0% found this document useful (0 votes)
736 views23 pages

Sylvie

This document provides an introduction and summary of Gérard de Nerval's 1853 work Sylvie. It discusses the complex publication history and biographical context of the work. It summarizes the plot, which follows a narrator returning to his childhood home in search of Sylvie, while also reminiscing about past loves Aurélie and Adrienne. It analyzes key themes of the work, particularly its blurring of time and memory through the narrator's recollections. It provides context on the term "nouvelle" and how Sylvie fits this genre through its focus on exploring memory and place rather than dramatic plot events.

Uploaded by

Sam Dressel
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
736 views23 pages

Sylvie

This document provides an introduction and summary of Gérard de Nerval's 1853 work Sylvie. It discusses the complex publication history and biographical context of the work. It summarizes the plot, which follows a narrator returning to his childhood home in search of Sylvie, while also reminiscing about past loves Aurélie and Adrienne. It analyzes key themes of the work, particularly its blurring of time and memory through the narrator's recollections. It provides context on the term "nouvelle" and how Sylvie fits this genre through its focus on exploring memory and place rather than dramatic plot events.

Uploaded by

Sam Dressel
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 23

University of Cambridge

Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages

Part II 2011

Year Abroad Project (Translation)

A translation of extracts from Sylvie by Gérard de Nerval

with introduction and translator’s notes

1893k
Introduction

Gérard de Nerval’s Sylvie1 was first published in La Revue des deux mondes in

August 1853, a year in which the author spent long periods in an asylum,

struggling against the nervous breakdowns which had plagued him throughout his

life2. Sylvie was later to make up part of Les Filles du Feu, a collection of eight

nouvelles3, a dedication and twelve sonnets, Les Chimères. The collection has a

complex history, since almost all of the material had been previously published,

and its final form was altered by Nerval several times in consultation with his

editor. The first edition appeared in January of 1854, just one year before the

author’s suicide, and as such is his last published volume.

The finished work deals with the romantic obsessions of a young, theatre-going

narrator. It concerns three women: Aurélie, an actress whom he has fallen in love

with from afar; Adrienne, a once-glimpsed beauty who has since become a nun;

and Sylvie, a country girl whom the narrator was close to in his youth, but who

he has not seen for some years. Each of these women seems to embody one

facet of an idealized woman: the sophisticated and cosmopolitan actress; the

unavailable, chaste nun; and the rustic, good-hearted childhood sweetheart. By

chance the narrator comes across an advertisement for a fête in Loisy, in the

Valois, where he spent much of his youth. This sparks a series of reminiscences

and prompts him to return to the area in search of Sylvie, who comes to embody

all the happy memories of his early years. In the mean time, the figures of

Aurélie and Adrienne become increasingly intertwined in the narrator’s

imagination.

1
Gérard de Nerval, Les Filles du Feu, ed. Jaques Bony (Paris: GF FLammarion, 1994). All subsequent
references to Les Filles du Feu are taken from this edition.
2
Those seeking a more detailed biographical study could turn to Norma Rinsler’s Gérard de Nerval,
(University of London: The Athlone Press, 1973), ch.1.
3
This term will be discussed more fully later.
The first sketches for Sylvie came in the summer of 1853, during a period of

convalescence which the author spent travelling around the Valois region,

scribbling down the memories of his childhood and youth which this provoked. In

1808, at around six months old, the young Gérard Labrunie (as he was then) had

been placed in the care of a wet-nurse in Loisy, where part of the nouvelle is set,

and following the death of his mother at the age of two, he was raised by a great-

uncle nearby. Even after returning to Paris to live with his father, a doctor, Nerval

continued to make frequent visits to the area which was later to inspire so much

of his creative output. His correspondence indicates that the process of drawing

together these jottings caused him considerable anguish; given his fragile mental

state, it is not too outlandish to suggest that writing this particular nouvelle may

have precipitated the final bout of madness which led to his death.

