Nerval, Gérard de

(1808-1855) (Gérard Labrunie)

   writer

   A leading symbolist writer, Gérard de Nerval (the pen name of Gérard Labrunie) was born in Paris. orphaned early, he was raised amid the legendary accounts of the Valois region. In Paris, he met Théophile gautier and spent a carefree youth, evoked in Les petits Châteaux de Bohême (1853) and La Bohême galante (1855). Fascinated by Germany, Nerval did a celebrated translation of Goethe's Faust (1827) and composed stories that were inspired by Ernst Theodore Wilhelm Hoffman, a German writer, composer, and painter who influenced the romantic movement. Already in early poems such as Fantaisie (1832) appeared the incarnation of the feminine figure that he pursued throughout his life, the blonde Adrienne who died in a convent. From 1836 to 1841, he pursued an unhappy love for the actress Jenny Colon (referred to as Aurélia or Aurélie in his works). The stories in Des Filles du feu (1854) are eerie reminiscences of lost youth and beauty, while his sonnets are dominated by a sense of despair (Les Chimères, 1854—Nerval committed suicide a year later). Nerval's use of dreams and fantasies also influenced surrealism and prefigured the work of charles baudelaire and stéphane mallarmé.