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Gérard de Nerval
Gérard de Nerval, by Nadar
Born	Gérard Labrunie (1808-05-22)22 May 1808 Paris, France
Died	26 January 1855(1855-01-26) (aged 46) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Occupation(s)	poet, essayist and translator
Notable work	Voyage en Orient (1851) Les Filles du Feu (1854)
Movement	Romanticism

Gérard de Nerval (French pronunciation: [ʒeʁaʁ də nɛʁval]) (22 May 1808 – 26 January 1855) was the nom-de-plume of the French writer, poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the Romantic French poets.

His works are notable for his charming personality and intelligence, his poetic vision and precision of form.

Biography

Early life

Two years after his birth in Paris, Nerval's mother died in Silesia while accompanying her husband, a military doctor and member of Napoleon's Grande Armée. He was brought up by his maternal great-uncle, Antoine Boucher, in the countryside of Valois at Mortefontaine. On the return of his father from war in 1814, Nerval was sent back to Paris. He frequently returned to the countryside of Valois during holidays, and he returned to it in imagination later in his Chansons et légendes du Valois.

During the 1820s at college he became lifelong friends with Théophile Gautier and later joined Alexandre Dumas, père, in the Petit Cénacle, a bohemian set affiliated with Charles Nodier, which evolved into the Club des Hashischins.

His prose translation of Goethe's Faust (1828) established his reputation. Goethe praised it and Hector Berlioz used sections of it in his legend-symphony La damnation de Faust.

Several of his works may have been influenced by his infatuation with the actress Jenny Colon.

Mental illness and suicide

Gérard de Nerval's first nervous breakdown occurred in 1841. Increasingly poverty-stricken and disoriented, he committed suicide during the night of 26 January 1855, by hanging himself from a sewer grating in the Rue de la vieille-lanterne, a narrow lane in the fourth arrondissement of Paris. He left a brief note to his aunt: "Do not wait up for me this evening, for the night will be black and white."

"La Rue de la Vieille Lanterne: The Suicide of Gérard de Nerval", by Gustave Doré, 1855.

The poet Charles Baudelaire wrote that Nerval had "delivered his soul in the darkest street that he could find." According to legend, the last pages of his manuscript for Aurélia ou la reve et la vie were found in a pocket of his coat.

Grave

He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, at the expense of his friends Théophile Gautier and Arsène Houssaye, who published Aurélia as a book later that year.

Pet lobster

Legend has it that Nerval kept a pet lobster, which he walked at the end of a blue silk ribbon in the Palais Royal in Paris. According to Théophile Gautier, Nerval said:

Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ...or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw upon one's monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad.

Poetry

Nerval's poetry is characterized by Romantic deism. His passion for the "spirit world" was matched by a negative view of the material one: "This life is a hovel and a place of ill-repute. I'm ashamed that God should see me here."

Translation

Nerval produced additional translations from Goethe and in the 1840s, his translations introduced Heinrich Heine's poems to readers of the Revue des deux mondes.

Major works

• Aurélia ou le rêve et la vie (1855). A semi-autobiographical account of hallucinations, dreams, and asylum visits.
• Les Filles du Feu (1854) — a volume of short stories that includes the novella Sylvie, and the collection of sonnets Les Chimères (1854).
• Promenades et Souvenirs (1854-1855). — Nerval returns to the Valois of his childhood and reminisces.
• Voyage en Orient (1851) — A fictionalized account of Nerval's travels throughout the Ottoman Empire in the early 1840s.

Bibliography

Works in French

• Œuvres complètes. 3 vols. Eds. Jean Guillaume & Claude Pichois. Paris: La Pléiade-Gallimard, 1984. Print.
• Les filles du feu/Les Chimères. Ed. Bertrand Marchal. Paris: Folio-Gallimard, 2005. Print. ISBN 978-2070314799
• Aurélia - La Pandora - Les Nuits d'Octobre - Promenades et souvenirs. Ed. Jean-Nicolas Illouz. Paris: Folio-Gallimard, 2005. Print. ISBN 978-2070314768

Works in English

• Aurélia & Other Writings. Trans. Geoffrey Wagner, Robert Duncan, Marc Lowenthal. New York: Exact Change, 2004. ISBN 978-1878972095
• Journey to the Orient. Trans. Conrad Elphinstone. New York: Antipodes Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0988202603
• Selected Writings. Trans. Richard Sieburth. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print. ISBN 978-0140446012

