Gérard de Nerval

Born Gérard Labrunie in 1808, he took the pen name Nerval and became a central figure in French Romanticism, translating Goethe, Schiller, and other German Romantics for French audiences. His own work—poems, novellas, travel writing—blurred dream and reportage in ways that wouldn't be named until later: "El Desdichado" and the novella "Sylvie" appeared in Les Filles du feu, a collection that fused memory, longing, and hallucination. His final work, Aurélia ou le rêve et la vie, narrated his descent into mental illness as a kind of mystical journey. Breton would later claim it as a founding tex…