Bohemianism; English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
One characteristic, however, both the Bohemian and the Vagabond have in
common—that is, restlessness. And although there is a restlessness which
is the outcome of superabundant nervous energy—the restlessness of
Dickens in his earlier years, for instance—yet it must be regarded as,
for the most part, a pathological sign. One of the legacies of the
Industrial Revolution has been the neurotic strain which it has
bequeathed to our countrymen. The stress of life upon the nervous system
in this era of commercialism has produced a spirit of feverish unrest
which, permeating society generally, has visited a few souls with special
intensity. It has never been summed up better than by Ruskin, when, in
one of his scornful flashes, he declared that our two objects in life
were: whatever we have, to get more; and wherever we are, to go somewhere
else. Nervous instability is very marked in the case of Hazlitt and De
Quincey; and there was a strain of morbidity in Borrow, Jefferies, and
Stevenson.
Far more pronounced in its neurotic character is Modern Bohemianism—as I
prefer to call the “town Vagabond.” The decadent movement in literature
has produced many interesting artistic figures, but they lack the grit
and the sanity of outlook which undoubtedly marks the Vagabond. In
France to-day morbidity and Vagabondage are inseparable.
Gallic Vagabonds, such as Verlaine and Baudelaire, interesting as they
are to men of letters and students of psychology, do not engage our
affections as do the English Vagabonds. We do not take kindly to their
personalities. It is like passing through the hot streets after inhaling
the scent of the woodland. There is something stifling and unhealthy
about the atmosphere, and one turns with relief to the vagabondage of men
like Whitman, who are “enamoured of growth out of doors.”
Of profounder interest is the Russian Vagabond. In Russian Literature
the Vagabond seems to be the rule, not the exception.
Every great Russian writer has more or less of the Vagabond about him.
Tolstoy, it is true, wears the robe of the Moralist, and Tolstoy the
Ascetic cries down Tolstoy the Artist. But I always feel that the most
enduring part of Tolstoy’s work is the work of the Vagabond temperament
that lurks beneath the stern preacher. Political and social exigencies
have driven him to take up a position which is certainly not in harmony
with many traits in his nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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