Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)
Gérard de Nerval
Language: English
Pages: 385
ISBN: B00EHX41LU
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855), a contemporary of Poe, De Quincey, Gogol and Heine, introduced into French literature a mode of writing rooted in German romanticism yet already recognizably modernist in its explorations of the uncertain borderlines between dream and reality, irony and madness, autobiography and fiction.. "This selection of writings - the first such comprehensive gathering to appear in English - provides an overview of Nerval's work as a poet, belletrist, short-story writer and autobiographer. In addition to 'Aurelia', the memoir of his madness, 'Sylvie' (considered a 'masterpiece' by Proust), and the hermetic sonnets of 'The Chimeras', this volume includes Nerval's Doppelganger tales and experimental fictions. Selections from his correspondence demonstrate a lucid awareness of the strategies by which nineteenth-century psychiatry consigned his visionary imagination to the purgatory of mental illness.
Dédaignant de frapper ces pêcheurs de couronne? O Médecis! les temps seraient-ils accomplis? Tes trois fils sont rentrés dans ta robe aux grands plis Mais il en reste un seul qui s’attache à ta mante. C’est un aiglon tout faible, oublié par hasard, Il rapporte la foudre à son père Ccesar … Est c’est lui qui dans l’air amassait la tourmente! To Hélène de Mecklembourg Fontainebleau, May 1837 The ancient palace awaits the Saxon princess who longs to save the offspring of the last of the.
Early working titles for ‘Aurélia’ was ‘Artémis ou le Rêve et la Vie’. Line 1: In a note on the Eluard manuscript, Nerval wrote: ‘The XIIIth hour (pivotal)’, that is, that hour which returns each time the previous twelve have elapsed. The variant title of this sonnet in the Lombard manuscript was ‘The Ballet of the Hours’. Line 8: The French adjective ‘trémière’, given the Oriental origins of hollyhock, derives from ‘outre-mer’. A note by Nerval on the Eluard manuscript identifies this figure.
Soldiers burst into the okel. Since then, I have again been out on the Nile and have had further encounters with that bewitching vision whose reality I can no longer doubt. Covering my eyes with her hand so that I would not recognize the gate, she would lead me through magnificent gardens and then take me into rooms of breathtaking splendour, designed by architects whose genius has surpassed even those fantastic constructions which the fancies of hashish build out of thin air. My fate is indeed.
Flaunted its endless array of pelts from outer Siberia or the banks of the Caspian Sea – an extraordinary display whose more familiar curiosities included polar bear, blue fox and ermine. Somewhat further along, Bohemian glassware was set out on cedar planks in a dazzling rainbow of colours – all bejewelled, festooned and inlaid with gold, it was like some bouquet of flowers plucked from some unimaginable paradise. In one of the backwaters of this bazaar, a more modest series of stalls had been.
He was probably an ancestor of the poor abbé. Still, it was a book worth owning: family features often reproduce themselves over time. Here is a Bucquoy born in the Artois who goes off to Bohemia to fight: imagination and energy are written all over his face – as is a certain tendency towards whimsy. The abbé de Bucquoy no doubt followed after him as dreamers follow after men of action. THE CANARY As I was on my way to Techener’s to try my luck one last time, I stopped in front of a.