to some years later. Wa3 the phrase which Balzac ~ revived in use in England in the reign of William IV so many years before Balzic and Murger? The most i aaious allusion to Bohemia in English literature is of course the allusion in Thackeray's " Adventures of Philip " ; but "The Adventures of Philip " was published a generation later than the time in which " Sowing the Wind "is set. Philip entered Bohemia something like 20 years aftar the psriod of " SowiDg the Wind," and Thackeray says that "what is now called Bohemia had no name in Philip's young days, though many of us knew the country very well." The P.M.G. would therefore appear to have established that the use of the phrase "Sawing the Wind" savours slightly o£ anachronism ; but, in any case, it is a very minor offence of which Mr Grandy has been guili y— if , indeed, he be guilty at a!'. It is interesting to note that, according to Biizac, Bjhcmia wa3 located in the Boulevard dcs Iralien3, and was composed of yjungmen beWeen 20 and 30, all men of genius, all little known, but destined to bo known — -writers, diplomatists, coldiers journalists, painters. Murger summed it up in the axiom that Bohemia was the starting

point of the artistic life, that it was the prelude of the academy, the hospital, or the morgue, and that it only existed and was only possible in Paris.