English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
A single text for the whole year: a serial about a serial 0:00 Once again, I thank the regulars for being here, for still being here. And the newcomers for being here at last. It's very kind of them to come and join our walk, in the literal sense this time, since the text—you know that this year we're inaugurating a new format—instead of my speaking...
0:30 In terms of general philosophy, to speak as they do at university. At university, when you study philosophy, you have different disciplines: history of philosophy. Plato, Kant, Descartes, Spinoza, Foucault, Bachelard. Maybe Bachelard will be on the agrégation. We do study a specialist of dreams. And then there's... So that's an author-based program. And then there's what's called general philosophy and logic, as they used to say, but we don't say that anymore.
1:05 And we proceed by concept. The program is: art, the world, God, the city, politics, science, law. That's it. Full stop. For the whole year, it depends a bit on... That's it. It changes every two years. So we were somewhat in general philosophy, proceeding by concept, as is most often done in philosophy. And to make up for the abstraction inherent in this kind of approach, I decided to do the same thing by doing the opposite.
1:40 Stand in front of a mirror and you'll see what I mean. Your reflection is the same thing and it's the opposite. That is to say, applying ourselves to one single text throughout this year's cycle of talks. Of which we begin today the second episode. The second installment of our serial. I smile because it's rather amusing to do a serialized commentary on a text that itself appeared as a serial.
2:11 And which bore another title—it wasn't called Angélique at the time, but was called something else. Oh, if you're good, you remember, that's good. I can die in peace, you're my memory. Yes, Les Faux-Saulniers, the salt smugglers. It's not a very clear story, all this smuggling business. There's a Corsican speaking to you at every session. I've noticed I say 'there's a Corsican speaking to you' whenever I say something negative. I'll end up having trouble with my compatriots.
2:41 Well, I'm in a free country. I'm joking. Good. I say that for the Corsicans, that I'm joking. So yes, it's amusing. I'm doing a serial commentary on a text that appeared as a serial. And it appeared—I'll give you some new, rather homeopathic details—it appeared as a serial in the newspaper Le National, which I already told you was a fairly subversive paper for its time.
3:14 But at the time, even 'relatively subversive' was more courageous than the far left is nowadays. You might say that's not saying much. It was more courageous than the far left today. But let's not stray. It appeared as a serial in 1850. So when I... I gave this long introduction last time about... I'm telling you, for the newcomers, you haven't missed much. I just gave a bit of context on Angélique, the first of the stories opening Nerval's most famous prose collection, Les Filles du feu.
3:48 We didn't comment on the title of the collection, only on the title of the story so far. And I already told you that it begins with this half-line: 'In 1851, I was passing through Frankfurt.' But what are you telling us? You tell me it was written as a serial in 1850, and the author says 'in 1851, I was passing'? He's already speaking of it in the past tense, in the imperfect, in Frankfurt. That's the whole problem with the way Nerval's texts are composed, re-edited by him, redeployed, a kind of combinatorics of texts.
4:28 It even happens, for the same sonnet, the same poem, that he keeps the tercets of one and substitutes them for the tercets of another. Those familiar with Nerval's poetic work understand what I mean. I'll give an example, a sample, later. For now it would confuse us. I return to this text. It appeared in 1850, but it appeared as a serial. When Nerval decided to publish a collection later—later, in 1854—Les Filles du feu appeared.
The preface to Dumas: Nerval refuses to be a case of madness 5:00 Nerval killed himself in 1855. I recall this chronology not to artificially dramatize things—it's dramatic enough as it is. And besides, this approach has done a lot of harm to Nerval's work. There are people who would never have taken any interest in Nerval's work if he hadn't been found hanged, and if people hadn't known he had gone mad. It's a somewhat unhealthy approach. I mean, it's important—I'm not saying we can ignore all that. Nerval hated being reduced to that. I'm not talking about his suicide, I'm talking about his madness.
