One would think that everything has already been said about Carmen— the character, the novel, the opera, and her infinite resurrections in the
peace.
However, the persistence in the popular imagination of the notion of
However, the persistence in the popular imagination of the notion of
Carmen as the ultimate essence of Spanishness is troubling.
A recent poll in the
European Union revealed that, after Don Quixote and Don Juan, Carmen was
the fictional character most identified with Spain.
Even more puzzlingly, twenty
Even more puzzlingly, twenty
percent of those surveyed believed Spain to be an “oriental nation” (Pulido 10).
Both perceptions have been deeply intertwined in the imaginary construction of
the Gypsy as icon of Spanishness.
This confusion of cultural identities requires
This confusion of cultural identities requires
the resuscitation of Carmen in critical discourse, if only to exorcise the demons
of exoticism for now.
Several underlying myths deeply imbedded in the European imagination converge
on the construction of Carmen:
-- the orientalization of Spain, or cultural
-- the orientalization of Spain, or cultural
conflation of Spain with the Orient, in the nineteenth century
--the romantic mythification
--the romantic mythification
of the bohemian as gypsy, or imaginary conflation of Bohéme (the region
where many Gypsies lived) and Bohème (the “gypsy way of life”);
-- the
-- the
conflation of Gypsy, Andalusian, and Spanish identities as mutually interchangeable
signifiers.
This conflation of national, ethnic, and racial identities created a
This conflation of national, ethnic, and racial identities created a
profound cultural remapping that repositioned both Spain and Gypsies in Europe
as exotic others.
It also led to the cultural appropriation of the Gypsies’
It also led to the cultural appropriation of the Gypsies’
mystique, their commodification as embodiments of the exotic, and their ambiguous
relocation to the symbolic center as icons of Spanishness.
The Gypsy is in the European Imagination.
Gypsies, of course, were not the only ethnic others in Europe, but they were the ones
closest to home and most easily exoticised.
Jews, Basques, Greeks, Cossacks, Ukrainians, and other
Jews, Basques, Greeks, Cossacks, Ukrainians, and other
ethnic minorities would fall in the same category, just as women.
Contemporary critical readings of the Carmen myth, particularly in cultural
studies, follow two contradictory tendencies.
Those informed by feminist theory
Those informed by feminist theory
see her as an affirmation of free will, independence, and liberation.
Those informed
Those informed
by post-colonial theory seek to unmask the misogynist and racist undertones
toward the other, which ultimately neutralize those emancipatory impulses.
The ambiguous nature of the Carmen myth, as conceived by Mérimée and developed
in Bizet’s opera, invites both readings.
In fact, the key to its continual renewal
In fact, the key to its continual renewal
and adaptability might be its fundamental ambivalence about issues crucial in
the construction of our modern consciousness, an ambivalence which reveals
cultural anxieties about gender, race, class, nation, language, and sexuality.
The cultural construction of the Gypsy in the modern European imagination
is intimately linked to the orientalist discourses of Romanticism as a projection
of its ambivalent feelings of fear and desire towards the other.
Carmen epitomizes
Carmen epitomizes
this ambiguity in the white European male consciousness, for she embodies
a highly marked racialized other (non-white, non-European, non-male), while
displaying a rebellious, subversive, and free spirit.
The love/hate scenario replayed
The love/hate scenario replayed
in all the versions of the Carmen myth reflects the simultaneous repulsion
and attraction toward the other.
This ambiguity conforms to the romantic
This ambiguity conforms to the romantic
fascination with the marginal, bohemian, exotic, and premodern.
It also reveals
It also reveals
the need to tame it, to control it, and ultimately to neutralize and destroy it.
Because exorcising the exotic other is ultimately a way for European bourgeois
culture to exorcise its own demons, Carmen must die.
An analysis of the
An analysis of the
ideological underpinnings of this most enduring of all Spanish Gypsy myths—in
its development from novella to opera and its establishment as an icon of
Spanishness—will reveal this same ambiguous impulse driving the exotic construction
of oriental Spain.
While the Orient had been a subject of interest to European poets and politicians
during the Enlightenment, this interest became particularly widespread
during the romantic movement against the backdrop of the industrial revolution
and the advancement of modern imperialism.
Romanticism rejected industrialism and encouraged an interest and admiration
for idealized pre-industrial societies and a desire to return to a pre-modern past.
As fugitives from their own time and space, romantic artists were the ultimate
escape artists.
Their idealization of the Middle Ages, a distinctive romantic trope
Their idealization of the Middle Ages, a distinctive romantic trope
for the age of innocence, paralleled their idealization of exotic lands and cultures,
particularly the Orient.
Their anti-industrialism generated a predilection
Their anti-industrialism generated a predilection
for natural scenery, unspoiled “primitive” societies, and remote landscapes.
The
The
new romantic concept of Beauty included the quality of strangeness (uncommon,
monstrous, unexplained, and ungoverned by reason).
This cult of the exotic
This cult of the exotic
explains the romantic fascination with Mediterranean cultures and the Orient,
as reflected in the renewed interest in travel books, archeology and anthropology,
museum collections, and picturesque paintings of the Oriental such as those by
Gros, Gericault and Delacroix.
Of course, the embrace of the exotic (the oriental)
Of course, the embrace of the exotic (the oriental)
had the effect of superimposing European values over these other cultures,
creating a distorted picture that conformed more with the expectations and fears
The Orient was
an adventure based in realistic acts of description.
Fom a later twentieth-century
Fom a later twentieth-century
point of view ‘Oriental’ is a political mythology passing itself off as objective
truth.
The exoticization of the Orient was part of the discourse of orientalism governing
European perspectives toward the East, a discourse of a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the
Orient.
As a system of symbolic representation based on bourgeois ideology,
As a system of symbolic representation based on bourgeois ideology,
orientalism looks at the other from a perspective of intellectual, moral—and
frequently legal and political—authority.
Literary and artistic orientalism shared
Literary and artistic orientalism shared
this perspective with their colonial counterparts—from the oriental dreams of
Napoleon in Egypt to the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the European
colonization of North Africa and the East.
Unfortunately, because Said’s study is
Unfortunately, because Said’s study is
devoted almost exclusively to French and British imperialism in the Middle East,
it ignores other European nations involved in orientalist practices, as well as
other oriental cultures or peoples whose cultural roots lie in the East (particularly
Jews and Gypsies).
Thus, Said’s study paradoxically reinforces the sense of
Thus, Said’s study paradoxically reinforces the sense of
hegemonic dominance of the British and French colonial systems under question
The building of empire is first an internal
process with internalized others who are more likely to be rival Europeans”
It is for this reason especially relevant to our analysis as it applies both to the
European construction of Spain and marginalized others such as the Gypsies.
In the geopolitical
In the geopolitical
imaginary of Europeans . . . there is a hegemonic geometry of center
and periphery that conditions all perceptions of self and the other.
The
The
first decades of the nineteenth century saw French imperial power at work in
Spain with the Napoleonic occupation, the War of Independence (1808-1814),
and the military intervention of 1823 decreed by Chateaubriand in his role as
Minister of Foreign Affairs to restore the Bourbon dynasty.
Since these events
Since these events
coincided with the loss of the Spanish American colonies, Spain became less
threatening as an imperial rival—events that clearly placed France in a position
of superiority and situated Spain as a conquered other, literally and symbolically.
