Gérard de Nerval: Selected Writings
by Gérard de Nerval
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"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 show more 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."--Jacket. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
The myth of Nerval: eccentric, careless, tortured. Reading the writing of this eccentric, you walk away dazed by the multi-dimensional, jeweled imagination he carried within him. The themes of Nerval’s stories are typical: desired love, lost love, phantasmagoric worlds and exotic places. However, you sense one who has wandered so far away that there can be no returning. Nerval pursues his dreamt muse who forever eludes her capture into words.
The highlights here are Aurelia and the poetry from Les Chimeres onwards. They are wacked out, and the ending of Aurelia is incredible.
Sylvie is subtly disquieting, probably completely unintentionally.
Sylvie is subtly disquieting, probably completely unintentionally.
I knew this would break my heart, and I dove in anyway.
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Literature in Translation
113 works; 5 members
Author Information
281+ Works 2,696 Members
Gérard de Nerval was the pen name of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essential Romantic French poets. He was born on May 22, 1808, in Paris, France. Nerval first became noted because of his translation of Goethe's Faust (1828). Gérard de Nerval's first nervous breakdown occurred during 1841. In a series show more of novellas, collected as Les Illuminés, ou les précurseurs du socialisme (1852), he described feelings that followed his third breakdown. Increasingly poverty-stricken and disoriented, he committed suicide in 1855, hanging himself from a window grating. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Gérard de Nerval: Selected Writings
- First words
- I came out of a theatre where I used to spend every evening in the proscenium boxes in the role of an ardent wooer.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Perhaps, even so, there is a little too much intellect in his story...
- Disambiguation notice
- The Penguin and Panther editions of de Nerval's Selected Writings have different contents. Please do not combine them.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Poetry
- DDC/MDS
- 848.709 — Literature & rhetoric French Literature French miscellaneous writings Constitutional monarchy 1815–48
- LCC
- PQ2260 .G36 .A25 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures French literature Modern literature 19th century
- BISAC
Statistics
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- 300
- Popularity
- 106,960
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.77)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 2