5:31 Although, if you've read—and I presume more and more of you have seen it, have read it—the incredible preface to the collection, not to Angélique but to the collection Les Filles du feu, that is, the incredible letter to poor Alexandre Dumas—excuse me for laughing—who must still, in his grave, not always understand half of what... Yes, I remind you why I'm dwelling a little on this preface and the fact that it shows he didn't like being spoken of only as a monument of pathology.
6:13 There, I'm getting to it. 'I dedicate this book to you, my dear master, as I had dedicated Lorely to Jules Janin.' He had just published Lorely, it was one of his first... Nerval took a long time, as I told you—I can't repeat everything each time—he took a long time to write, to publish; until then he was known for writing reviews of mediocre plays, run-of-the-mill stuff, mostly boulevard theater. The other day I allowed myself to compare him to what today would be a guy who only did TV series reviews.
6:49 That's roughly it. He would only have been known for that, not as an author. For a long time he was known—ah, excellent in that genre, people loved his pen, they wanted more. That's it. But he had a lot of reserve on his own account. He took a long time to express himself as he truly was in a work, and even longer to speak of himself. It's in his final works, barely the last two years, that he begins, and even then very gradually, to make a few allusions to his private life, even though he belonged to the generation where everyone starts from himself, where that's the rule—it's Romanticism.
7:22 You quoted Hugo last time. 'When I speak to you of myself, I speak to you of yourselves.' Speak of me as much as you like. That's Romanticism, you see? Musset tells us about his love affairs with George Sand. It's very beautiful, I'm not criticizing. It's the law of the genre at the time. 'Ah, strike your heart, that's where genius lies. Nothing makes us so great as a great sorrow.' You see, but no—we saw this last time, I don't want to repeat it too much either, so I'll repeat it a bit faster.
7:52 This text appears, and that's why I insist on the dates, in the middle of the century, when Romanticism is passing the torch, when it's going out of fashion. And before Baudelaire inaugurates a new chapter—not just of literature, but perhaps even of poetics, and I include music, the visual arts, whatever, modernity. That's what people say, I won't allow myself to assert something so important alone. Rimbaud is the first to mark the point when he says that Baudelaire is 'the first of the seers, king of poets, a true god.'
8:22 'But he lived in too artistic a milieu'—it's still him speaking, I won't allow myself—'and the form so praised in him is petty.' I repeat it every time: it takes some nerve to come out with something like that at 17. And on top of it, he's not wrong. It takes nerve, genius. Or to live in a time other than our own—a meteor, like that. Back to Nerval. So it happens that he had published Lorely—I resume my chronological thread—he had dedicated it to Jules Janin.
8:59 Why? Because Jules Janin had written an article saying Nerval was dead. Because Nerval traveled a lot, there was no news of him. So they decided he was dead, his friends did. And with a great deal of friendly, benevolent irony, Nerval, in his preface, almost regrets still being alive. There. And as for the preface to Les Filles du feu, now—they hadn't done this with Lorely. This is to help you understand why he doesn't begin by drawing this parallel. It responds to an article Dumas had just published in the press, which was widely read, in which he spoke of Nerval's madness.
9:34 Nerval. Which is also a kind of death—the spiritual death of someone, madness. It means: we've lost our Gérard. He's no longer there, he no longer listens to us, you'll see, he says, I don't know, 'I am Napoleon, I am not Gérard de Nerval.' 'I dedicate this book to you, my dear master, as I had dedicated Lorely to Jules Janin. A few years ago, they thought me dead; he wrote my biography. A few weeks ago, they thought me mad, and you devoted some of your most charming lines to the epitaph of my mind.'
10:07 'There's plenty of glory that has fallen to me as an advance on my inheritance.' Those are legal terms, an advance on an inheritance. 'I must beg the public to discount so much praise granted to my ashes'—that was for Janin—'or,' and here he speaks of his madness, 'to the vague contents of that bottle which I went to fetch on the moon in imitation of Astolfo, Ariosto's hero, and which I have, I hope, restored to reason's usual seat.'
