Unfortunately, scholars have generally neglected or ignored Gérard de Nerval as a possible precursor to modern tendencies in literature. It will be my purpose in the pages that follow to (1) explore the elements of his biography that seem to contribute to an understanding of his development as a writer,1 (2) venture a few observations regarding his short prose fiction, and (3) suggest briefly the possible extent of his relevancy in the flood of literary trends since his time.
Seven months after his birth in May, 1808, Gérard de Nerval was left with a wet nurse in the village of Loisy, near Mortefontaine. Upon the death of his mother two years later, he was sent to live with a great-uncle in Mortefontaine. By the time his father returned some seven years later to take him to Paris and begin his studies, the Valois countryside had etched its indelible impression upon Gérard’s sensitive nature. When school days were over, he invariably returned to Mortefontaine to his childhood friends, as he later returned to try to capture his childhood memories. A great many of the details of his life in Mortefontaine are found in his Sylvie and Promenades et souvenirs. There is no question that the region of Valois had a great effect upon his life and his subsequent works. Especially significant was Sylvie, who came from the neighboring hamlet of Loisy, and who provided him with a kind of pagan balance to the other elusive, mystic love whom he also came to “know” in the region of Valois, i.e. his Adrienne. He walked and played with Sylvie, and with her learned to know and love the countryside and its people. She was the principal object of his nostalgic reminiscence in the story that bears her name.
Adrienne, whom Gérard, accompanied by Sylvie, met at a village festival, was to become for him a Pandora and a Beatrice—at once his tormentor and savior. The few extant facts regarding this event would indicate that the person Gérard met and kissed in a dance in the above-mentioned festival was the worldly Sophie Dawes, who by marriage to Baron Adrien de Feuchéres, could claim the far more glamorous title of Mme de Feuchéres.2 It is apparent that Gérard was either not aware of her true identity, or the ideal woman that he saw in this Adrienne could not be erased by ugly realities. His quixotic pursuit of this ideal love was to be the foremost quest of his life.
Another Valois influence on Gérard was his great-uncle’s musty attic library, which was replete with books of theosophic and cabalistic deliberations. There were nondescript treatises on Buddhism, alchemy, magic and germane theosophies, neo-Platonic, Orphic and Pythagorean myths.3 Gérard would amuse himself for hours in the fantasy of this discarded library. His great-uncle’s own pantheistic bent was also destined to affect him, though he was constantly in touch with Catholic dogma in Valois, largely through the efforts of one of his aunts. He was ultimately to represent in his own beliefs an admixture of pagan and Christian elements which led him on one occasion to claim adherence to seventeen different religions.
Gérard was also a more than passive reader of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who had spent his last years near Mortefontaine. The fact that his most characteristic writing is, like Rousseau’s, confessional suggests that he was spiritually drawn to the eighteenth-century philosophe. But the importance of his Parisian life and education cannot be minimized. He owes his initial literary success to the knowledge of German which his father had been careful to impart to him in the earliest years of his instruction, for his translation of Goethe’s Faust in 1827 was his first literary effort of rewarding merit. It betrays not only an adequate knowledge of German, but more important, an affinity for the Faust theme.
One of the most singular events in his life and works is his platonic love affair with Jenny Colon, an actress in whom Gérard saw the reembodiment of his ideal love, Adrienne. Ironically, Jenny was almost as worldly as Sophie Dawes, his Adrienne. Gérard’s love for her was destined, from the moment it was conceived, to dominate the remainder of his life. He first saw Jenny Colon early in the year 1834, but it was several months later that he actually met her. It is doubtful that he ever possessed her, though he lavished gifts and money on her and rounded Le Monde dramatique, an elegantly edited theatrical magazine, for the dual purpose of swelling her reputation and pleasing his father, who never approved of his son’s literary penchant. But Gérard proved, like Balzac, to be a genius of financial disaster. Although some of the foremost names of the day contributed to its publications, Le Monde dramatique was destined shortly to pass into other hands, and finally into oblivion, for it soon became a mere altar upon which Gérard made anonymous adorations and sacrifices to Jenny until it had devoured the whole of the modest legacy he had received in 1835. It was at about that time, too, that he chose his pseudonym, Nerval, from a field (Clos be Nerval) near Mortefontaine, which belonged to his great-uncle’s family. Jenny not only received limitless adoration and favors from him, but it was for her that he wrote the bulk of his unsuccessful plays. Ironically, his best play, Leo Burckart, was written after Jenny Colon had left him.