Another important aspect neglected by Said is the particular double bind of
Spanish culture due to its experience of orientalism from both sides.
As a European
As a European
Christian culture that has repressed a constitutive element of its historical
identity and sees the oriental as its cultural and political other, and as a mirror of
oriental culture constructed by other Europeans (emphasizing the historical imprints
left by several centuries of close contact with Arabic and Jewish culture
and highlighting the Gypsies as a symbolic representation of Spanish orientalism).
This duality, frequently mediated through the fictional construction of the Gypsy,
explains how Spain, like the Gypsies themselves, is constituted in romantic literature
as an internal other to European modern identity, the same position of internal
alterity that, ironically, the Gypsy has come to hold within modern Spanish
culture.
The symbolic centrality of Gypsies in Spain’s collective imaginary (as opposed
The symbolic centrality of Gypsies in Spain’s collective imaginary (as opposed
to their actual marginality in society) might be partially explained by their
embodiment of a radical difference in Spanish culture—the crucial but repressed
non-white, non-European, and non-Christian elements that are the legacy of its
Jewish and Moorish past, and that are safely projected onto the figure of the
Gypsy, exoticised as outcast.
We need to resituate within this complex background
We need to resituate within this complex background
of orientalist discourses the ideological ambiguity of the romantic construction
of Gypsies and Spain.
It is well known that Spain was a privileged space for the romantic imagination.
French imperialism was instrumental in the discovery of Spanish art, as
during the occupation French military officers (such as General Hugo, the poet’s
father) systematically seized works of art from Spanish churches, convents, and
private palaces, and shipped these coveted possessions back to France.
The discovery
The discovery
of Golden Age art and literature (Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, Zurbarán,
Cervantes, Calderón, the romancero) and of Goya’s depictions of the picturesque
and horrific created a fascination for all things Spanish—culminating with Louis
Philippe’s "Musée Espagnol" (1838)—that rapidly spread through the rest of Europe.
------
The romantic construction of Spain embodied the qualities that writers such as
The romantic construction of Spain embodied the qualities that writers such as
Borrow, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Byron, Irving, Mérimée, and many others were
looking for: a rich cultural past, a preservation from modernity, a certain quaintness,
and a heroic history (from the Medieval hero El Cid to the guerilla resistance
in the War of Independence against Napoleon).
The romantic imagination
The romantic imagination
exoticised the strange non-Western substrate of Andalusia in particular—its oriental
influence, the legends of its Moorish past, and, most importantly, the continuous
presence of the Gypsies—blending all these images into a composite
oriental Spain.
In nineteenth-century European discourses Spain was exotically oriental in
nature. But because it was closer to home and the unfamiliar was spoken in a
familiar language, it was perceived as a more sheltered space onto which the
fears and anxieties caused by modernity could be safely projected. Its physical
proximity, however, was countered by the reinforcement and resemantization of
its geopolitical border -- as in the French maxim with clear imperialist overtones
attributed to Alexandre Dumas Pere: “Africa begins at the Pyrenées” --and by the
efforts to exoticise difference.
Indeed, one could say that for the romantic imagination
Indeed, one could say that for the romantic imagination
“the Orient begins at the Pyrenées.” Thus, the Swiss literary historian
Simonde de Sismondi considered Spanish literature as the perfect mirror in which
to contemplate a feminized oriental other:
Spaniards themselves had helped create this confusion of identities as a nationalist act of resistance
against foreign influences. The Spanish aristocracy reacted against the French and Italian
models imported by the Bourbon monarchy during the Enlightenment because of the perceived
threat to national identity.
Thus the Spanish elite started identifying with and imitating the customs
Thus the Spanish elite started identifying with and imitating the customs
in music, clothing, speech, and entertainment of Madrid’s lower classes, considered more Spanish
and authentic (the “majos” and “majas” portrayed by Goya).
The aristocracy also embraced forms of
The aristocracy also embraced forms of
popular entertainment that were seen as typically Spanish, flamenco and bullfights, where Andalusians
and Gypsies prevailed as performers.
As a result, Gypsies, Andalusians and Majos became clichés
As a result, Gypsies, Andalusians and Majos became clichés
identified with Spanishness in Spanish music and theater. The diffusion of these images both inside
and outside of the Spanish territory prepared the way for the Romantic discovery of “oriental Spain.”
. . . la littérature espagnole est pour nous un phénomène, et un objet d’étude et d’observation.
Tandis que son essence est tireé de la chevalerie, ses ornements et son langage son empruntés des
Asiatiques. Dans la contrée la plus occidentale de notre Europe, elle nous fait entendre le langage
fleuri et l’imagination fantastique de l’Orient . . . Si nous considérons la littérature espagnole, comme
nous révélant en quelque sorte la littérature orientale, comme nous acheminant à concevoir un
esprit et un goût si différens des nôtres, elle en aura à nos yeux bien plus d’intéret; alors nous nous
trouverons heureux de pouvoir respirer, dans une langue apparentée à la nôtre, les parfums de
l’Orient et l’encens de l’Arabie; de voir, dans un miroir fidèle, ces palais de Bagdag, ce luxe des
califes qui rendirent au monde vieilli son imagination engourdie, et de comprendre, par un peuple
d’Europe, cette brillante poésie asiatique qui créa tant des merveilles. (258-59)
The literature of Spain presents to us a singular phenomenon, and an object of study and observation.
Whilst its character is essentially chivalric, we find its ornaments and its language borrowed
from the Asiatics. Thus, Spain, the most western country of Europe, presents us with the flowery
language and vivid imagination of the East . . . If we regard the literature of Spain as revealing to us,
in some degree, the literature of the East, and as familiarizing us with a genius and taste differing so
widely from our own, it will possess in our eyes a new interest. We may thus inhale, in a language
allied to our own, the perfumes of the East, and the incense of Arabia. We may view as in a faithful
mirror, those palaces of Bagdad, and that luxury of the caliphs, which revived the lustre of departed
ages; and we may appreciate, through the medium of a people of Europe, that brilliant Asiatic
poetry, which was the parent of so many beautiful fictions of the imagination. (445)
This passage offers an essentialist paradigm of the kind “like us” (European,
occidental, chivalric) “but unlike us” (Asiatic, exotic, excessive and feminized),
bringing to the forefront the issue of cultural mediation.
Sismondi’s hegemonic
Sismondi’s hegemonic
male subject position invites the French reader to breathe, see, and experience
the oriental from a safe distance through the language and the mirror of Spanish
culture, repeatedly referred to in the feminine form and characterized by
feminine traits (perfumes, ornaments, flowery language). This form of mediation
enacted through the self-authorizing power of academic discourse—in this
case the discourse of literary historiography—redefines Spanish culture as sensual
and exuberant with the exotic oriental accent of the other, while constructing
an us/them dichotomy that reinforces cultural hegemony. Sismondi’s obsessive
insistence on demonstrating throughout his three-volume work that Spanish literature
fails adequately to conform to the paradigms of French and Italian literatures
(mainly due to its oriental influence) confirms both a fascination with the
exotic and, ultimately, a need to dismiss it as inferior other. Of course, this is in
no way an exceptional occurrence. A very similar design shaped that popular
nineteenth-century French exotic concoction known as the espagnolade, a favorite
genre among Parisian readers and theater goers alike, which had as its goal
the exploitative and derisive celebration of Spanish exoticism and which was also
at the root of the construction of Carmen.
