DOI Heft:
Nr. 2
DOI Artikel:Murawska-Muthesius, Katarzyna: The myth of bohemianism in nineteenth-century Warsaw
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51715#0196
their companions, the author and historian Ksawery
Zenon Sierpiňski, who was moving from one rented
fiat to another. The whole group marched together
through the major streets of the city, carrying the bed
with Sierpiňski prostrated on his miserable mattress,
and flaunting a pitiful stock of domestic items owned
by the poor writer, so few of them that they could
easily be carried by hand by his friends. Carefully
staged, the move meant much more than a common
move, transforming the épisode from everyday life
into a Street performance, and was used as an occa-
sion to proclaim the group’s artistic, social and politi-
cal credo, and to demonstrate the contempt towards
ail kinds of strictures imposed by the Tsarist police.
On the one hand, the event created a perfect oppor-
tunity to extol poverty as both virtue and rébellion
in its own right, and on the other hand it lent itself
rather aptly to evoke the romande longing for the
freedoms of the nomadic life of Gypsies, vagabonds
and itinérant performers. On top of that, the singing
of arias from opéras during the procession served as
a way of attracting attention to the provocation, but
also of stressing its artifice, and indeed of turning
the move-event into an art-event, to the bewilder-
ment and irritation of the law-obeying citizens of
Warsaw. As argued by Gomulicki, however, behind
the provocation against the “comic philistin^ stood
“the whole Empire with thousands of Tsarist officiais” ,19 20
The procession through the streets of Warsaw was
a manifestation of contempt against the laws of the
police, forbidding public assemblies in streets. Thus,
the real addressee of this action was not the philis-
tine, but the Paskevitch’s apparatus of persécution,
attempting to discipline not just the political life in
Congress Poland, but also the private sphere of the
individual, who could be arrested just for growing a
beard, associated with the revolutionary views.
19 Ibidem, p. 26.
20 Murger’s book was known to the members of Warsaw’s
literary bohemia who referred to it explicitly in their own
works, see NIEWIAROWSKI, A.: Rotmistrsfiesyoty [Cavalry
Capitan without Cavalry]. Warszawa 1856, Vol. 2, pp. 86-87.
It was translated into Polish as S ceny y cyaa cyganerii in 1907
by Zofia Wrôblewska, and again in 1927 by Tadeusz Boy-
-Želeňski.
It is almost impossible to assess today to what
extent the eccentric life habits, careless dress and
Street démonstrations practiced by the Warsaw
literary bohème were of their own invention, or, to
what measure they might hâve been inspired by the
news from Paris, disseminated both by the word of
mouth, by journals and by Murger’s Scènes de la vie de
bohème?0 or, indeed, whether they might hâve been
directly influenced by the rituals of unruly behaviour
celebrated by some German students corporations,
the Burschenschaften, which had been known to
some of the group members through first-hand
expérience.21 An additional problém is created by the
fact that the very accounts of the eccentricities of
the Warsaw bohemia were written as memoirs, dating
from the 1850s or later and thus, almost inevitably,
they must hâve followed the already thriving literary
discourse about bohemianism. Thus, what we analyse
are not the actual Street performances and other
eccentricities of the Warsaw bohemia, but their de-
scriptions. As argued by Wilson: “Bohemia... couldnever
be separatedfrom its literary and visual représentation. Once
these représentations existed, new générations could build on
them. So that the bohemian myth was self-perpetuating..., re-
cycled and amplifiedT22 The picturesque accounts of the
untidy space of the éditorial board of Nadwišlanin,
and of the chaotic contents of their flats and their
untidy clothes must hâve been informed, at least to
some extent, by the existing literary tropes.23
Regardless of the originality, however, what ap-
pears to be spécifie just to the Warsaw literary bohème
are the political overtones of their protest, and the
adoption of the patterns of social and aesthetic
dissent associated with bohemian communities into
the strategies of the fight for political autonomy. In
the opinion of the poet and the writer Aleksander
Niewiarowski, the Warsaw bohemia did not follow
21 Jozef Bogdan Dziekoňski studied in Dorpat University.
— KAWYN 2004 (see in note 14), p. 15. For the role of Ger-
man universities in establishing the boundary between the
students and the townsfolk in the early modem period, and
the origins of the term “philistine”, see RYKWERT, J.: The
Constitution of Bohemia. In: Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics,
1997, No. 31 (The Abject), p. 112.
