Mérimée claimed to have been inspired to create his "Carmen" not only by his travels in Spain in 1830 but also after reading the poem "The Gypsies" by Alexander Pushkin whom he admired and attempted to translate into French.
Pushkin's poem which famously begins with Цыганы шумною толпою
По Бессарабии кочуют.
was written during Pushkin's exile to the south of Russia in 1823, namely to Bessarabia, the left-bank side of the river Dnestr, liberated from the Turkish yoke in the course of the Russian-Turkish war of 1797-99 which was crowned by the impressive victory of Suvorov in the capture of Ismail. В стране, где долго, долго брани
Ужасный гул не умолкал,
Где повелительные грани
Стамбулу русский указал...
In the poem we find the character of the gypsy woman, Zemphira, who is the precursor of Mérimée's Carmen. This is how Pushkin speaks about the old man's daughter: Его молоденькая дочь
Пошла гулять в пустынном поле,
Она привыкла к резвой воле,
Она придёт: но вот уж ночь,
И скоро месяц уж покинет
Небес далеких облака;
Земфиры нет как нет, и стынет
Убогий ужин старика.
Zemphira eventually returns but not alone. With her she brings a young man, who like Jose to Carmen is a stranger, a man from a different cultural paradigm. Он хочет быть, как мы, цыганом,
Его преследует закон,
Но я ему подругой буду.
Его зовут Алеко; он
Готов идти за мной повсюду.
Unlike Jose, who was a barely educated Basque gentleman from the most patriarchal and most conservative part of Spain, the young Russian nobleman, Aleko, whom Zemphira brings with her from the steppe, is a man of civilization, culture, refined feelings and notions. He is both intellectually and morally above the society which has made him an outcast. О чём жалеть? Когда б ты знала,
Когда бы ты воображала
Неволю душных городов!
Там люди, в кучах, за оградой,
Не дышат утренней прохладой,
Ни вешним запахом лугов;
Любви стыдятся, мысли гонят,
Торгуют волею своей,
Главы пред идолами клонят
И просят денег да цепей.
Что бросил я? Измен волненье,
Предрассуждений приговор,
Толпы безумное гоненье
Или блистательный позор.
All the more barbarous, in this respect, does it make the tragic outcome of a poem in which the girl also falls out of love with her man and he, though not a backward Basque but a progressive Russian, kills both - the girl and her lover. According to Belinsky the moral of the poem is contained in the words of the old gypsy man, Zemphira's father, in his final address to Aleko in the scene of the double funeral when the murderer who was terrible to look at silently leant forward from the stone he was sitting on and in mute anguish fell onto the grass. Тогда старик, прибли́жась, рек:
"Оставь нас, гордый человек.
Мы дики, нет у нас законов,
Мы не терзаем, не казним,
Не нужно крови нам и стонов;
Но жить с убийцей не хотим.
Ты не рождён для дикой доли,
Ты для себя лишь хочешь воли;
Ужасен нам твой будет глас:
Мы робки и добры душою,
Ты зол и смел; - оставь же нас,
Прости! да будет мир с тобою".
Belinsky sees Ты для себя лишь хочешь воли as the key line of the poem - the denunciation of the home-made liberalism of the progressive Russian man which is just a thin coat of varnish over the egoistic and barbarous core of his true self.
The poet himself seems to be only partly in accord with this interpretation of his work because he gives his poem an epilogue the final lines of which were very much criticized by the great Belinsky for their pessimism and the invocation of the notion of Doom. Но счастья нет и между вами,
Природы бедные сыны!
И под издраными шатрами
Живут мучительные сны,
И ваши сени кочевые
В пустынях не спаслись от бед,
И всюду страсти роковые,
И от судеб защиты нет.
Both Carmen and Zemphira choose freedom over tyranny. Even the flattering tyranny of love and desire. Pushkin exposes Aleko's weakness in not being able to practise what he apparently would preach - the dignity and the freedom of an individual - and for which incidentally he is in trouble with authorities and is "ordered south", like Pushkin himself. But at the same time the young poet finds himself unable to reconcile himself with the fact that like nothing can stop the Moon in its progress in the night skies so nothing can order a woman's heart: Люби одно, не изменись.
The 24 year old Russian poet would have been quite understood here by the 25 year old English singer John Lennon who wrote a very interesting track for the "Rubber Soul" album which is now denounced as misogynist and which would never get any airplay in the present day political climate of "tolerance" and the "equality of the sexes". The track we are referring to is entitled -
Run For Your Life
I'd rather see you dead little girl,
Than to be with another man.
You better keep your head, little girl,
Or you won't know where I am.
You better run for your life if you can, little girl,
Hide your head in the sand, little girl,
I catch you with another man -
That's the end, little girl.
Well, you know that I'm a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind.
And I can spend my whole life trying
Just to make you toe the line.
