Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris, on the 28th of September, 1803, and
died at Cannes, on the 23d of September, 1870. His grandfather on his
father's side was a lawyer, his father a professor at the _École des
Beaux-Arts_. His mother, a grand daughter of Mme. Leprince de Beaumont,
the author of "The Beauty and the Beast" and other juvenile stories,
was a painter of merit, like his father, and had a natural gift for
narration.
Mérimée's early home and school training emphasized and developed
three characteristics of his nature, the first of which had to do with
his feelings, the second with his mind, and the third with his will.
When he was five years old, it happened that he was sent away from his
mother's studio as a punishment for some misbehavior. Once outside, he
began to beg pardon in tones of genuine repentance. His mother did not
answer. Finally, he opened the door and dragged himself on his
knees towards her, supplicating so pathetically that she burst
out--laughing. Then, suddenly, he arose and in an altered tone cried
out: "Well, if you make fun of me, I shall never beg pardon again!"
Afterwards at school, at the Collège Henri IV, he was teased and made
fun of by his fellows on account of his timidity, awkwardness and the
effeminate elegance of his dress. This sort of experience, aided
by his natural temperament, gradually led to the concealment of his
feelings. Though his voluminous correspondence, published after his
death, reveals a sensitive nature, his habitual attitude towards the
emotions ultimately became one of indifference and even cynicism.
He fared better in the education of his mental faculties. His parents'
home was a calm retreat where thought, judgment and refinement had
their abode, and the noise of mob and cannon and politics scarcely
penetrated. It was an artists' home, frequented by artists, English as
well as French. Here was leisure and disposition to consider the value
of an idea. And here was laid the foundation of that varied education
of which he gives evidence in the many-sidedness of his interests and
of his literary activity.
But although this quiet life in the society of artists and scholars,
quite shut in from the world of politics, was conducive to the
development of a refined mind, it is evident that participation in
events would have been better for the development of Mérimée's will.
Besides, he was humored at home, was not put to definite and
perhaps disagreeable tasks. Another unfavorable influence was the
reaction--after Waterloo--from the extreme energy of Napoleonic times,
bringing about in France a general feeling of lassitude and vague
fear. This may explain to some extent why Mérimée very rarely gave
himself completely to a cause and why he appeared to the world as a
sceptic and a dilettante.
We must think then of Mérimée as a man of exceptionally complex and
refined mind, capable of deep feeling, but rarely showing it, and
strongly inclined towards dilettantism.
During the first ten years of his early manhood Mérimée divided his
time between literary studies and pleasure, taking upon himself no
definite responsibilities. He began the study of law, but he soon
abandoned it. In 1826 he took a trip to England, in 1829 he went to
Spain. Between 1831 and 1833 he was, according to his own account, a
"_mauvais sujet_ with moderation and from curiosity". In the mean time
he acquired a rather profound knowledge of Greek and of Latin. He
also began to study Spanish and learned to speak not only the pure
Castilian, but several of its dialects as well. History, too, began
to have a great charm for him, especially in the form of the concrete
anecdote. He declares in one of his early books, the "Chronique du
règne de Charles IX", that history is but a series of anecdotes
and that he would have preferred the memoirs of one of Pericles'
chambermaids to the "History of the Peloponnesian War". He also
becomes acquainted with the thinkers and literary men of the
day, young men most of them, such as Albert Stapfer, Henri Beyle,
Sainte-Beuve, Viollet-le-Duc, Victor Hugo, and others, some of whom
achieved lasting fame. Many of these would meet regularly, read their
work to each other and discuss Byron, Walter Scott and Goethe. Mérimée
would then sit sketching at a corner of the table, and would utter
from time to time his droll, shrewd witticism, quietly, without a
smile, and without making any effort to see whether his "mot" had hit
the mark.
After the July revolution (1830), and through the influence of the De
Broglie family, of whose estates Mérimée's grandfather had been the
manager, the author was appointed _maître de requêtes_, the officer
to whom petitions to the Council of State were addressed. Six weeks
afterwards he was appointed chief of cabinet in the ministry of
marine, a position which he exchanged later for similar positions in
the ministries of commerce and of the interior. And when his minister,
the Count of Argout, became governor of the Bank of France (1836), the
latter procured for him the position of Inspector General of Public
Monuments, the only position--on account of its opportunities for
artistic criticism--which he took seriously. He held it with great
merit until his failing health made it impossible for him to perform
its duties. On the 18th of November, 1843, he was elected a member
of the _Académie des Inscriptions_ and on the 4th of March, 1844,
occurred his reception at the _Académie française_. On the 23d of
June, 1853, he received an appointment to the Senate of France.
These last appointments he received, or affected to receive, with
indifference, and his attitude in the academy as well as in the senate
was that of an indolent spectator. He owed his senatorship to Empress
Eugénie, whom he had known since his first journey to Spain and whose
mother, the Countess of Montijo, had become one of his best friends.
Through his friendship with the empress he became _persona grata_ at
the court of Napoleon III, and though he was not of the stuff of which
courtiers are made, he took an active part in many of the functions
and festivities of the court.
