Murger Henri, *27 March 1822 Paris, †28 January 1861 Paris, French novelist. He described the milieu in which he moved – the residents of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter of Paris – in a series of short stories published between 1845 and 1849 in the satirical newspaper “Le Corsaire”. Some of them gave rise to the play La vie de bohème, which Murger wrote together with Th. Barrière, and published in a slightly modified version as the novel Scènes de la vie de bohème (1848, Polish translation by T. Boy-Żeleński, 1920). It immediately brought Murger considerable fame; his sense of observation, inextricably intertwined with lyricism, a sense of humour and a love of life, on the one hand, and a critical approach to social issues on the other, was greatly appreciated. Around 1893, R. Leoncavallo became interested in the novel as material for an opera libretto. He proposed the text he had written to G. Puccini, but when Puccini showed no interest, he began composing La Bohème himself. It soon turned out that both composers were working on librettos based on Murger’s novel (the text for Puccini was prepared by G. Giacosa and L. Illica). This did not go without controversy in the press. Puccini’s work, staged earlier (premiered on 1 February 1896 in Turin), was initially received coolly and only gradually gained recognition from the press and the public. Leoncavallo’s opera, on the other hand, was an immediate success (premiered on 6 May 1897 in Venice), but over time it was overshadowed by Puccini’s work and is now only performed sporadically.
Literature: F. Bernhard Henri Murger, Paris 1861, reprint Paris 2013, e-book 2016; F. Maillard Les derniers bohêmes: Henri Murger et son temp, Paris 1874; O. Williams Vie de Bohème, a patch of romantic Paris, Paris 1913, reprint 2016, e-book 2012; A. Warnod La vraie Bohème de Henri Murger, Paris 1947; R. Baldrick The First Bohemian. The Life of Henry Murger, London 1961; A. Csampai and D. Holland Giacomo Puccini “La Bohème”. Texte, Materialien, Kommentare, Reinbek 1981; J. Seigel Bohemian Paris. Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930, London 1987, reprint Baltimore (Maryland) 1999; L. Sabourin Henri Murger, Scènes de la vie de bohème, «Studi Francesi» LVIII/I, 172 (2014); L.A. Farias Duque, S. Salvarani Pometto Escenas de la vida bohemia de Henri Murger: arte y modus vivendi revolucionario, «Literatura: Teoría, Historia, Crítica», XXVII (2025), pp. 169–198.