10:39 We've rarely seen a madman master his own discourse to this degree. Well, there's a pent-up anger in Nerval—they call him 'the kind Gérard,' he adored his friends, his friends adored him, he's not the type to bang his fist on the table, he's not a Baudelaire. If you read the draft letter to Jules Janin—the same Jules Janin whom Baudelaire, in a draft letter he never sent, addressed because he was so angry—because Janin had had the misfortune to say, 'enough already, it's a shame, all these Baudelaires, these morbid, these modern types'—and Baudelaire wrote a letter, a draft letter I recommend to you, isn't that so?
11:12 'Ah, you are happy, sir, I don't congratulate you, you are happy, too bad for you, you don't like dissonance'—not discrepancy, his reign—'one could never say Gérard de Nerval hanged himself.' That's Baudelaire writing that, and he adds—since I'm using Baudelaire to come back to Nerval—'a year ago, to the day, a man, a writer, sorry, not a man, a writer of admirable honesty'—that's the first word that comes to mind, admirable honesty—'who was an immense writer and who was always lucid enough to seek out the darkest street of Paris, to loosen his soul there with a discretion that resembled contempt.'
11:59 There were a few, after all, who weren't like Janin and like Dumas. So there, you see, that's why it's important—regarding the madness, I'll close my parenthesis a bit—the pathology; but we're going to try to see that we're dealing with a text that has a textual logic, whether he was mad or not, isn't that so, which holds together very well. So I'd like to follow the outline that Thomas was kind enough to send you. There's a general theme, I spoke of writing as resistance, and in Nerval's case, resistance to death, and/or to madness.
Major and minor works: El Desdichado as a calling card 12:32 I say 'and/or,' because I just showed that madness is a psychic death. 'I am no longer what I once was, and will never be able to be so again'—that's quoted in Angélique, by the way. So, last time I lingered quite a bit on the context—it had to be done, though it's not even sufficient, isn't that so—on the context, in short, mostly on what's outside the text, let's say. It's not... it had to be done, for those who don't know it, neither the author nor, a fortiori, this particular text, which I remind you has always been considered somewhat secondary within Nerval's work—which is what's going to be settled today, this kind of problem of minor works, as if one could separate major works from minor ones—one can, in plenty of authors, we'll see—but for Nerval it's much harder.
13:17 Look, I'm opening a parenthesis on this theme—it's not a digression, quite the opposite—on this theme of major works, minor works. Perhaps Nerval's best-known text—some even know it by heart without knowing it's by Nerval, because they learned it from their teacher or in secondary school—'I am the shadowy one, the widower, the unconsoled'—you see, many people know that. What don't they know? I'm joking. Which is titled with a Spanish word, El Desdichado, isn't that so?
13:50 So this poem—a major work if ever there was one. It's in Les Chimères, which is the poetic crown of Nerval's work, and within Les Chimères it's the best-known sonnet. I'm not saying the best, I'm saying the best-known. I'll explain the reasons. You know the origin, the genesis of this text. Nerval arrives at the offices of the newspaper La Presse to see Dumas, for a business meeting with Dumas and with Méry, people of the time, to discuss theater tickets, that sort of thing.
14:25 He's told they're not there, and he's asked, 'Who shall I announce to Monsieur Dumas?' 'You'll hand him this. Nerval scribbles: I am the shadowy one, the widower, the unconsoled.' This major work was left as a calling card. What genre would you classify that under? There are the great genres—poetry, theater, the novel. There's no genre called 'calling card.' You see? In Nerval's case, major/minor just doesn't work.
14:57 We'll go deeper into this, but I won't get ahead of myself, with our comparative reading later on, once we really get into the heart of the matter. Now, to prepare for today's return to the text, I posted—some of you may have seen it on our Facebook page—I posted, taking as a pretext that we were near All Saints' Day, since I like writing according to the calendar, because that habit is being lost.