You better run for your life if you can, little girl,
Hide your head in the sand, little girl,
I catch you with another man -
That's the end, little girl.
Let this be a sermon,
I mean, everything I said.
Baby, I'm determined
And I'd rather see you dead.
You better run for your life if you can, little girl,
Hide your head in the sand, little girl,
I catch you with another man -
That's the end, little girl.
The theme of Man, Pride and Vengeance is eternal, but that both a XIX century Russian poet and the XX century English pop-idol should be so close in their reworking of it, is amazing. Compare John's song with Aleko's own confession in the poem: Нет, я, не споря,
От прав моих не откажусь;
Или хоть мщеньем наслажусь.
О нет! когда б над бездной моря
Нашёл я спящего врага,
Клянусь, и тут моя нога
Не пощадила бы злодея;
Я в волны моря, не бледнея,
И беззащитного б толкнул;
Внезапный ужас пробужденья
Свирепым смехом упрекнул,
И долго мне его паденья
Смешон и сладок был бы гул.
Aren't these the words of a "wicked guy" who "was born witha jealous mind"?
To sum it all up, we are celebrating "Rubber Soul", the Beatles album, which was released 50 years ago. It is curious to note that the work on the album started and finished on the two John Lennon songs we have just considered: on October 12, 1965 "Run For Your Life" was recorded and on November 11, 1965 The Beatles recorded the final track for the LP called "Girl". It appeared that the themes and images of the songs in question bring to mind two literary characters from the century before the last - Carmen by Prosper Mérimée and Pushkin's Aleko. Carmen is one of the quintessential female images in the collective subconscious of the European civilization and Aleko is the character who, together with Pushkin's "Caucasian Prisoner" opens the long line of the so-called superfluous men whose creation is the single greatest achievement of the Russian literary genius of the XIX century that has established Russian literature as the highest manifestation of human spirit in general.
Why the meeting between Carmen and Aleko should come to a complete disaster is probably supposed to show at work the fateful agency from which Pushkin says there is no protection. Because conflicting forces tear human hearts apart: the desire to possess and the desire to be free. The more Carmen hurts the man who is in love with her the more desirable she appears in his eyes but the more humiliation he takes from her the closer it brings him to revenge which is not only an act of sheer possessiveness on his part but also an act of rebellion against the tyranny of the other.
Like Lennon was accused of misogyny in his "Run For Your Life" so Pushkin in his time was accused of his poem being immoral. But by accepting these views we allow ourselves to sink into the narrow-mindedness of taking the description of murder for the real murder. The depiction of murder on stage or in a song or in a poetic work is the prerogative of an artists and aims at the analysis of the human passions in which the spectator is supposed to get the deeper understanding of the world and of his own heart. Shakespearean plays with abundance of murder in them give the spectators catharsis - the elevation of the spectator's soul through the spectacle of the hero's suffering on the stage. So, it is in real life that murder is ugly and immoral. In a work of art murder is not ugly, it is expressive and produces a lasting impression - remember Plisetskaya's rendering of Carmen's death. She wouldn't bend so the world, in the person of Jose, breaks her and at the moment the dagger strikes she doubles up but only for a second, to bounce back upright in the one last attempt to assume the proud posture she had started her flamboyant dance with.
What conclusion do we come here after all is said and done? Ars longer vita brevis est. Carmen dies, Zemphira and the young Gypsy die, Radda and Zobar in Gorky's "Makar Chudra" both die, and those who don't end bloodily, end unhappily. И под издраными шатрами живут мучительные сны.
But John Lennon did not kill anybody, either the "Girl" who put him down or the "little girl" who would "toe the line". And Pushkin did not kill anybody either. And nordid Mérimée.Because each of them was an Aleko "with an outlet of song", to borrow Marina Tsvetaeva's phrase. So the true choice of the rejected lover is not between To have her or to kill her, but between To have her or to sing her. This is the choice Alexander Blok makes in his verse from the "Carmen" cycle. Среди поклонников Кармен,
Спешащих пёстрою толпою,
Её зовущих за собою,
Один, как тень у серых стен
Ночной таверны Лиллас-Пастья,
Молчит и сумрачно глядит,
Не ждёт, не требует участья
Когда же бубен зазвучит
И глухо зазвенят запястья, -
Он вспоминает день весны,
Он средь бушующих созвучий
Глядит на стан её певучий
И видит творческие сны.
P.S.
09.01. 2016
P.S.
"So, my Carmen, you will follow me, won"t you?"
"I will follow you till death, yes, but I will no longer live with you".
We were in a lonely gorge. I stopped my horse.
"Is it to be here?" she asked; and with a leap she had dismounted. She took off her mantilla, threw it to her feet, and stood motionless, one fist on her hip, staring at me. {Kate assumes the pose from the Habanera scene}.
"For the last time," I cried, "will you stay with me?"
"You want to kill me, I can see that," she said. "It is fated. But you shall not make me submit."