Nerval au miroir du temps: Les Filles du feu, Les Chimeres (review)

Gisèle Séginger's new study of Gérard de Nerval offers a close re-reading of several of his important works, followed by analyses of later writers and critics named as descendents of Nerval in order to demonstrate his influence on their work. Nerval au miroir du temps is divided into two sections, the first of which discusses Les Filles du feu and Les Chimères in depth; other relevant works, such as Aurélia and Voyage en Orient, are also given considerable attention. The second section methodically and chronologically describes the rediscovery of and engagement with Nerval's works on the part of fin-de-siècle and twentieth-century writers: Mallarmé, Gourmont, Proust, Apollinaire, Breton, and Bonnefoy. Séginger's work is ambitious, in that while she assumes of the reader a basic familiarity with Nerval, modernity, and the later writers she discusses, she presents some background and contextual information, and provides thorough readings of relevant works by the authors whom she names as descendents of Nerval. The result is a noteworthy study that stresses the importance of artistic lineage and influence, while also contributing an important reading of Nerval as a precursor to twentieth-century modernism.

Séginger draws from Nerval's works themes and aesthetics that have become closely associated with modernism: expression of alienation and exile, the search for a third possibility between two extremes (for example retreat from society and acceptance of an unsatisfying status quo), the impossibility of representing in writing the sense of loss perceived as central to modern life, and the representation of non-linear time and space in narrative. Though Séginger never directly references Walter Benjamin, his influence and approach to studies of the nineteenth century and its modernity are evident in her analyses. This is especially true of her discussion of Sylvie, the story from Les Filles du feu that she treats the most thoroughly. Echoing Benjamin's approach of uncovering the secrets of the past through an assemblage of remnants excavated by scholar-archeologists like himself, Séginger notes that the narrator of Sylvie is concerned with preserving a collective past accessible through fragments of memory and text (history, song), which lend to his narration the form of "collage, bricolage"(86). Séginger refers to this narrator as an "archéologue de l'imaginaire collectif: il collecte morceau par morceau, les débris du temps passé" (88). Reading Nerval through Benjamin offers a useful and interesting approach to Nerval, in that it links aspects of Nerval's work to issues of great interest to contemporary scholars of modernity and allows Séginger to draw out new complexity and meaning in Sylvie.

In the process of outlining Nerval's contributions to modern literature, Séginger issues an important reminder that he ought not be dismissed or even classified simply as romantic, mystic, or esoteric, as he often is. Nerval acknowledges that for him the world is without illusions, and that his is a generation that senses the absence of god. But Nerval is not a nihilist, he does not resign himself to rejection of the world because he regrets its condition. Séginger stresses Nerval's desire to re-enchant the world through his work, rather than use it to express disenchantment, and that this is the primary link between Nerval and the twentieth-century writers she discusses. Dreams and illusions are valued as creative forces that belong to lived experience in the world as it exists, therefore Nerval's invention of "une sorte de réalisme du rêve" is not necessarily the equivalent of turning his back on the world (22). What Nerval has in common with the later writers is the desire to create something new and the belief that because the real is not a fixed or finite state, it is inexhaustible.

Most valuable in Séginger's study of Nerval's influence on later writers is...