What associations do you have with the word"Bohemia"? Is it a way of life, the name of an opera, or can this term be used to designate a certain group of people? In order to better understand the meaning of this word, you first need to plunge into history ...
At first, as usual, there was a word, and the word was- "Gypsy". That is the translation from the French word "boheme". It all began with the fact that an unprecedentedly French, free and cheerful Roma tribe arrived in Paris at the beginning of the 15th century from the Austro-Hungarian town of Bohemia. How did the gypsies live?
They were roaming tribes of free people, notcramped by the strict framework of social principles and rules common to European residents. The manners and customs of the new inhabitants made a huge impression on the then Parisians. In addition, the Gypsies were endowed with the ability to various kinds of arts: they sang beautifully, danced, showed different tricks. In general, it was impossible to miss them.
Parisians called cranks bohemians by namethe places from which they arrived, and since then this definition has firmly settled in the languages of different nations, denoting people of a free, nomadic way of life. But the modern bohemian is not Roma at all. What does this word mean now?
А дальше дело обстояло вот как:In 1851, a literary work by Henri Murge called "Scenes from the Life of Bohemia" was born in France. And the characters in this book were not Gypsies, but the young and poor inhabitants of the Latin Quarter: artists, artists, poets.
This creative youth is just as inconvenient.everyday life, like the Roma tribe, they occupy the opposite position of the well-fed and primitive life of the French bourgeois. On the one hand, they are part of the working people, but on the other, they still cannot be in constant disagreement with the society of the rich.
Subsequently, based on the works of Henri MürzheGiacomo Puccini wrote the opera "La Boheme", which gained immense popularity all over the world. And later, the composer Imre Kalman, based on the plot "Scenes from the Life of Bohemia", published the operetta "Violet of Montmartre". From now on, the meaning of the word "Bohemia" has changed completely.
But if we talk about the meaning of this word in ourdays, then bohemia is no longer the designation of only talented, but poor and unrecognized rebel artists. Today, this term is more commonly used when it comes to the most famous, wealthy and, at the same time, extraordinary representatives of various areas of modern art.
It is rather a kind of elite of our society:famous fashion designers, singers, film actors, directors, playwrights, artists, writers and poets. Their bohemian way of life creates a lot of gossip and serves as a constant feed for the most popular and scandalous publications of glossy magazines.
А теперь хотелось бы поговорить о понятии "Russian bohemia". This expression refers to the representatives of the creative intelligentsia of the Russian silver age. Their desire for creative freedom became the forerunner of the upcoming revolution. Here are a few names of some of the brightest representatives of Russian bohemia: Sergey Yesenin, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Maximilian Voloshin, Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Valery Bryusov, Vera Khlebnikova, etc.
In the pre-revolutionary years it was still quiteyoung people seeking to create various creative unions. They were looking for new forms of expression and piously believed that the revolution would help create a new, free person. Subsequently, they all had to endure a strong disappointment, since the illusions were unrealizable.
