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The British rock band Queen receives the biopic treatment of "Bohemian Rhapsody", which will be released this weekend. The film shares its title with the group's iconic song, a dummy pastiche that achieved improbable tube status in 1975 and has since become a sustainable pop-cultural stand-up.
When Freddie Mercury proposed the title of the inimitable song, he may have hinted at the Hungarian Rhapsodies, a set of piano pieces composed by Franz Liszt. But by replacing Hungary with Bohemia, it was not simply a geographical change of the neighboring regions of Central Europe. He was talking about the unconventional artistic tradition of "bohemianism".
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Finally, the French "bohemian" became synonymous with "vagabond" or "adventurer".
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Bohemia was originally the name of a kingdom encompbading the western part of the present Czech Republic, populated by a Gallic tribe known as Boii. The ancient Romans knew the region as "Boiohaemum", combining the name of the tribe with a Germanic root meaning "homeland". Once an independent principality, Bohemia was later ruled by the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Austrian Empire.
In the 15th century, an itinerant ethnic group from northern India traveled to western Europe. Known as Rom or Romani, they have received many names in European languages, reflecting various erroneous theories about their origins. Some thought that they came from Egypt, hence the English name "gypcian", abbreviated as "gypsy". Many traveled with letters of good conduct given by King Sigismund of Bohemia. Thus, in French, they were wrongly called "bohemian" or "bohemian".
Finally, "bohemian" became synonymous with "wanderer" or "adventurer" and in English, "bohemian" followed suit. Paris became famous for its nonconformist types pursuing a carefree "bohemian" lifestyle, especially at the height of the 1830's romantic movement. French journalist Félix Pyat wrote in 1834 that "today's Bohemians Were young artists who wanted to live "outside of their time" and "outside of society". of Bohemia ", which became the basis of opera" La Bohème "by Giacomo Puccini)
More "words in the street"
This romantic image filtered through the Channel when Eugène Sue's serial novel entitled "The Mysteries of Paris" was translated in the 1840s and presented on the London scene under the title "The Bohemians or Fetishes of Paris". William Makepeace Thackeray used the word in "Vanity Fair" of 1848, writing that his protagonist, Becky Sharp, was "wild and wandering nature, inherited from father and mother, both bohemians".
A decade later, in 1858, the New York Times reported that "bohemianism" had crossed the Atlantic. Noting that the word was not yet in the Webster dictionary, the Times defined a "bohemian" as "either an artist or an author, whose particular dislike is work and whose ambition is to To excel in a particular approach for which Nature never conceived it. "
Despite this cynical definition, the aesthetic appeal of bohemianism has made its way into the United States, and San Francisco-based writers such as Bret Harte and Mark Twain have embraced this designation with enthusiasm. A group of artists and journalists founded the Bohemian Club, as well as a more private refuge north of the city, Bohemian Grove.
In the 20th century, "bohemian" (sometimes abbreviated as "boho") persisted as a romantic image of artistic individualism pursued beyond the boundaries of conventional society. It is no wonder that this word has such appeal to a non-conformist like Freddie Mercury who wrote a song about a "poor boy" who is "easygoing" in a bohemian work of art that transcends expectations pop music in the 1970s.
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