Gérard de Nerval

The Choix of the poets of the sixteenth century is for Nerval both a defence and illustration of popular and national poetry, being in 1830, a defence and illustration of romantic poetry.

Forfatteren beskriver en reise til underverdenen der sjelen må kjempe desperate kamper for å føres videre mot befrielsen. Boken beskriver en erkjennelsesprosess og beskriver reisen fra en verden i illusjoner til en høyere innsikt i universets skjulte harmoni.

Poet, visionary, short-story writer and autobiographer, Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855) explored the uncertain borderlines between dream and reality, irony and madness, autobiography and fiction with his groundbreaking writings. This comprehensive selection of his works includes 'Aurélia', the memoir of his madness; the haunting novella of love and memory 'Sylvie' (considered to be a masterpiece by Proust); the hermetic sonnets of 'The Chimeras'; as well as Nerval's experimental fictions and selections from his correspondence, which demonstrate his lucid awareness of how nineteenth-century psychiatry consigned his fertile imagination to the status of mental illness. Together these pieces confirm Nerval's place as a pioneering modernist, a precursor of the French Symbolists and a vital model for such writers as Marcel Proust, André Breton, Antonin Artaud and Michel Leiris.