Reading of the passage on autumn landscapes 15:28 There. And yes, I knew that era, I had my Catholic aunts—that's not my case, but anyway—who were even more traditional than my parents, who had traveled a lot and were less believing. And so my aunts—there was Palm Sunday, if I suddenly saw palm branches put up on the walls, those little habits that used to punctuate the year. And in African countries, it's even better, because you accumulate the Christian holidays, the Muslim holidays, the independence holidays, the French holidays like July 14th. Fantastic.
15:58 That makes for a lot of public holidays. Isn't that so, Jean? But Jean, we worked in Ivory Coast for that. We took advantage of all those days off, Jean, I'm ashamed of it. There. I took advantage of the fact that it was All Saints', the Day of the Dead, to post a text you'll find on page 64.
16:29 For those who have the volume—those who have it, we'd be grateful if they'd be willing to show it to neighbors who don't, as far as that's possible. There. But otherwise, I'll read it to you. I'm not following the order line by line. I'm going straight to page 64. Maybe even a bit beyond.
16:59 Oh, let me... a little. Ah, walls, walls, that's the point. You'll excuse me, there.
17:46 Yes, this text begins with... Has anyone seen it? The one that begins with, 'Those who are not hunters do not fully understand the beauty of autumn landscapes.' Right now, despite the stubborn morning mists, I don't know if you saw it, we glimpse scenes worthy of the great Flemish masters. Well, it's on the website. So I quoted it, and it's even... because in this text, and in this passage only, Nerval specifies that it's the Day of the Dead when he's writing.
18:24 Isn't that so? ...that I was quite pleased we were starting the new session series in late October, so that we'd be, you see, just before All Souls' Day and All Saints', and I could post this text. You see I had this in mind for a long time. So... there.
18:54 No, it's... Excuse me, yes, I said 74, it starts there, but it's a bit further on. On page 76, it should be... No, not even, 77... Yes, that's it, page 7... At the end of page 77. Isn't it? I'll read it first, the passage I posted, I isolate it, so I keep isolating it, and afterward I'll put it in context, that is, I'll go back a little further with you.
19:25 'Those who are not hunters do not fully understand the beauty of autumn landscapes. Right now, despite the morning mist, we glimpse scenes worthy of the great Flemish masters.' In the châteaux and in the museums one still finds the spirit of the painters of the North—this picks up 'Flemish,' see. 'Always those views with pink or bluish tints in the sky, half-bare trees, with fields in the distance or, in the foreground, rustic scenes. Watteau's Embarkation for Cythera was conceived amid the transparent, colored mists of this region.'
19:57 We're in 1850, right. Impressionism comes much later. And here you have 'the transparent, colored mists of this region.' That's Monet, not Delacroix. So we find again what I told you: Nerval, too early, too late. I'll move on, we'll come back to it. 'Watteau's Embarkation for Cythera was conceived amid the transparent, colored mists of this region. It's a Cythera modeled on an islet of its ponds, formed by the overflows of the Oise and the Aisne, rivers so calm and peaceful in summer.'
20:33 'The lyricism of these observations should not surprise you. Weary of the vain quarrels and sterile agitations of Paris, I find rest in seeing again these fields, so green and so fertile; I regain my strength on this maternal earth. Whatever one may say philosophically, we are bound to the soil by many ties. One does not carry the ashes of one's fathers away on the soles of one's shoes. And the poorest man still keeps somewhere a sacred memory that reminds him of those who loved him. Religion or philosophy—everything points man toward this eternal cult of memory.'
21:07 There, one of the passages that must have pleased Proust—can you imagine. I read it in full. No, I'll continue. It flows into the sixth letter. That was the end of the fifth. You know it's not divided into chapters but into letters, because each part was sent as a letter to the director of the newspaper in which the serial appeared, the director of Le National. 'It is the Day of the Dead that I am writing to you. Forgive these melancholy thoughts. Arriving at Senlis the day before'—after that I'll look at it in a moment.