Mérimée began his literary career in 1825 with the publication of a
collection of eight short plays after the Spanish manner, the "Théâtre
de Clara Gazul, comédienne espagnole", for which he borrowed a
sub-title: "Collection des théâtres étrangers", from a collection
of foreign dramas edited by Ladvocat. He prefaced the plays with a
"Notice sur Clara Gazul", signed: Joseph L'Estrange, who was supposed
to be the editor of them. In 1827 he continued this vein of clever
imitation under the cloak of fictitious editorship in "La Guzla, choix
de poésies illyriques recueillies dans la Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la
Croatie et l'Herzégovina." This book consisted of twenty-eight ballads
in prose form and an article on Hyacinthe Maglanovich, a fictitious
Slavic bard and the supposed editor of them. These ballads and those
plays looked so genuine that even men of international reputation
in literature were deceived. One of Mérimée's objects with these two
books was a silent, satirical comment on the too loudly proclaimed
efficacy of certain romantic tenets, especially the assertion that
scenes should be laid in surroundings remote in time and place, and
that the local color of these surroundings should be minutely studied
and described. In 1840 he writes that with five or six Illyrian words
and two pedantic little books he improvised "La Guzla" in two weeks.
And further: "From that day on I was disgusted with local color,
seeing how easy it was to fabricate it." Of course, this statement
should in the first place be regarded as polemical and as a sly hit
perhaps at Victor Hugo. For Mérimée's literary output is a triumph for
the cause of local color. What he meant, and illustrates in his work,
is that local color and remoteness in time and place are secondary to
treatment and style, and that he regarded the romantic treatment and
style as exaggerated and bombastic. After "La Guzla" he soon shows
that Beyle's ideas have "singularly colored" his own, though not
to the extent of affecting his originality. He attempts themes more
closely allied to France and to his own time, choosing from a number
of possible features the salient, the most striking feature, and
though sometimes choosing themes that are strange and weird in
themselves, avoiding sensational treatment of them. "Mateo Falcone",
"L'Enlèvement de la redoute", "Tamango" (1829), "La partie de
trictrac", "Le vase étrusque" (1830), and "La double méprise" (1833),
are examples of realistic, not of romantic, treatment.
All the critics agree that these short stories are masterpieces which
will remain classics. They contain no lengthy descriptions. There are
no reflections, dissertations or explanations in them. They bring out
in relief only the permanent features of a given situation, features
interesting and intelligible to men of other ages and climes. They
are lucid and well constructed. Their plots turn about a simple action
with unique effect. Their style is alert, urbane, discreet, and rich,
seeking its effect only through concrete and simple means. They deal
but very slightly with lyrical emotion, they deal with passions and
the will.
Mérimée reached his climax in 1840 with "Colomba". Sainte-Beuve calls
it a perfect story and points out various analogies between Sophocles'
"Electra" and Mérimée's heroine. It was published in book form in
1841, together with the "Vénus d'Ille" and "Les Ames du purgatoire",
which had, like "Colomba", first appeared in the "Revue des Deux
Mondes", the former in 1837 and the latter in 1834. As the days of
romanticism become numbered, Mérimée ceases his original production.
In 1846, with the publication of a volume containing "Carmen", "Arsène
Guillot" and "L'Abbé Aubain", he takes leave of the novel-reading
public, and when twenty years later he takes up his pen again with "La
chambre bleue" and "Lokis", the first of which was written in 1866 for
the empress and the second of which first appeared in the "Revue des
Deux Mondes" in 1869, the author shows no longer the faultlessness of
"L'Enlèvement de la redoute" or of "Colomba".
If it is impossible to do justice to Mérimée's purely literary work
in a short introduction, it is evident that it is out of the question
even to touch upon his historical work, or on his numerous reports as
Inspector General of Public Monuments, or on the great number of his
prefaces and articles on history, archaeology, art, architecture,
ceramics, travel and literature. Neither can anything but a bare
mention be made of his large correspondence, which has been so
important a factor in a truer study of Mérimée. One matter should,
however, be brought out here. Though he fails to appreciate Russian
mystic feeling and melancholy, though he enters only into those
elements of Russian literature which are like himself and appeal
to him, he deserves credit for having been practically the first
to introduce that literature to France. The immediate results of
Mérimée's studies in Russian are articles on Nicolas Gogol (1852), on
Alexander Pushkin (1868) and on Ivan Turgenieff (1868), the last of
which is a preface to a translation by one Augustin Galitzin of
that author's "Fumée" of which Mérimée had, besides, corrected the
proof-sheets. Further translations were: "La Dame de pique", "Les
Bohémiens", "Le Hussard" (1852), and "Le Coup de pistolet" (1856),
from Pushkin; "L'Inspecteur général" (1853) from Gogol's "Revisor".
It goes without saying that translations by an artist of Mérimée's
caliber have from the stylistic point of view the value of original
stories.
Mérimée has taken his place in the history of French literature as
discreetly as if he were alive. Nobody has attacked him, nobody has
lauded him to the skies. But his fame is genuine and still growing. A
classicist from personal taste, he becomes one of the first realists
by way of reaction from romantic exaggeration. Above all he is an
artist. He excels in planning the just proportion of the parts of a
story. He rebels at the non-essential. And he conceals the machinery
of narration so successfully that it escapes detection, thereby giving
the impression of spontaneity, which is the _sine qua non_ of any art.
He is the foremost novelettist of his time.
Sorrow over the Franco-Prussian war hastened his end. His death,
which, in 1869, had been erroneously announced in all the newspapers
of Europe, passed unnoticed amid the loud crash of the downfall of the
second empire.