The following question has been asked to determine whether one is a Bohemian: You have enough money to buy either art supplies or a meal, but not enough money to buy both. Which would you buy? If you chose art supplies, you qualify as a Bohemian.
That was the CONVENTIONAL definition.
I could rephrase the question: You have enough money to buy a trip to NZ to play touch, or a month's luxury living right here in town. But not enough money to buy both. Which would you buy? If you chose the All Nations trip, you qualify as a Bohemian.
Or should that be "fanatic"??
A lady named Ada Clare, known to New York as the Queen of Bohemia, had stated in 1860: "The Bohemian is by nature, if not by habit, a cosmopolite, with a general sympathy for the fine arts, and for all things above and beyond convention. The Bohemian is not, like the creature of society, a victim of rules and customs; he steps over them with an easy, graceful, joyous unconnsciousness, guided by the principles of good taste and feeling. Above all others, essentially, the Bohemian must not be narrow minded; if he be, he is degraded back to the position of near worlding." - from The Improper Bohemians, Churchill, Allen. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1959, p. 25.
...An unnamed British observer who stated "Bohemianism is understood to mean a gay disorderliness of life, cheerful bad manners, and no fixed hours or sexual standards." - from The Improper Bohemians, Churchill, Allen. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1959, p. 26.
"They had all in a sense, been Bohemian; they had maintained the right of the poet and the man of letters to escape the social system, to follow a personal moral code, to create his own environment, and develop his originality. They had asserted the right of man to live as he chose..." - from The Bohemians, Richarson, Joanna. London: Macmillan, 1969, p 21.
Source:
http://home.swbell.net/worchel/