Analysis versus interpretation and subjectivism 21:39 But why did I want to add these two lines? Because we've just had a rather strange passage. 'The lyricism of these observations should not surprise you.' Nerval suddenly addresses the reader. You, me. First the representative, the director of the newspaper, who will pass it on to all the paper's readers. And what is he apologizing for? For being lyrical. That's exactly what's written.
22:09 I remind you, and I say this for the newcomers, so I'm quite clear: I hate interpretation. Not this or that interpretation, even my own. I hate interpretation in general, it's always just cooking something up. It's not serious. Insofar as it's always tinged with some indeterminate degree, more or less—generally more rather than less—of subjectivity by definition. It's your interpretation, it's mine, it's someone else's. And I told you, some of you remember, that I opposed interpretation to... thank you. To analysis.
22:41 We see the scientists. And yes, that does have the advantage of being more objective. You might say to me, what right do you have to claim that you've got the objective version of Nerval? That's what we're going to see today. That's why I'm insisting a bit. We haven't seen it yet. You still think there's subjectivity? That's the level of opinion, of literature, whereas there are the hard sciences. You'll soon change your tune. We'll sing a different tune shortly. It would be good news if we managed to be just as rigorous about things that concern us so closely.
23:11 Wouldn't it? As rigorous as with Jupiter's moons, or black holes, or spin. Those are things I take very seriously. There's no opposition at all in any of this. Yes, I oppose it to analysis. But I'm not megalomaniac enough to think I'm the only one who has the objectivity of Nerval's text, or anyone else's. I'm simply reminding you that when you're at the Conservatory of Music, national or otherwise, municipal, regional, they have you listen to a piece of music, I don't know, we were talking earlier about a Beethoven sonata that Philippe kindly posted on our site, with an excellent performance.
23:58 The thirtieth one, which I recommend to you, is one of the last three, it's the music of the twentieth century, it's incredible. Anyway, that's why we understand why Hegel says that art stopped at that point, since that's what modernity is. Beethoven was born the same year as Hölderlin and Hegel. I mention it in passing, 1770, there are these vintage years, so to speak. Kant's dissertation, 1770, the birth of Hegel, of Beethoven and Hölderlin, that's quite something.
24:28 "Beautiful clover leaf, which splendidly turned green," that's Hölderlin saying that, the clover leaf. So, you're at the conservatory, and if someone says, oh, in this sonata I can really see a landscape of the Mississippi, and another says, no, I'd rather see the Yangtze River, I'm saying nonsense on purpose. Well, frankly, we don't care about any of that. Because those who say that aren't talking about Beethoven, they're talking about themselves.
24:58 You see? He's talking about himself. Spinoza saw very clearly that the idea Peter has of Paul expresses more about the state of Peter's body than the state of Paul's body. Put that way it seems abstract, but now you can see how concrete it is. When you say, oh I hate Prokofiev's music—I'm just saying anything, at random—I love it. But whether I love it or hate it, I'm talking about myself. I'm not yet describing the slightest objective thing about Prokofiev, you see what I mean. The idea Peter has of Paul, it's simple, that's Spinoza, and it's brilliant.
25:30 It expresses more the state of Peter's body, Peter's affects. What Prokofiev's music does to him, he hated it, that's his problem, than the state of Paul's body. I'm dwelling on this a bit, because these are the... We've never terrorized a society the way yours has been terrorized. When I say yours, ours today, but above all I'm thinking of generations younger than mine, because it started, it got worse over the last 30 years, this subjectivism. I have nothing against subjectivity. I resent subjectivism, which is quite different.