Nerval first won public acclaim for his translation of Goethe’s Faust, published at

the age of 20 in 1828. At the time, his father was keen that he should study to

become a notary, a career which he embarked upon with little enthusiasm. From

the 1830s, encouraged by Hugo, and accompanied by his lifelong friend Théophile

Gautier, Nerval became increasingly involved in the Romantic movement. His first

attempts at a literary career met with mixed success. A public protest made by a

large number of his friends and associates led to his arrest and imprisonment,

and on leaving prison, an outbreak of cholera meant that he was obliged to assist

his father in his work. The turning point came in 1834, when his maternal

grandfather died and left him around 30 000 francs, a sum which allowed him to

devote himself entirely to writing. The following year, he founded an ill-fated

theatrical review, Le Monde dramatique, largely in order to chart the career of

Jenny Colon, an actress with whom Nerval became romantically obsessed. The

magazine folded within two years, and the brief period of happiness and financial

success which he had enjoyed also came to an end.


In his own time, many of Nerval’s contemporaries tended to concentrate on his

well-documented eccentricities, rather than his literary qualities. This was not lost

on Nerval himself, complaining of one biography that “on me traite en héros de

roman…”4 In his Histoire du Romantisme5, Gautier unsurprisingly affords Nerval a

positive appraisal, particularly the quality of his language, which he favourably

compares with the purity of the eighteenth-century “littérateurs”. In general,

however, Nerval has often suffered from an excessively sentimentalized view of

his life, a kind of tragic hero who lost his life to Romanticism, with little

consideration for the influence of his work on later writers. Over the last century,

this view has been reconsidered by many critics. Proust, for instance, discusses

Sylvie in some detail, refuting the commonly held view that Nerval is “un écrivain

du XVIIIe siècle attardé”.6

Les Filles du Feu was published as a collection of nouvelles, a term which Nerval

certainly approved, but one which is problematic for modern readers, particularly

in translation. The nineteenth-century French nouvelle does not have a

convenient English language equivalent. The novella form tends be somewhat

more developed, yet “short story” is often too brief; Nerval’s nouvelles seem to

straddle both genres, despite the lack of any clear boundary between the two.

Many conflicting definitions already exist, but it is worth pointing out that Nerval

made a clear distinction between conte and nouvelle, the latter always having a

contemporary setting, free from the fantastic (i.e. not a fairy tale). As well as

this, a nouvelle often explores just one, often mundane, event and its

repercussions. Most of Les Filles du Feu do not comfortably fit this description.

Sylvie, however, is a typical Nervalien nouvelle: a chance reminder of his

childhood, a visit to the Valois area, and its consequences. This reductive

4
From a letter to his father (Oeuvres Complémentaires de Gérard de Nerval, ed. Jean Richer. Series :
Nouvelle Bibliothèque nervalienne, Vol. I (Paris : Minard Lettres Modernes, 1959)), reacting to
Mirecourt’s Gérard de Nerval.
5
Théophile Gautier, Histoire du Romantisme (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), pp. 134-6
6
Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Gallimard, 1954)
synopsis nevertheless demonstrates one of the nouvelle’s key characteristics –

Sylvie is not driven by plot. The events of this nouvelle are of significance only to

one man, the narrator, and once we reach the conclusion, there has been no

change in his circumstances. It is rather an exploration of memory, time and

space, all three of these becoming wonderfully blurred as the nouvelle

progresses.

This treatment of time and memory is perhaps the most striking aspect of Sylvie,

and is well worth further discussion. Over the course of the nouvelle, we see our

narrator as man, boy, and youth, and the time of writing (1853) places its events

around twenty years in the past. These shifts between the ages of man are

presented to us through the process of memory, which in turn is often brought on

by a movement through space (for instance the narrator’s journey to Loisy in the

post coach and his subsequent remembrance of similar childhood journeys). Place

and memory, space and time, are inextricably linked in this text. One might

expect these to be merely contextual details, a backdrop against which the

nouvelle’s events unfold, but in Sylvie these are of primary importance, since the

bulk of the nouvelle consists of recollections, deeply rooted in the narrator’s

Valois childhood. His journey there is not only a physical return (through space),

but also historical (a return to youth). As a consequence, the chronology of Sylvie

is complex. Events which are situated at completely different points in time follow

each other in quick succession; years are dispensed with in a single sentence, yet

an evening can occupy an entire chapter. The reader is often left without any

obvious temporal markers, adrift in the narrator’s stream of remembrance. This

disorientating effect is very obviously underlined in the third chapter of the

nouvelle, when the narrator is unable to find a functioning timepiece (“Je n’avais

pas de montre…” &c.7). Then follows what seems like a flight-of-fancy: an

elaborate description of an ornate seventeenth-century clock. After a paragraph

7
Bony edition, p.179
of lavish detail the narrator informs us that it has been inactive for over two

centuries. This ostensibly meaningless paragraph neatly summarizes two of the

nouvelle’s main themes: an obsession with the past, and a lack of temporal

awareness.

