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Gérard de Nerval (French: [ʒeʁaʁ də nɛʁval]; 22 May 1808 – 26 January 1855), the pen name of the French writer, poet, and translator Gérard Labrunie, was a French essayist, poet, translator, and travel writer. He was a major figure during the era of French romanticism, and best known for his novellas and poems, especially the collection Les Filles du feu (The Daughters of Fire), which included the novella Sylvie and the poem "El Desdichado". Through his translations, Nerval played a major role in introducing French readers to the works of German Romantic authors, including Klopstock, Schiller, Bürger and Goethe. His later work merged poetry and journalism in a fictional context and influenced Marcel Proust. His last novella, Aurélia ou le rêve et la vie, influenced André Breton and Surrealism. Biography Early life Gérard Labrunie was born in Paris on 22 May 1808. His mother, Marie Marguerite Antoinette Laurent, was the daughter of a clothing salesman, and his father, Étienne Labrunie, was a young doctor who had volunteered to serve as a medic in the army under Napoleon. In June 1808, soon after Gérard's birth, Étienne was drafted. With his young wife in tow, Étienne followed the army on tours of Germany and Austria, eventually settling in a hospital in Głogów. While they travelled East, the Labrunies left their newborn son Gérard in the care of Marie Marguerite's uncle Antoine Boucher, who lived in Mortefontaine, a small town in the Valois region, not far from Paris. On 29 November 1810 Marie Marguerite died before she could return to France. Gérard was two years old. Having buried his wife, Étienne took part in the disastrous French invasion of Russia. He was reunited with his son in 1814. Upon his return to France in 1814, Étienne took his son and moved back to Paris, starting a medical practice at 72 rue Saint-Martin. Gérard lived with his father but often stayed with his great-uncle Boucher in Mortefontaine and with Gérard Dublanc at 2 rue de Mantes (now 2 rue du Maréchal Joffre) in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. (Dublanc, Étienne's uncle, was also Gérard's godfather.) In 1822 Gérard enrolled at the collège Charlemagne. This was where he met and befriended Théophile Gautier. This was also where he began to take poetry more seriously. He was especially drawn to epic poetry. At age 16, he wrote a poem that recounted the circumstances of Napoleon's defeat called "Napoléon ou la France guerrière, élégies nationales". Later, he tried out satire, writing poems that took aim at Prime Minister Villèle, the Jesuit order, and anti-liberal newspapers like La Quotidienne. His writing started to be published in 1826. At age 19, with minimal knowledge of the German language, he began the ambitious task of translating Goethe's Faust. His prose translation appeared in 1828. Despite its many flaws, the translation had many merits, and it did a great deal to establish his poetic reputation. It is the reason why Victor Hugo, the leader of the Romantic movement in France, felt compelled to have Gérard come to his apartment on 11, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Cénacle In 1829, having received his baccalaureate degree two years late (perhaps because he skipped classes to go for walks and read for pleasure), Gérard was under pressure from his father to find steady employment. He took a job at a notary's office, but his heart was set on literature. When Victor Hugo asked him to support his play Hernani, under attack from conservative critics suspicious of Romanticism, Gérard was more than happy to join the fight (see Bataille d'Hernani). Gérard was sympathetic to the liberal and republican atmosphere of the time, and was briefly imprisoned in 1832 for participating in student demonstrations. Gérard set himself two anthology projects: one on German poetry, and one on French poetry. Alexandre Dumas and Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie arranged a library card for him so he could carry out his research. The first anthology included translations of Klopstock, Schiller, Bürger and Goethe, and met with less enthusiasm than his translation of Faust. The second anthology included poems by Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Guillaume Du Bartas and Jean-Baptiste Chassignet. By the fall of 1830, the Cénacle, a group created by Sainte-Beuve to ensure Victor Hugo's success with Hernani, had assembled many famed writers, including Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset, Charles Nodier, Alexandre Dumas and Honoré de Balzac. After Hernani's success, the Cénacle began to fall apart. At that time a new group appeared: the Petit-Cénacle, created by the sculptor Jean Bernard Duseigneur. Gérard attended some of the meetings, which took place in Duseigneur's studio. Gérard, following Hugo's lead, started to write plays. Le Prince des sots and Lara ou l'expiation were shown at the Théâtre de l'Odéon and met with positive reviews. He started to use the pseudonym Gérard de Nerval, inspired by the name of a property near Loisy (a village near Ver-sur-Launette, Oise) which had belonged to his family. Work with Dumas In January 1834, Nerval's maternal grandfather died and he inherited around 30,000 francs. That autumn, he headed to southern France and then travelled to Florence, Rome and Naples. On his return in 1835, he moved in with a group of Romantic artists (including Camille Rogier). In May of that year, he created Le Monde Dramatique, a luxurious literary journal on which he squandered his inheritance. Debt-ridden, he finally sold it in 1836. Getting his start in journalism, he travelled to Belgium with Gautier from July to September. In 1837, Piquillo was shown at the Opéra-Comique. Despite Nerval's work on the project, Dumas' was the only name on the libretto. Jenny Colon played the main role. Nerval may have fallen in love with the actress. Some specialists claim that his unrequited love for her is what inspired many of the female figures that appear in his writing, including the Virgin Mary, Isis, the queen of Saba. Other experts disagree with this biographical analysis. Despite Dumas' refusal to let him take credit for his work, Nerval continued to collaborate with Dumas on plays. In the summer of 1838, he travelled with Dumas to Germany to work on Léo Burckart, which eventually premiered at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin on 16 April 1839, six days after the premiere of another play the pair worked on together called L'Alchimiste. In November 1839, Nerval travelled to Vienna, where he met the pianist Marie Pleyel at the French embassy. First nervous breakdowns Back in France in March 1840, Nerval took over Gautier's column at La Presse. After publishing a third edition of Faust in July, including a preface and fragments of Second Faust, he travelled to Belgium in October. On 15 December Piquillo premiered in Brussels, where Nerval crossed paths with Jenny Colon and Marie Pleyel once again. After a first nervous breakdown on 23 February 1841, he was cared for at the Sainte-Colombe Borstal ("maiso.... Discover the Andrew Lang Gerard De Nerval Elphinstone popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Andrew Lang Gerard De Nerval Elphinstone books.