Fumism

[1] This generalized aesthetic-philosophical term became widespread in French culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries thanks to Émile Goudeau, a poet, writer, finance ministry official, and founder of the so-called ″Hydropath Society″.

The founders and ideological inspirers of the movement were the same Émile Goudeau, as well as two permanent troublemakers: Arthur Sapeck [fr] (real name — Eugène Bataille) and Alphonse Allais.

[3] In October 1878, the poet and finance ministry official Émile Goudeau organized a “closed” circle (or artistic club) called the “Society of Hydropaths”,[4] 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.

[1] The playful term ″fumism″, casually dropped by Émile Goudeau and then briskly picked up by Sapek and Alphonse Allais, grew out of the noun French: fumée — smoke.

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.

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.

[2]: XVIII  The greatest oral contribution to the initial development of Fumism was made by Arthur Sapeck [fr], a caricaturist, wit, mystifier, and later a government official in the field of mass spectacles and entertainment.

[1] After Sapek's departure (first to government service, and then from life altogether), the main successor of the traditions of Fumism was the ″chief of the Fumists″ Alphonse Allais, an eccentric, writer, black humorist and journalist.

As a teenager, having experienced the influence of some Parisian fumists and the Russian obscene poet Pyotr Schumacher [ru] in the 1890s, Savoyarov later, as a tribute of respect and gratitude, called his “unbridled” concerts “smoky fonforisms” or “fanfaronnades”.