The importance of space and time is also crucial to our understanding of the three

female protagonists. None of them is particularly well characterized, beyond a

physical description, yet each occupies such a distinct spatial and temporal

position that they become more than mere ciphers. Aurélie belongs to the

narrator’s vivid, worldly present, at the heart of Parisian society. At the nouvelle’s

outset, she is the most tangible of the three. Her existence is corroborated by the

narrator’s conversation with a third party, so she is not merely a historical

fantasy. Bound up with her status as a city-dweller are ideas of culture, glamour,

sophistication and knowledge, in opposition to her rural counterparts. Sylvie

comes from the narrator’s past, then is re-introduced to his present with a view

to her forming a part of his future. Our narrator clearly situates her in a pastoral

setting by linking her to his impressions of the Valois region. Our first encounter

with her takes place by a sixteenth-century castle, in a part of the world which

repeats ancient druidic traditions “d’âge en âge”. We also learn that she is from a

neighbouring hamlet – as far removed from the Paris metropolis as possible. This

suggests simplicity, decency and a certain solidity (unlike flighty Parisian

actresses). Place and time do more than simply inform the characters of these

women. To some extent, their otherwise under-developed characters are replaced

by their geo-temporal location.

This is particularly true of Adrienne. Our narrator makes it clear that he has only

had one meeting with her (a beauty “à peine entrevue”), so she must be from the

past, and yet of the three women, she is the one who has most haunted his

thoughts over the years. His obsession with her is based on one chaste kiss, a
fleeting dance and the knowledge that she is out of his reach in a convent. We

know she is beautiful, but beyond that, she is a blank. Onto this, the narrator

imposes (or rather we are encouraged for ourselves to impose) a great deal of

supplementary information. Firstly, the figure of the nun suggests chastity,

goodness and inaccessibility. The narrator makes clear early on the importance of

this last quality (“la femme réelle” should not be approached), and later implies

that the nun is one half of man’s feminine ideal (“Aimer une religieuse sous la

forme d’une actrice! … Il y a de quoi devenir fou!”). As well as this, even more

than Sylvie, she is linked to the Valois region, since “le sang des Valois coulait

dans ses veines”. This blood of course refers to the Valois aristocracy, but the fact

that they share a name with the region that our narrator holds in such affection

assures Adrienne of a similarly exalted position, and makes her a representative

of the region itself. It as though he is lusting after the land of his childhood in the

form of a woman, but since the character of the woman is so deeply connected to

the region, the region itself also becomes an object of lust. The narrator’s primary

obsession is with a specific time and place – his past in the Valois. The three

women in the text are merely expressions of this past (even Aurélie, who reminds

him of Adrienne).

If this seems to be a confused picture of the narrator’s relationships with his

youth and the three women, then it is only because the nature of these

relationships is so complex. The waters are muddied further when we consider

that his obsession with the past is nothing new. Chapter VI contains a revealing

moment where the narrator and Sylvie put on her aunt’s wedding clothes,

transforming himself “en marié de l’autre siècle”. It is as though even in his youth

he looks back to an earlier age, instead of concentrating his attentions on Sylvie

in what was then his present, condemned from childhood to fetishize the past. He

describes the aunt’s reaction to their appearance as “l’image de sa jeunesse, -


cruelle et charmante apparition!”, a description which could equally be applied to

the entire nouvelle – an image of the narrator’s youth, cruel and beguiling.

Translator’s Note

This new translation is the latest in a distinguished, if brief, lineage.

Distinguished, but not unimprovable, since the various translations made over the

past century or so seem to me to fall either into the trap of being too formal and

fussy (selected extracts by Andrew Lang8 and in full by Lucie Page9), or of

adopting a register unsuited to Nerval’s original prose (Richard Sieburth10 and

Kendall Lappin11). Even an otherwise creditable effort by Geoffrey Wagner12

bizarrely omits the end of the third chapter.