Biography

• Album Nerval. Eds. Éric Buffetaud and Claude Pichois. Paris: La Pléiade-Gallimard, 1993. ISBN 2070112829.
• Cogez, Gérard. Gérard de Nerval. Paris : Folio-Gallimard, 2010. Print. ISBN 978-2070338795
• Gautier, Théophile. Histoire du romantisme/Quarante portraits romantiques. Ed. Adrien Goetz. Paris: Folio-Gallimard, 2011. Print. ISBN 978-2070412730
• Gautier, Théophile. (1900). "Gérard de Nerval." In: The Complete Works of Théophile Gautier, Vol. VIII. London: The Athenæum Press, pp. 96–116.
• Jones, Robert Emmet (1974). Gerard de Nerval. New York: Twayne Publishers.
• Sowerby, Benn. The disinherited; the life of Gérard de Nerval, 1808-1855. New York: New York University Press, 1974. Print.

Criticism

• Ahearn, Edward J. "Visionary Insanity: Nerval's Aurélia." Visionary Fictions: Apocalyptic Writing from Blake to the Modern Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Print.
• Jeanneret, Michel. La lettre perdue: Ecriture et folie dans l’œuvre de Nerval. Paris: Flammarion, 1978. Print.
• Gordon, Rae Beth (2014). "The Enchanted Hand: Schlegel’s Arabesque in Nerval." In: Ornament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century French Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Rhodes, Solomon A. (1951). Gérard de Nerval, 1808–1855: Poet, Traveler, Dreamer. New York: Philosophical Library.
• Symons, Arthur (1919). "Gérard de Nerval." In: The Symbolist Movement in Literature. New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, pp. 69–95.
• Lang, Andrew (1892). "Gérard de Nerval." In: Letters on Literature. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co., pp. 147–156.

Journal Articles

• Blackman, Maurice (1986–87). "Byron and the First Poem of Gérard de Nerval," Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. XV, No. 1/2, pp. 94–107.
• Bray, Patrick M. (2006). "Lost in the Fold: Space and Subjectivity in Gérard de Nerval's 'Généalogie' and Sylvie," French Forum, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, pp. 35–51.
• Carroll, Robert C. (1976). "Illusion and Identity: Gérard de Nerval and Rétif's 'Sara'," Studies in Romanticism, Vol. XV, No. 1, pp. 59–80.
• Carroll, Robert C. (1976). "Gérard de Nerval: Prodigal Son of History," Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. IV, No. 3, pp. 263–273.
• DuBruck, Alfred (1974-1975). "Nerval and Dumas in Germany," Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. III, No. 1/2, pp. 58–64.
• Duckworth, Colin (1965). "Eugène Scribe and Gérard de Nerval 'Celui Qui Tient la Corde Nous Étrangle'," The Modern Language Review, Vol. LX, No. 1, pp. 32–40.
• Knapp, Bettina L. (1974–75). "Gérard de Nerval's 'Isis' and the Cult of the Madonna," Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. III, No. 1/2, pp. 65–79.
• Knapp, Bettina L. (1976). "Gérard de Nerval: The Queen of Sheba and the Occult," Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. IV, No. 3, pp. 244–257.
• Lang, Andrew (1873). "Gérard de Nerval, 1810–1855," Fraser's Magazine, Vol. VII, pp. 559–566.
• Mauris, Maurice (1880). "Gérard de Nerval." In: French Men of Letters. New York: D. Appleton and Company, pp. 129–150.
• Moon, H. Kay (1965). "Gerard de Nerval: A Reappraisal," Brigham Young University Studies, Vol. VII, No. 1, pp. 40–52.
• Rhodes, Solomon A. (1938). "Poetical Affiliations of Gerard de Nerval," PMLA, Vol. LIII, No. 4, pp. 1157–1171.
• Rhodes, Solomon A. (1949). "The Friendship between Gérard de Nerval and Heinrich Heine," The French Review, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, pp. 18–27.
• Rinsler, Norma (1963). "Gérard de Nerval, Fire and Ice," The Modern Language Review, Vol. LVIII, No. 4, pp. 495–499.
• Rinsler, Norma (1963). "Gérard de Nerval's Celestial City and the Chain of Souls," Studies in Romanticism, Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 87–106.
• Smith, Garnet (1889). "Gérard de Nerval," The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. CCLXVI, pp. 285–296.
• Warren, Rosanna (1983). "The 'Last Madness' of Gérard de Nerval," The Georgia Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, pp. 131–138.

External links

• Works by Gérard de Nerval at Project Gutenberg
• Error in Template:Internet Archive author: Gerard de Lafayette/sandbox/Gérard de Nerval doesn't exist.
• Works by Gerard de Lafayette/sandbox/Gérard de Nerval at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Hieronymo's Mad Againe: On Translating Nerval essay by Richard Sieburth, an English translator of Nerval