Narrative
Aurélia
Gérard de Nerval · 1855
Synopsis
The narrator recounts the crisis he went through after the loss of Aurélia, a woman he had loved long after she had become unattainable for him. Holding the dream to be “a second life”, he records his dreams and visions and mingles them with episodes from his waking life. Alternately sceptical of these mystical states and overtaken by them, he tries to decipher their meaning, without deciding between delirium and revelation.
Context
The narrative, subtitled Le Rêve et la Vie, appeared in the Revue de Paris in two instalments, on 1 January and 15 February 1855. Nerval had written it during his stay with Doctor Émile Blanche, an alienist who encouraged him to set down his dreams in writing; he wanted to fix in it the thoughts felt at the height of his madness. In Aurélia one recognises the actress and singer whom he loved without return. The text invokes Swedenborg, Apuleius and Dante.
Who it is for
A brief, fragmentary narrative, somewhere between diary, fantastic tale and mystical confession; it calls for slow reading.
Prizes and reception
Long little read, rediscovered by the Symbolists in the 1880s; Richard Sieburth translated it into English for Penguin.
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