Fumism

In October 1878, the poet and finance ministry official Émile Goudeau organized a “closed” circle (or artistic club) called the “Society of Hydropaths”, where poets, writers, and playwrights gathered to drink heavily and eat a little, and in the meantime, show each other poems, essays, sketches, monologues, and generally anything that could be “showed.” Sharp verbal duels regularly took place between the hydropaths, where they could show off their wit, quick reactions, or wordplay. Some time later, more precisely in February 1879, on the initiative of the founder of the club (the same Emile Goudot) and under his editorship, a newspaper of the same name, ″Hydropat″, was founded. Later the name was changed to ″Hydropats″, and then the newspaper received its last name ″All Paris″ — and soon ceased to exist. During the first year (1879-1880), thirty-one issues of the newspaper were published. At the initial stage, the composer Georges Fragerolle played a major role in the emergence of the fumists in place of the hydropaths. In 1879 he joined the Hydropathic literary club. On 12 May 1880 he published an article on ″Fumisme″. ″Fumisme″ is a system of elaborate hoaxes used to expose hypocrites and deflate the pompous. It was often practiced by the Hydropathes. According to Fragerolle, fumisme The Fumist manifesto, written by Fragerolle, contained the main thesis, which could be considered the motto of this movement: «The arts must become fumism , or they will not exist». The ideas of the early hydropathists were continued by the historic exhibitions of the Arts Incohérents by , the first of which took place in October 1882. Many hydropathists and fumists, including Alphonse Allais and Eugène Bataille, showed their fumist discoveries (painting, music and theatre) at these exhibitions, which anticipated Minimalism, Dadaism and Suprematism by decades. == Name and meaning ==

The playful term ″fumism″, casually dropped by Émile Goudeau and then briskly picked up by Sapek and Alphonse Allais, grew out of the noun — smoke. It is a collective philosophical term denoting a person's attitude to the world, to himself, and also to art as a type of human activity. The new attitude was expressed in the deliberate ridicule and mockery of everything and everyone without any restrictions or prohibitions, the shaming of everyday stupidity and bourgeois consciousness. The more incomprehensible and absurd, the stronger the bewilderment, the better and higher the result — such was the invisible motto of the fumists. Thus, having begun its formation with moderate ″hydropathy″ (hydrotherapy), a group of French writers, and later artists and even composers, found their ideological justification and support on the basis of total and all-pervading fumée, or — smoke. Meanwhile, the play on words prevailed here: in French, the word fumée, its derivatives, and similar-sounding ones have more meanings: from smoke and smoking itself, to stove-setters, chimney sweeps, chatterboxes, liars, empty talkers, and even pure manure. Since the ″Hydropathic Society″ ceased to exist in the stuffy atmosphere of the club, its art of blowing smoke and dust in the eyes, playing practical jokes and mockery spread throughout Paris and then further afield in the form of fumism. For the fumists, the everyday practice of shocking or ″mocking the stupidity of the common man″ was of great importance. In much the same way, in the 1920s, a group of surrealists smashed exhibitions, started fights at performances and constantly disturbed public order. The fumists were not as noisy, but in general they behaved in much the same way. Fumism emerged as smoke from the ″Hydropathic Society″ founded by the civil servant and poet Émile Goudeau. By chance (and Emile Goudot himself), Arthur Sapek and Alphonse Allais were named (appointed) as the ideological leaders of Fumism. Thanks to the stories and newspaper chronicles of Allais, the purely oral artifacts of the initial period of Fumism have been preserved as facts of history, and partly as results of a purely literary level. And not only literary, but also pictorial, After the early death of Alphonse Allais, his close friend, the composer Erik Satie, became his informal heir and most prominent successor to Fumism. The only “heir” of fumism in Russia was declared to be the famous “king of eccentricity” and “vomiting chansonnier” Mikhail Savoyarov in the 1910s. As a teenager, having experienced the influence of some Parisian fumists and the Russian obscene poet in the 1890s, Savoyarov later, as a tribute of respect and gratitude, called his “unbridled” concerts “smoky fonforisms” or “fanfaronnades”. == See also ==