Gérard de Nerval

Sylvie and The Chimeras are two of French author G rard de Nerval (AD 1808-1855)ʼs best-known works. Sylvie, a novella, is by all accounts his masterpiece; it was first published in July 1853 in the Revue des Deux-Mondes, a periodical. It is a Romantic tale of the love of a young man from Paris for two women, one a childhood sweetheart from Valois, and the other a stage actress in Paris. It is a tale of longing, misgiving, and nostalgia for the past, with the dreamy landscape of Valois as the backdrop. Immediately before having written the novella, Nerval had suffered several bouts of mental illness. After its publication, he was again seized, but more seriously this time, rushed off to the nearest hospital, and put into a straitjacket. In 1854, Sylvie was published in book format, in the collection entitled Les Filles du Feu. The Chimeras is a collection of poems, all in sonnet format. They were written over the course of several years, from as early as 1843 and as late as 1854, a year before the author passed away. Of them "El Desdichado" and "Christ in the Garden of Olives" (itself a collection of five sonnets) are the most famous. Although some of the poems were published in magazines previously, the entirety of them were published as part of Les Filles du Feu. In the appendix is a short excerpt from the biography by Henri Strentz, published in 1911, which includes a discussion of the events leading up to Nervalʼs mental illnesses, his writing of Sylvie, and the squalid details surrounding his death by hanging by his own hand.

La collection Conna tre une oeuvre vous offre la possibilit de tout savoir des Chim res, de G rard de Nerval, gr ce une fiche de lecture aussi compl te que d taill e. La r daction, claire et accessible, a t confi e un sp cialiste universitaire. Cette fiche de lecture r pond une charte qualit mise en place par une quipe d'enseignants. Ce livre contient la biographie de G rard de Nerval, la pr sentation du recueil, le r sum d taill , les raisons du succ s, les th mes principaux et l' tude du mouvement litt raire de l'auteur.

Poetical biographies of six radical thinkers from Cagliostro to Restif de la Bretonne, by the leading figure of French Romanticism First published in French in 1852, The Illuminated was the first of a string of Gérard de Nerval’s late works that would culminate in his posthumous fantastical autobiography Aurélia in 1855. The Illuminated collects six portraits of men whom Nerval mysteriously dubbed “precursors of socialism”—visionaries who together formed an alternative history of France and a backdrop to a mystical form of madness that Nerval ultimately claimed for himself. Nerval here presents the reader with Raoul Spifame, a mad lawyer who imagined himself to be Henry II; the Abbé de Bucquoy, a man who opposed the monarchy and whose amazing escapes suggested the possession of magical powers; Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, the 18th-century theosophist who defined God in human terms rather than spiritual; the Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, the famous magus and alchemist; Jacques Cazotte, author of The Devil in Love, who created a synthesis between hermetic ideas and Catholic thought; and Quintus Aucler, a lawyer who sought to revive paganism in the unstable world of French society in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution of 1789. An overlooked work by Nerval, The Illuminated brings together the picturesque and pathos, a peculiar gallery of portraits that blur the boundaries between mysticism and mystification. Gérard de Nerval (1808–55) was a writer, poet and translator who wedded French and German Romanticism and transformed his research into mystic thought and his bouts of mental illness into such visionary works as Aurélia.

Les Filles du feu rassemble des textes vari s: - Six nouvelles dont le titre est un pr nom f minin (Ang lique, Sylvie, Jemmy, Octavie, Corilla, Emilie), et qui ont presque toutes en commun l' vocation de jeunes filles du pass , de souvenirs mal distincts du r ve. - Deux courts essais, Chansons et l gendes du Valois et Isis, qui pr sentent les r flexions de Nerval, l'un sur les chansons populaires (Il inclut aussi un conte: la Reine des poissons), l'autre sur le culte d'Isis ( propos d'un r cit de voyage). - Un recueil de douze sonnets, Les Chim res, dont l'originalit a marqu l'histoire de la po sie fran aise.

The Voyage en Orient is a geographical, initiatory, and philosophical journey. From Paris to Cythera, passing through Vienna; from Egypt to Lebanon and Constantinople, the narrator immerses himself in a complex Oriental world, far from a West he had to flee in his tireless search for Woman.

Un entrefilet dans un journal plonge brutalement le narrateur dans des souvenirs de f tes villageoises pr s de Senlis, dans l'Oise. Il d cide de quitter Paris sur l'heure et, au cours du trajet qui le m ne Loisy, il se rem more sa jolie compagne d'alors, la brune Sylvie, et la myst rieuse Adrienne, aper ue un soir au milieu d'une ronde de jeunes filles, et jamais oubli e depuis.

By evoking the memories of the impasse du Doyenne, Nerval participates in the invention of "bohemian life," destined to become a literary myth. He also composes a poetic and autobiographical journey that foreshadows the one in Aurelia. This reference edition illuminates the texts in light of the most recent Nerval scholarship.