My own modest attempt tries to strike a balance between these two extremes, as

far as possible using clear, modern English, but avoiding the glaring neologisms

found in some translations (Lappin, for instance, translates “amateurs forces” as

“hard-core theater-goers”). It must be acknowledged that the question of period

language is a taxing one. Page’s 1896 translation contains phrases such as, “Thus

it chanced that on quitting the theatre” or “They bade me kiss her”, which sound

rather outdated, even mawkish, to modern ears - a quality which I do not believe

is present in the original French. Besides, Nerval’s prose is syntactically complex

enough, without having to wade through faux-Victorian vocabulary and flowery

constructions.

Another challenge, therefore, is to try to maintain Nerval’s sometimes tortuous

line of argument. At the level of the sentence, this means deciding whether or not

8
Andrew Lang, Letters on literature (London: 1889)
9
Sylvie, trans. Lucie Page (Portland, Me: T.B. Mosher, 1896)
10
Sylvie, trans. Richard Sieburth (London: Syrens, 1995)
11
Aurélia followed by Sylvie, trans. Kendall Lappin (Santa Maria, CA: Asylum Arts, 1993)

12
Selected Writings of Gérard de Nerval, trans. Geoffrey Wagner, (London: Panther Books, 1968)
to follow the order of clauses in the original. This is what I have tried to do

wherever practicable, since changing this order invariably changes which ideas

the author has emphasized. At the level of the paragraph, it is tempting to break

up some of Nerval’s longer sentences, but this complexity is integral to the

original, so I have always left this unaltered. In effect, this means maintaining the

original punctuation; the semi-colon, more frequently used in French than in

English, stays as a semi-colon, and long sequences of clauses are never broken

up. The exceptions to this are the dash and the ellipsis, widespread in French

writing, but usually redundant in English. I have used these on a case by case

basis, for instance where Nerval is clearly implying a broken chain of thought.

Space does not allow for a detailed description or justification of every solution I

have proposed to the translation problems posed by the original. The title of the

first chapter, however, is especially problematic. “Nuit perdue” in the original

French has been variously rendered as “A wasted night”, “Wasted night”, and “A

lost night”. None of the translators listed above8-12 opts for “Lost Night”, perhaps

out of a desire to avoid the obvious. Yet this seems to me to be the best option.

The absence of the article is more striking in French than in English, so to re-

introduce it seems artificial, and “Wasted night” does not fit with what follows.

Our narrator has wasted many nights at the theatre, but this particular night is

emphatically not one of them, since on coming across the advertisement for the

fête at Loisy, he is plunged into memories of his childhood, in turn bringing about

the events of the entire nouvelle. Ultimately, it is fruitless, but at this stage we

are not aware of this – in fact, it is the least wasted night our narrator has had

for some time. “Lost night” therefore seems to be the most apposite, since it

situates the night in question vaguely in the past, with the absence of article

adding to this lack of specificity, and as a consequence neatly sets up the text’s

problematic relationship with time.


The introduction discusses in some detail this approach to time. From a purely

technical point of view, this means constantly trying to choose the most

appropriate tense to use. His use of the imperfect is problematic and often

ambiguous. The translator must decide whether Nerval is referring to one action

or a repeated, habitual one. In my version, this one tense is translated in four

different ways according to context, which gives some idea of the scale of the

task. The many temporal shifts also require careful handling. The narrator often

switches between reminiscence and action, his reflections described by both the

imperfect and the simple past, and his reactions to these by the simple past and

present. This is clearly problematic, since there is a degree of overlap between

which tenses Nerval uses for events situated at completely different points within

the nouvelle’s chronological structure. I have adopted something of a “hands-off”

approach, as faithful as possible to the text. The sudden shifts of tense can be

unsettling, but this is essential to the original.

The final problem is a function of the content rather than the language. The

original is thick with both classical and historical references. Lappin, Sieburth and

Wagner use footnotes to explain some of these, and to add biographical detail.

