Carmen (10 page)
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
RUDYARD KIPLING
MICHAEL KOHLHAAS
HEINRICH VON KLEIST
THE BEACH OF FALESÁ
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
THE HORLA
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
THE ETERNAL HUSBAND
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED
HADLEYBURG
MARK TWAIN
THE LIFTED VEIL
GEORGE ELIOT
THE GIRL WITH THE
GOLDEN EYES
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
BENITO CERENO
HERMAN MELVILLE
MATHILDA
MARY SHELLEY
STEMPENYU: A JEWISH ROMANCE
SHOLEM ALEICHEM
FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES
JOSEPH CONRAD
HOW THE TWO IVANS
QUARRELLED
NIKOLAI GOGOL
MAY DAY
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
RASSELAS, PRINCE ABYSSINIA
SAMUEL JOHNSON
THE DIALOGUE OF THE DOGS
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
THE LEMOINE AFFAIR
MARCEL PROUST
THE COXON FUND
HENRY JAMES
THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYCH
LEO TOLSTOY
TALES OF BELKIN
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
THE AWAKENING
KATE CHOPIN
ADOLPHE
BENJAMIN CONSTANT
THE COUNTRY OF
THE POINTED FIRS
SARAH ORNE JEWETT
PARNASSUS ON WHEELS
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
THE NICE OLD MAN
AND THE PRETTY GIRL
ITALO SVEVO
LADY SUSAN
JANE AUSTEN
JACOB’S ROOM
VIRGINIA WOOLF
THE DUEL
GIACOMO CASANOVA
THE DUEL
ANTON CHEKHOV
THE DUEL
JOSEPH CONRAD
THE DUEL
HEINRICH VON KLEIST
THE DUEL
ALEXANDER KUPRIN
THE ALIENIST
MACHADO DE ASSIS
ALEXANDER’S BRIDGE
WILLA CATHER
FANFARLO
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
THOMAS HARDY
THE ENCHANTED WANDERER
NIKOLAI LESKOV
THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR
GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET
EDGAR ALLAN POE
CARMEN
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
THE POOR CLARE
ELIZABETH GASKELL
I. Prosper Mérimée on the way to
Carmen
“A tall, erect, pale man …”—
Selection from Hippolyte Taine’s
Lettres à une inconnue
.
The Origin of
Carmen
—Letter from Mérimée to the Countess Montijo.
Scholarly Pursuits—
Selection from
Carmen
.
Illustration
: Map of Andalusia (1635).
An Encounter with Gypsies—
Selection from one of Mérimée’s letters to Jeanne Françoise Dacquin.
II. The Influence of George Borrow
Borrow in the Novella
—Selection from
Carmen
.
On Gypsy Dialect—
Selection from one of Mérimée’s letters to Jeanne Françoise Dacquin.
Illustration
:
“Rig
to
Romany Rye”
by George Borrow (1874).
III. Gypsies and Bohemians in the Imagination
Illustration
:
The Suppliants: Expulsion of the Gypsies from Spain
by Edwin Long (1872).
An Early Spanish Gypsy Narrative—
Selections from Miguel de Cervantes’
The Gypsy Girl
.
“A Russian Parallel”—
Passages from Alexander Pushkin’s “The Gypsies.”
Esmeralda—
Selection from Victor Hugo’s
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
.
“The wild air bloweth in our lungs”—
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Romany Girl.”
A Different View—
Selection from Vicente Blaso Ibáñez’s
La Bodega
.
Two Bohemians—
Charles Baudelaire’s “Gypsies Travelling” and Arthur Rimbaud’s “Sensation”
IV. A Gallery of Noteworthy Carmens
“Carmen”—
A poem by Théophile Gautier.
Illustration
: “Carmen and Don José” by Prosper Mérimée (ca. 1845).
Illustration
: “Célestine Galli-Marié” by Félix Nadar (1875).
Illustration
: Advertisement for the film
Gypsy Blood
(1921).
Illustration
: Advertisement for Gitanes cigarettes (1947).
