Gérard de Nerval (1808–55,) pseudonym of Gérard Labrunie, was a French poet, essayist, and critic. An early Romantic, he is best known for his poetry and fantastic short tales.
Nerval is often appreciated as a pioneer of both the Symbolist and Surrealist movements that shaped modern French literature. Marcel Proust declared that Nerval was “assuredly one of the three or four greatest writers of the nineteenth century.”
Born in Paris, Nerval was deeply influenced by reading his uncle’s compendium of occult books during his youth. At age 20, Nerval produced a French translation of Goethe’s Faust (1828,) which Goethe himself commended. Nerval expanded it as Faust, et le second Faust (1840,) which French composer Hector Berlioz brought into play as the opera La damnation de Faust (1846.)
Along with prose and verse, Nerval also wrote Voyage en Orient (1843–51, “Voyage to the East,”) a travelog that included a study of mythology, folk symbols, and religion. His noted short tales include the Contes et facéties (1852, ‘Stories and Jests,’) the partially autobiographical series Les Filles du feu (1854; Daughters of Fire, 1923,) and La Bohème Galante (1855, ‘Gallant Bohemian Life.’)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Gerard de Nerval
The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the “I,” under another form, continues the task of existence.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Sleep
The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations?. Ignorance cannot be learned.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Knowledge
It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Little Things, Things
The enthusiasm of old men is singularly like that of infancy.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Enthusiasm
I have always differentiated between two types of friends; those who want proofs of friendship, and those who do not. One kind loves me for myself, and the others for themselves.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Friendship
Each flower is a soul opening out to nature.
—Gerard de Nerval
How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: The Universe
Our dreams are a second life. I have never been able to penetrate without a shudder those ivory or horned gates which separate us from the invisible world.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Dreams
Every flower is a soul blossoming in Nature.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Nature, Flowers, One liners
When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind’s disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
—Gerard de Nerval
Topics: Disorder, Religion
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Alfred de Musset French Poet, Playwright
Stephane Mallarme French Poet
Michel Leiris French Surrealist Writer, Ethnographer
Cesare Pavese Italian Novelist, Poet
Edgar Quinet French Intellectual
John Keats English Poet
Moliere French Playwright
Ivan Turgenev Russian Novelist, Playwright
Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) Roman Statesman, Poet
Arthur Henry Hallam English Essayist, Poet