Gérard traveled frequently. He went often to Italy, and in fact traveled all over the European continent, and visited extensively Egypt and the Near East. He wrote many accounts of his travels, but most notable is his Voyage en Orient, which exposes his preocupations with cabalistic and esoteric religions. The embroidery of his account lends it charm and interest. His letters to his unimaginative father describe the trail of reality in his itinerary. The trail of charming fancy is followed in Voyage en Orient.
The last decade, approximately, of Gérard’s life was punctuated by periods of actual insanity and confinement. He had lived for many years in a twilight state in which the line of demarcation between dream and reality was to him very dim. It disappeared entirely at intervals, the first of which occurred on February 28, 1841, when he was confined to Dr. Emile Blanche’s asylum. It is even believed that he suffered two such confinements that year.4 A series of reverses and further mental strain precipitated a relapse in the form of a sort of cataleptic fall and consequent chest injury in 1851. For this seizure he was sent for a brief period to Dr. Dubois’ private asylum. He was once more interned there in the spring of 1853, but again only briefly. Between this confinement and the subsequent relapse of the following year, he wrote Sylvie. In 1854 he was committed again to the care of Dr. Émile Blanche, in whom he expressed complete trust. He was released for the last time in October of that year. Between periods of confinement his life was characterized by hallucinations and vagabond wanderings into the Parisian underworld, with which, by now, he was well acquainted. His subjective description of these wanderings, and some of the accompanying hallucinations, appear in Les Nuits d’octobre. In spite of his demented condition, this period was one of his more fruitful, and is unequivocally the most important. The uncompleted manuscript of his Aurélia left the asylum with him in his penultimate release. The final pages were found in his pocket following his death on January 26, 1855. He died, it is commonly conceded, by hanging himself with an apron string which he maintained at various times was the corset string of Madame de Maintenon or Marguerite de Valois, or, more often, the Queen of Sheba’s garter.
II
Nerval’s early prose works are by no means as significant as the final burst of literary activity in the last few years of his life. They mostly reflect the influence of his great-uncle’s molding attic library. They represent a type of horror story then in vogue. His output was not very great. He is best when he is autobiographical. Even the stories in which he supposedly avoids his own preoccupations are fraught with overtones of the Adrienne love theme. For example, his Jemmy, which is a translation of an obscure story by the German author Charles Sealsfield,5 portrays the same scene found in Sylvie between Gérard and Adrienne.6 At a harvest festival, Jemmy and Toffel, surrounded by a group of young people, are obliged by custom to exchange kisses. The tone is idyllic—pastoral in essence. Its setting is in America, its theme is largely one of primitivism à la Chateaubriand. This and other stories merely represent Nerval’s ability to follow the literary current of his time.
It is, of course, of greater pertinence to consider the more typical style of Nerval’s Sylvie and Aurélia. The former is a conscious attempt to reconstruct his childhood through a work of art. It represents his primitivism, his reaction against the prevalent materialism, his own “recherche du temps perdu.” It is autobiographical, written with a type of pre-Proustian flashback technique. It is the key to his obsession for the ideal woman, whom he saw personified first in Adrienne, then in Jenny Colon, who was to him a kind of Pythagorean reincarnation of Adrienne. Sylvie reveals Gérard’s concept of ideal womanhood, his Venus in three phrases. Jean Gaulmier explains it thus:
Sylvie . . . nous donne aussi une image des Trois Vénus: dès le premier chapitre, l’actrice Jenny-Aurélia prend figure de déesse infernale aux feux de la rampe qui l’éclairait d’en bas et Gérard éprouve devant elle une terreur sacrée: Je craignais de troubler le miroir magique qui me renvoyait son image. At, chapitre II, Adrienne, reine du pays d’enfance, est la Vénus céleste, véritable vision paradisiaque. Enfin, la complexe Sylvie, après l’apparition d’Adrienne en sainte, Sylvie qui a perdu sa puret‚ primitive, qui fabrique des gants à la mécanique au lieu de son ancienne dentelle, qui chante l’opéra eta oublié les vieilles romances, Sylvie devient, elle aussie une sorte de Vénus infernale.7
Gérard’s fascination with time and memory is arresting.