Indeed, a constitutive
Indeed, a constitutive
element of the orientalization of Spanishness throughout the romantic period
and beyond is precisely the reflexive mechanism of citation and endless repetition
of inherited images. Thus, in 1826 Alfred Vigny writes in Cinq-Mars: “Un
Espagnol est un homme de l’Orient, c’est un Turc catholique”
‘A Spaniard is a
‘A Spaniard is a
man from the East; he is a Catholic Turk’ (289; 225).
Two years later Victor Hugo
Two years later Victor Hugo
states in his preface to Les Orientales:
“l’Espagne c’est encore l’Orient; l’Espagne
“l’Espagne c’est encore l’Orient; l’Espagne
est à demi africaine, l’Afrique est á demi asiatique” ‘Spain is still the Orient. Spain
is half African, Africa is half Asiatic’ (11).And Stendhal reiterates the same idea
the following year, conflating race, language and ethnicity: “Sang, moeurs, langage,
manière de vivre et de combattre, en Espagne tout est africain. Si l’Espagnol était
mahométan il serait un Africain complet”
‘Blood, manners, language, way of
‘Blood, manners, language, way of
living and fighting, everything in Spain is African. If the Spaniard were a Muslim
he would be a complete African’ (152).
Chateaubriand goes even further in 1838,
Chateaubriand goes even further in 1838,
reaffirming that Spaniards are “Arabe chrétiens” ‘Arab Christians’.
In fact,
In fact,
one of the trademarks of orientalist discourses is the interconnectedness of texts
supporting each other, the network of overt citations (and often camouflaged
plagiarism) as a strategy to verify the object of study and legitimize the locus of
authority residing in the orientalist.
Some writers, like the travel writer Pecchio,
Some writers, like the travel writer Pecchio,
are quite explicit about acknowledging their sources, while reinforcing the idea
of southern Spain as a feminized internal other for the pleasurable consumption
of northern European traveler.
Byron n’a rien exagéré lorsque qu’il a dit que
Byron n’a rien exagéré lorsque qu’il a dit que
l’Andalousie était un harem.
Byron did not exaggerate at all when he said that
Byron did not exaggerate at all when he said that
Andalusia was a Harem’ (138-39). Orientalist discourses of Spanishness can thus
be seen as true “mosaics of citations,” to echo Julia Kristeva’s dictum. The same
mechanism of reflexive citation is at work in the nineteenth-century European
artistic depictions of Spanish Gypsies (see Brown).
Knowledge was largely acquired
Knowledge was largely acquired
from other books and rarely by first-hand experience.
Two parallel trends intimately related to the orientalist outlook in search of
exotic others took place at this time: the vogue of traveling to Spain to follow the
oriental trail, and the transformation of Gypsies into bohemians.
The basic purpose of romantic travel writing was to “fantasize
The basic purpose of romantic travel writing was to “fantasize
the satisfaction of drives denied at home, thus evading the conflicts between
guilt and duty, inner desires and social responsibilities. The craving for oriental
fantasies resulted in an avalanche of travel literature—again profusely reproducing
inherited images—that aimed to fulfill the desires repressed in bourgeois
societies: promising adventure, exploring forbidden territories, and offering
vicarious escapades outside of bourgeois conventionality. The parallel idealization
of Gypsies as travelers roaming free in a perpetual state of flux was particularly
appealing to the romantic artist at odds with bourgeois society.
The key element in the nineteenth-century construction of
The key element in the nineteenth-century construction of
the Bohème in French culture was the imaginary identification of bohemians
with Gypsies (known as “bohémiens” in French, from the region of Bohemia) by
those déclassé artists and intellectuals dissatisfied with bourgeois culture and
urban industrialism. Indeed, the myths of the bohemian Gypsy and of exotic
oriental Spain were fused as early as Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (1830).
The Cervantine echo of Preciosa is ever present in the exotic Esmeralda, a “Spanish
Gypsy” who in fact ultimately turns out to be neither Spanish nor a Gypsy—
providing yet another case of mistaken ethnic identity.
The immense popularity
The immense popularity
of this work awakened a long-lived fascination with the idealized Spanish Gypsy
that would be sustained and developed by bohemian artists like Jollivet, Steuben,
Díaz de la Peña, and Adolphe Leleux in the following years.
By fantasizing and
By fantasizing and
symbolically transposing their desires onto an exotic outside, bohemian artists
found in the Spanish Gypsy the instrument needed to safely reconcile their differences
with bourgeois ideology, while in fact never leaving home.
Particularly influential in the dissemination of these myths were George Borrow’s
accounts of his travels in Spain with the Gypsies: The Zincali; The Gypsies in Spain
(1841) and The Bible in Spain (1843). Borrow combined familiar images of the
Spanish Gypsies with accounts of first-hand experiences in a new example of the
“family tree of ideas” and “inherited thinking” at work in the social construction
of Gypsy identities.
Mixing picturesque adventures with ethnographic
Mixing picturesque adventures with ethnographic
observations, Borrow’s work reiterates well-known negative perceptions
of the Gypsies (as primitive, uneducated, sensual, degenerate, living on the fringes
of society, and devoted to thieving and fortune telling), while simultaneously
revealing other traits dear to the romantic fantasist.
Gypsies as rebel outcasts
Gypsies as rebel outcasts
and outsiders, travelers, musicians and dancers, whose free-spirited women possess
both the power of seduction and the occult.
As Spain and Gypsies became
As Spain and Gypsies became
inseparable in the romantic imagination—for cultural and ethnic differences
tended to be subsumed in the category of exotic otherness—many of these same
images were easily attached to Spanish culture as a whole (primitive, backward,
superstitious, ignorant, quaint, a land of passion, music and dance).
Thus, for
Thus, for
instance, Gautier’s Voyage en Espagne (1843) offers a ready-made composite of a
romantic Spain “de cachucha, de castagnettes, de majos, de manolas, de moines,
de contrabandiers et de combat de toureaux” ‘of cachucha, of castanets, of majos,
of manolas, of nuns, of smugglers and bullfights.
In the image repertoire
In the image repertoire
constructed by the orientalist codification of Spain the fan and the shawl (“mantón
de Manila”), products of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, became
privileged signs of exotic oriental Spanishness.
Moreover, this codification of a
Moreover, this codification of a
system of signs of Spanishness as ready-made exotic images for North European
consumption coincided with the commodification of Spanishness in everyday
culture, fashion, travel, painting, dance, theater, and writing—a vogue for all
things “Spanish” that has been well documented by Léon-François Hoffmann
(51-65).
As these examples make clear, the processes of codification, cultural
As these examples make clear, the processes of codification, cultural
appropriation, and commodification of oriental Spanishness are phenomena that
went hand in hand.
At the high point of the romantic era, when these orientalist clichés had already
been assimilated, the ultimate romantic myth of Spanish gypsyness was born.
We mean Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen. Originally published as a three-chapter novella in
1845, the year the word “exotisme” appears for the first time in the French
Académie—“orientalisme” had appeared in 1840 (Moura 193-94)—Mérimée’s
narrative provides further proof that these concepts were already well codified
in French culture.
