Why/How did the Bohemian ethnic group become essentially synonymous with “hippies” and a certain aesthetic? Are Gypsy, Romany, and Bohemian terms for the same group?
In: Culture
In early 19th century France a lot of artists, actors, writers and other creative types had begun to live in lower class, low-rent neighbourhoods that were often home to large Romani populations.
Other comments have mentioned that the Romani people were thought to have originated in Bohemia. It’s also worth pointing out that the word ‘gypsy’ is derived from the Greek for ‘Egyptian’ because they were thought to have been exiled from Egypt in the Byzantine Empire. Modern genetic evidence suggests they actually originated from northern India, but that’s not really relevant.
Some Romani groups find ‘gypsy’ to be offensive so it’s best avoided, but that’s not universally true and it’s equally offensive to lump all Romani people together. There are many disparate subgroups, but let’s not get into that here.
The original lower-case bohemians were associated with unorthodox lifestyles and anti-establishment politics. They often lived in voluntary poverty, working less than they could to have more time to pursue their art and having few permanent ties, furthering their association with the upper case Bohemian people in France who were generally poor. Both groups were also associated with lawlessness (probably unfairly) as in the opera *Carmen* where the title character (who is Romani) sings that “love is a gypsy child, it has never ever known the law”.
The unorthodox way of life of French bohemians quickly spread out of France and the name was adopted in New York by a group of writers, poets and journalists in the mid 1800s. Amongst them was Walt Whitman, whose poetry was highly controversial for its overt sexuality, and Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose book *The Hasheesh Eater* describing his experiences using cannabis helped to popularise its usage in the United States. Whitman was a big influence on the Beat Generation of the 1940s and 50s, particularly on Allen Ginsberg. The Beats also broke with conventional lifestyles in favour of spirituality, sexual liberty and creative pursuits but they tended to be less politically active than the previous generations of bohemians. A lot of them also hated being called ‘beatniks’. Again, that’s not really very relevant, but I find it interesting. ‘Beatnik’ was coined as an insult, associating the Beats with the Russian satellite Sputnik, and therefore with communism. Because the Beats were generally not very political they didn’t want that association and thought of the people who embraced the beatnik moniker as being poseurs who were copying their aesthetic but not really being part of the Beat Generation.
The counter-culture revolution of the 1960s and 70s took some influence from the Beats, but it ramped up political engagement in light of the Civil Rights Movement and escalation of the Vietnam War, and it moved away from the darker, more drab style of the Beat Generation in favour of a brighter, more colourful aesthetic. Combined with the popularity of psychedelics at the time (Ludlow’s *The Hasheeh Eater* had a popular resurgence in the 60s) and the ‘flower power’ protest movement and their influence on hippie fashion, their style was partly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of artists who worked in England in the mid 1800s, during the height of the original bohemianism although the two weren’t closely associated at the time. They rejected the prevalent art of the time which they considered ‘sloshy’ and drab, in favour of brighter compositions, similar to the way the hippie movement rejected the darker Beat style. They considered the study of nature an important part of depicting it, and held that their art had to Express ‘genuine ideas’ and not just be conventional and ‘learned by rote’. Given that their paintings often depicted the fashions of their era, those fashions became popular as part of the ‘boho’ style of the 1960s and 70s.
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