Aurélia, his most important work, is, again, autobiographical, or more specifically confessional. It is Gérard’s symbolic descent into hell, his personal Divine Comedy. He describes quite faithfully, if we can count on his own word, his hallucinations, his visions—his insanity. This work is the summation of his cabalistic, pythagorean, pantheistic, and Christian tendencies. It is his portrayal of his mental strife. Unattainable love was the cause of his madness, and represents for him his salvation. His manias become apparent, allegedly at least, to the initiated in psychology.8 He was plagued with feelings of guilt for the outrages he had committed against his love for Aurélia (ideal woman), because he had indulged in “facile love affairs.”9 He had profaned her memory. He also felt pangs of guilt for his compromise of doctrine, though he never felt that he could embrace Christianity alone. His descent into hell teaches him the way to atone for these sins. He fancies that in these visions he is able to learn secrets withheld from him in his normal consciousness. He sometimes regrets his conscious state and awaits anxiously the time for his visionary sleep, but for the most part his visions are frightful trials to which he is subjected. It is, in Dantesque fashion, his Aurélia that represents to him his salvation when she appears and assures him:
L’épreuve à laquelle tu étais soumis est venue à son terme; ces escaliers sans nombre que tu te fatiguais à descendre ou à gravir étaient les liens mêmes des anciennes illusions qu’embarrassaient ta pensée, et maintenant rappelle-toi le jour où tu as imploré la Vierge sainte et où, la croyant morte, le délire s’est emparé de ton esprit. Il fallait que ton voeu lui fût porté par une âme simple et dégagée des liens de la terre. Celle-là s’est rencontrée près de toi, et c’est pourquoi it m’est permis à moi-même de venir et de t’encourager.10
His Aurélia is not his only account of a descent into hell. There is another of a sort in Les Nuits d’octobre, in which he tells of his nocturnal wanderings and the progressively horrifying descent into the Parisian underworld. In fact, his guide at one point tells him, as Virgil to Dante, “Or sie forte ed ardito; omai si scende per si fatte scale.”11
As though anticipating that his reader might doubt the verisimilitude of his account, Gérard states in Aurélia, “Si je ne pensais que la mission d’un écrivain est d’analyser sincérement ce qu’il éprouve dans les grâces circonstances de la vie, et si je ne me proposais un but que je crois utile, je m’arrêterais ici, et je n’essayerais pas de décrire ce que j’éprouvai ensuite dans une série de visions insensées peut-être, ou vulgairement maladives. . . .”12 This passage is illustrative of his very personal style. The tonal unity in this work, as in Sylvie, is impeccable. It is a tone of madness, analyzed with seemingly cold objectivity, which arouses a curious observation regarding Nerval’s latest literary output, i.e., that his works, far from suffering from his madness, seem to be enhanced by it, or even contingent upon it.
“Le bon Gérard” was not capable of the consistently mordant satire of Merimée, but satire does appear in his works. Nothing in all his writings is more delightfully whimsical than his account of his relationship with his Mohammedan slave Zeynab (Z’n’b). What could have greater exotic appeal than this Malaysian with almond-shaped eyes, pearl-like teeth, long, burnished hair, tawny skin, and a regal air of distinction, and what could be more in keeping with a romantic bent? But on the other hand, what could be more useless? Their relationship was hardly exotic. She was quite ignorant, she could not cook or sew, and she could not learn French in order to interpret for him; but his moral reservations would not admit of placing her back on the slave market. She was little more than extra weight in his travel plans. But, he observed, “Her smile was delightful!”13 The satirical elements are typically good-natured, by no means bitter nor abusive, but even this would tend to contribute to the decline of Romanticism, because he is, after all, laughing at its exaggerated exoticism.
III
Defining the extent of an author’s influence is at best an elusive task. Gérard de Nerval’s role and importance are still being assessed. Guy Michaud, the latest authority on French Symbolism, points out that Nerval went well beyond his fellow Romantiques in establishing norms for passing from Romanticism to modern tendencies.14 Arthur Symons traces the origin of symbolist literature to Nerval, largely on the basis of the ideas and style apparent in Aurélia.15 Gérard’s opening statement, “Le rêve est une seconde vie,” simple as it is, supplies an initial basis for Symons’ claim on him as the father of the symbolists’ and surrealists’ muse. Symons further maintains that Gerard’s genius, “. . . to which madness had come as the liberating, the precipitating spirit, disengaging its finer essence, consisted in a power of materializing vision, whatever is most volatile and unseizable in vision, and without losing the sense of mystery, or that quality which gives its charm to the intangible.”16 Certainly, Gerard represents a change in libido, a shift from the visible to the invisible, or more specifically, from the material to the spiritual, which is in essence the basis of Symbolism. S. A. Rhodes, whether accurate or not in his evaluation, is certain that Baudelaire felt his influence, and through him “. . . the long lineage of symbolist, post symbolist, and surrealist poets, all of whom experienced what Jean Cocteau has described as the ‘incalculable . . . repercussion . . . of a Nerval. . . .’”17
The duality theme in Aurélia is identical to the symbolic duality of Hakim-Biamr-Allah and Yousouf, who appear in a tale in Voyage en Orient. In this tale, Yousouf, who is Hakim’s double, strikes the first blow that fells Hakim, just as Gérard’s double, who in one of his visions is his mortal enemy, prepares to strike him.18 This “double” of Gérard’s is undoubtedly the phase of his personality responsible for his own death, which is symbolically prefigured in the tale of Hakim and Yousoul.19 Gérard and his spiritual twin die together, just as Hakim and Yousouf, one inflicting the death blow upon the other. This is the epitome of Nerval’s power to “materialize vision.”