Prosper Mérimée (1803–1870)
CARMEN
“A tall, erect, pale man …”
I frequently met Mérimée in society—a tall, erect, pale man, who, excepting his smile, had very much the appearance of an Englishman; at least he possessed that cold, distant air that in advance repels all familiarity. One was impressed, merely on seeing him, with his natural or acquired phlegm, his self-control, his habit and determination of holding himself in perfect check. His countenance, especially on ceremonious occasions, was impassible even in intimate circles, and when recounting some drollery his voice remained even and calm, never any outburst nor enthusiasm; while he related the raciest details in fitting words with the tone of a man asking for a cup of tea. He so strenuously subdued all manifestations of sensibility as to seem destitute of it; but it was not so, indeed quite the reverse; as there are racers so well broken in by their master, that once well in hand they no longer indulge in a caracole. This training began at an early period with Mérimée; for he was but ten years old when, having committed some slight fault, he was severely reprimanded and sent from the room: and weeping, overcome with distress, he had just closed the door, when
he heard a burst of laughter, and someone said: “Poor child, he really thought us angry.” He revolted at the idea of being deceived; he swore to repress thenceforth so humiliating a sensitiveness, and he kept his word. “Remember to distrust,” was his motto. To guard against impulse, ardor, and enthusiasm, never entirely to allow himself full play, to maintain always a personal reserve, to be the dupe neither of others nor of himself, to act and write as if perpetually in the presence of an indifferent and mocking spectator,—such was the salient feature which, graven more and more deeply into his nature, left its imprint on every phase of his life, his work, and his talent. He lived as an amateur; and indeed, possessed of a critical taste and habit, one can hardly do otherwise; by dint of reversing the tapestry, one ends by looking habitually at the wrong side, seeing instead of handsome personages in fine attitudes, only bits of thread…
[F]ew men possessed more varied attainments. He was master of the Italian, Greek, Latin, Spanish, English, and Russian languages, with their history and literature: and I believe that he also read German. From time to time a phrase, a note shows the point to which he had pursued these studies. He spoke
Calo
in a manner to astonish the Spanish gypsies; he understood the various Spanish dialects, and deciphered ancient Catalonian charters, and scanned English poetry. Only they who have studied an entire literature in print and manuscript, during the four or five successive periods of the language, its style and orthography; can appreciate the facility and the perseverance necessary to enable one to understand Spanish so thoroughly as the
author of “Don Pedro”; and Russian as the writer of the “Cosaques” and the “Faux Demetrius.” He possessed a remarkable lingual gift, and acquired languages up to a ripe age, becoming a philologist towards the end of his life, applying himself at Cannes to the minutiae of study pertaining to comparative grammar. To this knowledge of books he joined extensive learning respecting monuments, his reports proving him to be a specialist as to those of France, comprehending not only the effect but the technicalities of architecture. He studied each church on the spot, aided by the best architects; his memory of locality was excellently trained, and born of a family of painters, he had early handled the brush, being an artist in water-colors; in short, he investigated the subject exhaustively, and having a horror of specious phrases, touched no topic unless with certainty of detail. He travelled frequently; once in the East, twice in Greece, a dozen or fifteen times in England, in Spain, and elsewhere, studying the manners, not only of good company but of bad; consorting familiarly with gypsies and bull-fighters, and relating stories to the peasants beneath the Andalusian stars.
—
From the historian and critic
Hippolyte Taine’s
introduction to
Lettres à une inconnue,
published posthumously in 1874—the “inconnue” was
Jeanne Françoise Dacquin
. In 1831, the twenty-year-old
Dacquin
had written
Mérimée
a flirtatious fan letter; this would be the beginning of a long correspondence between the two, lasting until
Mérimée
’s death in 1870
.
Carmen
Paris, 16 May 1845
Dear Countess,
Our letters have crossed one another. You can see that we were talking about the same work. I do not understand how this Sancha, having published the works of Lope de Vega, started with twenty-one volumes filled with even less interesting material. What is more confusing, now that there is a reaction against classicism in Spain, is that no one has done an edition of Lope de Vega’s comedies. You would do well to suggest this idea to some of your clever-witted friends. The majority of your comedies are printed horribly, almost always quite improperly and in ugly characters on abominable paper. A few years ago, in Hamburg, Germany, they published Lope de Vega’s
Théâtre
, his
teatro escogido
, in a compact volume, containing, so they tell me, fifty or sixty plays. This edition is now out of print. The original edition, or rather the collection of twenty-five volumes of individually printed plays, is extremely rare and exorbitantly expensive. You tell me nothing of your journey in France. The other day I announced your future arrival to the prefect of the Basses-Pyrénées, who has a Spanish name. He’s called Acevedo. He’s a spirited man who would be honored to have you in his
département
, with all the pleasure of an exile who encounters his countrymen in the midst of the desolate countryside.
I have just spent eight days shut up indoors to write not the trials and tribulations of D. Pedro, but a story you told me fifteen years ago, and I am afraid I may have ruined it. It was about one Jaque de Malaga who killed his mistress, a woman who devoted herself exclusively to the public. After Arsène Guillot, I could find no better moral to offer to our fine ladies. Since I have been studying Bohemians for quite some time with much care, I made my heroine a Bohemian. Speaking of which, do you happen to know if a book published by a certain M. Borrow in
chipi calli
, the language of the
Gitanos
, titled
Embeo e majarò Lucas
can still be found in Madrid? It is the Gospel of Saint Luke. This Borrow wrote a very amusing book called
The Bible in Spain
. It is a shame that he lies like a tooth-puller and that he is outrageously Protestant. For example, he says that clandestine Muslims still exist in Spain, and that recently there was an archbishop of Toledo who was, in fact, of this religion. About Bohemians he says some very curious things, but because of his Englishness and his piety he did not see or did not want to mention several traits that were worth the effort he put forth in his research. He claims that Bohemian women were very chaste and that a
Busno
, that is, a man who is not of their race, could not get anything from them. In Seville, Cadiz and Granada, there were, in my day, Bohemian women whose virtue could not resist a
douro
. There was a very pretty one in the
mazmorras
close to the Alhambra who was wilder than the others, but still seemed susceptible to domestication. Most of these women are horribly ugly; it is one of the reasons they are chaste—all the better! In Paris at the
moment there are a dozen Indians from the Rocky Mountains, and some women. The men are very big and very strong; some are fairly handsome. The women are hideous. In this savage state, the woman is a beast of burden, and is mistreated to such an extent that they are necessarily ugly from misery. It is for this reason, I think, that the gypsies are so ugly. They sleep under the stars, they carry their children on their backs, they eat only what is left by their husbands, and on top of this they ignore the use of soap and water. That’s enough to make monsters of them.
