Selected Writings by Gérard de Nerval

Selected Writings Reviews

• 
  J.

  The world literature landmark Faust was first translated into English from Goethe's German original in 1821. Illustrious Brit prodigies Coleridge and Shelley both made attempts with varying degrees of success. In 1828 it was translated into French, by Gérard de Nerval, who by all accounts, Goethe's included, nailed it. At the age of twenty.
  
  When it came to his own work, Nerval had a wrenchingly different arc; early success with poetry and plays led to important associations, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas amongst them. Heady times in France, the newly emerging Romantic movement, crisis of The Faith, and the July Revolution of 1830 spun the young man in several directions. The King Of Bedlam, 1839, finds him steeped in the echoey dissonances of the times; what would be the indelible Nerval themes of doubles, impersonation and deception come to the surface, fully formed.
  
  An inheritance (squandered), an investment in a literary magazine (bankrupt), and some luckless stabs at love (failed) were to lead Nerval off the Parisian reservation. An insatiable curiosity toward exotic cultures, whether the Balkans or the Near East, led him to the unfamiliar. But from what gets written, nothing about, say, Cairo or Constantinople seemed to soothe the broken heart, and his involvement with absinthe, ether, and hashish probably didn't constitute a cure, either. The first of several nervous breakdowns occurred, just as Nerval was finding his subject. The off-world beauty of The Tale Of Caliph Hakim was emblematic of the fascination he found in 'the orient', where he was drawn to the themes of heresy, apostasy and the shadowy atmosphere where the far-off is directly, unknowably at hand.*
  
  So what we have is the French sensualist, libertine, voluptuary and poet-- but unlucky in love and carrying a sizeable chip on his shoulder. His writing now took up the inevitable near-misses Nerval had observed, in identity and romance, the hearth/home-terroir thing versus the longing for the exotic other, the hallucination of finding his own opposite, his unknown twin. In female form. Beguiling, complex stories dealing in this paradox were written, always about a woman and her--safer or more dangerous, depending-- other self, all complete torture to the man of relentless visions. 'Angelique', 'Sylvie', 'Octavia' and 'Pandora' all materialized to confront the writer. Enigmas with an echo, touched by unreliable memory and sentiment. This is capital-R Romantic Lit, if wildly off its head and a little dizzy.
  
  Here he was completely and wholly his own man, waging an ardent struggle with both the goddesses of antiquity and the comely mademoiselle at close range-- which is to say, absolutely lost in the stratosphere of his own imagination. Women must have been completely bewildered by his approaches. Nerval's signature theme is the intentional indecipherability of enchantment-- how it manifests, and flits away, having left the initiate clenching a fistful of deceitful clues. (Yes, hello Mr Nabokov). And often enough those clues came in dreams.
  
  Time, and the times he lived in, were not kind to Nerval; they were a whirling extravaganza of bohemian allure, pure catnip to any young dreamer with an established way with the pen. He immersed himself in the mystic, threading his writing with allusions to the hermetic, the alchemical, the arcane interests of his age. Oneiromancy, (what a word!) or the practice of letting dreams predict the world, became an obsession, his day job on any day preceded by a night, of dreaming (and perhaps hallucinogens).
  
  Well you can tell where this is going. Borderlines between embracing the exotic and socially taboo behavior were being questioned, and Nerval and his set were at the forefront. But there were real breakdowns, and friends would have to resort to committing him to asylums to try to help him cope, sometimes at the insistence of the police. In the asylum, Nerval did the only thing he knew, wrote and wrote, much of it raving, attempts to connect Norse foundation myths with Islamic ones, for example, reams of barely connected allusion, and macro referencing of myth & literature. The riddle-filled Gramont manuscripts and Les Chimeres appear to be the skeleton key to his whole oeuvre, sonnets addressed to an array of Nerval's femmes and his mystical touchstones. He also composed his hermetic masterpiece, 'Aurelia', the autobiography of a man encountering, then submitting to madness. A descent into Hell, he confides honestly enough.
  
  Nerval seems to have been able to contain himself long enough to gain release from the sanitarium, and having done so is a free man when he hangs himself in a narrow lane in Paris. He left a note to a relative, "do not wait up for me this evening, for the night will be black and white." The final pages of Aurelia were found on the body.
  
