Gérard 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, belle-lettrist, short-story writer and autobiographer. In addition to 'Aurélia', the memoir of his madness, 'Sylvie' (considered a 'masterpiece' by Proust), and the hermetic sonnets of The Chimeras, this volume includes Nerval's Doppelgänger 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.
Selected Writings confirms Nerval's place as a precursor of the French Symbolists and as a vital model for such twentieth-century writers as Marcel Proust, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, and Michel Leiris.
Selected Writings
Introduction
Chronology
Further Reading
Shadow Selves
Introductory Note
The King of Bedlam
The Tale of Caliph Hakim
Memories of the Valois
Introductory Note
Angélique
Sylvie
Unreal Cities
Introductory Note
Diorama
To My Friend Théophile Gautier
Octavia
October Nights
Pandora
Dream/Life
Introductory Note
Aurélia
Drafts of "Aurélia"
Panorama
Letters
Sonnets
Introductory Note
The Gramont Manuscript
The Chimeras
Notes
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