Through his travels and research in Spain, Mérimée had firsthand
Through his travels and research in Spain, Mérimée had firsthand
familiarity with Spanish culture, but he was even better acquainted with the
Parisian Bohemian subculture, where the romanticized mythical idea of Gypsies
as free, rebellious, and unbound by society’s rules was fused with the identity that
bohemians had constructed for themselves as outsiders to bourgeois culture.
The idea of the free-loving Gypsy woman—with very little resemblance to actual
reality—was mostly an artistic projection of the grisette type, the lower class muse
and lover of bohémiens.
Mérimée’s ambivalent approach to his subject matter
Mérimée’s ambivalent approach to his subject matter
was the consequence of his double life as, on the one hand, a respectable member
of bourgeois society—attested by his many official appointments and honors,
his association with the elite circles, and his close friendship with the Empress
Eugènie—and, on the other, a life-long fraternizer with bohemian life (including
his own liaisons with grisettes).
Not surprisingly, then, the novella encapsulates
Not surprisingly, then, the novella encapsulates
Mérimée’s ambivalence toward the figure of the other represented by the
Gypsy and a mixture of attraction and fear toward “la vie bohémienne” or “gypsy
life.”
But ultimately the novella illustrates the disavowal of those bohemian ideals
But ultimately the novella illustrates the disavowal of those bohemian ideals
by Mérimée, an imperialist at heart who was appointed senator by Napoleon III
during the Second Empire.
Mérimée’s story of Carmen (basically confined to the third chapter of the novel)
is framed by the self-legitimizing discourse of a male narrator, an archeology
scholar traveling throughout southern Spain (a semi-autobiographical veiled
reference to Mérimée’s own official position as traveling cataloguer of national
monuments).
In the first two chapters the narrator speaks from the position of
In the first two chapters the narrator speaks from the position of
authority conferred upon him by his gender, class, intellectual background, and
national status.
In the fourth and last chapter, a later addendum on cultural
In the fourth and last chapter, a later addendum on cultural
anthropology and language usage of the Spanish Gypsies explicitly indebted to
the works of George Borrow, he again legitimizes his position of intellectual superiority
through his orientalist scholarly discourse.
The explanatory footnotes
The explanatory footnotes
inserted throughout the story (such as the Gypsy proverbs from Romaní translated
into French) and the interpolated stories (such as the legend of King don
Pedro, who is compared to the Caliph Haroûn-al-Raschid from Thousand and
One Nights), both exhibit a romantic taste for the exotic and the orientalization
of Spanish culture, and offer yet another strategy of authentication that reinforces
the narrator’s authority and the story’s verisimilitude.
The unnamed narrator
The unnamed narrator
in control of Carmen’s story epitomizes the new orientalist discourses (such
as archeology, anthropology, and cultural linguistics) that grant the speaker a
position of intellectual and moral authority over the natives.
The narrator’s scholarly
The narrator’s scholarly
fascination with past splendours even leads him to look for the lost Roman
ruins of Munda, where Caesar fought his last battle—a search that implicitly associates
his outlook with European civilization and imperialism.
Nevertheless,
Nevertheless,
following the well-trodden path towards the barbaric primitivism of the exotic,
he finds instead the foreign orientalist story of Spanish Gypsies, bandits, smugglers,
and toreadors—the compulsory components of every nineteenth-century
travel book on Spain.
In fact, the plot of the novel constantly moves around,
In fact, the plot of the novel constantly moves around,
traveling from place to place like tourists and travel books.
Cordova, Granada,
Cordova, Granada,
Seville, Ronda, and the Sierra mountains were all obligatory stops in every
traveler’s companion guide to the Iberian Peninsula.
This duality was constitutive of the engendering of the Bohème itself, as male bohemians were
usually of petit bourgeois origin, but their female companions were generally grisettes, or working
class girls.
The direct influence of Borrow on Mérimée is acknowledged in the last chapter of Carmen.
Borrow and Mérimée also shared an interest in Pushkin’s writings on the Russian Gypsies.
One of
One of
these works, Zigáni, was translated by both Borrow and Mérimée, and was yet another source for the
exotic construction of Gypsies and perhaps the inspiration for Carmen (see Northup).
From the start of the novel, set in the exotically colorful Andalusia of 1830, the
first-person narrator frames the story with a familiar setting into which he then
introduces elements of the unfamiliar, the bizarre, and “oriental,” thus constructing
a domesticated exotic other.
This framing reveals an underlying anxiety about
This framing reveals an underlying anxiety about
defining ethnic identities and marking boundaries.
Identities are confused into
Identities are confused into
a bipolar order that constructs the great divide of male European self/female
Oriental other.
Cultural differences across the divide are highlighted as irreconcilable
Cultural differences across the divide are highlighted as irreconcilable
(civilized/barbarian, white/dark, MASCULINITY male/female, us/them), while correspondences
within each side of the divide are stressed and presented as interchangeable
(Gypsy, Arab, Jew, Middle Eastern, Andalusian, and Spanish versus English, French,
and European).
Tellingly, the narrator’s first observation about Spanish culture
Tellingly, the narrator’s first observation about Spanish culture
is that the ritual exchange of cigars among men establishes relations of hospitality,
“comme en Orient le partage du pain et du sel” ‘as does the sharing of
bread and salt in the East’(6,4), but he later decides that those “devoirs de
l’hospitalitée” ‘obligations of hospitality’ are indeed just “préjugé de sauvage”
‘primitive notions’ (7; 17) by which he does not need to abide.
His encounter
His encounter
with Carmen is marked by a reciprocal case of mistaken ethnic identity.
At first
At first
he takes Carmen to be an Andalusian, then he cannot tell whether she is Moorish
or Jewish, until finally she reveals to him her true identity as a Gypsy.
For the
For the
narrator these different ethnicities (Andalusian, Jewish, Moorish, or Gypsy) are
obviously confused and almost interchangeable versions of the “Oriental.”
Conversely,
Conversely,
Carmen takes the French narrator for an Englishman, a mistake that
provides the narrator with yet another opportunity to develop the orientalist
West/East, white/non-white dichotomy.
En Espagne,
En Espagne,
tout voyageur qui ne porte pas avec lui des échantillons de calicot ou de soieries
passe pour un Anglais, Inglesito. Il en est de même en Orient.
n Spain, any
n Spain, any
traveller not carrying samples of calico or silk is taken for a Englishman (Inglesito).
The same is true in the Levant’ (272-73; 13).
For Spaniards and Orientals alike,
For Spaniards and Orientals alike,
northern European travelers, whether French or English, are all categorized
within the same paradigm.
The clear geographical and ethnic divide of the narrative framing is replayed
internally in the love story between the northern brigadier from ELIZONDO (the river valley), Navarra don
José Lizarrabengoa, an “old Christian” Basque hidalgo, of Elizondo, Navarra,and Carmen, the southern
Gypsy girl whose oriental origins are in question.
In sharp contrast to don
In sharp contrast to don
José, Carmen is exoticised as a dark Gypsy woman, highlighting the strangeness
and wildness of her oriental substrate and of her picturesque acquaintances
(Gypsies, bullfighters, smugglers, bandits), who bring additional “local colour” to
the story.