The latter can be found in the introduction to this version, leaving the reader to

draw his own conclusions as to how relevant this is. My own personal belief is

that since Nerval does not specify which theatre he frequents, it is an imposition

for a translator to assert an actual location, even if this takes the form of a

footnote – this is not, after all, an autobiography, and to try to match every

episode with an event from the author’s own life is at best speculative. I also

agonized over whether to attempt to elucidate Nerval’s wide sphere of allusion.

Lappin, for instance, footnotes “Isis”, “Alexandria” and “Diana” (references which

I suspect would not be beyond a good A-level student), yet leaves many more

obscure references unexplained. In the end I have adopted the same strategy as

for biographical detail; Nerval chooses not to offer assistance to readers less well-
read than himself (among whom I freely place myself), and so I leave readers to

decide for themselves whether to follow every lead or not. A classical dictionary,

or – dare I suggest – an Internet search engine, will furnish answers to anything

in this extract. Besides, it can be dangerous to approach Nerval as an exercise in

“decoding” allusion. Readers can easily find themselves adrift in the temporal

fluidity of this text; I would argue that the complexity of Nerval’s references

makes an important contribution to this sense of disorientation. On a first

encounter, it is best just to allow oneself to be swept along by Nerval’s rich prose

and lush imagery.


Sylvie

Memories of the Valois

I. Lost Night

I was leaving a theatre where every evening I would appear in the boxes

in a suitor’s costume. Sometimes the place was full, sometimes the place was

empty. Looking out over stalls filled with thirty or so hopeless amateurs, or boxes

stuffed with bonnets and old-fashioned outfits was of no importance to me - nor

indeed was being a part of a lively, trembling auditorium, crowned at every tier

by flowery garments, sparkling jewels and radiant faces. Indifferent as I was to

the spectacle of the hall, that of the play was barely of greater interest - except

for the second or third scene of some dreary masterpiece, when a familiar

apparition would light up the empty space, giving life with a breath and a word to

those vain figures who surrounded me.

I felt myself living in her, and she living for me alone. Her smile filled me with an

infinite goodness; the vibration of her voice, so sweet and yet powerfully

distinctive, made me quiver with joy and love. For me she possessed every

possible perfection, she responded to all my enthusiasm, and to all my whims -

beautiful as the day when the footlights shone upon her from below, pale as the

night when the dimmed footlights left her illuminated more naturally from above

beneath the chandeliers’ rays, only her beauty gleaming in the shadow, like the

divine Hours carved out, with a star on each forehead, on the dark brown of the

frescos at Herculaneum.
For a whole year, I had not thought to discover who she really was; I was afraid

of disturbing the magic mirror which reflected her image to me - and at most I

had overheard certain comments concerning not the actress, but the woman. I

learnt as much about her as I might have learnt from rumours about the Princess

of Ilia or the Queen of Trabzon - one of my uncles who had lived through the

years before the Revolution, as one must in order to understand that time

properly, had warned me at an early age that actresses were not women, and

that nature had forgotten to give them a heart. He was speaking about actresses

from that bygone age no doubt; but he had told me so many tales of his illusions

and disappointments, and shown me so many ivory portraits, delightful

medallions since used to decorate snuffboxes, so many yellowing tickets, so many

faded favours, whilst giving me the full story and account, that I was used to

thinking badly of them all with no consideration for the way of things nowadays.

We were living through a strange era then, as is usually the case after revolutions

or the toppling of great monarchies. The heroic gallantry of the Fronde, the

elegant and ornate vice of the Regency, the scepticism and wild orgies of the

Directory were all no more; there was a combination of activity, hesitation and

sloth, of brilliant utopias, philosophical or religious aspirations, vague enthusiasm,

mixed with a certain instinct for rebirth; a sense of being tired of past discords

and uncertain hopes – something like the age of Peregrinus and Apuleius. Worldly

man aspired to the rejuvenating bouquet of roses proffered by the fair Isis; the

eternally youthful and pure goddess would appear to us at night, and shamed us

for the wasted hours of our days. And yet for us it was not an ambitious age, and

the greedy scramble for rank and honour taking place at the time only distanced

us from possible spheres of activity. The only refuge left to us was the poets’

ivory tower, which we climbed ever higher to escape the mob. Guided to such

heights by our masters, we breathed at last the pure air of solitude, we drank

oblivion from the golden cup of legends, we were drunk on poetry and love. Love
– alas! – of vague shapes, of shades of pink and blue, of metaphysical phantoms!

