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Gérard de Nerval (French pronunciation: ) (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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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."
Several of his works were influenced by his infatuation with an actress named Jenny Colon (1808–1842), of whom little is known.
Nerval had a pet lobster], which he walked at the end of a blue silk ribbon in the Palais Royal in Paris.[1] According to Théophile Gautier, Nerval said:[2]
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.
Gérard de Nerval's first nervous breakdown occurred in 1841. He published a collection of biographical sketches as Les Illuminés, ou les précurseurs du socialisme (1852). It included portraits of Rétif de la Bretonne, Alessandro Cagliostro, Quintus Aucler, and others.
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.[1] He left a brief note to his aunt: "Do not wait up for me this evening, for the night will be black and white."[3]
The poet Charles 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 for Aurélia ou la reve et la vie were found in a pocket of his coat. He was interred 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.
The complete works of Gérard de Nerval are published in three volumes by Gallimard in the collection Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.[4]
In 1867, Nerval's friend Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) wrote a touching reminiscence of him, "La Vie de Gérard", which was included in Gautier's Portraits et Souvenirs Litéraires (1875).
André Breton exemplifies the influence of Nerval's insistence on the significance of dreams on the Surrealist movement. Others influenced by Nerval's work include Marcel Proust, René Daumal, and Antonin Artaud.
Umberto Eco in his Six Walks in the Fictional Woods calls Nerval's Sylvie a "masterpiece" and analysed it to demonstrate the use of temporal ambiguity.
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 what Baudelaire did for Poe's verse, or Nerval for Faust, or Morel and Larbaud for Ulysses".[5]
Lawrence Durrell used the phrase "his eyes reflect the malady of De Nerval" in his poem "Je suis un autre" (1942).
T. S. Eliot quoted the second line of Nerval's sonnet "El Desdichado" in his poem The Waste Land.
Donald Swann set "El Desdichado" to music as "Je Suis le Ténébreux" and sang it in the Flanders and Swann revue At the Drop of a Hat (1956). This song appears on the live recording of that performance. Clive James, in his songwriting collaboration with Pete Atkin, wrote two lyrics that refer to the poem: "The Prince of Aquitaine" and "The Shadow and the Widower".[6]
Richard Wilbur's poem "A Prelude" in the collection Anterooms refers to Nerval. The poem mocks of the seriousness of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach". Wilbur writes: "And was upon the point of saying "Ah," / When he perceived, not far from the great Aiguille, / A lobster led on a leash beside the sea. / It was de Nerval, enjoying his vacances!"
William Boyd's 1998 novel Armadillo contains many references to Nerval and his work.
In the play "Cowboy Mouth" (1971) by Sam Shepard and Patti Smith, the character Cavale is obsessed with Nerval. He makes numerous references to him, claims that Nerval hanged himself on her birthday, and mentions Nerval's pet lobster.
The title of the song Dream Gerrard, written by Vivian Stanshall and recorded by Steve Winwood, apparently refers to Nerval.
Nerval's poem El Disdichado was set to music for the album Feasting with Panthers, released in 2011 by Marc Almond and Michael Cashmore. It was edited, adapted and translated by Jeremy Reed.
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