22 WILSON 2009 (see in note 6), p. 6.
23 GOMULICKI 1964 (see in note 11), pp. 67-217.
188
Zenon Sierpiňski, who was moving from one rented
fiat to another. The whole group marched together
through the major streets of the city, carrying the bed
with Sierpiňski prostrated on his miserable mattress,
and flaunting a pitiful stock of domestic items owned
by the poor writer, so few of them that they could
easily be carried by hand by his friends. Carefully
staged, the move meant much more than a common
move, transforming the épisode from everyday life
into a Street performance, and was used as an occa-
sion to proclaim the group’s artistic, social and politi-
cal credo, and to demonstrate the contempt towards
ail kinds of strictures imposed by the Tsarist police.
On the one hand, the event created a perfect oppor-
tunity to extol poverty as both virtue and rébellion
in its own right, and on the other hand it lent itself
rather aptly to evoke the romande longing for the
freedoms of the nomadic life of Gypsies, vagabonds
and itinérant performers. On top of that, the singing
of arias from opéras during the procession served as
a way of attracting attention to the provocation, but
also of stressing its artifice, and indeed of turning
the move-event into an art-event, to the bewilder-
ment and irritation of the law-obeying citizens of
Warsaw. As argued by Gomulicki, however, behind
the provocation against the “comic philistin^ stood
“the whole Empire with thousands of Tsarist officiais” ,19 20
The procession through the streets of Warsaw was
a manifestation of contempt against the laws of the
police, forbidding public assemblies in streets. Thus,
the real addressee of this action was not the philis-
tine, but the Paskevitch’s apparatus of persécution,
attempting to discipline not just the political life in
Congress Poland, but also the private sphere of the
individual, who could be arrested just for growing a
beard, associated with the revolutionary views.
19 Ibidem, p. 26.
20 Murger’s book was known to the members of Warsaw’s
literary bohemia who referred to it explicitly in their own
works, see NIEWIAROWSKI, A.: Rotmistrsfiesyoty [Cavalry
Capitan without Cavalry]. Warszawa 1856, Vol. 2, pp. 86-87.
It was translated into Polish as S ceny y cyaa cyganerii in 1907
by Zofia Wrôblewska, and again in 1927 by Tadeusz Boy-
-Želeňski.
It is almost impossible to assess today to what
extent the eccentric life habits, careless dress and
Street démonstrations practiced by the Warsaw
literary bohème were of their own invention, or, to
what measure they might hâve been inspired by the
news from Paris, disseminated both by the word of
mouth, by journals and by Murger’s Scènes de la vie de
bohème?0 or, indeed, whether they might hâve been
directly influenced by the rituals of unruly behaviour
celebrated by some German students corporations,
the Burschenschaften, which had been known to
some of the group members through first-hand
expérience.21 An additional problém is created by the
fact that the very accounts of the eccentricities of
the Warsaw bohemia were written as memoirs, dating
from the 1850s or later and thus, almost inevitably,
they must hâve followed the already thriving literary
discourse about bohemianism. Thus, what we analyse
are not the actual Street performances and other
eccentricities of the Warsaw bohemia, but their de-
scriptions. As argued by Wilson: “Bohemia... couldnever
be separatedfrom its literary and visual représentation. Once
these représentations existed, new générations could build on
them. So that the bohemian myth was self-perpetuating..., re-
cycled and amplifiedT22 The picturesque accounts of the
untidy space of the éditorial board of Nadwišlanin,
and of the chaotic contents of their flats and their
untidy clothes must hâve been informed, at least to
some extent, by the existing literary tropes.23
Regardless of the originality, however, what ap-
pears to be spécifie just to the Warsaw literary bohème
are the political overtones of their protest, and the
adoption of the patterns of social and aesthetic
dissent associated with bohemian communities into
the strategies of the fight for political autonomy. In
the opinion of the poet and the writer Aleksander
Niewiarowski, the Warsaw bohemia did not follow
21 Jozef Bogdan Dziekoňski studied in Dorpat University.
— KAWYN 2004 (see in note 14), p. 15. For the role of Ger-
man universities in establishing the boundary between the
students and the townsfolk in the early modem period, and
the origins of the term “philistine”, see RYKWERT, J.: The
Constitution of Bohemia. In: Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics,
1997, No. 31 (The Abject), p. 112.
22 WILSON 2009 (see in note 6), p. 6.
23 GOMULICKI 1964 (see in note 11), pp. 67-217.
188