 Mérimée's own watercolor Carmen | |
| Author(s) | Prosper Mérimée |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | Novella |
| Publisher | Revue des deux Mondes (periodical, first three parts), Michel Lévy (book, full version) |
| Publication date | 1845 (periodical), 1846 (book) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Carmen is a novella by Prosper Mérimée, written and first published in 1845.
It has been adapted into a number of dramatic works, including the famous opera by Georges Bizet.
According to a letter Mérimée wrote to the Countess of Montijo, Carmen was inspired by a story she told him on his visit to Spain in 1830.
He said, "It was about that ruffian from Málaga who had killed his mistress, who consecrated herself exclusively to the public.
As I have been studying the Gypsies for some time, I have made my heroine a Gypsy."
An important source for the material on the Romani people (Gypsies) was George Borrow's book The Zincali (1841).
Another source may have been the narrative poem The Gypsies (1824) by Alexander Pushkin, which Mérimée would later translate into French prose (Briggs 2008).
The novella comprises four parts.
Only the first three appeared in the original publication in the October 1, 1845 issue of the Revue des Deux Mondes[3] (Robinson 1992).
The fourth first appeared in the book publication in 1846.
Mérimée tells the story as if it had really happened to him on his trip to Spain in 1830.
While searching for the site of the Battle of Munda in a lonely spot in Andalusia, Mérimée meets a man who his guide hints is a dangerous robber.
Instead of fleeing, Mérimée befriends the man by sharing cigars and food.
They stay in the same primitive inn that night.
The guide tells Mérimée that the man is the robber known as "Don José Navarro" and leaves to inform on him, but Mérimée warns Navarro, who escapes.
Later, in Córdoba, Mérimée meets Carmen, a beautiful Romani woman who is fascinated by his repeating watch.
Merimee goes to Carmen's home so she can tell his fortune, and she impresses him with her occult knowledge.
They are interrupted by Navarro, and although Carmen makes throat-cutting gestures, Navarro escorts Mérimée out.
Mérimée finds his watch is missing.
Some months later, again in Córdoba, a friend of Mérimée's tells him that Navarro is to be garrotted the next day.
Mérimée visits the prisoner and hears the story of his life.
Lizarrabengoa killed a man in a fight resulting from a game of paume (presumably some form of Basque pelota) and had to flee.
One day Lizarrabengoa meets Carmen, then working in the cigar factory he was guarding.
As Lizarrabengoa alone in his unit ignored Carmen, she teases him.
A few hours later, Lizarrabengoa arrests Carmen for cutting x's in a co-worker's face in a quarrel.
Carmen convinces Lizarrabengoa, by speaking Basque, that she was half Basque, and he let her go, for which he was imprisoned for a month and demoted.
After his release, Lizarrabengoa encounters Carmen again and she repaid him with a day of bliss, followed by another when he allowed her fellow smugglers to pass his post.
Lizarrabengoa looked for Carmen at the house of one of her Romani friends, but she entered with his lieutenant.
In the ensuing fight, Lizarrabengoa kills the lieutenant.
He fled to Carmen's outlaw band.
With the outlaws, Lizarrabengoa progresses from smuggling to robbery, and was sometimes with Carmen but suffered from jealousy as she used her attractions to further the band's enterprises.
Lizarrabengoa also learns that Carmen was married.
After her husband joined the band, Lizarrabengoa provokes a knife fight with him and killed him.
Carmen became José's wife.
However, she told him she loved him less than before, and she became attracted to a successful young picador named Lucas.
José, mad with jealousy, begged her to forsake other men and live with him.
They could start an honest life in America.
She said that she knew from omens that he was fated to kill her, but "Carmen will always be free," and as she now hated herself for having loved him, she would never give in to him.
He stabbed her to death and then turned himself in.
Lizarrabengoa ends his tale by saying that the Romani are to blame for the way they raised Carmen.
If readers expect a continuation of the story, perhaps with a description of José's execution, they will be surprised.
This part consists of scholarly remarks on the Romani: their appearance, their customs, their conjectured history, and their language.
According to Henri Martineau, editor of a collection of Mérimée's fiction, the etymologies at the end are "extremely suspect".
As the above summary and that of Bizet's opera indicate, the opera is based on part III of the story only and eliminates many elements, such as Carmen's husband.
It greatly increases the role of other characters, such as
-- the Dancaïre, who is only a minor character in the story
-- the Remendado, who one page after he is introduced is wounded by soldiers and then shot by Carmen's husband to keep him from slowing the gang down; and
-- Lucas (renamed Escamillo and promoted to matador), who is seen only in the bull ring in the story.
The opera's female singing roles other than Carmen—Micaëla, Frasquita, and Mercédès—have no counterparts in the novella.
Carmen knows her fate not from reading cards but from interpreting such omens as a hare running between José's horse's legs.
Other differences are too numerous to list.
Notes
^ The Countess's daughter would become the Empress Eugénie.
^ "Il s'agissait de ce jaque de Malaga qui avait tué sa maîtresse, laquelle se consacrait exclusivement au public. [...] Comme j'étudie les bohémiens depuis quelque temps, j'ai fait mon heroïne bohémienne."
- ^ Review of the Two Worlds
- ^ "Carmen sera toujours libre."
- ^ Dancaire, an obsolete Germanía word for someone who gambles on someone else's behalf with that person's money—Dancaire in El delincuente español. El lenguaje : (estudio filológico, psicológico y sociológico) : con dos vocabularios jergales by Rafael Salillas.
- ^ Man wearing patched clothes
References
- Carmen in English (1903 translation), accessed November 16, 2006
- Briggs, A. D. P. (2008), "Did Carmen really come from Russia (with a little help from Turgenev)?", in Andrew, Joe; Offord; Derek; Reid, Robert, Turgenev and Russian Culture: Essays to Honour Richard Peace, Rodopi, pp. 83–102, ISBN 90-420-2399-6, retrieved 2012-10-26
- Brown, William Edward (1986). A History of Russian Literature of the Romantic Period, Volume 3. Ardis. p. 238. ISBN 0-88233-938-9. Retrieved 3 March 2009.
- Mérimée, Prosper (1973). Les Âmes du Purgatoire, Carmen. Paris: Garnier Flammarion. With an apparatus criticus by Jean Decottignies. This edition's text and notes were used for the first draft of the present article.
- Mérimée, Prosper (1846). Carmen. Paris: Michel Lévy. The original book publication, also containing the stories "Arsène Guillot" and "L'Abbé Aubain".
- Henri Martineau, editor. Mérimée, Prosper (1951). Romans et Nouvelles. Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. p. 814. Cited by Decottignies.
- Robinson, Peter (1992). "Mérimée's Carmen". In McClary, Susan. Georges Bizet, Carmen. Cambridge University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-521-39897-5. Retrieved 25 January 2011.
[edit] External links
- Carmen at Project Gutenberg
French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Carmen
- (French) Carmen, audio version
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