Seen at close quarters, actual woman appalled us in our naivety; she had to be a

queen or a goddess, and above all should not be approached.

There were those among us who nevertheless held these platonic paradoxes in

low esteem, and through our renewed dreams of Alexandria would sometimes

brandish the torch of the underground gods, lighting up the shadows for a

moment with their trail of stars. And so it was that, on leaving the theatre with

the bitter sadness that a faded dream leaves behind, I gladly sought out the

society of a club who used to dine together in great numbers, and where all

melancholy surrendered to the inexhaustible verve of several brilliant, lively,

stormy, and, at times, sublime individuals – such as are always found in periods

of reform or decadence, and whose arguments ascended to such a level that the

most timid among us would sometimes go to the windows to see whether the

Huns, the Turkmen or the Cossacks were finally coming to cut short the debates

of these rhetoricians and sophists.

“Drinking and making love, now that’s wisdom!” This was the sole opinion of the

youngest there. One of this group said to me, “I’ve been seeing you for a while in

the same theatre, every time that I go. Which one do you come for?”

Which one…? It did not seem possible that one could go for another. But I

conceded a name nonetheless.

“Well!” answered my friend with indulgence, “over there is the lucky fellow who

has just escorted her here, and, faithful to the rules of our club, might not be

meeting with her again until the night is over.”


Somewhat blankly, I glanced over at the figure pointed out to me. He was a

young man, properly dressed, with a pale and nervous face, acceptable manners

and eyes bearing the stamp of melancholy and sweetness. He was throwing coins

onto a whist table and losing with indifference. “Why should it matter to me,” said

I, “him or any other? There was bound to me one, and he seems worthy of being

chosen.”

“And you?”

“Me? I am chasing an image, nothing more.”

As I left, I passed through the reading room, and mechanically looked at a

newspaper in order, I believe, to see how the stock exchange was faring. In the

wreckage of my wealth there was quite a substantial sum of foreign securities.

Although overlooked for some time, there had been a rumour that they were

going to be recognized; - which had indeed occurred after a change of

administration. The funds were already valued quite highly; I found myself rich

again.

This change of circumstances brought about one thought alone, namely that the

long beloved woman was mine if I so wanted. I was within touching distance of

my ideal. Surely this was another illusion, a mocking printing error? But the other

papers were saying the same thing. The sum I had earned stood before me like

the golden statue of Moloch. “What would the young man I saw a moment ago

say,” I thought, “if I went to take his place beside the woman he has left alone?”

I shuddered at this thought, and my pride rebelled.

No! That is not the way, killing love with gold at my age: I will not be a corrupter.

Besides, such an idea belongs to another time. And how do I know this woman
would be so mercenary? My eyes wandered vaguely across the paper I was still

holding, and I read the following two lines: “Country Flower Fair. – Tomorrow, the

archers of Senlis must return the bouquet to the archers of Loisy.” At these

simple words a whole new series of emotions stirred in me: a long-forgotten

memory of the countryside, a distant echo of the naïve holidays of youth. The

horn and drum would sound from afar in the little villages and in the woods; the

girls would weave garlands and, singing all the while, gathered bouquets bound

up with ribbons. A heavy cart, pulled by bullocks, received these gifts along their

way, and we, children of those parts, we made up the procession with our bows

and arrows, calling ourselves knights - without realizing that we were simply

repeating from age to age a druidic rite surviving both monarchies and new

religions.

II. Adrienne

I returned to my bed and was unable to sleep. Immersed in a half-slumber, all

my youth was playing out in my memory. This state, where the mind is still able

to resist the strange combinations of dream, often allows one to see the most

salient scenes of a long period of life flit past in a few minutes.

I was picturing a castle from the time of Henri IV with its pointed roofs covered

with slate and a reddish front with corners indented by yellowing stones, a large

green square framed by elms and linden trees, whose foliage the setting sun

pierced with its burning shafts. Young girls were dancing in a round on the lawn

singing old songs passed down to them by their mothers, and in French so

naturally pure that one had a strong sense of being alive in that ancient Valois

land, the beating heart of France for over a thousand years.


