NERVAL, GERARD

This article appears in Volume V19, Page 394 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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NERVAL, GERARD 'DE (18o81855), the adopted name of Gerard Labrunie, French man of letters, born in Paris on the 22nd of May 18o8. His father was an army

doctor

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

, and the child was left with an uncle in the country, while Mme Labrunie accompanied her husband in his campaigns. She died in Silesia. In 1811 his father returned, and beside Greek and Latin taughtthe boy modern languages and the elements of Arabic and Persian. Gerard found his favourite reading in old books on mysticism and the occult sciences. He distinguished himself by his successes at the College Charlemagne, however, and his first

work

WORK

, La France guerriere, elegies nationales, was published while he was still a student. In 1828 he published a translation of Goethe's Faust, the choruses of which were afterwards used by Berlioz for his legend-symphony, The Damnation of Faust. A number of poetical pieces and three comedies combined to acquire for him, at the age of twenty-one, a considerable literary reputation, and led to his being associated with Theophile Gautier in the preparation of the dramatic feuilleton for the Presse. He conceived a violent passion for the actress Jennie Colon, in whom he thought he recognized a certain Adrienne, who had fired his childish imagination. Her

marriage

MARRIAGE

and her death in 1842 were blows from which his nervous temperament never really recovered. He travelled in Germany with Alexandre Dumas, and alone in various parts of Europe, leading a very irregular and eccentric life. In 1843 he visited

Constantinople

CONSTANTINOPLE
CONSTANTINOPLE, COUNCILS OF

and Syria, where, among other adventures, he nearly married the daughter of a Druse sheikh. He contributed accounts of his travels to the Revue des Deux Mondes and other

periodicals

PERIODICALS

. After his return to Paris in 1844 he resumed for a short time his feuilleton for the Presse, but his eccentricities increased and be committed suicide by hanging, on the 25th of January 1855. The literary style of Gerard is simple and unaffected, and he has a peculiar faculty of giving to his imaginative creations an air of naturalness and reality. In a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of novelettes, afterwards published under the name of Les Illumines, ou les precurseurs du socialisme (1852), containing studies on Retif de la Bretonne, Cagliostro and others, he gave a sort of

analysis

ANALYSIS (Gr. avci and Meta, to break up into parts)

of the feelings which followed his third attack of

insanity

INSANITY (from Lat. in, not, and sanus, sound)

. Among his other works the principal are Les Filles du feu (1854), which contains his masterpiece, the semi-autobiographical romance of Syl ., Scenes de la vie orientale (1848185o) ; Contes et faceties (1852); La Boheeeme galante (1856); and L'Alchimiste, a drama in five acts, the

joint

JOINT (through Fr. from Lat. junctum, jungere, to join)

composition of Gerard and Alexandre Dumas. His Poesies completes were published in 1877.
There are many accounts of Gerard de Nerval's unhappy life. Among them may be mentioned notices by his friend Theophile Gautier and by Arsene

Houssaye

HOUSSAYE, ARSINE (1815-1896)

, prefixed to the posthumous Le Reve et la vie (1855); Maurice Tourneux's sketch in his Age du romantisme (1887); and a sympathetic study of temperament in the Nevroses (1898) of Mme Arvede Barine. See also G. Ferricres, Gerard de Nerval (1906).

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