Gerard de Nerval

Gerard de Nerval , of its true name Gerard Labrunie , is a poet French, born with Paris the May 22nd 1808, died in Paris the January 26th 1855.

Biography

Gerard de Nerval was born the May 22nd 1808 in Paris. Two years later, his/her mother dies in Silesia whereas it accompanied her husband, army medical officer of the Napoleonean Large army . He was raised by his maternal great-uncle, Antoine Boucher, in the countryside of the Valois to Mortefontaine. Installed to Paris in 1814, at the time of the return of his father, it returned regularly in these places evoked in number of its news.

Still high-school pupil, it announced himself by his translations of Faust and other works of Goethe, which remain among the best ever carried out. The first of those was simply signed “Gerard”. It appeared in November 1827 and relates only to the first part of the masterpiece, the only known one then. Goethe appreciated its work largely and noticed its inspiration, going until saying that he would have written his part thus if he had had to write it in French. Berlioz was inspired for the Damnation by it by Faust .

It bound friendship with Théophile Gautier, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. It became with Petrus Borel one of the first members of the Young person-France. It took share actively, on the side of “modern”, with the battles of '' Hernani '' started the February 25th 1830 around the work of Hugo. Towards 1835, it settled street of the Deanery at Camille Rougier: a whole romantic group was found there: it was the time of “gallant Bohemia” or “gilded Bohemia”. It settles with the Castle of the fogs of Montmartre in 1846. It will describe this time in a work on the contemporary theater published in 1852.

Enthusiast of the actress Jenny Colonist, Nerval dedicated a worship idolâtre to him which took new forms with dead of this one: appear of the lost Mother, but also of the Ideal woman where mix, in a syncretism characteristic of the thought of Nerval, Marie, Isis, the Queen of Sheba… It knew starting from 1841 several crises of Démence which led it to the private hospital of Doctor Blanche. Consequently its stays in this establishment alternated with its voyages, in Germany, with the the Middle East. Its Voyage in the East will be published in 1851. He affirms in a letter with Doctor Blanche dated October 22nd, 1853, to be initiated with the mysteries Druzes at the time of his passage in Syria, where he would have reached the rank of “remade”, one of highest of this brotherhood. All its work is strongly tinted of esotericism and Symbolisme, in particular Alchimique.

In the years 1844 with 1847, Nerval travelled much (Belgium, Holland, London, surroundings of Paris) and wrote reports and impressions of corresponding voyages. At the same time, he worked like Nouvelliste and author of booklets of opera as as translator of the poems of Heinrich Heine which was his/her friend (collection printed in 1848). Its last years were remembered by the material and moral distress, and by the writing of its principal masterpieces, carried out to purge its emotions on the councils of Doctor Blanche: Girls of fire, Aurélia or the dream and the life (1853 - 1854). One found it hung with a grid of a moves, street of the Old woman-Lantern, the January 26th 1855, in the “most sordid corner which it could find”, like noted it Baudelaire.

Posterior influence

The insistence of Nerval on the significance of the dreams had an influence on the surrealist movement which was underlined by André Breton. In its dedication with Alexandre Dumas for the girls of fire, Nerval evokes “the state of daydream super-naturalist ” which was it his when he wrote the sonnets of the Chimères .

Marcel Proust and Rene Daumal was also largely influenced by this major work.

Antonin Artaud saw in committed suicide Nerval one of the company, which according to him “occultement was occultement leagued against its conscience”.

One can wonder whether Arthur Rimbaud, which refers to the translation of Faust, read Aurélia which appeared in the Review of the Two Worlds . Certain similarities in the rate/rhythm and the images make it possible to consider it. For example, when Nerval writes “the star which chatoyait of a double glare in turn blue and pink”, Rimbaud writes a poem which starts with it towards: “The star cried pink in the middle of your ears”.

A masterpiece: Sylvie

Anecdotes

One saw one Gerard day walking while holding leaves of it a lobster in the galleries of the Palais Royal. Whereas one questioned it on why of this act, he would have answered: I have the taste of the lobsters, which are quiet, serious, know the secrecies of the sea, do not bark… . The critics and the biographers generally see in this episode one of the precursory signs of the madness which was going to strike the poet. Roger Mazelier, in Gerard de Nerval and divine humor , advances another assumption: it could be a question of a will to establish a “perfect phonic Métathèse” to mean the amor (love) ou/et of an allusion to Omar I {{er}} and to its lieutenant Amrou, who one showed to be the instigators of the last fire of the Bibliothèque of Alexandria. Besides in the first letter of Angelica , Gerard de Nerval affirms “to want to avenge the memory for the famous caliph”.

Whereas one showed it to be impious, it exclaimed: “Me, not of religion? I have seventeen of them! ”

With the bottom of a photographic portrait of him, Gerard de Nerval wrote: “I am the different one. ”

Quotations

“I like to lead my life like a novel. ”
“This life is a bulge and an evil haunt. I have shame that God sees me there. ”
“do not await me this evening because the night will be black and white. ”, word left with his/her aunt the evening of her suicide.
“I am the dark one, - the widower, - unconsoled” the
“I left a theater where every evening I appeared with the aprons in great behavior of sighing. Sometimes all was full, sometimes all was empty…”
“It resembled the Beatrice de Dante who smiles to the poet wandering on the edge of the holy residences. ”
“the Dream is one second life. I never could bore without quivering these doors of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world. ”
“the first which compared the woman with a pink was a genius, the second was an imbecile”

Principal works

Voyage in the East (1854)
Bohemian gallant the (1852)
Lorely, memories of Germany (1852)
Enlightened the (1852)
Small castles of Bohemian (1853)
Girls of fire: Angelica, Sylvie, Jemmy, Isis, Emilie, Octavie, Pandora, the Dreams (1854)
Walks and memories (1854)
Aurélia or the dream and the life (1855)
the Dreams (1854)

Various works

Napoleon and warlike France, national elegies (1826)
Napoleon and Talma, new national elegies (1826)
the untraceable academy or members (1826), satirical comedy in worms
the people (1830), ode
Our good-byes with the House of Commons or “let us go away, old agents” (1831)
the hand of glory, macaronic history (1832)
Piquillo (1837), drama
the alchemist (1839), drama
Léo Burckart (1839), veracious drama
History of the duck (1845)
Scenes of the Eastern life (1846-1847)
the marquis de Fayolle (1849)
the Montenegrins (1849), drama
red devil, cabalistic almanac for (1850)
the carriage of child (1850), drama
confidences of Nicolas (1850) (Edition criticizes of Michel Brix, 2007)
the nights of Ramazan (1850)
the false saulniers, history of the abbot of Bucquoy (1851)
the imagier of Harlem (1852), drama
Conte and jokes (1852)
Odelettes
an alley of Luxembourg

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