The double framing mirror structure of the story creates an additional
The double framing mirror structure of the story creates an additional
sense of ambiguity and confusion.
The internal story of the Gypsy and the Basque
The internal story of the Gypsy and the Basque
dragoon, which constitutes the third chapter and main part of the novella, is nar-
(Interestingly, even the name of Carmen has been a source of great confusion. The etymology of
the name does NOT derive from the Latin word carmen for “song” or “charm,” or carmin for “red,” as
most readers and critics believe and Mérimée probably intended, given the strong symbolic associations
of both.
In actuality the name Carmen comes from the Arabic word karm, “vineyard,” from
In actuality the name Carmen comes from the Arabic word karm, “vineyard,” from
which derives the modern Spanish word carmen—with the final –n added because of confusion
with the Latin word—still used in Granada to refer to a moorish-style villa with an inside garden.
rated also in the first person, but this time by don José.
This mirror structure
This mirror structure
blurs the male narrators’ identities to the extent that the narrator (in
charge of chapters one, two and four) and don José appear almost interchangeable.
Don José clearly acts as a mediator for the master narrator—he is his mirror
reflection—as they both represent male authority figures displaced in an
exotic territory.
For the narrator he is another fellow traveler, “a voyageur comme
For the narrator he is another fellow traveler, “a voyageur comme
moi, moins archéologue seulement” ‘a traveller like myself, though one less interested
in archaeology’ (7; 3).
Don José is a northern hidalgo (literally, “son of
Don José is a northern hidalgo (literally, “son of
something”) who feels displaced in Andalusia, a white European with fair hair
and blue eyes, traditionalist, educated and civilized, representative of social order
and propriety—as is the narrator.
Don José clearly symbolizes bourgeois honour,
Don José clearly symbolizes bourgeois honour,
duty, and possessiveness.
Yet he also embodies the fatal attraction (dear to the
Yet he also embodies the fatal attraction (dear to the
romantic imagination) to the life of freedom outside of bourgeois conventionality
offered by Carmen.
Through this narrative confusion, the
Through this narrative confusion, the
can safely project his desires and anxieties onto the figure of don José without
the fear and danger of personal involvement with the other.
Both the prudish
Both the prudish
dragoon and the prudent narrator are captives of Carmen’s charm.
Significantly,
Significantly,
in each case their first meeting with Carmen takes place in a setting that arouses
a male fantasy of an erotic utopia.
From their respective male subject positions,
From their respective male subject positions,
Andalusia is constructed as an ideal earthly paradise offering unlimited numbers
of local women to fulfill male desires.
The narrator is visually stimulated
The narrator is visually stimulated
watching the women of Cordova bathing nude in the river at night:
. . . toutes ces femmes se déshabillent et entrent dans l’eau.
Alors ce sont des cris, des rires, un
Alors ce sont des cris, des rires, un
tapage infernal . . . les hommes contemplent les baigneuses, écarquillent les yeux, et ne voint pas
grand’chose. Cependant, ces formes blanches et incertaines qui se dessinent sur le sombre azur du
fleuve, font travailler les esprits poétiques . . . (19-20)
Women remove their clothes and leap into the water.
A pandemonium of shouts and laughter
A pandemonium of shouts and laughter
ensues.
The men gaze at the bathers in a vain attempt to see what is going on.
Yet those white and
The men gaze at the bathers in a vain attempt to see what is going on.
Yet those white and
indistinct forms visible against the dark azure of the river set poetic minds at work . . . (12)
The French narrator’s voyeurism is mirrored in the visual pleasure of don José,
who guards the secluded women working half-dressed in Seville’s tobacco factory
and shares with the narrator the illicit experience of entering a forbidden
room.
Figurez vous, monsieur, qu’entré dans la salle je trouve d’abord trois cent
Figurez vous, monsieur, qu’entré dans la salle je trouve d’abord trois cent
femmes en chemise, ou peut s’en faut, toutes criants, hurlant, gesticulant, faisant
un vacarme à ne pas entendre Dieu tonner.
Just imagine, señor: the first thing I
Just imagine, señor: the first thing I
found when I went into the room was three hundred women in their undergarments
and precious little else, all shouting, screaming, gesticulating, kicking up
the most unholy row.
Both scenes suggest the fantasies of the oriental
Both scenes suggest the fantasies of the oriental
harem or the brothel, with women sexually available for a token compensation,
whether a mantilla or a cigarette.
Here, Mérimée appears to agree with Byron
Here, Mérimée appears to agree with Byron
The mirror structure is befitting in a work where the dynamics of self/other become central
problems of representation.
The double frame narration implies a series of mirror reflections between
The double frame narration implies a series of mirror reflections between
don José and the narrator, the narrator and the author, as well as the distorting
mirror relationship between history and fiction, text body and footnote, reality and legend, model
and copy—a reflection of Mérimée’s own ambivalent doubling as historian and novelist.
The mirroring
The mirroring
device also suggests the endless repetition of borrowed images of orientalism (the hall of
mirrors of inherited romantic clichés), as well as the compulsive repetitions of the main characters
(to love, lie, steal, and kill), governed by internal dynamics as much as by codes of representation.
and Pecchio: Andalusia, and Spain by extension, appears as a paradise of sexual
freedom and opportunity for the foreign male traveler, a fantasy of both a colonial
and sexual conquest.
Yet another, perhaps more perverse, form of identity confusion is at play in the
story.
The subject position of don José is an ambiguous one, and his ethnic mark
The subject position of don José is an ambiguous one, and his ethnic mark
as Basque functions as a shifting signifier.
While he is a narrative stand-in for the
While he is a narrative stand-in for the
French narrator, sharing the same gender, race, religion, and class position, as a
white male Christian hidalgo, he is also tainted as an ethnic other.
Both Basques
Both Basques
and Gypsies are historically loaded cultural formations in Mérimée’s story.
The
The
notion of “Old Christian,” a racialized construction of Spanish identity that excluded
its internal others, originated with the spirit of the Catholic Counter-
Reformation which tried to abolish all forms of religious, political, and cultural
nonconformity.
Race became a privileged marker of national identity, and
Race became a privileged marker of national identity, and
“limpieza de sangre” (“purity of blood”) the litmus test of authentic Spanish blood,
particularly for those with Jewish or Moorish ancestry.
The contaminated body
The contaminated body
of the other was literally expelled or exorcised.
Race and class were clearly intertwined,
Race and class were clearly intertwined,
as Basques claimed “limpieza de sangre” and “hidalgo” status by birth.
An
An
old Christian Basque hidalgo like don José and an oriental, mixed blood Gypsy
like Carmen represent two diametric worlds.
The unlikely union of the Gypsy
The unlikely union of the Gypsy
and the Basque in Mérimée’s story fulfills the orientalist’s idea of the Spaniard as
“Arab-Christian” or “Catholic Turk” and the mythical construction of Spanish
identity as essentially split: half-European and half-Oriental, like us but unlike
us, partly civilized yet exotic and dangerous.
This confusion of identities is reinforced
This confusion of identities is reinforced
by the fictional characters’ own impersonations of each other.
Carmen
Carmen
tries to pass herself off as Basque to don José, replaying
the old myth of the child
the old myth of the child
stolen by the Gypsies and speaking to don José in Basque.
