Carmen

by Prosper Merimee

  ELIZABETH GASKELL

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  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.

  An Authoritative Work on Gypsies—Selections from George Borrow’s The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain.

  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)

  1. PROSPER MÉRIMÉE ON THE WAY TO 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.

  The Origin of 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.

  Adieu! dear countess. I hope that your voyage to Salamanca does not keep you from making the other one. With tenderness and love for your girls.

  —A letter from Mérimée to the Countess Montijo, excerpted from Lettres de Prosper Mérimée à Madame de Montijo (trans. Jean-Patrick Grillet). In 1830, Mérimée spent six months traveling around Spain, during which time he began a lifelong friendship with the aristocratic Montijo family, especially the countess, an intelligent, cultured, and ambitious woman. (The countess’s younger daughter, Eugenia, would marry Emperor Napoleon III in 1853, and on her recommendation Mérimée was made a senator of the French Empire.) Between 1831 and 1833, Mérimée published a series of four Lettres d’Espagne in the Revue de Paris. These letters recount bullfights, bandits, Spanish customs, and encounters with Gypsies, and the story Mérimée tells in the third letter, about the bandit José Maria, is another direct precursor of Carmen.

  Scholarly Pursuits

  I had always suspected the geographers of not knowing what they were talking about when they placed the battle-field of Munda in the country of the Bastuli-Poeni, near the modern Monda, some two leagues north of Marbella. According to my own conjectures concerning the text of the anonymous author of the Bellum Hispaniense, and in view of certain information collected in the Duke of Ossuna’s excellent library, I believed that we should seek in the vicinity of Montilla the memorable spot where for the last time Caesar played double or quits against the champions of the republic. Happening to be in Andalusia in the early autumn of 1830, I made quite a long excursion for the purpose of setting at rest such doubts as I still entertained. A memoir which I propose to publish ere long will, I trust, leave no further uncertainty in the minds of all honest archaeologists. Pending the time when my deliverance shall solve at last the geographical problem which is now holding all the learning of Europe in suspense, I propose to tell you a little story; it has no bearing on the question of the actual location of Munda.

  —From the opening lines of Carmen.

  A map of Andalusia from a 1635 Elsevier edition of Caesar’s Commentaries (first written ca. 50 BCE), the book Carmen’s narrator carries at the beginning of the story.

  An Encounter with Gypsies

  Barcelona, 1845

  I have reached the goal of my long journey and have been admirably received by my archivist, who had already prepared my tables and the ancient books in which I shall lose what remains of my sight. To find his despacho, a gothic hall of the fourteenth century must be traversed, and a marble court planted with orange-trees as tall as our lime-trees, and covered with ripe fruit. This is very poetical, and as regards comfort and luxury recalls, as does my chamber, the Asiatic caravanserai. However, it is better than Andalusia though the natives are inferior and have a fatal defect in my eyes, or rather ears, in that I understand nothing of their gibberish. At Perpignan, I met two gypsies who were cropping mules, and I spoke caló to them to the great horror of my companion, a colonel of artillery; while they, finding me even more skilled than themselves in the patois, offered a striking testimony to my attainments of which I was not a little proud. In summing up the results of my journey, my conviction is that it was unnecessary to come so far, and that my history could have been satisfactorily accomplished without disturbing the venerable dust of Aragonese archives.

  —From one of Mérimée’s letters to Jeanne Françoise Dacquin. Mérimée wrote Carmen in 1845 while in the midst of researching a history of Don Pedro, the notoriously cruel king of Castile and León who reigned from 1350 to 1369. Like the narrator of Carmen, Mérimée was an antiquarian, at first in an amateur capacity. Then, in 1834, Mérimée was appointed Inspector General of Historical Monuments for France, and for the next eighteen years he spent most of his summers traveling to small towns throughout the country to study churches, chateaux, and artwork as part of an enormous project to catalog and preserve France’s cultural heritage, the first sustained attempt to do so.

  2. THE INFLUENCE OF GEORGE BORROW

  Borrow in the Novella

  M. Borrow, an English missionary, the author of two very interesting works on the gypsies of Spain, whom he had undertaken to convert at the expense of the Bible Society, asserts that there is no known instance of a gitana having a weakness for a man not of her race.

  —From the last chapter of Carmen.

  On Gypsy Dialect

  Saint Cloud, August 1866

  You asked me whence I derived my knowledge of the gypsy dialect: from M. Borrow whose book is one of the most curious that I ever read. What he relates of the gypsies is perfectly true, and his personal observations agree perfectly with my own, except on one point. In his character of clergyman he was naturally deceived in matters respecting which I, as a Frenchman and laic, have a clearer insight from personal experience. It is exceedingly singular, however, that this man gifted in languages to the extent of speaking the Cali dialect, should possess so little grammatical perspicacity as not to see at a glance that many words unknown in Spanish have remained in this dialect. He asserts that only the roots of Sanskrit words have been preserved.

  —From one of Mérimée’s letters to Jeanne Françoise Dacquin. George Borrow, an agent of the British Bible Society, wrote a number of popular books about Gypsies, and it was Borrow’s translation of the Gospel of Luke into caló (published in 1837 and referenced in Mérimée’s letter to the Countess Montijo, above) that reawakened Mérimée’s interest in Spanish Gypsies in the early 1840s. Borrow’s books were part of a small flood of scholarly publications on Gypsies during the period, allowing concrete information to replace, somewhat, Romantic imaginings.

  An Authoritative Work on Gypsies

  Preface

  It is with some diffidence that the author ventures to offer the present work to the public.

  The greater part of it has been written under very peculiar circumstances, such as are not in general deemed at all favourable for literary composition;—at considerable intervals, during a period of nearly five years passed in Spain—in moments snatched from more important pursuits—chiefly in ventas and posadas, whilst wandering through the country in the arduous and unthankful task of distributing the Gospel among its children.

  Owing to the causes above stated, he is aware that his work must not unfrequently appear somewhat disjointed and unconnected, and the style rude and unpolished: he has, nevertheless, permitted the tree to remain where he felled it, having, indeed, subsequently enjoyed too little l
eisure to make much effectual alteration.

  At the same time he flatters himself that the work is not destitute of certain qualifications to entitle it to approbation. The author’s acquaintance with the Gypsy race in general dates from a very early period of his life, which considerably facilitated his intercourse with the Peninsular portion, to the elucidation of whose history and character the present volumes are more particularly devoted. Whatever he has asserted, is less the result of reading than of close observation, he having long since come to the conclusion that the Gypsies are not a people to be studied in books, or at least in such books as he believes have hitherto been written concerning them.

  Throughout he has dealt more in facts than in theories, of which he is in general no friend. True it is, that no race in the world affords, in many points, a more extensive field for theory and conjecture than the Gypsies, who are certainly a very mysterious people come from some distant land, no mortal knows why, and who made their first appearance in Europe at a dark period, when events were not so accurately recorded as at the present time.

  But if he has avoided as much as possible touching upon subjects which must always, to a certain extent, remain shrouded in obscurity; for example, the original state and condition of the Gypsies, and the causes which first brought them into Europe; he has stated what they are at the present day, what he knows them to be from a close scrutiny of their ways and habits, for which, perhaps, no one ever enjoyed better opportunities; and he has, moreover, given—not a few words culled expressly for the purpose of supporting a theory, but one entire dialect of their language, collected with much trouble and difficulty; and to this he humbly calls the attention of the learned, who, by comparing it with certain languages, may decide as to the countries in which the Gypsies have lived or travelled.