Death and Birth in the Works of Gerard de Nerval

Abstract

This article starts with a reflection on the proximity of death and birth on a syntactic level, proximity that is a part of the global vision of the Nervalian universe where death and birth interconnect and alternate and even condition one another. At another level, we claim that the Nervalian thought movement is « unity circularly generating the multiple » (J.-P. Richard) The multiplication of me, the alternation of death and rebirth, leads to an Orphic theme: here, it is nothing but the view of the Nervalian Orpheus not giving in to the logic of dying, the lost woman born at the same time she disappears, rediscovering her mythic dimension in the traits of Aurélia, ’Isis, Jenny Colon and the mother (Mother). We go on to the death-dealing maternal, the lack of a mother image and the interpretation of suicide as a struggle against the double vision of maternal death giving birth to writing, the incessant recourse to death.