28 September 1803, 210 years ago, the author, historian and civil servant Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris.
“Not to take Goethe into account, for he is reasonably claimed by the century that produced him, I look only on Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Merimee, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor the author of Imaginary Conversations, as worthy to be called masters of prose.“ (Friedrich Nietzsche)
|De Champmartin’s (1797 – 1883) portrait of Prosper Mérimée|
Combining his sombre taste with a fascination for the supernatural an a weird sense of humour, Mérimée published his own set of Illyrian tales and ballads of revenge and treachery and blood and vampires, allegedly a translation by one Joseph L’Estrange of the works of the local poet “Hyacinthe Maglanowich”, a hoax in the manner of MacPherson’s faked Scottish “Ossian” epics and equally believed to be genuine. Eastern European, especially Russian as well as Spanish influences continued to inspire him to publish more tall tales as well as to introduce Pushkin and Lermontov to France. But relating the tale of the ruffian Don José Zempranito and his ill-fated love affair with a beautiful if volatile cigar factory worker he heard in Spain made his literary fame everlasting – the story was published in 1845 as “Carmen” and inspired Bizet to compose one of the world’s best-known operas.
|Prosper Mérimée's own watercolour of Carmen (1845)|