Bouzingo

The Bouzingo were a group of eccentric poets, novelists, and artists in France during the 1830s that practiced an extreme form of romanticism whose influence helped determine the course of culture in the 20th century including such movements as Bohemianism, Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence, Aestheticism, Dadaism, Surrealism, the Lost Generation the Beat Generation, Hippies, Punk rock, etc.

The stories the Bouzingo wrote about themselves were full of intentional exaggerations. The stories were meant to frighten the middle and upper class. They believed that people from the middle and upper class would be offended by the idea of poets and artists acting like barbarians and primitives. This was the aim of the Bouzingo and for a time they spawned major controversies. The actual truth is now nearly impossible to find out. These artists were not well documented with any kind of journalistic objectivity during their prime. The legends of the Bouzingo are captured most notably by Gautier in “Les Jeunes-France” (1833) but also to a lesser extent in Henry Murger's "La Vie de Bohème" (1849).

These are a few of the most famous exaggerations invented by the Bouzingo:

Members of the Bouzingo became highly influential in the Avant-Garde Movements of the Late 19th Century and on into the 20th Century.

André Breton mentioned the influence of Nerval in the first Surrealist Manifesto. He also included Petrus Borel and Xavier Forneret in his influential "Anthology of Black Humor".

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