ABSTRACT
Bohemia is not just an artistic and literary phenomenon: it is a social phenomenon as well. But whoever looks for a definition of it in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences looks in vain. Such a significant omission makes one hesitate. Have the distinguished arbiters of social phenomena decided that Bohemia does not exist? Is it then so nebulous as to defy any attempt at analysis? The disappointed student turns to the Oxford English Dictionary with relief, for it directs him to a passage in Thackeray's Philip (1862) where Bohemia is described as
… a land of chambers, billiard rooms, supper rooms, oysters, a land of song, a land where soda flows freely in the morning … a land of lotos eating … a land where men call each other by their Christian names; where most are poor, where almost all are young; and where, if a few oldsters do enter, it is because they have preserved more tenderly and carefully than others their youthful spirits, and the delightful capacity to be ideal. I have lost my way in Bohemia now, but it is certain that Prague is the most picturesque city in the world. 1