  This was a difficult group of readings, and only really takes final shape once you've gotten thru 'the girls' sections, and realize that this singular madman really means it, really sees dreams as continuous with reality (and isn't so completely wrong, at that), really has miraculous vision. Proust himself commented that to read Sylvie for the first time was to experience 'a disorientation verging on mild panic'. Nerval's influence would ripple far and wide, though, in a certain sense-- Gautier, Heine, Dumas, Proust would all feel his example simmering through their own pages. The Symbolists would cite his influence as a prime mover. Andre Breton and the Surrealists of the next century would count him with Baudelaire and Mallarme as the oracle of their conception of the world. It is impossible to get to Joyce, or Beckett, or Borges-- without first confronting Nerval.
  ________________________
  * this disconcerting combination, 'heresy, apostasy and the shadowy atmosphere where the far-off is directly, unknowably at hand' would be exactly what Surrealism would embrace, sixty years later.. Breton & Apollinaire both would hold Nerval to be a patron saint.
  
• 
  Rodney

  My copy's titled Selected Writings, as pictured here, not Selected Prose, so Penguin may have excised the dense, enigmatic poems of "The Chimeras" for this new edition, in which de Nerval virtually invented literary modernism. Even without them, the book's a must-have. Aurelia is one of the most touching accounts of schizophrenia ever written, and Sylvie is a gorgeous proto-Proustian hymn to memory and loss. (I wish there were more of his travel writings among the Ottomans though.)
  
  De Nerval's tragic disintegration, ending in suicide in 1855, seems to mark the point where Romanticism turned from fantasy and Nature to madness and derangement, a pattern that still plays out in our culture in a hundred different ways. This book, it's the Magna Carta of that.
  
  
• 
  Peter Crofts

  Don't be misled by the size of this volume (approx. 450 pages)...it contains multitudes. Like most people I came across Nerval through his impenetrable sonnets, being a big fan of 19th century French writing I was curious to see what his prose writings were like. After being spellbound the entire way through this treasure trove I find myself wondering why he is not better known. In fact in my humble estimation he should be considered one of the great writers of 19th century Europeans.
  
  This volume ranges through short stories; an exquisitely mischievous "historical" novella; "travel" writings; Aurelia, an account of his descent into "madness"; letters and concludes with the famous sonnets. Notice the constant use of quotation marks, this is deliberate. Nothing Nerval does in any genre fits neatly into its generally accepted parameters. The degree to which he plays both with form and substance is astounding. The introduction posits he is a precursor of surrealism. I would describe some of his work as surrealism in full flight. At the same time there is a luminous rather delicate component to his writings which make them absolutely charming, there's something almost Chaplinesque about the atmosphere of some of them.
  
  I really could not put this down. I was constantly returning to previous sections to re-read portions. It's a shame that in the States he is known only for the sonnets and walking around Paris with a leashed lobster. There is so much to this writer and if you are a fan of 19th century European literature you might want to give Nerval a go.
• 
  lisa_emily

  The myth of Nerval: eccentric, careless, tortured. Reading the writing of this eccentric, you walk away dazed by the multi-dimensional, jeweled imagination he carried within himself. The themes of Nerval’s stories are typical: desired love, lost love, phantasmagoric worlds and exotic places. However, you sense one who has wandered so far away that there can be no return. Nerval pursues his dreamt muse who forever eludes capture into words.
• 
  Jim

  This review is only for one of the novelettes in this collection, entitled Sylvie by
  Gérard de Nerval.
  
  The narrator is a feckless young man who falls in love easily but cannot ever "close the deal." In this story, he goes to the haunts of his youth in Valois, where he takes up with the beautiful Sylvie, who, alas, is pledged to another. Still, he returns to see her married to the local pastry cook, with small children running around. He muses, "This way lay happiness, perhaps, and yet...." Never have ellipsis marks been so sad.
  
  The atmosphere of Sylvie is dreamlike. Nerval's writing is always beautiful in a hortatory way:

  Such are the chimeras that beguile and misguide us in the morning of life. I have tried to set them down without much order, but many hearts will understand me. Illusions fall away one after another like the husks of a fruit, and that fruit is experience. It is bitter to the taste, but there is fortitude to be found in gall -- forgive me my old-fashioned turns of phrase. Rousseau said the spectacle of nature provides consolation for everything.

  Rousseau, who was originally buried at nearby Ermenonville (before his remains were spirited away to the Pantheon in Paris), acts as the local deity of the place, the scene of the narrator's attempts at love.
  
  This is a beautiful little work. It encourages me to read more by Nerval.
  
