Gérard de Nerval (French:[ʒeʁaʁdənɛʁval]; 22 May 1808 – 26 January 1855), was thepen name ofGérard Labrunie, a French travel writer, essayist, poet, and translator. He was a major figure during the era ofFrench romanticism, and best known for his novellas and poems, especially the collectionLes Filles du feu (The Daughters of Fire), which included the novellaSylvie and the poem "El Desdichado".[1] Through his translations, Nerval played a major role in introducing French readers to the works of German Romantic authors, includingKlopstock,Schiller,Bürger andGoethe. His later work merged poetry and journalism in a fictional context and influencedMarcel Proust. His last novella,Aurélia ou le rêve et la vie, influencedAndré Breton andSurrealism.
Gérard Labrunie was born in Paris on 22 May 1808.[2] His mother, Marie Marguerite Antoinette Laurent, was the daughter of a clothing salesman,[3] and his father, Étienne Labrunie, was a young doctor who had volunteered to serve as a medic in the army underNapoleon.[4]
In June 1808, soon after Gérard's birth, Étienne was drafted. With his young wife in tow, Étienne followed the army on tours of Germany and Austria, eventually settling in a hospital inGłogów.[5] While they travelled East, the Labrunies left their newborn son Gérard in the care of Marie Marguerite's uncle Antoine Boucher, who lived inMortefontaine, a small town in theValois region, not far from Paris.[4] On 29 November 1810 Marie Marguerite died before she could return to France.[5] Gérard was two years old. Having buried his wife, Étienne took part in the disastrousFrench invasion of Russia.[6] He was reunited with his son in 1814.[6]
Upon his return to France in 1814, Étienne took his son and moved back to Paris, starting a medical practice at 72 rue Saint-Martin.[7] Gérard lived with his father but often stayed with his great-uncle Boucher in Mortefontaine and with Gérard Dublanc at 2 rue de Mantes (now 2 rue du Maréchal Joffre) inSaint-Germain-en-Laye. (Dublanc, Étienne's uncle, was also Gérard's godfather.)[2]
In 1822 Gérard enrolled at thecollège Charlemagne. This was where he met and befriendedThéophile Gautier. This was also where he began to take poetry more seriously. He was especially drawn to epic poetry. At age 16, he wrote a poem that recounted the circumstances of Napoleon's defeat called "Napoléon ou la France guerrière, élégies nationales".[8] Later, he tried out satire, writing poems that took aim at Prime MinisterVillèle, the Jesuit order, and anti-liberal newspapers likeLa Quotidienne.[9] His writing started to be published in 1826.
At age 19, with minimal knowledge of the German language, he began the ambitious task of translatingGoethe'sFaust.[10] His prose translation appeared in 1828. Despite its many flaws, the translation had many merits, and it did a great deal to establish his poetic reputation.[11] It is the reason whyVictor Hugo, the leader of theRomantic movement in France, felt compelled to have Gérard come to his apartment on 11, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.[12]
In 1829, having received his baccalaureate degree two years late (perhaps because he skipped classes to go for walks and read for pleasure),[12] Gérard was under pressure from his father to find steady employment. He took a job at a notary's office, but his heart was set on literature. WhenVictor Hugo asked him to support his playHernani, under attack from conservative critics suspicious of Romanticism, Gérard was more than happy to join the fight (seeBataille d'Hernani [fr]).
Gérard was sympathetic to the liberal and republican atmosphere of the time, and was briefly imprisoned in 1832 for participating in student demonstrations.[13] Gérard set himself two anthology projects: one on German poetry, and one on French poetry.Alexandre Dumas andPierre-Sébastien Laurentie arranged a library card for him so he could carry out his research.[citation needed]
Gérard, following Hugo's lead, started to write plays.Le Prince des sots andLara ou l'expiation were shown at theThéâtre de l'Odéon and met with positive reviews. He started to use the pseudonym Gérard de Nerval, inspired by the name of a property near Loisy (a village nearVer-sur-Launette,Oise) which had belonged to his family.[15][16]
In January 1834, Nerval's maternal grandfather died and he inherited around 30,000 francs. That autumn, he headed to southern France and then travelled to Florence, Rome and Naples. On his return in 1835, he moved in with a group of Romantic artists (includingCamille Rogier [fr]). In May of that year, he createdLe Monde Dramatique, a luxurious literary journal on which he squandered his inheritance. Debt-ridden, he finally sold it in 1836. Getting his start in journalism, he travelled to Belgium with Gautier from July to September.
