Gérard de Nerval

Gérard de Nerval ( Gérard actually Labrunie, born 22 May 1808 In Paris, † January 26, 1855 ) was a French writer. In the French literature, he is regarded as a rather marginal representatives of Romanticism. His lyrics, however, act today fresher than that of many colleagues Exploder once most of his time. His prose Aurelia fascinated by later authors such as Baudelaire or the Surrealists.

Life and work

Youth and literary beginnings

Gérard de Nerval (as he called himself in 1831 ) was the only child of a physician, who was appointed shortly after the birth of his son to the staff physician and offset to the French Army of the Rhine into Germany. As the young mother wanted to accompany her husband on his job sites, they gave Gerard a nurse in his native Valois, however, died in 1810 in the far Silesia. Thereafter, he came to an uncle of the mother, also in the Valois. There he remained until he was in 1814, brought to Paris after the end of the Napoleonic campaigns from finally returned home father. Here he attended the Lycée Charlemagne, where he had the later author Théophile Gautier as classmates.

After he had already begun writing verses with 13, he was first printed in 1826 and 27, with political opposition poems in the trend of Napoleon nostalgia of those years, as well as a satirical sketch about the " untraceable ", ie at meetings often missing, members of the Académie française. At the same time, i.e., 18-19 years old, he wrote a transfer of Goethe's Faust I, which gained him wide recognition when she appeared in 1827, and in 1829 set to music excerpts by Hector Berlioz.

The years as a relatively successful author

In 1828 he was introduced to Victor Hugo and processed Han d' Islande whose novel to a piece, but this was not performed until after the July Revolution in 1831. On February 25, 1830, he was present with the entire circle of friends Hugos at the world premiere of its intended as a programmatic romantic drama Hernani, bataille d' Hernani the legendary, a "battle" of applause and booing during the performance. In the same year he published a highly acclaimed anthology itself transmitted German poems together with a preliminary " study of the German poets ." Hereby he made his compatriots numerous German poet known and has been an important mediator of German literature in France.

Although Nerval as a writer was almost professionally active in the meantime, he began in 1832 at the urging of his father to study medicine. However, when he in 1834 by a grandfather 30,000 francs inherited ( one of which is economical economize single person could live 20 years), he broke off the listless powered studies and joined the " Bohème" by Théophile Gautier on, the literary and artistic circles at the edge of the bourgeois Parisian society. He also undertook a first extended trip to southern France and Italy.

In the same year, 1834, he fell in love with the actress Jenny Colon, while not heard him, but until 1838 employed strong. So he founded to please her 1835 elaborately made ​​theater magazine. When they went bankrupt a year later, Nerval was ruined and had to henceforth live by his pen. This, however, he succeeded passable as a co- author of plays such as 1837 and 1839 as a partner of the bustling Alexandre Dumas, and as a journalist, such as literature reviews and travel reports.

In 1837 he undertook with Gautier for the purpose of collecting impression a trip to Belgium. 1838 brought him a first trip to Germany to Frankfurt, 1839/40 a second to Vienna. In 1840 he published a transfer of the entire fist (I and II) as well as other German poems.

Disease and end

In 1841 he had the first time delusions and spent most of the year in clinics. In 1842, he tried with journalistic work to get back on track and prepared an Orient- trip before that was to bring him new inspiration. In fact, it was the year 1843 on the road: Malta, Cairo, Beirut, Rhodes, Smyrna. Reports on this trip appeared in magazines from 1844; later he reworked them as a book version ( Scènes orientales, I: Les Femmes du Caire ), but remained almost unnoticed on its release in the revolutionary year 1848.

Even in the years 1844-1847 Nerval traveled a lot (Belgium, Holland, London, outskirts of Paris) and relevant written travel reports and impressions. At the same time he worked as a novelist and poet, as well as a translator of poems by the Paris- Heinrich Heine, with whom he was friends ( printed 1848).

As his health deteriorated dramatically after 1850, and he was becoming more common in hospitals, he worked in the following years, when he could, as if possessed. He published in 1851 the final version of his journey to the Orient ( Voyage en Orient ) and brought in December his play L' imagier de Haarlem for performance that had his thumb should be, but fell through.

Thereafter, he sought together old and new, generally published already in magazines texts, revised them and strung them together, creating two shorter anthologies arose, are now considered his masterpieces: Les Illuminés, ou Les Précurseurs du Socialisme (1852 ) and Les filles du feu (1854 ). The first contains six fictional portraits of historical male individuals whose "socialism" rather anarchism; the other consists of eight very different, mostly narrative texts to female protagonists as well as Appendix with the collective title Chimères, 12 ornate hermetic sonnets, including the famous, as a conclusion of the existence of its author acting El Desdichado ( = the Unfortunate ).

Nerval's last work was begun probably already 1841 medium long prose text Aurelia, who appears as a suggestive as perfectly shaped fine line between dreams and reality and whose last part came out posthumously.

His last trip took Nerval in 1854 returned to Germany. In particular, Nuremberg, Bamberg, Leipzig and Dresden inspired him.

When he end of the year found himself after a new hospital stay without fixed abode and with only trickling fees on the streets of Paris, he committed suicide by hanging early 1855. He hanged himself from a lantern in the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne - in Paris.

Works

• Oeuvres completes .. 6 vols, Paris 1867-1877
• Oeuvres completes. Edited by A. Marie, J. Marsan, É. Champion, 6 vols, Paris 1926-1932
• Oeuvre. Edited by H. Lemaître, 2 vols, Classiques Garnier, Paris 1958
• Voyage en Orient. 2 vols, Paris 1851
• Voyage en Orient. Edited by M. Jeaumaret, Garnier- Flammarion, Paris 1984
• Les Filles du feu. Paris 1854
• Les Filles du feu. Edited by L. Cellier, Garnier- Flammarion, Paris 1972
• The daughters of the flame. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1991
• La Bohème gallant. Paris 1855
• Le Rêve et la Vie. Paris 1855
• Aurélia, ou le Rêve et la Vie. Lettres d' amour. Edited by J. Richer et alii, Paris 1965
• Poésies, suivies de Petits Châteaux de Bohème, Les Nuits d'octobre, Promenades et souvenirs, La Pandora, Contes et Facéties. Edited by M. Hafez, Le Livre de Poche, Paris 1964
• Les Chimères. Edited by J. Guillaume, Brussels 1966
• Pandora. Edited by J. Guillaume, Namur, 1968; 1976
• Les Illuminés, ou les Précurseurs du Socialisme, Bibliothèque Marabout, Verviers 1973
• Les Chimères, Le Livre de Poche, Paris 1984