I was the only boy in this circle, into which I had led my companion Sylvie, in

those days still a young girl from the neighbouring hamlet, so lively and so fresh-

faced, with her dark eyes, her even profile and lightly sun-kissed skin…! I loved

only her, I had eyes for no other – until then! I had hardly noticed, in the circle

where we were dancing, a tall, beautiful blonde who went by the name of

Adrienne. All at once, according to the steps of the dance, Adrienne was alone

with me in the middle of the round. We were both the same height. Someone told

us to kiss, and the dance and the chorus whirled more vividly than ever. As I

gave her that kiss, I could not stop myself from squeezing her hand. The long,

golden rings of her hair brushed against my cheeks. From that moment, an

unknown disquiet took hold of me. – The lady had to sing in order to return to the

dance. We sat around her, and straight away, in a sweet, penetrating, yet slightly

husky voice, typical of girls from that misty country, she sang one of those

ancient ballads full of melancholy and love which always describe the misfortunes

of a princess imprisoned in a tower by a father punishing her for having loved.

The melody of each verse ended with those quavering trills which young voices

can perform so well, imitating the shaking voice of a grandmother with tremulous

modulations.

While she was singing, shadows were falling from the lofty trees, and the

emerging moonlight was shining on her only, alone in the middle of our transfixed

circle. She finished her song, and no one dared to break the silence. The lawn

was covered with faint, condensed vapour, its white droplets unfurling on each

blade of grass. We thought ourselves in paradise. Eventually I arose, and hurried

to the castle’s parterre, where laurel trees had been planted in large earthenware

vases decorated with cameos. I brought back two branches, braided into a

garland and tied up with ribbon. I placed this ornament on Adrienne’s head, its

glossy leaves standing out against her blonde hair lit by the moon’s pale rays.
She looked like Dante’s Beatrice, smiling on the poet wandering by the border of

the heavenly heights.

Adrienne stood up. Unfolding her slender form, she gave a graceful wave, and ran

back to the castle. She was, we were told, the granddaughter of someone

descended from a family allied to the ancient kings of France; the blood of the

Valois flowed through her veins. For this holiday, she had been allowed to join our

revels; we were not to see her again, since the following day she returned to the

convent where she was a boarder.

When I went back to Sylvie, I saw that she was crying. The garland given to the

beautiful singer by my hand was the cause of her tears. I offered to go and cut

another, but she replied that she, undeserving, would rather I did not. I tried in

vain to defend myself, but she did not utter a single word as I escorted her to her

parents’ home.

I myself was obliged to return to Paris in order to continue my studies, and I

carried with me the double image of a blossoming friendship sadly broken - and

an impossible and vague infatuation, source of mournful thoughts that school

philosophy had no power to calm.

The figure of Adrienne alone remained triumphant - a mirage of glory and beauty,

softening or sharing the hours of harsh studies. During the holidays of the

following year, I learnt that the family of this half-glimpsed beauty had decided

that she should take the veil.

III. Resolution
Everything became clear to me through this half-dreamed memory. This vague

and hopeless love for a woman of the theatre which took hold of me every night

at the time of the show, only releasing me with the onset of sleep, had taken root

in my memory of Adrienne, flower of the night blooming by the pale light of the

moon, blond and rosy phantom gliding across the lush grass half-bathed in dew.

From that moment, the resemblance to that long-forgotten face took shape with

striking clarity; it was a rough drawing, faded by the years, becoming a painting,

like those sketches by the old masters which one admires in a museum, before

finding the dazzling original elsewhere.

To be in love with a nun under the guise of an actress…! and if they should be the

same! – The stuff of madness! a fatal impulse where the unknown draws you in

like the will-o’-the-wisp hovering above rushes by a stagnant pool… Let us try to

return to reality.

And Sylvie, of whom I had once been so fond, why had I forgotten her for three

years? She was really a very pretty girl, and the most beautiful in Loisy!

She is real, and no doubt good and pure of heart. I see her window where the

vine embraces the rose, the cage of songbirds hanging on the left; I hear the

noise of the spindle echoing and her favourite song:

A fair maid was sitting

By a rushing brooklet…

She is still waiting for me… Who would have married her? She is so poor!

