ABSTRACT
If any single figure looms large in the field of literary hoaxes in nineteenth-century France, it is Prosper Mérimée. After all, this is the author whose entrance on the literary scene consisted of a series of brief dramatic works—the Théâtre de Clara Gazul, comédienne espagnole [The Theater of Clara Gazul, Spanish Actress] (1825)—written under the double pseudonym of a female author (Clara Gazul) and a fawning editor and translator (Joseph Lestrange). (Moreover, some copies of the original edition included a lithograph portrait of Mérimée dressed as a Spanish woman, enveloped in a mantilla and anatomically enhanced.) Five years before Hugo completed Hernani, Mérimée had written the first plays of the Romantic tradition—and they were frauds. Two years later he inaugurated a whole new genre, writing the first prose poems in the French literary tradition: La guzla, ou choix de poésies illyriques recueillies dans la Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la Croatie et l’Herzégovine [The guzla, or Selections of Illyric Poetry Collected in Dalmatia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Herzegovina] (1827). The collection was advertised as a set of translations of folkloric verse from Slavic countries; the only problem was that no originals for these translations had ever existed. After such authors as Goethe raved about the smack of authenticity emanating from these poems, Mérimée finally showed his hand, later saying puckishly that he had hoped that the proceeds from the sale would allow him to travel to the countries whose literature he had fabricated. 1
