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183 CHAPTER 6 Charles Nodier’s The Crumb Fairy—A Sacred Marriage Of Sun And Moon Nodier’s unappeased thirst for fairy tales induced his monumental dream-reverie, The Crumb Fairy (1832). The fantastic adventures of the author’s protagonists, the young Michel, incapable of adapting to society, and his beloved Crumb Fairy, are narrated mainly in flashbacks within the framework of a “lunatic” asylum in Glasgow (Scotland). Studies and inquiries concerning insanity and mental institutions were popular in the nineteenth century. In fact, the idea for Nodier’s The Crumb Fairy came to him after having read a letter from the Duke de Levis to a Dr. A. in La Revue de Paris (May 1829) concerning new—but considered by Nodier inhumane— treatments used in Scottish mental institutions (Nodier, Contes 156). The tale reveals the metaphysical and psychological dramas of two humanized cosmic principles: Michel takes on the personality of a Moon Man and becomes the receptor of indirect occult knowledge; the love of his life, a wizened Crumb Fairy by day, at night manifests herself as a Solar principle— who claims at times to be the beautiful Belkiss (another name for the Queen of Sheba; Koran 27:22), or her descendant. To lend credibility to this and to his other fairy tales and fantastic writings, Nodier wrote insightfully: “[Y]ou must first write something believable, and to make certain that others believe what you have written, you must first believe it yourself. Once this condition has been accepted, you may boldly say whatever you like” (Nodier, Contes, preface by Castex 170). ECTYPAL ANALYSIS Charles Nodier, born out of wedlock at Besançon in 1790, was not legitimized until 1791. His father, a rather dogmatic gentleman, had presided for a short period over the criminal tribunal of that city during the Reign of Terror headed by the much-feared Robespierre. Memories of horrific experiences remained incised in the lad’s mind throughout his life, and may have accounted in part for his later hypertension, nightmares, and insomnia. Some of the particularly excoriating spectacles he had witnessed as a child were interspersed in his short stories: rolling heads, pathetic cries, blood flowing into gutters. Other reasons may have also triggered his bouts of morbidity, his penchant for the fanciful, and the exotic as a would-be escape mechanism. Ever since he could recall, family life had been unpleasant. His mother, whom he never mentioned in his writings, had been a housemaid. He disliked her for her ignorance, brusqueness, and lack of feeling. From her he inherited Addison’s disease (a malfunction of the adrenal glands, characterized by anemia and peculiar discoloration of the skin); he suffered also from periodic fevers, which did not abate with the passing of years. The opium he took at times aggravated rather than alleviated his condition. A Catholic by heritage, Nodier did not find salvation in a conventional approach to worship. His needs being more complex, he turned to the writings of mystics such as Jakob Boehme (1575–1624), Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), Martinez de Pasqualis (?–1774), Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803), and Jacques Cazotte (1719–1792). Not only did they stimulate his imagination, but they helped him develop his own comforting credo as well. Nodier married in 1808, and had several children, only one of whom, Marie, survived. Beautiful and charming, she became the focal point of her father’s life. After the marriage of his beloved daughter in 1830, Nodier suffered a bout of depression—perhaps a better term would be a kind of postpartum melancholia. He had lost the main attraction of his well-frequented Salon and, more accurately, the love of his life! Unable to see his daughter daily, he felt a void that gnawed at his very existence. More and more introverted , his dream world intruded increasingly and persistently into his empirical existence, bringing with it the momentary and necessary joys for survival. It has been suggested that Nodier’s death at home in 1844 had been perhaps caused by a continuously diminishing interest in life! An inveterate reader, the very learned Nodier wrote on a variety of subjects : natural history (Dissertation on the use of Antennae Insects [1789]); philology (Dictionary of French Onomatopoeias [1808]); the occult (The Army’s Secret Societies [1815]); fantastic tales (Smarra [1821] and Trilby [1822]) to mention but a few. Following his appointment as librarian of the Bibliothèque de 184 FRENCH FAIRY TALES [3.17.150.163] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 06...

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