• 
  Graychin

  I’m new to Gerard de Nerval, but in reading him it was almost immediately clear to me that he must have been a big influence on Flaubert (especially the Flaubert of Three Tales and The Temptation of St Anthony). It would also be interesting to compare de Nerval to Thomas De Quincey and Robert Louis Stevenson, among others.
  
  This is a wonderful collection and it includes (from what I understand) all of de Nerval’s most well-known work. Silvie (which Proust admired) and Aurelia, a memoir of his very public mental breakdown, are the stand-outs.
  
  The opening paragraph of the latter is really terrific:
  
  “Dream is a second life. I have never been able to cross through those gates of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world without a sense of dread. The first few instants of sleep are the image of death; a drowsy numbness steals over our thoughts, and it becomes impossible to determine the precise point at which the self, in some other form, continues to carry on the work of existence. Little by little, the dim cavern is suffused with light and, emerging from its shadowy depths, the pale figures who dwell in limbo come into view, solemn and still. Then the tableau takes on shape, a new clarity illuminates these bizarre apparitions and sets them in motion – the spirit world opens for us.”
  
• 
  Quicksilver Quill

  From the Pen of a Poetic Soul
  
  Poor Gerard, his was an unfortunate fate. But the sad, mad man of letters and adventurer left behind some truly remarkable stories and verse. So in a strange way—though his life seems to be a study in sorrow—somehow, despite the tragedy of it all, artistically he triumphed in the end.
  
  For the most part Gerard de Nerval: Selected Writings serves up a sumptuous literary banquet. Who could forget the haunting and tender “Sylvie”, Nerval’s masterpiece of melancholic reflection on lost love which apparently inspired Proust? Or the hallucinatory and hashish enshrouded “Tale of Caliph Hakim” influenced by his voyages through the Orient? As for Nerval’s poetry cycle, “The Chimeras”, they are a visionary revelation, and fittingly, they appear at the end of this volume—a proper dessert.
  
  Of course, a few stories here and there may fail to capture your imagination, or perhaps they go on a bit too long. “Angélique” comes to mind, and “Aurélia”, despite its sublimity, can be a challenging read, having been written after one of Nerval’s serious mental breakdowns. In other words, among this collection, you’ll probably find your own favorites.
  
  But one thing is certain: there is a poetry and sensitivity here that will bejewel your memory. Nerval seems to capture details of the past as though with a daguerreotype, allowing you to see what he saw. And he goes beyond this as well, inviting you to step into his own personal Diorama wherein everything unfolds: the sights, sounds, colors, and emotions. In this regard, pay special attention to the story “October Nights” which, when you read it, is like traveling back in time to the mid-1800s and journeying on a nocturnal Parisian perambulation with Gerard.
  
  Richard Sieburth, the translator, provides insightful introductions to the writings and copious notes of interest. Depending on your own personal reading style, and if you value surprise and suspense above all else, you may want to read Nerval’s stories first and then the introductions afterwards.
  
  To sum up, if you are looking to read a very interesting and oft-overlooked 19th century French writer, you should give this volume a look. I think you will be impressed with most of Nerval’s writing, as he was a gifted and poetic soul, whose work is infused with a heady combination of pathos, mysticism, and remembrance.
  
• 
  Lily

  Some truly gorgeous musings and reflections about dreams, time, and the ineffable. Nerval's self-awareness about longing and ideals is resonant and tender, his use of women in his life as grand metaphors isn't as problematic as it sounds, but builds to a satisfying uncertainty and enigma about beauty, history, illusion, and life itself. Part flaneur, part troubled and in a fugue state, Nerval's prose is haunted and Proustian. The translations of the poems weren't as impressive as I assume they are in the original French.
• 
  Muaz Jalil

  Not my cup of tea. Too magic realism type. Liked his letters, which weren't many, Memories of Valois and Caliph Hakim
• 
  Sam

  I may never have read this book without also rereading Dante's "Vita Nuova," as I've done these past two days. I would much recommend either. I've two or three translations of "Sylvie" but no others with the daguerreotype cover. Nerval had a pet lobster he leashed during walks.
• 
  Zara

  worth a shot. everyone should know where decadence emerges...
• 
  Takipsilim

  Well-conceived collection of the various writings of one of Romanticism's most talented madmen.
• 
  Tom Newth

  dreamy, narcotic, mythopoetic.
• 
  Muzzy

  Nerval is one of those writers I enjoy reading about more than I enjoy reading his work.