Bohemian

“ The merciless ridicule of Paris would have killed them in a week, without support as they were. Defiance of the bourgeois, an absolute essential of the true Bohemian creed, was, therefore, not appropriate to the first cénacle, who lived openly the life of ordinary, decent citizens, while secretly preparing the proclamations, the standards, and the weapons by which the cataclysmic victory of 1830 was to be won. In such a tense moment Bohemia could not be born. Their outlook, in the second place, was too lofty to comprehend the lower planes in which Bohemia made itself conspicuous. ”

“ Bohemia, in Roqueplan's words, must be continually renewed, for the old Bohemian is nothing but a legitimate object for ardent social reformers. So the Bohemians of 1830, some of whom made their names, while others remained obscure, were all youthful nobodies in the eyes of the world, perching in their attics like a colony of singing birds upon the topmost branches. ”

“ But la vie de Bohème, once so vivid a reality, has now no tangible substance: it wanders about, the palest ghost of a legend, formless and indistinct. The young may look forward to it and the old pretend to look back on it, but young and old, in either case, are turning their mind's eye upon a mere abstraction. The word "Bohemian" has become as conventional as "gentleman," with less content for all its greater glamour.
The glamour of Bohemia, too, is projected from a paradox. On the assumption that it exists, those who wish to live in Bohemia idealize it; those who have lived in it boast of it ”

“ But the history of the Bohemia of arts and letters—which rose to its greatest and most prophetic heights in the Paris of the nineteenth century—would no doubt prove to be as extensive a work as Buckle’s “History of Civilization,” though the recitation of tenets and principles of one would be the inevitable reverse of the other.
The intellectual Bohemian—the artist, or the man of letters—has something in his make-up of the gipsy’s love of the open road; the vagabond who instinctively rebels against the established rules of society, more because they are established than for any other reason. ”

“ But you, O Bohemian land, be careful of your fate, for all the words of Christ will be fulfilled;
Many wonders happen; the people murder one another; foul pestilences arise everywhere.
Frequently very noble lords leave us; the able and leading men disappear.
Thus this noble who lies on the bier, let him be an example to us; for we must remember
That there is a prophecy that when this family is extinct there will be no peace in the Bohemian kingdom ”

“ Yet many people, at least in England, do so masquerade—people who affect Chelsea, slouch hats, and ill-cut garments, who haunt Soho restaurants, talk and smoke cigarettes in half a dozen studios, toady sham genius, flutter in emancipatory "movements," and generally do nothing on quite enough a year. Not long ago a distinguished artist, genially inspired by dinner at a club of Bohemian traditions and most respectable membership, gave utterance to the view that, though the velvet coat had disappeared before evening dress, the Bohemian still existed. ”

“ Men of letters, in whom the national consciousness had not died out, now began to work to awaken the same feelings in others, and in due time the fruits of their labors began to appear. Thus it was that the period of the greatest humiliation of the Bohemian language, proved to be the dawn of a new era, in which the nation may yet regain much of its former liberty and importance. ”

“ When after the fall of the Bohemian Kingdom during the XVII Century the Bohemian intellectuals scattered into all corners of the earth it was the good fortune for the people to live in the heart of the Bohemian Lands as if forgotten and unheeded as to their culture. ”

“ SOCIAL CONDITION AND CIVILIZATION IN BOHEMIA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
As early as the thirteenth century the people began to be divided into two nations, the Germans and Bohemians. Nationality.The Bohemian language was used at first by the native nobility, the clergy, and the common people; the German, in the royal cities and villages settled by German immigrants. The German settlers brought with them their own customs and habits, which differed considerably from those of the natives ”

“ We welcome these visitors .these ambassadors from a nation so ancient, so new. They confirm to us the spirit which we had already surmised in the soul of the whole Bohemian people. Never again, they say, and we believe, shall Bohemia return underground. Bohemia will have victory now, in the light of day, or , in the light of day, extermination. They are ruthless for their rights. But not one inch of German soil do they demand. Not one German right, even in Bohemia, do they ask us to extinguish.
Germans, in a minority, have existed in Bohemia for ages. ”

“ It sometimes happens that, as a gipsy’s child turns out to be a prince’s child, who, perforce, dwells in a palace, so the Bohemian is found in a fine house and high society. Bohemia is a fairyland on this hard earth. ”

“ In Bohemia, again, the same difficulties presented themselves in an even more complicated form; for, while many of the Bohemian Reformers had identified their cause with that of the Lutherans, the old feeling of national distinction was driving many into opposition to the aggressive character of the German movement, and compelling them to seek for a new religious centre which should be neither Papal nor German. As the Utraquists could no longer supply such a centre, the championship of Bohemian feeling rapidly passed to the leaders of the Bohemian Brotherhood. ”

“ These illustrious martyrs were, with the exception of Wickliffe, the first advocates of truth a century before the Reformation. Since then, in no language has the Bible been studied with more zeal and devotion than in the Bohemian. The long contest for freedom of conscience which desolated the country until the extinction of the nation is one of the great tragedies of human history.
The period from 1520 to 1620 is considered the golden age of Bohemian literature. ”

“ The honor of carrying the sword was conferred upon a German nobleman. Even now all did not move on smoothly. The Bohemian nobles, either through shame or anger, would not come to the coronation dinner, which so vexed the youthful sovereign that the queen had all she could do to comfort him.
RISE OF LUTHERANISM IN BOHEMIA.
In a previous chapter it was said that the Diet of Kuttenberg, in 1485, by its wise laws settled for many years the religious troubles in the country; but in 1519 they began anew, bringing endless sufferings to the people. ”