In her village and those which surround it, good country folk in smocks, with

rough hands, pinched faces and weather-beaten complexions! She loved me


alone, me the little Parisian, when I used to visit my poor late uncle near Loisy.

For three years, I have squandered the modest living he left me which could have

lasted a lifetime. With Sylvie, I would have saved it. Chance is giving part of it

back to me. There is still time.

What is she doing at this hour? Sleeping… No, she is not sleeping; today is the

festival of the bow, the only day in the year where the dancing lasts all night. She

is at the festival…

What time is it?

I did not have a watch.

Shining with a newly-restored gleam among all the splendid bric-a-brac, which at

the time it was customary to collect in order to restore local colour to an

apartment from days gone by, was one of those Renaissance tortoise-shell clocks,

whose dome, mounted with the figure of Father Time, is supported by Medici-

style caryatids, who in turn rest on half-rearing horses. The classical Diana,

leaning on her hart, is in bas-relief beneath the face, where enamel numbers

sprawl on an engraved background. The action, no doubt excellent, had not been

wound for two hundred years. It had not been to tell the time that I bought this

clock in Touraine.

I went down to the concierge. His cuckoo-clock was showing one o’clock in the

morning. In four hours, I said to myself, I can be at the ball in Loisy. There were

still five or six hansom cabs on the square of the Palais-Royal waiting for the

regulars from the gambling dens or clubs there: “To Loisy!” I said to the nearest.

“And where might that be?”


“Near Senlis, eight leagues from here.”

“I’ll take you to the mail-coach,” said the driver, less concerned than I.

What a miserable road, at night, that Flanders road, which only becomes

beautiful on reaching the forest section! Always those two lines of monotonous

trees scowling vague shapes; beyond, squares of vegetation and ploughed earth,

hemmed in on the left by the bluish hills of Montmorency, Ecouen, and Luzarches.

There is Gonesse, the ordinary little town filled with memories of the Ligue and

the Fronde…

Past Louvres there is a road bordered by apple trees whose flowers I have seen

so many times bursting into the night like stars from the earth: it was the

shortest way to reach the hamlets. While the coach ascends the little hills, let us

reconstruct the memories of the time when I would come here so often.
Bibliography

Source material and translations:

Gérard de Nerval, Les Filles du Feu, ed. Jaques Bony (Paris: GF Flammarion,

1994)

Andrew Lang, Letters on literature (London: 1889)

Sylvie, trans. Lucie Page (Portland, Me: T.B. Mosher, 1896)

Sylvie, trans. Richard Sieburth (London: Syrens, 1995)

Aurélia followed by Sylvie, trans. Kendall Lappin (Santa Maria, CA: Asylum Arts,

1993)

Selected Writings of Gérard de Nerval, trans. Geoffrey Wagner, (London: Panther

Books, 1968)

Dictionaries:

Le Petit Robert, ed. Paul Robert (Paris: Le Robert, 2004)

Dictionnaire général de la langue française, depuis le commencement du 17e

siècle jusqu'à nos jours, ed A. Hatzfeld, A. Darmsteter (Villefranche : 1871)

Collins Robert French dictionary (London: Collins, 2007)


Critical material:

Gérard de Nerval, Norma Rinsler (University of London: The Athlone Press, 1973)

L’Ecriture Nervalienne du Temps, ed. Philippe Destruel (Saint-Genouph: Librairie

A.-G. Nizet, 2004)

Les Filles du Feu, Les Chimères, Aurélia, ed. François-Charles Gaudard (Paris:

ellipses, 1997)

Oeuvres Complémentaires de Gérard de Nerval, ed. Jean Richer. Series :

Nouvelle Bibliothèque nervalienne, Vol. I (Paris : Minard Lettres Modernes, 1959)

Théophile Gautier, Histoire du Romantisme (Paris: Charpentier, 1874)

Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Gallimard, 1954)

Internet resources :

www.wordreference.com (online dictionary)

http://www.tierslivre.net/litt/proustnerval.html (excerpt of Proust’s writing on

Nerval)

http://www.tierslivre.net/litt/proustnerval.html (Andrew Lang’s Letters on

Literature)

You might also like