The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter. Henri Murger

      Originally published 1901 by Greening and Co.

      Introduction copyright © 2004 University of Pennsylvania Press

      Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Published by

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Murger, Henri, 1822–1861.

      The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter / Henry Murger ; translated by Ellen Marriage and John Selwyn ; introduction by Maurice Samuels.

      [Scènes de la vie de Bohème. English]

      p. cm.

      Originally published: London : Greening and Co., 1901. With new introduction.

      ISBN 0-8122-1884-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      I. Paris (France)—Fiction. I. Title. II. Marriage, Ellen. III. Selwyn, John.

      PQ2367.M94 S4213 2004

      843’.8—dc22

      2004041959

      INTRODUCTION

       Maurice Samuels

      THANKS to the opera La Bohème (1896), Rodolfo and Mimi have entered the pantheon of our culture’s most famous lovers, alongside Paolo and Francesca and Romeo and Juliet. But if we’ve grown accustomed to imagining the nineteenth-century French poet as a portly Italian tenor, and his garret as a soaring stage set, the dimensions of the original text on which Puccini based his opera were far more modest. In Henry Murger’s depiction of the struggles of a group of bohemians, as poor intellectuals in the Latin Quarter of Paris were beginning to be known, we discover a grittier picture of what it meant to be an artist—or to love one—in Paris in the 1840s. Before he became Puccini’s Rodolfo, Murger’s Rodolphe incarnated the dreams and disappointments of a generation of Parisian writers and artists who would be the first to attempt to live by their pen or brush. On the border between late Romanticism and early Realism, Murger’s novel—really a collection of stories—did much to implant the myth of the artist in modern culture.

      Henry Murger (1822–1861) originally published the stories comprising The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter (Scènes de la vie de Bohème) between 1845 and 1849 in one of the small satirical journals that proliferated in Paris during the July Monarchy (1830–1848), Le Corsaire-Satan (called Le Corsaire after 1847). Like the characters he portrayed, Murger at first remained obscure and penurious, appreciated only by a small coterie of like-minded young artistic laborers. Not until he reworked his stories into a play in 1849, and then into a novel in 1851, did he achieve anything like popular success: Murger was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1858, and became a well-known figure during the early years of the Second Empire (1852–1870). Nevertheless, and despite the fame he gained from his portrait of Bohemia, Murger was never destined to escape from it: the novel earned him only 500 francs, and he died alone in a hospital (a fate reserved for the poor) at the age of thirty-eight, much like his character Jacques, the lovelorn and penniless sculptor.

      Though more realistic in its description of the hardships faced by this group of artists struggling to pay the rent while remaining true to their creative impulses, Murger’s novel is no less mythologizing than Puccini’s opera. Indeed, Murger is largely responsible for creating the myth of Bohemia. “Bordered on the North by hope, work and gaiety, on the South by necessity and courage; on the West and East by slander and the hospital,” Bohemia, as Murger charted it, is a land where the ideal meets the real, where dreams of glory confront the hard fact of modern materialism. Populated by poets, painters, musicians, and philosophers (all male), and by the women who share their lot, Bohemia has its own language, customs, and mores. Sustained more by fellowship than food, speaking a witty slang, dressing in ragged or outlandish costumes, the bohemians look forward to a great future but never know where their next meal will come from. Staring out at Parisian rooftops from their attic rooms, trying to stay warm by burning their furniture and even their manuscripts, Murger’s characters embody all that is joyful about youth, and also all that is tragic for those who fail to outgrow it. For, as Murger warned, Bohemia is the “preface to the Academy, the Hospital or the Morgue.”

      In his original preface to the novel, Murger argued that Bohemia has existed “everywhere and always” and traced its illustrious origins to Greek poets and to minstrels of the Middle Ages. The word itself was originally used in French to designate Europe’s nomadic peoples who were believed to come from a province of what is now the Czech Republic (in English, the term “gypsy” refers to a no less fanciful Egyptian origin). According to historian Jerrold Seigel, the modern use of the term “bohemian” to refer to artists dates to a text by Félix Pyat from 1834, which drew an analogy between the unconventional lifestyle of nomads or gypsies and the bizarre costumes and comportment of the young denizens of the Romantic movement. But despite Pyat’s text, the term took time to gain currency. Romantic followers of Victor Hugo from the generation of 1830, such as Théophile Gautier and Gerard de Nerval, would later refer to their group living in around the rue du Doyenné, near Notre Dame Cathedral, as the “First Bohemia.” But they did not apply that term to themselves at the time. It was Murger’s sketches from the 1840s, and especially his later play and novel, that succeeded in implanting the term in the public consciousness.

      Literary critics and historians have spent much energy hunting for the keys to Murger’s characters, and have identified many of the models in the writers and artists haunting the cafés of the Latin Quarter (including the real Café Momus) in the years leading up to the Revolution of 1848. The members of this “Second Bohemia” included such well-known figures as the photographer Nadar, the writer and critic Champfleury (who for a while shared rooms with Murger), and the poet Baudelaire. Murger’s characters, however, are based on lesser figures from the time. Jacques, the sculptor, is modeled on Joseph Desbrosses (1819–1844); the musician Schaunard is Alexandre Schanne (1823–1887); the painter Marcel is Léopold Tabar (1818–1869); the philosopher Colline is a composite of Jean Wallon (1821–1882) and Marc Trapadoux (1822–?). According to Loïc Chotard, the journalist Charles Barbara (1817–1866) never forgave Murger for his unflattering depiction as the slightly ridiculous Carolus Barbemuche. Rodolphe, of course, is a portrait of Murger himself.

      Contradicting his claim that Bohemia is universal, Murger argued in his preface that it cannot exist outside Paris. Indeed, the imprint of the French capital is everywhere apparent in Murger’s universe. A densely populated place, in which poor artists live alongside pretty seamstresses in garret rooms on the fifth and sixth floors of apartment houses, Bohemia necessitates an urban setting in which boulevard strolling, or flânerie, encourages random encounters. The unique sociability of Murger’s world reflects the distinctive forms of Parisian urbanization. Although London, Vienna, and New York may have had artistic subcultures, Murger’s Bohemia is a product of the specific geographic and even climatic features of the Parisian landscape. In Murger’s Bohemia it is always winter, always cold and gray, and there is never enough wood for the fire. It would be hard to imagine the romance of Rodolphe and Mimi kindling in the more temperate climes of Rome or Naples.

      The specifically Parisian nature of Murger’s Bohemia is also a function of deeper historical forces. Walter Benjamin termed Paris the “capital of the nineteenth century” for the way it starkly embodied the social trends of the entire era, and we find many of these trends at work under the glittering surface of Murger’s novel. The notion of Bohemia itself is intimately