Prosper Merimee

From Philosopedia

Mérimée, Prosper (28 September 1803 - 23 September 1870)

Merimee, whose father was an artist, was born in Paris, France. Initially studying law, he switched to the humanities. A cultivated gentleman, a painstaking student of archaeology, a linguist who translated Russian authors into French, a senator under the Empire, he became a member of the French Academy.

His first play, Cromwell, was published in 1822, followed by several famed literary "hoaxes," more plays and a travel book.

A student of language, Merimee made the first translations into French of many Russian classics. In the 1830s, he was appointed chief of cabinet to two ministers, then inspector-general of historical monuments, where his archaeological interests could be explored.

His most famous novella, Carmen, was published in 1845, and later made into an opera by fellow rationalist Georges Bizet in 1869.

Merimee was made a senator in 1853 by Eugenie of France, the daughter of his Spanish friend, the Countess of Montigo of Spain.

His The Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX (1829) has an objectivity and psychological penetration called rare among the romanticists. According to J. M. Robertson, he - like Flaubert, Zola, Daudet, Maupassant, and the De Goncourts - was a rationalist. In his anonymous brochure on H(enri) B(eyle), “Eleutheropolis,” there is an open profession of atheism.

Freethought historian Joseph McCabe described Merimee as an atheist and a rationalist, citing his letter to M. de Stendhal:

• The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist.

{BDF; CE; FFRF; JM; JMR; RAT; RE}