Colomba, that strange, fanatic being, who has a code of action, of self-respect, a conscience, all to herself, who with all her virginal charm only does not make you hate her, is, in truth, the type of a sort of humanity Mérimée found it pleasant to dream of--a humanity as alien as the animals, with whose moral affinities to man his imaginative work is often directly concerned.
Were they so alien, after all?
Were there not survivals of the old wild creatures in the gentlest, the politest of us?
Stories that told of sudden freaks of gentle, polite natures, straight back, not into Paradise, were always welcome to men's fancies; and that could only be because they found a psychologic truth in them.
With much success, with a credibility insured by his literary tact, Mérimée tried his own hand at such stories: unfrocked the bear in the amorous young Lithuanian noble, the wolf in the revolting peasant of the Middle Age.
There were survivals surely in himself, in that stealthy presentment of his favourite themes, in his own art.
You seem to find your hand on a serpent, in rea
Were they so alien, after all?
Were there not survivals of the old wild creatures in the gentlest, the politest of us?
Stories that told of sudden freaks of gentle, polite natures, straight back, not into Paradise, were always welcome to men's fancies; and that could only be because they found a psychologic truth in them.
With much success, with a credibility insured by his literary tact, Mérimée tried his own hand at such stories: unfrocked the bear in the amorous young Lithuanian noble, the wolf in the revolting peasant of the Middle Age.
There were survivals surely in himself, in that stealthy presentment of his favourite themes, in his own art.
You seem to find your hand on a serpent, in rea