Tag Archives: gerard de nerval

Unhallowed #1

 

La Treizième revient… C’est encore la première ;
Et c’est toujours la seule, — ou c’est le seul moment ;
Car es-tu reine, ô toi ! la première ou dernière ?
Es-tu roi, toi le seul ou le dernier amant ?…

Aimez qui vous aima du berceau dans la bière ;
Celle que j’aimai seul m’aime encore tendrement :
C’est la mort – ou la morte… Ô délice ! ô tourment !
La rose qu’elle tient, c’est la Rose trémière.

Sainte napolitaine aux mains pleines de feux,
Rose au coeur violet, fleur de sainte Gudule :
As-tu trouvé ta croix dans le désert des cieux ?

Roses blanches, tombez ! vous insultez nos dieux,
Tombez, fantômes blancs, de votre ciel qui brûle :
— La sainte de l’abîme est plus sainte à mes yeux !

 

(Artemis by Gerard de Nerval)

Classical Monsters

I am on (in?) a Classical groove today, having posted two favorite poems:
Poe’s To Helen  and Nerval’s Delfica.

They share many similar Hellenic traits (or is Hellenistic a better term? Someone explain the difference  please—it’s all Greek to me).  I find many rich associations in both poems. In To Helen , the image of those Odyssean triremes transports me to the ancient Aegean, where the the name Psyche combines with Delos to form “psychedelic” (a purely subjective association, I know).  By now I am hearing Cream’s Tales of Brave Ulysses in my mind—but I digress . . .

If you know French, I hope you will enjoy Delfica. Here is a translation into English by A.Z. Foresman if you don’t.

Psyche’s agate lamp has illuminated and inspired me ever since I first went on an E.A. Poe kick around the same time I got interested in Symbolist art during the mid 80’s.  But long before that, in 4th grade, I attempted to memorize The Raven. I can still make it up until the line “… sorrow for the lost Lenore”.  I was really into horror movies as a kid, which would explain some of what you find at this blog.  I had a subscription to Famous monsters of Filmland magazine in the early 70’s. Did any of you read Monster magazine as a kid? I was obsessed with creepy stuff. I used to BEG my parents to let me stay up late on Saturday night for Creature Feature and Tales of the Unknown. (Channel 56 if you grew up in the Boston area)

Back to the poems: Nerval’s Chimères have fascinated me ever since a college French professor turned me on to them. Nerval’s poetry takes neoclassical madness right up to the edge of Christianity (one thinks of  Paul before Festus and Agrippa  in Acts 26: 24 -28 ) but then leaves you hanging  in a philosophical void. The French seem to have been hanging in this void for a long time, ever since their Revolution turned into a blood bath which in turn paved the way for Napoleon.  Gérard de Nerval was also left hanging apparently . . .

I wonder whether Nerval was a Christian or not.
Le Christ Aux Oliviers is so entwined with classical Greek paganism it is hard to tell.

I have tendency to blather. Gotta post this and move on.  I thought it would be about Classical Greek allusions but it turned into a monster somewhere.

Hope you found something in the poems.

Gimme dat lyric, yo…

I like old-school lyrics. Meaning  from around 1685 or later.

Do you like poetry? What kind  – what poets?

I can’t stand most modern, academic esoteric intentionally cryptic free verse. Who reads that stuff anyway? Forget those weak little ditherings in the margin of New Yorker and Atlantic – how boring. And although I once believed in it, I grew out of stridently  political agit-prop years ago as well.  Give me real poetry please!

I was forced to analyze poetry in school and I resented it.  Maybe a few lines here and there [E.E. Cummings, Ogden Nash] were amusing but it was nothing I ever chose to read on my own. Years later I got turned on to French poets like Baudelaire, G. de Nerval, Rimbaud and others who had some great hypnotic rhythms and rhyme combined with astral imagery and intense feeling. I began to realize that I did like poetry – that kind at least. Later, stranded in the Arizona desert with the New Oxford Book of English Verse [1250-1950…new indeed!], I found great treasures. Many of them I have posted, and will continue to post here for your enjoyment.  I discovered that being alone in  the  desert was the ideal way to develop appreciation for poetry. This was in the late 80’s to mid 90’s before the age of cyber-connectivity had infected me.  After my mind cleared  from the barrage of  stimuli  considered  normal, I found that I was reading these old works with new perception. It was like actually communing with the mind of the writer, no matter how distant [or near] in time. It was a spiritual realization for me. Perhaps some of you have also experienced that realization – maybe you are so blessed that you don’t have to live in the desert as I had to reach that state of cerebral clarity. In this age of rampant pragmatism and commodified common-sense, it is almost shameful to confess that I love poetry.
Do you also hesitate before divulging your love of poetry?