Don José, in turn,
Don José, in turn,
trades his military uniform for a gypsy costume and becomes an aculturated Gypsy,
to the extent that he is mistaken for one by the Gypsies in Gibraltar.
This transformation
This transformation
is reflected in his name change from don José Lizarrabengoa to José
Navarro.
For all their ethnic differences, Basques and Gypsies have a lot in common
For all their ethnic differences, Basques and Gypsies have a lot in common
in Carmen.
The Basque is another form of the incomprehensible other,
The Basque is another form of the incomprehensible other,
whose secret language needs to be translated by the narrator (like the Gypsies’
own Calé ), and whose cultural roots (like those of the Gypsies) need to be decoded
and footnoted. Both are attractive and exotic to the romantic imagination:
they have a mythical past, and legendary origins.
They are at odds with society
They are at odds with society
and largely misunderstood; and yet they are also identifiably close to the French
Basques and bohémiens found at “home.”
Both are travelers who live outside of
Both are travelers who live outside of
their mythical paradise: don José in exile from his homeland in the northern
Basque provinces, Carmen forever roaming, like all Gypsies, since the “exodus”
from their original homeland (Egypt according to myth; India, according to historical
discourse).
Characterized as typical extremes of Spanish split identity,
Characterized as typical extremes of Spanish split identity,
Basque and Gypsy eventually reconcile their cultural differences with their union
in the Sierra Mountains of Andalusia, a symbolic space in the violent formation
of national identity.
The Sierra Mountains have throughout Spanish history represented
The Sierra Mountains have throughout Spanish history represented
a locus of struggle and resistance against domination and assimilation,
most recently for Spanish guerillas fighting French invaders, and earlier for mi
Moriscos, Conversos and Gypsies). It is fitting that the orientalist composite
image of modern Spanish identity would blend and con-fuse these different
ethnicities as stand-in synecdoches of Spanishness.
Spontaneous, full of life, and unbound by the conventional mores and laws of
society, Carmen embodies the heroic defiance of free spirit, desire, and natural
instinct over the social rules governing modernity.
She is the idealized image of
She is the idealized image of
the bohemian.
But for those same reasons she also represents a symbolic threat.
But for those same reasons she also represents a symbolic threat.
Her natural freedom warrants her autonomy, as she will not be tied to any man,
and this constitutes a permanent threat to the confused identities of don José,
the narrator, and ultimately Mérimée.
In this double bind lies the
In this double bind lies the
ambiguous undecidability of the story, for while Carmen incarnates the principles
of freedom espoused by bohemians, her independence threatens the male-dominated
social and narrative order.
From the beginning, fears of inadequacy and emasculation are stirred in don
José by the sexually charged gestures, lurid language, and provocative clothing
worn by Carmen, whose job at the tobacco factory is, quite symbolically, rolling
cigars by hand and chopping off their heads.
An upright and uptight don José,
An upright and uptight don José,
recognizing the temptation of the exotic forbidden fruit, remarks:
“Dans mon
“Dans mon
pays, une femme en ce costume aurait obligé le monde à se signer”
In my part of
In my part of
the world everyone would have crossed themselves at the sight of a woman dressed
like that’ (33; 21).
Reinforcing the biblical imagery, it is at the “rue du Serpent”
Reinforcing the biblical imagery, it is at the “rue du Serpent”
where Carmen again uses her charm to seduce don José.
The implicit comparison
The implicit comparison
of the tempting, subversive Gypsy with the biblical serpent is part of a process
of degradation signaled by the repeated use of animal imagery (comparing her
to a cat, a wolf, and a chameleon), which represents the free-spirited Gypsy as
primitive, instinctual, wild, and dangerous.
Furthermore, Carmen is systematically
Furthermore, Carmen is systematically
demonized and characterized by the Frenchman as a fortune teller, a witch,
and “une servante du diable” ‘a servant of the devil’ (22; 14).
Again, the same
Again, the same
mirroring effect reoccurs as she is repeatedly described by don José as a witch
and a devilish creature, although he nevertheless completely succumbs to the
Gypsy girl’s charm.
The ambiguity of the story owes a great deal to both the narrator’s and don
José’s mixture of attraction and aversion toward Carmen.
Clearly, don José fulfills
Clearly, don José fulfills
the romantic fantasy of identifying with the other, living a “gypsy life” on the
fringes of society.
By joining Carmen in the mountains, he becomes a Gypsy fellow
By joining Carmen in the mountains, he becomes a Gypsy fellow
traveler, but also a bandit, a smuggler, and eventually a prisoner, identities at
odds with the social norms and moral code of his upbringing.
As an object of
As an object of
fascination and repulsion to the two men who represent the center of authority
in their respective narratives, Carmen spells a threatening other, a dark figure
that resists assimilation and endangers masculine power.
Her story thus requires
Her story thus requires
a final exorcism of the exotic so that social and patriarchal order may be restored.
Don José, a proud man of honour and reason, has lost both to Carmen’s magic
spell. His symbolic bewitchment is suggested repeatedly throughout the novel
and parallels the micro-story of the medieval King don Pedro I introduced as a
mise en abyme.
The analogy between the romantic don José and the romanticized
The analogy between the romantic don José and the romanticized
don Pedro is introduced at his first rendezvous with Carmen at the rue du
Candilejo, where (the narrator reminds us in another lengthy footnote) don
Pedro had killed a man in a quarrel, and also where don José will kill Carmen’s
suitor in a sword fight, inaugurating his long career as an outlaw with the Gypsies.
Before the final climax of the story, while Carmen performs the ritual of her
“magic,” she sings “quelqu’une de ces chansons magiques où elles invoquent
Marie Padilla” ‘one of those magic songs invoking María Padilla’ (75; 51).
This
This
new reference (amplified in yet another extended historical footnote) to the
traditional legend of the bewitched King Pedro I, who had presumably fallen
under the magic spell of his mistress María Padilla, popularly known as “la grande
reine des Bohémiens” ‘the Great Queen of the Gypsies” (75; 51), thus casts a
menacing shadow over don José: Carmen’s song is a bad omen that spells trouble.
The pressure to stop Carmen’s devilish magic and menacing charm and, ultimately,
to make her conform is clearly felt from the beginning of the narration:
“Toujours la même! Ça finira” ‘The same old story. This has got to stop’ (26; 16),
shouts a furious don José when he discovers Carmen has returned to the “occult
practice” of fortune-telling and the not-so-occult practice of flirting with other
men.
Because he is unable to tame Carmen’s independent spirit, the only way for
Because he is unable to tame Carmen’s independent spirit, the only way for
don José to put an end to these practices is to put an end to her life.
In order to
In order to
break free of her spell, don José resorts to a symbolic exorcism that will destroy
her “demonic” powers and eliminate his own sense of powerlessness: “La fureur
me possédait. Je tirai mon couteau. J’aurais voulu qu’elle eût peur et me demandât
grâce, mais cette femme était un démon”
Fury gripped me. I drew my knife. I
Fury gripped me. I drew my knife. I
would have liked her to show fear and beg for mercy, but that woman was a
demon.
Carmen must die, for she is unwilling to submit to a master/
Carmen must die, for she is unwilling to submit to a master/
slave relationship. Thus, Don José’s final embrace of Carmen, like the orientalist
embrace of the exotic other, is the kiss of death.