Marcel Schwob, whom no less an authority than Pierre Champion places squarely in the mainstream of Symbolism,20 offers affinities for Nerval which tend to substantiate Symons’ postulation regarding Nerval’s contribution to the development of Symbolism. Schwob no doubt heard his father speak of Nerval, for the elder Schwob had been associated with him and Charles Baudelaire in the printing of a literary review, the Corsaire Satan. While still a teen-ager, Schwob wrote an erotic version of Faust, and about two years later another work, “Les vierges du feu,” which bears notable resemblance to Les filles du feu by Nerval. Also, Schwob gave the title Les Faux-Saulniers to one of his contes, after Nerval’s Faux-Saulniers, Histoire de l’abb‚ de Bucquoy, his sentimental journey through the countryside of his childhood. While still in his youth, Schwob composed a “Ballade pour Gérard de Nerval pendu à la fenêtre d’un bouge.” Recently, in 1959, John A. Green brought to light an article written by Schwob with the title “La chanson populaire,”21 the essential theme of which he shows to derive from Nerval’s statement in “Chansons et légendes populaires de Valois” that the old “Chansons populaires” represent “la memoire et la vie des bonnes gens du temps passé;” therefore, continues Nerval, “il serait à desirer que de bons poètes modernes missent à profit l’inspiration naïve de nos peres, et nous rendissent . . . une foule de petits chefs-d’oeuvre qui se perdent.22 Moreover, it is apparent that this admiration for Nerval follows Schwob even in his mature years. According to his dossier at the Archives Nationales, on December 12, 1894 (nine years before his death), he requested fifteenth-century documents formerly communicated to Nerval, probably for no greater purpose than to review material in which Nerval had shown a lively interest. He had learned from Nerval’s comments regarding the documents that they contained an autobiography of Angélique de Longueval, about whom Nerval wrote in Les Filles du Jeu. Schwob seemed bent on utilizing the same material to compose a play, perhaps in an attempt to surpass his master, but death overtook him before the project could be completed.
A close relative of Symbolism is its descendant Surrealism. “Surrealism aims to transcend the accepted limitation of reality, to bring into literature material hitherto unused, the dream and the automatic association, and to synthesize the experiences of the conscious and unconscious minds.”23 Its basic idea is derived “. . . from a combination of dadaism with Freud: the automatic, illogical, uncontrolled fantasies and associations of the mind represent a higher reality than the realistic . . . world.”24 This, certainly, defines the basic approach in Aurélia. It is thus that André Breton, author of the surrealist manifesto, is able to declare, “It seems indeed that Nerval possessed exactly the spirit we claim kinship with.”25 On the other hand, though Gérard sometimes preferred his dream world to the world of reality, he rarely failed to recognize the difference between them.26 C. G. Jung states the case for many of the surrealists: “Intellect remains imprisoned within itself so long as it does not voluntarily sacrifice its supremacy, and admit the value of other claims. It shrinks from taking a step beyond itself, and will not allow that it does not possess universal validity, for everything outside its own view is nothing but phantasy.”27 Gérard was always willing to “admit the value of other claims.” For the surrealists, the insane world is a mere prolongation of experience in the sane. The subtitle of Aurélia is Le Rive et la vie, not ou la vie, and Gérard opens the narrative with “Le rêve est une seconde vie,” another life, not a prolongation of the conscious world. Hence the difference between him and his spiritual twin, his double. Though the general spirit and tone of his writing is very closely akin to Surrealism, there is that basic difference.