In 1837,Piquillo was shown at the Opéra-Comique. Despite Nerval's work on the project, Dumas' was the only name on the libretto.Jenny Colon [fr] played the main role. Nerval may have fallen in love with the actress. Some specialists claim that his unrequited love for her is what inspired many of the female figures that appear in his writing, including the Virgin Mary, Isis, the queen of Saba. Other experts disagree with this biographical analysis.[17]
Despite Dumas' refusal to let him take credit for his work, Nerval continued to collaborate with Dumas on plays. In the summer of 1838, he travelled with Dumas to Germany to work onLéo Burckart, which eventually premiered at theThéâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin on 16 April 1839, six days after the premiere of another play the pair worked on together calledL'Alchimiste. In November 1839, Nerval travelled to Vienna, where he met the pianistMarie Pleyel at the French embassy.
Back in France in March 1840, Nerval took over Gautier's column atLa Presse. After publishing a third edition ofFaust in July, including a preface and fragments ofSecond Faust, he travelled to Belgium in October. On 15 DecemberPiquillo premiered in Brussels, where Nerval crossed paths with Jenny Colon and Marie Pleyel once again.
After a first nervous breakdown on 23 February 1841, he was cared for at the Sainte-Colombe Borstal ("maison de correction"). On 1 MarchJules Janin published an obituary for Nerval in theJournal des Débats. After a second nervous breakdown, Nerval was housed in Docteur Esprit Blanche's clinic in Montmartre, where he remained from March to November.
Between 1844 and 1847, Nerval travelled to Belgium, the Netherlands, and London, producingtravel writing. At the same time, he wrote novellas and opera librettos and translated poems by his friendHeinrich Heine, publishing a selection of translations in 1848. His last years were spent in dire financial and emotional straits. Following his doctor Emile Blanche's advice, he tried to purge himself of his intense emotions in his writing. This is when he composed some of his best works.
La rue de la vieille lanterne: The Suicide of Gérard de Nerval, byGustave Doré, 1855
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'smonadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad.
In his later years, Nerval also took an interest in socialism, tracing its origins to the eighteenth-centuryIlluminists and esoteric authors such asNicolas-Edme Rétif.[20]
Increasingly poverty-stricken and disoriented, he took his own life during the night of 26 January 1855, by hanging himself from the bar of a cellar window in the rue de la Vieille-Lanterne, a narrow lane in a squalid section of Paris.[a] He left a brief note to his aunt: "Don't wait up for me this evening, for the night will be black and white."[22] Just like in English, in French anuit blanche (literal translation: a white night) is a sleepless night.[citation needed]
The poetCharles Baudelaire observed that Nerval had "delivered his soul in the darkest street that he could find." The discoverers of his body were puzzled by the fact that his hat was still on his head. The last pages of his manuscript forAurélia ou le rêve et la vie [fr] were found in a pocket of his coat. After a religious ceremony at the Notre-Dame cathedral (which was granted despite his suicide because of his troubled mental state), he was buried in thePère Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, at the expense of his friendsThéophile Gautier andArsène Houssaye, who publishedAurélia as a book later that year.
Les Faux Saulniers (The Salt Smugglers, 1850) – published over several weeks inLe National, a daily newspaper. He later incorporated some of this material inLes Filles du feu (inAngelique) and inLes Illuminés (inL'Abbé de Bucquoy).
Voyage en Orient (1851) – an account of the author's voyages to Germany, Switzerland and Vienna in 1839 and 1840, and to Egypt and Turkey in 1843. Includes several pieces already published, includingLes Amours de Vienne, which first appeared in theRevue de Paris in 1841. One of the author's major works.
La Bohème Galante (1852) – a collection of short prose works and poems including some of the set he later calledOdelettes. Dedicated and addressed toArsène Houssaye.
Les Nuits d'Octobre (1852) – a small but distinguished collection of essays describing Paris at night.
Lorely, souvenirs d'Allemagne (1852) – an account of his travels along the Rhine, also in Holland and Belgium. It includes the full-length playLéo Burckart, under the title "Scènes de la Vie Allemande".
Les Illuminés (1852) – a collection of six biographical narratives in the form of novellas or essays.
Sylvie (1853) – described by Nerval as "un petit roman" ("a small novel"), it is the most celebrated of his works.
