A bohemian is mentioned as someone who leads a lifestyle far from social conventions.
From the Latin bohemius , the term bohemia has various meanings. The word is associated with the lifestyle that deviates from social conventions and that privileges art and culture over material things. By extension, a bohemian person is one who leads this type of life. For example: “Juan is a bohemian, he lives in a train car and dedicates himself to painting,” “Bohemian nights were a classic of Paris in the '60s.”
These uses of the term also allow us to refer to bohemia in general, as the community of people who live in this way: “The bohemia of Buenos Aires met at the Café Tortoni” , “After the closure of the cultural center, the bohemia has lost their main refuge.”
A historic region
Bohemia is a region of the Czech Republic bordering Poland , Austria and Germany . It is surrounded by mountain ranges and has industry, agriculture and mining as the main sectors of its economy . Bohemia manufactures automobiles, iron, machinery and other products that are exported to various regions of the world, even beyond European borders.
From this derives the name that was later given to the homonymous cultural movement since numerous groups of gypsies left this region for France and other European countries and who were characterized by presenting lives and social values that were absolutely different from those of the rest of the people .
Bohemia is the name of a historical region of the Czech Republic.
The first bohemians
In this way, the intellectuals who emerged from these groups began to be known as bohemians and later the concept was expanded to all those who led a disheveled lifestyle that went against the values considered fundamental.
The bohemians, in addition to leading disorderly lives, sleeping anywhere and spending a long time without eating and not caring about the needs of the world, had a free way of thinking, were atheists or agnostics and criticized the lifestyle of the aristocracy . All this made them more repudiated by those in control of the companies.
The concept in literature
In the history of literature there have been various movements that were led by people who had lifestyles that differed greatly from how most people did and who, although they did not share the same ideas, could find themselves in bohemia to confront the "normal" values imposed by the great social powers.
In Paris during the 18th century there was a condensed group of authors who lived almost in conditions of destitution and dedicated themselves absolutely to literature, which led the writer Henri Murger to write his famous work "Scenes of Life in Bohemia", which is It became a kind of treatise for those who wanted to reveal themselves to dogmatic customs and ideas.
The Spanish Bohemians
In Spain, more precisely in Madrid, there was an important bohemian movement during the 19th century in which authors from various trends merged : realists, naturalists, avant-garde . Among them were writers from the Generation of '98 , Noucentismo and the Generation of '27, among others. In an extremely difficult time for literature, times of dictatorship and censorship , despite this, literature emerged in the lower and upper neighborhoods and spread throughout the city.
It is worth mentioning that many authors left records of what the life of bohemian authors was like, such as works such as "Adventures, inventions and mystifications of Silvestre Paradox", written by Pío Baroja, or "Luces de bohemia" by the author Valle-Inclán , allow us to get deeply closer to this era. But surely the work that best recreates this period is "The Masks of the Hero", by Juan Manuel de Prada.