MÉRIMÉE AND HIS WRITINGS
Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris, September 28, 1803. His father, a Norman, was a professor in the École des Beaux-Arts, and his mother, Anne Moreau, who had English blood in her veins, was also an artist. Prosper attended the Collège Henri IV, and in the home of his parents met the literati of the day. He undertook the study of law, but soon abandoned it, and spent some years in observing life while journeying abroad. He made much of ancient and modern languages, becoming especially proficient in Spanish. Upon his return to Paris he served in public office, and held the post of Inspector General of Public Monuments until declining health compelled him to retire. He was elected to several learned societies and became a commander of the Legion of Honor, and, in 1844, a member of the French Academy. Nine years later he was made a Senator of France, an honor he owed to the friendship of the Empress Eugénie. He died at Cannes on the 23rd of September, 1870, at the age of sixty-seven.
Prosper Mérimée was a successful poet, translator, novelist, and short-story writer. His translations of the Russian novelists have been pronounced excellent. “Colomba” is a romantic novelette of singular power and charm. His most famous short-stories are “The Taking of the Redoubt,” “Tamango,” “Federigo,” “The Etruscan Vase,” “The Vision of Charles XI,” “The Venus of Ille,” “The Pearl of Toledo,” “Carmen” (on which Bizet’s opera is founded), “Arsène Guillot,” and “Mateo Falcone”; which follows, in a translation by the editor of this volume. It was first published in the Revue de Paris, May, 1829.
Among French masters of the short-story, Mérimée easily holds place in the first rank. Both personality and genius are his, and both well repay careful study. He was an alert student of history, to whom its anecdotal side made strongest appeal. The detached, impersonal, unprejudiced attitude of the historian is seen in his short-stories, for he tells his narrative impartially, with a sort of take-it-or-leave-it air, allowing the story to make its own appeal without any special pleading on his part. His story-telling manner is, therefore, one of ironical coldness. He delighted to tell his tales in the matter-of-fact manner of the casual traveller who has picked up a good yarn and passes it on just as it was told him. And this literary attitude was a reflex of his personality. To him, to love deeply was to endure pain, to follow impulse was to court trouble, to cherish enthusiasms was to delude the mind, so he schooled himself to appear impassive. Yet now and then in his lucid and clear-cut stories, as in his urbane life, a certain sweetness is revealed which speaks alluringly of the tender spirit within.
All my life I have sought to free myself from prejudices, to be a citizen of the world before being a Frenchman, but now all these garments of philosophy are nothing to me. To-day I bleed for the wounds of the foolish French, I mourn for their humiliations, and, however ungrateful and absurd they may be, I love them still.—Prosper Mérimée, letter to Madame de Beaulaincourt (Marquise de Castellane), written, ten days before his death, on hearing from his friend Thiers that the disaster of Sedan was irreparable and that the Empire was a thing of the past.
A gallant man and a gentleman, he has had the reward he would have wished. He has been discreetly and intimately enjoyed by delicate tastes.... It was his rare talent to give us those limpid, rapid, full tales, that one reads in an hour, re-reads in a day, which fill the memory and occupy the thoughts forever.—Émile Faguet, quoted by Grace King, in C. D. Warner’s Library of the World’s Best Literature.
Colomba, Mateo Falcone, La Double Méprise, La Vénus d’Ille, L’Enlèvement de la Redoute, Lokis, have equals, but no superiors, either in French prose fiction or in French prose. Grasp of human character, reserved but masterly description of scenery, delicate analysis of motive, ability to represent the supernatural, pathos, grandeur, simple narrative excellence, appear turn by turn in these wonderful pieces, as they appear hardly anywhere else.—George Saintsbury, A Short History of French Literature.
While inferior to Stendhal as a psychologist, notwithstanding the keenness of his analysis, he excels him in opening out and developing action, and in composing a work whose parts hang well together. In addition he possesses a “literary” style,—not the style of an algebraist, but that of an exact, self-sustained writer. He attains the perfection of form in his particular line. Nearly all his stories are masterpieces of that rather dry and hard, though forceful, nervous, and pressing style, which constitutes him one of the most original and most characteristic novelists of the century.—Georges Pellissier, The Literary Movement in France.
I do not scruple to apply the word great to Mérimée, a word which is not to be used lightly, but of which he is thoroughly deserving. His style is the purest and clearest of our century; no better model could possibly be found for our present generation. His prose, to my mind, together with that of Musset, Fromentin, and Renan, is the most beautiful modern prose which has ever been written in the French language. Like the great classics of the 17th century, he never wrote a passage merely to please the eye or the ear; his sole aim was to express thought, and the colour of his language, which is so pre-eminently true to nature, is of a rare sobriety; he never studies effect, and, nevertheless, invariably attains it.—Edouard Grenier, Literary Reminiscences.