Carmen

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).

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.

I had hired a guide and two horses at Cordova, and had taken the field with no other impedimenta than Caesar’s
Commentaries
and a shirt or two. On a certain day, as I wandered over the more elevated portion of the plain of Cachena, worn out with fatigue, dying with thirst, and scorched by a sun of molten lead, I was wishing with all my heart that Caesar and Pompey’s sons were in the devil’s grip, when I spied, at a considerable distance from the path I was following, a tiny greensward, studded with reeds and rushes, which indicated the proximity of a spring. In fact, as I drew nearer, I found that what had seemed to be a greensward was a marshy tract through which a stream meandered, issuing apparently from a narrow ravine between two high buttresses of the Sierra de Cabra. I concluded that by ascending the stream I should find cooler water, fewer leeches and frogs, and perhaps a bit of shade among the cliffs. As we rode into the gorge my horse whinnied, and another horse, which I could not see, instantly answered. I had ridden barely a hundred yards when the gorge, widening abruptly, disclosed a sort of natural amphitheatre, entirely shaded by the high cliffs which surrounded it. It was impossible to find a spot which promised the traveller a more attractive sojourn. At the foot of perpendicular cliffs, the spring came bubbling forth and fell into a tiny basin carpeted with sand as white as snow. Five or six fine live-oaks, always sheltered from the wind and watered by the spring, grew upon its brink and covered it with their dense shade; and all about the basin, a fine, sheeny grass promised a softer bed than one could find at any inn within a radius of ten leagues.

The honour of discovering so attractive a spot did not belong to me. A man was already reposing there, and was asleep in all probability when I rode in. Roused by the neighing of the horses, he had risen, and had walked towards his horse, which had taken advantage of his master’s slumber to make a hearty meal on the grass in the immediate neighbourhood. He was a young fellow, of medium height, but of robust aspect, and with a proud and distrustful expression. His complexion, which might once have been fine, had become darker than his hair through the action of the sun. He held his horse’s halter in one hand and in the other a blunderbuss with a copper barrel. I will admit that at first blush the blunderbuss and the forbidding air of its bearer took me a little by surprise; but I had ceased to believe in robbers, because I had heard so much said about them and had never met one. Moreover, I had seen so many honest farmers going to market armed to the teeth that the sight of a firearm did not justify me in suspecting the stranger’s moral character.—“And then, too,” I said to myself, “what would he do with my shirts and my Elzevir Caesar?” So I saluted the man with the blunderbuss with a familiar nod, and asked him smilingly if I had disturbed his sleep.

He eyed me from head to foot without replying; then, as if satisfied by his examination, he scrutinised no less closely my guide, who rode up at that moment. I saw that the latter turned pale and stopped in evident alarm. “An unfortunate meeting!” I said to myself. But prudence instantly counselled me to betray no uneasiness. I dismounted, told the guide to remove the horses’ bridles, and, kneeling by the spring, I
plunged my face and hands in the water; then I took a long draught and lay flat on my stomach, like the wicked soldiers of Gideon.

But I kept my eyes on my guide and the stranger. The former drew near, sorely against his will; the other seemed to have no evil designs upon us, for he had set his horse at liberty once more, and his blunderbuss, which he had held at first in a horizontal position, was now pointed towards the ground.

As it seemed to me inexpedient to take umbrage at the small amount of respect shown to my person, I stretched myself out on the grass, and asked the man with the blunderbuss, in a careless tone, if he happened to have a flint and steel about him. At the same time I produced my cigar-case. The stranger, still without a word, felt in his pocket, took out his flint and steel and courteously struck a light for me. Evidently he was becoming tamer, for he sat down opposite me, but did not lay aside his weapon. When my cigar was lighted; I selected the best of those that remained and asked him if he smoked.

“Yes, señor,” he replied.

Those were the first words that he had uttered, and I noticed that he did not pronounce the
s
after the Andalusian fashion,
^*
whence I concluded that he was a traveller like myself, minus the archaeologist.

“You will find this rather good,” I said, offering him a genuine Havana regalia.

He bent his head slightly, lighted his cigar by mine, thanked me with another nod, then began to smoke with every appearance of very great enjoyment.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, as he discharged the first puff slowly through his mouth and his nostrils. “How long it is since I have had a smoke!”

In Spain, a cigar offered and accepted establishes hospitable relations, just as the sharing of bread and salt does in the East. My man became more talkative than I had hoped. But, although he claimed to live in the
partido
of Montilla, he seemed to be but ill-acquainted with the country. He did not know the name of the lovely valley where we were; he could not mention any village in the neighbourhood; and, lastly, when I asked him whether he had seen any ruined walls thereabouts, or any tiles with raised edges, or any carved stones, he admitted that he had never paid any attention to such things. By way of compensation he exhibited much expert knowledge of horses. He criticised mine, which was not very difficult; then he gave me the genealogy of his, which came from the famous stud of Cordova; a noble animal in very truth, and so proof against fatigue, according to his master, that he had once travelled thirty leagues in a day, at a gallop or a fast trot. In the middle of his harangue the stranger paused abruptly, as if he were surprised and angry with himself for having said too much.

“You see, I was in a hurry to get to Cordova,” he added,
with some embarrassment. “I had to present a petition to the judges in the matter of a lawsuit.”

As he spoke, he glanced at my guide, Antonio, who lowered his eyes.

The cool shade and the spring were so delightful to me that I remembered some slices of excellent ham which my friends at Montilla had put in my guide’s wallet. I bade him produce them, and I invited the stranger to join me in my impromptu collation. If he had not smoked for a long while, it seemed probable to me that he had not eaten for at least forty-eight hours. He devoured the food like a starved wolf. It occurred to me that our meeting was a providential affair for the poor fellow. My guide meanwhile ate little, drank still less, and did not talk at all, although from the very beginning of our journey he had revealed himself to me in the guise of an unparalleled chatterbox. Our guest’s presence seemed to embarrass him, and a certain distrust kept them at arm’s length from each other, but I was unable to divine its cause.