Another unexplored possibility as regards Nerval’s range of influence is Latin America. Following the belated Romantic movement in that area, which was obviously on the decline in 1870, the writers of that generation demanded, for the most part, a more subdued treatment of verse than had been practiced by the followers of Byron and Hugo. The Modernist movement in Latin America captures and characterizes much of the spirit of Nerval’s writing, particularly the nostalgic reverie and the accompanying disdain of materialism evident in Sylvie. The following might have been part of their manifesto:
Nous vivions alors dans une époque étrange. . . . L’homme matériel aspirait au bouquet de roses qui devait le régénérer par les mains de la belle Isis; la déesse éternellement jeune et pure nous apparaîssait dans les nuits, et nous faisait honte de nos heures de jours perdus. L’ambition n’était cependant pas de notre âge, et l’avide curée qui se faisait alors des positions et des honneurs nous éloignait des spheres d’activité possibles. Il ne nous restait pour asile que cette tour d’ivoire des poètes, où nous montions toujours plus haut pour nous isoler de la foule. A ces points élevés où nous guidaient nos maîtres, nous respirons enfin l’air pur des solitudes, nous buvions l’oubli dans la coupe d’or des légendes, nous étions ivres de poésie et d’amour. Amour, hélas! des formes vagues, des teintes roses et bleues, de fantômes métaphysiques!28
This finds an echo in Darío’s own statement, “Yo detesto la vida y el tiempo en que me tocó nacer.”29 Compare the above quotation from Sylvie with the following definition of Modernism: “Modernism may be described as the literary expression of that mood of unrest and of dissatisfaction with the prevailing worship of material success that marked the last few years of the nineteenth century. The young idealist of those days felt himself thrown by fate into an environment to which he did not belong. He had a soul above the sordid aims of his fellowmen, and his art and his ideals were things beyond their comprehension.”30
The term “ivory tower,” for which Gérard more than perhaps anyone else was responsible, was adopted by the Modernists.31 Their inspiration was admittedly French, their champion Rubén Darío an avid reader of all the nineteenth-century masters. Their disdain of the materialistic led them, like Nerval, to explore new doctrines, desire new experiences, discover new truths. Julián del Casal was attracted by Japanese verse patterns and philosophy, Amado Nervo was a student of Buddhism, and Jaimes Freyre ardently studied Scandinavian mythology and philosophy, and particularly the works of Emanuel Swendenborg, likewise a favorite of Nerval’s.
It is difficult to assess the extent of Gérard’s influence, through his preoccupation with time and memory, on Marcel Proust. It is known that Proust read him extensively and regarded him highly, but did Nerval make any contribution to his literary output? Perhaps Proust would have written just as much, just as well, and perhaps he would have said it just the same way if Nerval had never existed. But the style of Sylvie, the nostalgic search for his lost childhood, and his idea of involuntary memory in Aurélia suggests that Proust built his novels on the foundation laid by Nerval. Jacques de Lacretelle recalls one of his last visits to Proust, when the latter spoke of Nerval and quoted some of his poetry. As Lacretelle departed, he tells us, “. . . il me parut que Nerval et lui s’étaient unis pour me donner la clef de son oeuvre.”32 Proust himself, in an unpublished notebook in the possession of Madame Mante-Proust, acknowledges, however indirectly, “. . . a more than normally ardent friendship . . . a shared taste.”33 The following passage from Sylvie suggests, at the least, a “shared taste”: “Je regagnai mon lit et je ne pus y trouver le repos. Plongé dans une demisomnolence, toute ma jeunesse repassait en mes souvenirs. Cet état, où l’esprit résiste encore aux bizarres combinaisons du songe, permet souvent de voir se presser en quelques minutes les tableaux les plus saillants d’une longue période de la vie.”34
What, finally, is Nerval’s bearing, if any, upon the twentieth century? This is, of course, impossible to determine definitively. He is not widely read; it is not the direct influence of his works that constitutes his present significance. The “mal du siècle” of which he was a victim is still extant. The disdain of materialism which characterized his generation still exists. This feeling, persisting in the guise of existentialist nausea, is not his doing, nor is he the first to introduce the relativity of truth. But in this area, his ideas are still relevant, even though they are only the echo of ideas already expressed in previous ages. “What may I believe?” was Gérard’s constant query. He felt a kinship with a certain Mohammedan cult which, aside from its Pythagorean foundation that always attracted Gérard, held truth and error to be equally deceptive. “God knows, we do not!” was their cry.35 This spirit permeates Gérard’s works and echoes in the minds of those, like André Gide, who find it impossible to stipulate definitively the difference between truth and error, and those who in far greater extremity, like van Gogh or Hölderlin, belong with Gérard de Nerval to the group of “great abnormals.”
