Author: Prosper Mérimée, French realist writer.
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Carmen is the famous work of the French novelist Mérimée. For more than a hundred years, the novel has been translated into dozens of languages and published around the world, and adapted into operas and film works, causing great repercussions.
Why did a novella that was not very long cause such a huge response around the world? Presumably, it is a question that every reader wants to understand.
1
The rational constraints of secular moral law
The uninhibited impulse of the primordial vitality of life
What are morals and laws for? It is used to safeguard the collective interests of mankind and social public order.
However, in the development of society to today, moral laws and regulations are becoming more and more complex and strict, imprisoning individuals in a strict and solid net, making you blame at every turn, resulting in the increasingly serious alienation of modern people.
Life is a product of nature, and the primal vitality or instinctive impulses it contains cannot tolerate any restraint or confinement. In the face of any restraint and confinement, it will do its best to carry out a riot of life at all costs.
Carmen and her fellow robbers, we can see them as symbols of the primordial vitality of life. They are opposed by the entire society governed by the rule of law and by all law-abiding citizens. They are outsiders who cannot tolerate any moral or legal constraints. Sanctions imposed on them by societies governed by the rule of law can only provoke stronger resistance. They trampled all morality and law under their feet, destroyed the social order, and deprived others of their lives and property to the point of heinousness. Any man with a modicum of reason will want to kill such a villain as quickly as possible. Because if such a person is allowed to live, others will not be able to live.
1948年 《The Loves of Carmen》
Carmen, played by Rita Hayworth
If Carmen's gang were just a bunch of villains, they would be killed if they were killed. But the artistic atmosphere of the novel gives us a strange feeling: the killing of Carmen and Jose is like the beheading of Ma Mo - the death of Carmen and Jose does not bring us the joy of clapping hands and applauding, but our hearts are similar to Zhuge Liang who slashed horses with tears: to kill, you must kill! But after killing, we can't help but be heartbroken.
What is the reason for this?
Not because of anything else. Rather, it is because they are the symbol of the original vitality of life, and the depths of each of us have the same nature and the same strong original vitality of life. Killing Carmen and Jose is like killing our own inner "self", like killing our own compatriots and siblings.
Moral law is necessary and has enormous limitations.
The primordial vitality of life is enormously destructive, but it is also the most fundamental source of creativity in all things. However, the increasingly complex laws and norms of modern society are increasingly depriving people of their original vitality, binding people in the shackles of one square and square, and losing their due vitality.
As far as society as a whole is concerned, this is often the case, and the more effective the moral law is, the more stable the society becomes. But things always have two sides: one is when society is in super-stability, and often the most lack of creativity; the other is when society's binding force on the individual is more severe and effective, and it is often the time when the social crisis is the deepest. At this time, most people were brewing a riot of primitive life vitality in their hearts. The time of the riot is the time of the most social turmoil, the time when morality and law are the weakest, but it is also the time when the vitality of the individual and society is the most active and strong, and the time when human creativity is at its most vigorous.
Carmen is a symbol of the primordial vitality of life.
Here's the sadness: moral law is necessary but has enormous limitations. The primordial vitality of life is the ultimate source of individual creativity and social vitality, but it has great destructive power. We humans can only struggle to find a way out in this dilemma forever.
2
The norms of secular marriage and love morality are bound with
The love of life is free and arbitrary
Love is one of the strongest feelings of human beings, but social civilization and morality have also set the norms for this feeling: love should be pure, single-minded, and loyal. The most intolerable thing civilized people can tolerate to their lovers is their infidelity to themselves. Fidelity also seems to be one of the most important cornerstones of the stability of the modern family.
However, does love really need fidelity? The answer may be the opposite.
Love is the feeling that is closest to the original vitality of life, the feeling that is the strongest, most blind, most subjective, and the most intolerable to the constraints of rational moral norms. As a popular song goes: "Love because of love, gentleness cannot stand up to arrangement." ”
Love is the closest thing to the original vitality of life.
Rational moral norms always manifest themselves in the form of "shoulds" and "should nots." But love, which comes from the primordial vitality of life, is the love of life that is natural and authentic, and does not require any moral premise. It is born according to its nature, let it develop by instinct, from what cannot be not sent, and it cannot stop at what cannot be stopped. No rational command can command its actions, but only its backfire.
So, is the moral code of loyalty really worthless and unnecessary? Of course not.
Like other moral codes, it is necessary, a guarantee for the maintenance of the feelings of secular couples, and an important cornerstone of the stability of the real family. Without fidelity, the relationship between husband and wife will break down and the family will disintegrate.
Carmen is clearly not a person who can tolerate the worldly couple's emotional model. She is the practitioner of the typical love of life. Her love comes from the primordial vitality of life, and is not bound by any rational moral norms, such as wild grass wandering, like wildfire swallowing the sky, one shot and no harvest, and nothing can stop. It is really instinctive, willful, indulgent and intense to the point of no return. In order to defend her right to free and willful love for life, she would rather choose to die than to live.
Carmen's aggression is her way of living by preserving herself and not bending to the rules of the world.
This is the innocence of Carmen, the charm of Carmen, the reason why Carmen is obsessive and annoying, and the mystery of the success of Carmen's image.
But indulging the love of life will inevitably destroy the family and endanger social stability. Once again we are faced with the dilemma of marriage and love, freedom and order.
3
It was seduced by Carmen,
Or is it "the devil in the heart"?
From a realistic point of view, Carmen is a female figure with a flesh-and-blood personality, but from the perspective of symbolic allegory, Carmen is the primitive impulse or the original vitality of life hidden in the depths of any of our flesh-and-blood bodies. In Freud's words, she is the self in the depths of each of our unconscious. Of course, she is also The Inner Self of Jose.
José fell in love with her not so much because he was seduced by her as his instincts had burst out of the cage of his rational moral code; not so much by Carmen as by his demons. The Buddhists have a saying: "The mind is the devil." Therefore, we must guard the city like a city, and hide six like a turtle. Once the demons of the heart break through the cage, great trouble will be imminent.
Once the demons of the heart break through the cage, great trouble will be imminent.
José killed Carmen as if he had killed the original self, the primordial vitality of his own life, so he categorically surrendered himself to the police and voluntarily walked to the guillotine.
Of course, his surrender also had the meaning of atonement for his sins with death. In order to gain Carmen's love, he indulged the primordial vitality of his life and committed the heinous crime of destroying the social order, not without remorse. He is far from being as natural and authentic as Carmen, and he has no remorse. He is always in the contradiction and pain of rational morality and the impulse of life. When he loses Carmen, he loses the original vitality of life, and he can only return to the rational moral norms, which means to atone for his sins with death, and to return rational morality and social order to the supreme majesty of rational morality and social order.
Here, once again, we see the irreconcilable contradiction between the primitive vitality of life and the norms of social reason.
Writers are not gods, and it is impossible to ask them to prescribe in our novels a panacea for us to resolve social and psychological contradictions once and for all. However, being able to reveal the contradictions and conflicts inherent in human nature to such a depth, so that people can more soberly and deeply understand themselves, has proved the special value of this novel in excavating human nature and shocking people's hearts. This should be the artistic charm of "Carmen", and the reason why "Carmen" has been able to continue to cause great repercussions around the world for more than a hundred years.
(The author is a professor at Nanchang Normal University and vice president of Jiangxi Aesthetics Society)
END
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