Did really come from Russia (with a little help from Turgenev)?

A.D.P. Briggs

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note. Georges Bizet1 I am convinced that in about ten years Carmen will have become the most popular in the world. Petr Ilich Chaikovskii (1889)2

A Disputed Claim

In the summer of 2006 a book review in the Times Literary Supplement contained the following passing remark hidden away between brackets: ‘(The free-loving Zemfira and her death at ’s jealous hands provided a direct source for Prosper Mérimée’s and ’s Carmen)’.3 The reference is, of course, to the two main characters in Pushkin’s narrative poem , which he wrote in 1824, and published in 1827. Although the claim is demonstrably true, you still cannot expect to make it without inviting opposition. On this occasion the objection was not long delayed. A reader wrote in to say that this claim was a canard often trotted out by academics; it was untrue, and one reason was that Mérimée began to study Russian only in 1848, having already written his story Carmen in 1845. A short correspondence ensued, but the subject has now gone back to sleep. Nothing has been cleared up. If anything, the story has become rather more complicated. Referring to The Gypsies, the correspondent informs us that ‘To see it as a direct source for his Spanish tale has tempted many critics.’4 This is to suggest that only one thing matters: the line of provenance goes from the Pushkin poem straight to the French-Spanish tale and thence to the opera libretto - which is by no means what has been claimed. And in any case, who are the ‘many’ critics? Very few people have written about this subject, and no-one in much detail. Several ideas need to be tested. How much Russian did Mérimée know, and when did he learn it? How well did he know Pushkin’s work? Could he have absorbed something from The Gypsies that affected his 84 Turgenev and Russian Culture: Essays to Honour Richard Peace tale? If so, or if not, could the librettists have done something similar, with or without him, in relation to the opera? Fortunately, there is plenty of evidence to comb through, and definitive answers to at least some of these questions are obtainable. This is an area in which the stakes are high. Are we not talking of Russia’s most important writer, and the world’s most famous opera? (And beyond that, incidentally, we may find connections with an even greater composer than Georges Bizet.) It is time to establish once and for all whether or not the reviewer’s claim has any substance. Lines from Russia

The most obvious thing anyone could say about the opera Carmen is that it is all Spanish and French. The setting is in Spain: it would not be complete without clicking castanets, Seville oranges, Spanish (or Latin American) dances, guitars, manzanilla, and, of course, all the bullfighting. Escamillo’s toreador song must be one of the half-dozen most popular tunes in the world. What could be more characteristically Spanish than all of this? As one pair of commentators puts it, ‘Say ‘seductive Spanish gypsy and we think of Carmen; say “Toreador” and we think of Escamillo’s swaggering tune. Bizet’s opera has come to have an almost proverbial status.’5 Conversely, what could be more French than the group of four men responsible for the words and music: Georges Bizet, the composer; the librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy; and Prosper Mérimée who wrote the story Carmen on which the opera was based? And yet, this apparent West-European monopoly of the world’s best-known opera is not as complete as it may seem. The least that can be said is that a small number of lines appearing in the libretto are translations into French prose of certain verses written by , verses which never appeared in any intermediary source, such as Mérimée’s story. The most that can be said is that a great deal of this opera, including its main thematic content, derives from that writer; more especially, the two main characters, Carmen herself and Don José, are traceable back beyond Mérimée’s story to two Pushkinian prototypes, Zemfira and Aleko in The Gypsies. Despite some strong clues we shall never be one hundred per cent certain who did the borrowing, why they did it or when they did it, and this whole story, once begun, soon wraps itself up in all sorts of complications. So let us begin with something solid and certain. Towards the end of the first act of the opera, in the ninth scene, Don José and two soldiers bring Carmen before their superior officer, Zuniga, and report on what they have seen in the tobacco factory. Zuniga then turns to Carmen and asks what she has to say for herself. Her response is magnificent in its impudence. Not only does she refuse to answer, she