Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855)

I came to Gerard de Nerval's short novella Sylvie 1) through a comparison I heard made with Madame Bovary through its exploration of love as an end in itself, the state of being "in love with love" and the eternal and 2) through Proust's fascination with it - the influence it had is really obvious to see as this is a book absolutely obsessed with memory and the places, things, sensations etc. that go with them as well as the worldly sadness as we watch a world that feels most real and natural to us - that of our childhood, in particular - disappear or alter beyond recognition, places changing shape, people disappearing from our lives and so on. As I also suggested, it's very much a novel about a man and his lifelong intoxication and infatuations with women, specifically three of them - we begin with the actress Aurelie, but as it turns out this is but an illusion, a case of her being mistaken for a girl he saw only once in his childhood but who coloured every romance and the trajectory of his life ever since, Adrienne. She is contrasted with the Sylvie of the title who represents a more realistic love, one he at first ignores only to run back towards by which point it's all too late.

Adrienne is most interesting for her only appearance early in the book, one which is never forgotten as even while pursuing Sylvie our narrator seems to really be looking for her, as when he considers detouring into a convent, as Adrienne had disappeared from life when she was sent to a convent some years after the meeting (and perhaps his love for Sylvie is part of his attempt to relive and capture at least part of the memory of that unforgettable day). Maybe this is me projecting my own nature more widely but I feel like all of us have an Adrienne of kinds, a dream and ideal we're forever chasing after that lies just beyond and out of reach from wherever we go, an unquenchable desire for completion that is impossible in an imperfect existence; reading this brought out that side of me for definite, and the potent evocation of lost worlds and memories that exist as the only fragments of them made me feel a deep sadness for the same events and people in my own life. A beautiful, entrancing work.… (more)