“ It is said that at this time at least seventy thousand Slavs in Austria eligible to military service quit the country.
The Germans have succeeded in making the Bohemian culture almost identical with theirs, and it is difficult to find in the German any traits that can be called specifically Bohemian. Only a long future can tell whether there are actually inherent psychological differences which can account for aggressiveness in the one and passivity in the other. ”

“ A chief reason for this is doubtless the complete isolation of the Bohemian immigrant. Several causes operate to bring this about: his singularly harsh and unattractive language, which he can neither easily himself unlearn nor impart to others, his stubborn pride of race, and a popular prejudice which has forced upon him the unjust stigma of a disturber of the public peace and an enemy of organized labor. I greatly mistrust that the Bohemian on our shores is a much-abused man. ”

“ If we except the classical literatures, there is none to whom belong so many books the existence of which can be proved with certainty, yet of which all trace is lost, as to the older literature of Bohemia. Jesuits accompanied by soldiers—to prevent the possibility of resistance—were empowered to search for heretical books in all Bohemian dwellings from the nobleman's castle to the peasant's hut. ”

“ Bohemia was glorious for a few years after 1830 as it has never been since because it proclaimed a creed, the creed of Romanticism. It was glorious then because, with Romanticism, Bohemia was a living force. Given this connexion, there was some point in the bravado, the extravagances and conceits of Bohemian life. They were an irregular army, those young men, and they rejoiced in their irregularity. Épater le bourgeois was a legitimate war-cry when the bourgeois stood for all that was reactionary in art. ”

“ It is to the four writers whom I have now successively referred to that the revival of the Bohemian language and of Bohemian literature is principally due. They were the centre of a group of writers who, if less talented, were no less patriotic and enthusiastic. The isolated position in which they were at first placed, surrounded by Germans or Germanised Bohemians, and living under an absolute Government, that always treated them with suspicion and often with positive enmity, caused these men to draw closely together ”

“ Bohemian scientific literature can be said only to have made its first appearance in the nineteenth century, as previously Bohemian savants published their works either in German or Latin. However, the nationalisation of this branch of the work is progressing steadily. ”

“ But as every species of oppression carried to excess reacts upon itself, bringing its own punishment, so this cruel persecution of the Bohemian people proved the very means of rousing the national spirit, and awakening an interest in the cultivation of a language neglected for so many generations. ”

“ In this class {366} you may find diplomatists who could overthrow the projects of Russia if supported by the power of France. Authors, too, administrators, warriors, journalists, artists, belong to the order of Bohemians.” A less flattering notion, however, of the Bohemian is given by Xavier de Montépin, who in his “Confessions d’une Bohême” describes the adventurer thus: “A lost child of this great Paris, where all the vices have temples and all the bad passions altars and priests, the Bohemian cultivates, with dangerous skill, the worse side of human nature. ”

“ This beautiful and in fact brilliant Bohemian Art succumbed to counter-reformation, as indeed did all the Bohemian Culture. Luckily, however, the counter-reformation could not completely destroy the character of the national spirit. In the simple peasant folk there was kept alive the national song with which grew up the national art of the people. ”

“ The very period at which the danger of Germanization was at its height, at which the national language seemed in the eyes of the Bohemian nationalist to be in no small danger of actual extinction, was a most flourishing epoch in the history of Bohemian literature. ”

“ Intoxicated by their brilliant success, they determined to march home across Bohemia, without even asking permission of the ruler of that country. Very probably, they counted upon the favor of the fourteen lords who had been baptized in Ratisbon, for this was before the baptism of the Bohemian prince. The Bohemians, highly indignant that a hostile army dared cross their territory, hastily collected a large army, fell upon the Germans, and defeated them so that they fled, leaving rich spoils in the hands of the victors. ”

“ Though these translators devoted themselves rather too much to the works of the fathers of the Church and to contemporary writers such as Erasmus and Sebastian Brand, and too little to the real classics, yet their work greatly contributed to the improvement and development of the Bohemian language. The study of ancient literature, which was undoubtedly furthered by their work, had a refining and elevating influence on some of the men who, in the last years of Bohemian independence, played a prominent part in the politics of their country. ”

“ One book-destroyer, an Austrian priest, boasted with pride that he had burned 60,000 Bohemian books. Many works were carried by the Bohemian exiles to Saxony, Slovakland, and other countries, and preserved; and these, together with others that escaped the fury of pillaging soldiers during the Thirty Years’ War, constitute the fragments out of which the literary history before the seventeenth century must be constructed. ”

“ Even the earliest traditions show that long before the introduction of Christianity the Bohemian ideal of national life had been totally different from that of the surrounding nations. The poem of “The Judgment of Libus̆a,” which seems to embody the earliest picture of Bohemian life, is no Iliad or Niebelungen Lied, no story of robber dens or rapes of the Sabines, but the representation of a peace-loving nation trying to uphold traditions of communal ownership of land, and the gentle guidance of the wisest in judicial affairs, modified by an organised expression of popular opinion. ”

“ German at the expense of Bohemian, while, in the University and the schools, both these living languages gave way before the Latin of the Jesuits. The study of history and physical science almost died out. Trade steadily decayed, and the population of the country diminished.
It is obvious that, in such a period as this, the real history of Bohemia should be rather studied in the lives of its exiles, than in the dreary records of its home life. Fortunately, one can find among these exiles a man who is trebly interesting to the historian ”

“ It was further declared that no Bohemian, at the penalty of being deprived of honor, goods, and life, could separate his interests from those of his nation, but must retain his natural love for his country and help it in this hour of need. This proclamation was sent to all parts of the country, and proved so effective that one lord after another sent letters to the camp of Sigmund severing his allegiance from the crown. Indeed, the disaffection toward the emperor was so great that secret messengers were sent to the King of Poland offering him the crown of Bohemia. ”