Editing Prosper Mérimée (section)

==Education and literary debut==
Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris, the [[First French Republic]], on 28 September 1803, early in the [[Napoleonic era]]. His father [[Léonor Mérimée|Léonor]] was a painter who became professor of design at the [[École polytechnique]], and studied the chemistry of oil paints. In 1807 his father was named Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. His mother Anne was twenty-nine when he was born and was also a painter. His father's sister, Augustine, was the mother of the physicist [[Augustin-Jean Fresnel]] and the orientalist [[Fulgence Fresnel]]. He was the great-grandson of French novelist [[Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont]] on his mother's side.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Mérimée |first=Prosper |title=Quatre contes de Prosper Mérimée |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14115/pg14115-images.html |access-date=2024-11-04 |website=Project Gutenberg |language=en}}</ref>

Both of Mérimée's parents spoke English well, traveled frequently to England and entertained many British guests. By the age of fifteen he was fluent in English. He had a talent for foreign languages, and besides English mastered [[Ancient Greek|classical Greek]] and [[Latin]]. Later in life he became fluent in [[Spanish language|Spanish]], and could passably speak [[Serbian language|Serbian]] and [[Russian language|Russian]].

At the age of seven, Prosper was enrolled in the Lycée Napoléon, which after the fall of Napoleon in 1815 became the [[Lycée Henri-IV]]. His classmates and friends were the children of the elite of Restoration France, including Adrien Jussieu, son of famous botanist [[Antoine Laurent de Jussieu]], and Jean-Jacques Ampère, son of [[André-Marie Ampère]], famous for his research in physics and electrodynamics. In school he had a strong interest in history, and was fascinated by magic and the supernatural, which later became important elements in many of his stories.{{Sfn|Darcos|1998|page=20}}

He finished the Lycée with high marks in classical languages and in 1820 he began to study law, planning for a position in the royal administration. In 1822 he passed the legal examinations and received his license to practice law.<ref>Balsamo, Jean, Notes and introduction to ''Colomba'' (1995)</ref> However, his real passion was for French and foreign literature: In 1820 he translated the works of [[Ossian]], the presumed ancient Gaelic poet, into French.<ref name="auto">Pierl, Caecelia, Notes to ''Mateo Falcone'', page 17</ref> At the beginning of the 1820s he frequented the salon of [[Juliette Récamier]], a venerable figure in the literary and political life of Paris, where he met [[François-René de Chateaubriand|Chateaubriand]] and other prominent writers. In 1822, at the salons, he met [[Stendhal|Henri Beyle]], twenty years older, who became one of his closest friends, and later became famous as a novelist under the pen name of Stendhal.{{Sfn|Darcos|1998|page=20}} He then began to attend the salon of Étienne Delécluze, a painter and art critic, whose members were interested in the new school of [[Romanticism]] in art and literature.<ref name="auto"/>

Between the spring of 1823 and the summer of 1824, he wrote his first literary works: a political and historical play called ''Cromwell''; a satirical piece called ''Les Espagnols en Dannark'' (''The Spanish in Denmark''); and a set of six short theater pieces called the ''Théâtre de Clara Gazul'', a witty commentary about the theater, politics and life which purported to be written by a Spanish actress, but which actually targeted current French politics and society. In March 1825 he read his new works at the salon of Delécluze. The first two works were quickly forgotten, but the scenes of Clara Gazul had considerable success with his literary friends. They were printed in the press under the name of their imaginary author, and were his first published work. [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]] described ''Clara Gazul'' as "a decisive step in the modern literary revolution",{{Sfn|Darcos|1998|page=38-45}}  and its fame soon reached beyond France; the German Romanticist [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]] wrote an article praising it. Mérimée was not so gracious toward Goethe; he called Goethe's own work "a combination of genius and German naïveté".{{Sfn|Darcos|1998|page=74}}

King [[Louis XVIII of France|Louis XVIII]] died in 1824, and the regime of the new King, [[Charles X of France|Charles X]], was much more authoritarian and reactionary. Mérimée and his friends became part of the liberal opposition to the regime. On 30 November 1825, he took part in a student demonstration led by the young but already famous [[Victor Hugo]]. He was invited to Hugo's home, where he charmed the poet by making macaroni for him.  Mérimée was drawn into the new romantic movement, led by the painter [[Eugène Delacroix]] and the writers Hugo, [[Alfred de Musset]] and [[Eugène Sue]]. In 1830 he attended the riotous premiere of Hugo's play ''[[Hernani (drama)|Hernani]]'', bringing with him a group of friends, including Stendhal and the Russian writer [[Ivan Turgenev|Turgenev]], to support Hugo. Hugo made an anagram from his name, transforming ''Prosper Mérimée'' into ''Premiere Prose''.{{Sfn|Darcos|1998|page=43}}

[[File:Hyacinthe Maglanovich, frontispice de La Guzla Merime.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Frontispiece of ''La Guzla'', showing the purported author, Hyacinthe Maglanovich]]

In July 1827 he published in a literary journal a new work, ''[[La Guzla]]''. Ostensibly it was a collection of poems from the ancient Adriatic province of [[Illyria]] (modern [[Croatia]]), and it was published under another assumed name, Hyacinthe Maglanovich. The poems were highly romantic, filled with phantoms and werewolves, and were intended as satirical commentary on the exaggerated and bombastic style of the era that people would get swept up in. This was especially true for works that included a foreign setting and placed an emphasis on local traditions.<ref name=":0" /> Mérimée drew upon many historic sources for his picturesque and gothic portrait of the [[Balkans]], including a tale about [[vampire]]s taken from the writings of the 18th-century French monk [[Antoine Augustin Calmet|Dom Calmet]]. These poems, published in literary journals, were widely praised both in France and abroad. The Russian poet [[Alexander Pushkin]] had translated some of the poems in the book into Russian before he was notified by Mérimée, through his Russian friend Sobolevsky, that the poems, except for one Mérimée translated from a real Serbian poet, were not authentic. The book was not a commercial success, selling only a dozen copies, but the journals and press made Mérimée an important literary figure. From then on Mérimée's stories and articles were regularly published by the two leading literary magazines of Paris, the ''[[Revue des deux Mondes]]'' and the ''[[Revue de Paris]]''.{{sfn|Mortier|1962|p=3717}}

After ''La Guzla,'' he wrote three traditional novels: ''La Jacquerie'' (June 1828) was an historical novel about a peasant revolt in the Middle Ages, filled with flamboyant costumes, picturesque details and colorful settings. The critic Henri Patin reported that novel was "lacking in drama, but many of the scenes were excellent".{{Sfn|Darcos|1998|page=82}} The second, ''La Famille Carvajal'' (1828), was a parody of the work of [[Lord Byron]], set in 17th-century [[New Kingdom of Granada|New Granada]], filled with murders and crimes of passion. Many of the critics entirely missed that the novel was a parody: the ''Revue de Paris'' denounced the story for its "brutal and shameful passions". The third was ''[[A Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX]]'' (1829), another historical novel, set during the reign of [[Charles IX of France]] in the 16th century. It was written three years before Victor Hugo published his historical novel ''[[The Hunchback of Notre-Dame|Notre-Dame de Paris]]''. Mérimée's story featured a combination of irony and extreme realism, including a detailed and bloody recreation of the [[St. Bartholomew's Day massacre]]. It was published in March 1829, without any great success, and its author was by then tired of the genre. "I wrote a wicked novel that bores me", he wrote to his friend Albert Stapfer.{{Sfn|Darcos|1998|page=82}}