The close connection between desire for the other and its eradication is encapsulated
in the novel’s misogynist Greek epigraph, which Mérimée borrowed
from the classical poet Palladas: “
Every woman is as bitter as
gall, but she has two good moments: one in bed, the other at her death.
The quotation’s playful use of the Greek words talamos and thanatos—equating
George Borrow, in The Zincali, had already noted the anachronism of the popular Gypsy legend
of María Padilla, since medieval king Don Pedro lived long before the arrival of Gypsies to the
Iberian Peninsula.
Mérimée was well aware of the factitiousness of the legend since not only had he
Mérimée was well aware of the factitiousness of the legend since not only had he
read Borrow’s account of the legend but he had also started writing his own History of Don Pedro I.
Even though his narrator credits the story to the popular tradition and acknowledges that there
exists a different version of the legend, he still retains it in his story to create the illusion of historical
depth and to foreshadow the story of Carmen and don José.
This is perhaps another sign of the
This is perhaps another sign of the
never resolved conflict between history and fiction that seems to have plagued Mérimée’s career—
thus the recurrent invasion of historical footnotes even in the narration of don José.
The same
The same
conflict reappears in the fourth part of the Carmen story added in 1847, where Mérimée basically
recycles second-hand historical and anthropological materials on the Gypsies from authors like
Borrow that seem to contradict their characterization in the novel)
orgasm and the moment of death—acquires very different proportions at the end
of the novella, as Carmen becomes the tragic object of male SEXUAL DESIRE.
Curiously,
Curiously,
this time the scholar-narrator does not explain the foreign citation in a footnote,
since this cryptic message was probably intended only for readers (male, white
European, and educated—like the narrator and author) who had the means to
decode it.
The narrator thus veils his tacit complicity with the patriarchal order
The narrator thus veils his tacit complicity with the patriarchal order
and his espousal of the misogynist values at the core of European civilization,
here symbolically represented by classical Greek poetry.
The fundamental ambiguity
The fundamental ambiguity
of the love/hate, attraction/repulsion toward the other ultimately reveals
the barbaric and primitive side hidden behind the cultured and civilized mask.
Death is predicated as a projection of the anxiety caused by male sexual desire for the
other.
Through Carmen’s sacrificial death, don José aims to exorcise his own
Through Carmen’s sacrificial death, don José aims to exorcise his own
demons and, indirectly, the narrator’s.
The narrative accumulation of reasons for Carmen’s death is thus based on a
single premise: Carmen embodies a quality of excess that makes her a threat to
the patriarchal political order, an excess impossible to neutralize except through
her sacrificial death.
Her body is a constant reminder of her resistance to domination.
Her body is a constant reminder of her resistance to domination.
Carmen’s continued blurring of the territorial demarcations imposed by
cultural and political norms is made manifest on multiple grounds: gender (she
resists male domination); sexuality (her desires are free and uninhibited, and
create fears of emasculation); race (as a Gypsy, she illicits fears of miscegenation);
religion (she practices occult magic and is repeatedly seen as a devil and a
threat to Christian faith); and politics (Carmen not only continually resists both
civil and military authority; she also obliterates geo-political borders, defying
territorial borders and mocking both Spanish and British law in the process as
she takes advantage of the status of Gibraltar as a British colony on peninsular
soil).
Ultimately, Carmen’s smuggling is also an economic threat that subverts
Ultimately, Carmen’s smuggling is also an economic threat that subverts
governmental regulations and the monopoly of the oligarchy (a threat already
suggested by the commotion she causes in the state-run cigarette factory).
Clearly Carmen defies and threatens the social order and finally has to pay
with her life.
Don José will be the private executioner, but her symbolic death
Don José will be the private executioner, but her symbolic death
for breaking cultural codes and political norms also displaces blame for don
José’s criminal action onto the Gypsy community, their way of life, and the principles
of freedom they bestowed upon Carmen.
Don José’s last words are a blanket
Don José’s last words are a blanket
accusation of the Gypsy race as a whole:
Pauvre enfant! Ce sont les Calé qui
Pauvre enfant! Ce sont les Calé qui
sont coupables pour l’avoir élevée ainsi” ‘Poor child! The Calé are to blame, for
bringing her up as they did.
On that note, social and narrative order
On that note, social and narrative order
are both finally restored. The exotic body of the Gypsy is demonized and safely
exorcised. The narrator can go back to the pleasures of his scholarly activities, as
Carmen, don José, and presumably the readers can now all rest in peace.
As we know only too well, however, this was just the first act of a never-ending
story.
Mérimée’s Carmen contributed to the renewed fascination with Spanish
Mérimée’s Carmen contributed to the renewed fascination with Spanish
Gypsies, mixing dancers, smugglers, bullfighters, and gitanas as interchangeable
signifiers of oriental Spain. The bohemian imagination of later artists such as
Dehodencq, Giraud, Doré, Corot, Manet, Courbet, Achille Zo, Regnault, Esbens,
and Renoir filled the walls of bourgeois Parisian salons with their exotic genre
paintings, proving that the appetite for exotic Spanish Gypsies was far from dead.
Indeed, Carmen was first resurrected by Giorgio Bizet and his librettists Meilhac
and Halevy in 1875, initiating a long series of deaths and resuscitations that would
continue uninterrupted to our day.
Bizet, who had earlier turned to oriental
Bizet, who had earlier turned to oriental
inspiration for his operas Les pêcheurs de perles and Djamileh, composed Carmen
following another old European tradition of setting operas in Spain, more than
20 in Seville alone
Rosini’s Il Barbieri di Seviglia
Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Verdi’s Il
Rosini’s Il Barbieri di Seviglia
Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Verdi’s Il
Trovatore,
Beethoven’s Fidelio,
Wagner’s Parsifal, among them.
It seems as if every
Beethoven’s Fidelio,
Wagner’s Parsifal, among them.
It seems as if every
major nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European composer fell captive
to Seville’s exotic magic.
Although the narrative framing disappears in Bizet’s Carmen, and with it the
overbearing French narrator (only the third chapter of the novella is retained),
the historical framing remains.
The setting is moved back to 1820, however, a
The setting is moved back to 1820, however, a
period of political confusion, social unrest, and popular uprisings during the
short interval between two major French military incursions into Spanish territory:
the Napoleonic War and the French intervention of 1823.
The othering mechanism
The othering mechanism
of Mérimée’s narrative framing, which stressed French dominance, is transposed
in the opera through the deployment of French cultural codes operating
—superimposed—over themes codified as Spanish.
Mérimée’s story had to be
Mérimée’s story had to be
adapted to conform to the Opéra-Comique conventions and the expectations of
an audience accustomed to bourgeois melodrama.
The story-line is more complicated
The story-line is more complicated
than in Mérimée’s novel: characters are added, and Manichaean stereotypes
are exaggerated.
Thus, in keeping with bourgeois operatic conventions, a
Thus, in keeping with bourgeois operatic conventions, a
pale, virginal, and angelic Micaela (also a Basque) appeared on stage to balance
devilish Carmen’s racial and sexual excess.
In spite of these changes, the opera
In spite of these changes, the opera
proved to be too shocking for the family theater.
