Bohemians of the Latin Quarter | Page 3

or the Epee Royale, and sups in the evening at the table of the
Duc de Joyeuse; it fights duels under a street lamp for the sonnet of
Urania against the sonnet of Job. Bohemia makes love, war, and even
diplomacy, and in its old days, weary of adventures, it turns the Old
and New Testament into poetry, figures on the list of benefices, and
well nourished with fat prebendaryships, seats itself on an episcopal
throne, or a chair of the Academy, founded by one of its children.
It was in the transition period between the sixteenth and eighteenth
centuries that appeared those two lofty geniuses, whom each of the
nations amongst which they lived opposed to one another in their
struggles of literary rivalry. Moliere and Shakespeare, those illustrious
Bohemians, whose fate was too nearly akin.
The most celebrated names of the literature of the eighteenth century
are also to be found in the archives of Bohemia, which, amongst the
glorious ones of this epoch, can cite Jean Jacques Rousseau and
d'Alembert, the foundling of the porch of Notre Dame, and amongst the
obscure, Malfilâtre and Gilbert, two overrated reputations, for the
inspiration of the one was but a faint reflection of the weak lyricism of
Jean Baptiste Rousseau, and the inspiration of the other but the
blending of proud impotence with a hatred which had not even the
excuse of initiative and sincerity, since it was only the paid instrument
of party rancour.
We close with this epoch this brief summary of Bohemia in different
ages, a prolegomena besprinkled with illustrious names that we have

purposely placed at the beginning of this work, to put the reader on his
guard against any misapplication he might fall into on encountering the
title of Bohemians; long bestowed upon classes from which those
whose manners and language we have striven to depict hold it an honor
to differ.
Today, as of old, every man who enters on an artistic career, without
any other means of livelihood than his art itself, will be forced to walk
in the paths of Bohemia. The greater number of our contemporaries
who display the noblest blazonry of art have been Bohemians, and
amidst their calm and prosperous glory they often recall, perhaps with
regret, the time when, climbing the verdant slope of youth, they had no
other fortune in the sunshine of their twenty years than courage, which
is the virtue of the young, and hope, which is the wealth of the poor.
For the uneasy reader, for the timorous citizen, for all those for whom
an "i" can never be too plainly dotted in definition, we repeat as an
axiom: "Bohemia is a stage in artistic life; it is the preface to the
Academy, the Hôtel Dieu, or the Morgue."
We will add that Bohemia only exists and is only possible in Paris.
We will begin with unknown Bohemians, the largest class. It is made
up of the great family of poor artists, fatally condemned to the law of
incognito, because they cannot or do not know how to obtain a scrap of
publicity, to attest their existence in art, and by showing what they are
already prove what they may some day become. They are the race of
obstinate dreamers for whom art has remained a faith and not a
profession; enthusiastic folk of strong convictions, whom the sight of a
masterpiece is enough to throw into a fever, and whose loyal heart
beats high in presence of all that is beautiful, without asking the name
of the master and the school. This Bohemian is recruited from amongst
those young fellows of whom it is said that they give great hopes, and
from amongst those who realize the hopes given, but who, from
carelessness, timidity, or ignorance of practical life, imagine that
everything is done that can be when the work is completed, and wait
for public admiration and fortune to break in on them by escalade and
burglary. They live, so to say, on the outskirts of life, in isolation and

inertia. Petrified in art, they accept to the very letter the symbolism of
the academical dithyrambic, which places an aureola about the heads of
poets, and, persuaded that they are gleaming in their obscurity, wait for
others to come and seek them out. We used to know a small school
composed of men of this type, so strange, that one finds it hard to
believe in their existence; they styled themselves the disciples of art for
art's sake. According to these simpletons, art for art's sake consisted of
deifying one another, in abstaining from helping chance, who did not
even know their address, and in waiting for pedestals to come of their
own accord and place themselves under them.
It is, as one sees,