Petits Châteaux de Bohême (1853) – a collection of prose works and poetry, including the short playCorilla, which was subsequently included inLes Filles du feu, theOdelettes, and several of the sonnets later published asThe Chimeras.
Les Filles du feu (1854) – a volume of short stories or idylls, including the previously publishedSylvie, along with a sequence of twelve sonnets,The Chimeras
Pandora (1854) – another Fille du Feu, not finished in time for inclusion in that volume, written in the style ofSylvie and set in Vienna. Also known asLa Pandora, often subtitledSuite des Amours de Vienne.
Aurélia ou le rêve et la vie [fr] (1855, posthumously) – a fantasy-ridden interior autobiography as referred to by Gérard de Nerval
Promenades et Souvenirs (1854–1855) – a collection of eight essays after the manner ofLes Nuits d'Octobre, describing theSaint-Germain neighbourhood of the author's childhood and youth. The last, "Chantilly", includes a portrait similar to those inLes Filles du feu.
In 1867, Nerval's friendThéophile Gautier (1811–1872) wrote a touching reminiscence of him in "La Vie de Gérard" which was included in hisPortraits et Souvenirs Littéraires (1875).
ForMarcel Proust, Nerval was one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Proust especially admiredSylvie's exploration of time lost and regained, which would become one of Proust's deepest interests and the dominant theme of his magnum opusIn Search of Lost Time. Later,André Breton named Nerval a precursor ofSurrealist art, which drew on Nerval's forays into the significance of dreams. For his part,Antonin Artaud compared Nerval's visionary poetry to the work ofHölderlin,Nietzsche andVan Gogh.[26]
In 1945, at the end of the Second World War and after a long illness, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalystCarl Jung delivered a lecture in Zürich on Nerval'sAurélia which he regarded as a work of "extraordinary magnitude". Jung described Nerval's memoir as a cautionary tale (the protagonist cannot profit psychologically from his own lucidity and profound insights), and he validates Nerval's visionary experience as a genuine encounter with thecollective unconscious andanima mundi.[27]
Henry Miller called Nerval an "extraordinary French poet" and included him among a group of exemplary translators: "[i]n English we have yet to produce a poet who is able to do for Rimbaud whatBaudelaire did forPoe's verse, or Nerval forFaust, orMorel andLarbaud forUlysses".[28] Literary criticHarold Bloom called him "a pure instance ofFaustian man" but judged that "the sorrow of his unmothered and unloved existence destroyed him before" his genius could "fus[e] all the visionary's contraries together."[29]
Twentieth century French composerDenise Roger used Nerval's texts for some of her songs.[30]
The English rock bandTraffic included the jazz-rock track "Dream Gerrard" in their 1974 albumWhen the Eagle Flies. Lyrics are known to be mainly written byVivian Stanshall after reading Nerval's biography.[31]
The Women of Cairo, trans. Conrad Elphinstone. Harcourt, Brace, 1930. Later reprinted asJourney to the Orient. New York: Antipodes Press, 2012.ISBN978-0988202603
Aurélia & Other Writings, trans. Geoffrey Wagner, Robert Duncan, Marc Lowenthal. New York: Exact Change, 1996.ISBN978-1878972095
Selected Writings, trans. Richard Sieburth. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print.ISBN978-0140446012
The Illuminated, or The Precursors of Socialism: Tales and Portraits, trans. Peter Valente. Wakefield Press, 2022.ISBN978-1-93966-374-0
Sylvie & The Chimeras, trans. Richard Robinson. Portland, OR: Sunny Lou Publishing, 2023.ISBN978-1-95539-240-2
Little Castles of Bohemia: Prose & Poetry, trans. Napoleon Jeffries. Wakefield Press, 2025.
^The street existed only a few months longer. The area had been scheduled for demolition in June 1854, and that work began in the spring of 1855. The site of Nerval's suicide is now occupied by theThéâtre de la Ville.[21]
Ahearn, Edward J. "Visionary Insanity: Nerval'sAurélia."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.
Jung, Carl Gustav (1945/2015).On Psychological and Visionary Art: Notes from C. G. Jung's Lecture on Gérard de Nerval's "Aurélia". Ed. Craig E Stephenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rhodes, Solomon A. (1951).Gérard de Nerval, 1808–1855: Poet, Traveler, Dreamer. New York: Philosophical Library.
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.
