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Biography of Gérard de NervalName: Gérard de NervalBirth Date: May 22, 1808 Death Date: January 25, 1855 Place of Birth: Paris, France Nationality: French Gender: Male Occupations: poet, translator, author Gérard de Nerval The French poet Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855) was an early romantic. His prose and poetry mark him as a precursor of the many movements, from symbolism to surrealism, that shaped modern French literature.Gérard de Nerval was born Gérard Labrunie on May 22, 1808, in Paris. Because of his parents' immediate departure for Silesia, where his mother died, Nerval was taken to the home of maternal relatives in the Valois. This region played a prominent part in many of his works. The fact that his early years were bereft of parental care probably contributed to his subsequent lack of mental equilibrium.Upon his father's return from the Napoleonic Wars in 1814, Nerval returned to Paris. As a day pupil at the Lycée Charlemagne, he distinguished himself by his precocious literary gifts and made the acquaintance of a lifelong friend, the poet Théophile Gautier.Nerval's …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…of Pierre de Ronsard. Nerval then published his best and most famous story, Sylvie, in the Revue des deux mondes. In this tale he explored the sources of memory and transfigured the Valois of his childhood. It was included in Les Filles du feu in 1854. That same year Les Chimères, a series of 12 hermetic sonnets, also appeared.During this period Nerval was also writing an autobiographical work, Les Nuits d'Octobre, and Aurélia, his last and most occult work. In Aurélia Nerval described the experience of madness and his attempt to overcome it by means of the written word.In January 1855, destitute and desperate, Nerval committed suicide by hanging himself in a Parisian alley. Further Reading Two full-length studies of Nerval are Solomon A. Rhodes, Gérard de Nerval, 1808-1855: Poet, Traveler, Dreamer (1951), and Alfred Dubruck, Gérard de Nerval and the German Heritage (1965). |