The violent conflation of gender,
The violent conflation of gender,
race, and class in the portrayal of Gypsies, cigarette girls, transgressive sexuality,
smoking women, outlaws, and the killing of a woman on stage clearly defied
the limits of propriety and acceptability in opera.
Carmen was a public enemy, a
Carmen was a public enemy, a
constant menace to bourgeois morality and order, and inevitably had to die in
the end—something formerly unseen at the Opéra-Comique.
While the opera retained Mérimée’s confusing ambiguity regarding the other,
entangling bohemianism, Gypsies, and oriental Spain with the idea of love as a
gypsy child, it was also too diluted and denaturalized for the purists, who considered
it essentially a French opera imbued with pseudo-Spanish gypsy-like patterns
by a French composer who had never set foot in Spain.
One of its early
One of its early
reviewers recognized the orientalist construction of modern Spain emerging from
“ses origines judaïques, arabs, égyptiennes” ‘her Judaic, Arab, Egyptian origins’
Indeed, Bizet’s Carmen represents a prime example of
the continued European fascination with oriental Spain.
Bizet clearly contributed
Bizet clearly contributed
to the orientalist fashion of appropriating Spanish motifs among turn-ofthe-
century European composers, from Strauss’s Don Quixote, Lalo’s Symphonie
espagnole, Debussy’s Iberia, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol, and Liszt’s Rhapsodie
espagnole to Ravel’s Bolero.
All of these scores resorted to an ample range of musical
All of these scores resorted to an ample range of musical
motifs vaguely codified as Spanish and recognizable by French audiences
accustomed to dance halls, cafes and brothels.
By mixing exotic popular rhythms
By mixing exotic popular rhythms
and dances such as the Spanish seguidilla and the Cuban habanera (appropriated
from the popular song “El arreglito” by Basque-Cuban composer Iradier), both
associated with nineteenth-century Parisian night life, with disparate gypsy folk
motifs (Spanish as well as Eastern European), and then embuing these exotic
elements with a brilliant, exuberant orchestration accentuated by oriental arabesques
and the use of chromaticism, conventionally codified as the oriental
dissonant other Bizet created a composite musical language that
defined oriental Spain as mysterious, exotic, and sensual, but also dangerous
and fatalistic.
Thus, Bizet accomplished musically what romantic writers and artists
Thus, Bizet accomplished musically what romantic writers and artists
had done through literary discourse, travel writing, and painting: the confusion
of different, even opposing, identities in a conglomerate recycled image of
oriental Spain embodied in the Gypsy.10
Yet in spite of all the elements conventionally coded as Spanish on its surface,
Bizet’s Carmen seems really to be speaking about contemporary French anxieties
that are displaced in the opera to the relative safety of the exotic.
It is easy to see
It is easy to see
Carmen’s tragic desire for freedom as a Spanish reflection of the revolutionary
desires that ended in the massacres of the revolution of 1848 or the failed uprising
of the Paris Commune in 1871.
Indeed, the overarching militarism of the
Indeed, the overarching militarism of the
opera recalls the militarist atmosphere of the post-Commune political situation
in France.
The military institution functions in the opera as the referent of patriarchal
The military institution functions in the opera as the referent of patriarchal
order, hierarchy, and established morality, qualities which are musically
celebrated in the military marches of the garrison at the beginning of the opera
as well as in the pseudo-military march of the toreador at the end.
The final scene of Carmen’s death outside the bullring is also musically linked
with Escamillo’s killing of the bull inside, as both are ritualistically sacrificed.
The
The
toreador’s victorious march overlaps don José’s killing of Carmen with the clamours
of “Victoire!” and “Bravo” framing the crime scene and so clearly suggesting
the completion of a collective exorcism.
The climatic sacrificial death of female
The climatic sacrificial death of female
protagonists who had “crossed the line” and represented a threat to patriarchal
order was of course a recurring element of closure in nineteenth-century European
fiction, and we interpret the frequent need to resort
to this strategy in nineteenth-century opera as a symbolic masculine revenge on
the world of femininity as well as an exorcism of the morally alien and illicit by a
(Spanish fin-de-siècle artists and composers were not immune to this orientalist trend. It was in
the fine arts where the nationalist sentiment found its most clear expression through internalized
orientalism. The modern Spanish school that helped create a national musical idiom of international
renown was born in large part as its result. Pedrell, Falla, Granados, and Albéniz all resorted
to the use of Gypsies and Andalusians as tropes of Spanishness in their works, and, not coincidentally,
they all studied or became successful as composers in Paris. The Moorish revival in architecture
and the decorative arts and the overbearing presence of Gypsies and other related Spanish-coded
motifs such as flamenco performers and bullfights in painting (Picasso to Nonell) and sculpture
(Benlliure) seems a reflection of internalized exoticism. Again, it is not a coincidence that all these
artists lived for long periods of time in Paris, befriending French artists who already had a fascination
with oriental Spain)
bourgeoisie which is at once both fascinated and horrified” (579).
Clearly, Carmen
Clearly, Carmen
could be inscribed within this operatic tradition of patriarchal exorcism against
nonconformity, but this symbolic act of exorcism, conflating in Carmen different
gender, class, ethnic, and racial identities (female, working class, Gypsy, Oriental,
and Spanish), represents also the triumph of the bourgeois white male
northern European subject over the defeated exotic other.
Once again, the multiple
Once again, the multiple
threats posed by the other, always desirable but always dangerous, need
finally to be ritualistically exorcised and expelled from the social body.
With Bizet’s Carmen the orientalization of Spain reached a new zenith.
Although
Although
not a success initially, it soon became one of the most popular operas ever composed,
canonizing the cliché espagnolade on a global scale and with a previously
unknown level of respectability and international recognition.
In effect, Bizet’s
In effect, Bizet’s
Carmen reinscribed the orientalist vision of Spain as a spectacle for travelers’
consumption, symbolized in the figure of the performing Gypsy.
The multi-layered
The multi-layered
operatic spectacle—music, dance, costumes, mise en scène—definitely established
in the popular imagination the overdetermined iconization of the
Spanish Gypsy—inseparable from the exoticised romantic construction of Spain
—as the seductive, colourful, exotic female body endlessly performing for male
pleasure, an obscure, and ultimately disposable, object of desire and disdain.
The persistent and widespread notion of Spain as an oriental nation and the
Gypsy as one of its most recognizable commodities is the legacy of the romantic
image of Spain as a land of passion, exotic travel, and erotic pleasure, but also
essentially different, eccentric, primitive, and inferior.
A hundred years ago American
A hundred years ago American
writer H.C. Chaterfield-Taylord wrote another travel book on Spain entitled
The Land of the Castanet. Written in the preliminary stages of the Spanish-American
War, the book suggests Spain had already been reduced to little more than
castanets in the American imagination.
The popular success in our day of exploitative
The popular success in our day of exploitative
pseudo-flamenco acts such as the Gypsy Kings or Michael Flatley’s
Riverdance, as well as the staging of Carmen at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games,
which aimed to project an image of modern Spain to the world, have only reinforced
this idea.
Spain remains, more than a hundred years after Bizet composed
Spain remains, more than a hundred years after Bizet composed
his opera, quintessentially the land of castanets.
The apparent difficulties
The apparent difficulties
of dismantling this inherited image are proof that the pervasive discourse of
exoticism is still in need of its own exorcism.
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