The
close connection between desire for the other and its eradication is
encapsulated in the novel’s misogynist Greek epigraph, which Mérimée [in his
novella "Carmen" -- source for Bizet's opera] borrowed from the classical poet
Palladas:
«Πᾶσα γυνὴ χόλος ἐστίν· ἔχει δ᾿ ἀγαθὰς δύο ὥρας· τὴν μίαν ἐν θαλάμῳ, τὴν
μίαν ἐν θανάτῳ.»
‘Every woman is as bitter as gall, but she has two good moments: one in bed, the other at her death’ (341). The quotation’s playful use of the Greek words "talamos" and "thanatos" — equating orgasm and the moment of death —acquires very different proportions at the end of the novella, as Carmen becomes the tragic object of male desire. 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 and his espousal of the misogynist values at the core of European civilization, here symbolically represented by classical Greek poetry. 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 desire for the other. Through Carmen’s sacrificial death, don José aims to exorcise his own demons and, indirectly, the French narrator’s."
Then there's the fascinating classical connection of Mérimée's tracing the site of the battle of Munda at the beginning of the novella.
‘Every woman is as bitter as gall, but she has two good moments: one in bed, the other at her death’ (341). The quotation’s playful use of the Greek words "talamos" and "thanatos" — equating orgasm and the moment of death —acquires very different proportions at the end of the novella, as Carmen becomes the tragic object of male desire. 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 and his espousal of the misogynist values at the core of European civilization, here symbolically represented by classical Greek poetry. 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 desire for the other. Through Carmen’s sacrificial death, don José aims to exorcise his own demons and, indirectly, the French narrator’s."
Then there's the fascinating classical connection of Mérimée's tracing the site of the battle of Munda at the beginning of the novella.
Mérimée, Prosper. Carmen. 1845. Ed. and Trans. Maxime Revon. Paris: Garnier Frères, 1960.
———. Carmen and Other Stories. Trans. Nicholas Jotcham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
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