26:02 That is, isolating us from one another. This is for you, this is for him, this is for us, but for... the Bantus, that's not at all their opinion. The Bantus aren't like us, they don't have the same values. Fine, so there's no more universal, no more humanity, there are only Tutsis, Hutus, Cans, French people, men, women, young, old. There's no communication at all between any of that. Tell me, where are they taking us? All that to create new markets. Because there are specialized presses, presses for under-15s, for over-15s, yes, that exists too. Well, I don't know.
26:32 I'm not going to carry this trial all the way through, this isn't the place for it, the trial of subjectivism, of relativism, which suits the market economy so well. Can you imagine how dangerous it would be for them if we all agreed? Think about it for a second. Not just agreeing that if A equals B, B equals A, because we've agreed on that for a long time. Yes, the hard sciences. Thankfully we have them. It's proof that we can agree on certain things after all. That annoys capital.
27:02 What makes use of it, yes, of that, of science. But on the other hand, it would like our mentality not to be scientific, to belong instead to the order of doxa, of opinion. It needs science in the shadows and television in the light, media that isolate us from one another. That's why I'm dwelling on this. So, back to my Beethoven sonata. The one who, instead of saying I like it, I don't like it, says that starting at the 14th bar, we shift from major to minor.
Music in the broad sense: Verlaine, Rousseau against Rameau 27:33 There, he's not talking about himself. You see, I'm not saying I have a monopoly on this. No, anyone can do it. It can be learned. Oh, you have to learn major, but no, that's nothing, that's within everyone's reach. Besides, since we were kind enough to talk about "the wrong note" earlier, that admirable film—I allow myself to say admirable, not because I'm in it as the exclusive star, but because Aliocha directed it and he deserves it. No, he deserves it objectively, I might add, 1,500?
28:08 3,500, 3,500 short films, I don't know how many were sent in, only about forty were kept. Sixty? Sixty were selected, including this short film. So bravo anyway for the direction. Yes, at one point I give a little illustration on the piano of the minor scale, of the major scale, it's not complicated. Even non-musicians like Verlaine, one of the greatest musicians of all time, in the art of verse, isn't that right?
28:38 What is more fluid and more musical than a line of Verlaine? "He is hidden among the grass," Verlaine—and it's Mallarmé in his tomb poem. Verlaine says, he's the one who said "music before all things," he knew a thing or two about it, his Art poétique begins like this: "and for that, prefer the uneven line, vaguer, more soluble in air, with nothing in it that weighs or poses." Isn't that musical? I'm being annoying with my parenthesis, but I'm going to make yet another parenthesis within the parenthesis for having added a mouth. Because these notions are too important.
29:10 Rousseau crossed swords with Rameau. All those who know the matter a little are aware of this, aren't they? There's a great quarrel between Rousseau and Rameau. A quarrel—let me set the substance aside for a second—it's above all a quarrel between Rameau, who is the buddy of the men who belong to the Enlightenment establishment of the time, of Diderot, of Voltaire, of the aristocratic salons that received in their homes the most advanced fraction of the bourgeoisie, to whom I tip my hat. I'm not putting the Enlightenment on trial.
29:40 Far from it. I'm no obscurantist. But Rousseau brings what they lacked, and what will make the Enlightenment howl. He dares to question property. That's not done. There, the Enlightenment shows that there are some limits to its progressivism after all. But let's move on. And so, there's this conflict between Rameau and... well, Rousseau, he's the backward one, the guy who clings to old values, the has-been, we'd say today, whereas Rameau is the trendy one.
30:12 Rousseau's music, for Rousseau is a composer, doesn't hold up for a second next to Rameau's. Let's be quite clear about that. But where Rousseau is the greatest musician of his time is in his prose, you see the connection with Verlaine. It's in the fifth Reverie, when he says—forgive me, I always quote passages—"but the ebb and flow of that water, its continuous sound, swelling at intervals"—he's by the lakeside—"striking ceaselessly at my ear and my eyes, supplied for the internal movement which reverie was extinguishing in me and sufficed to make me feel, with pleasure, my existence, without taking the trouble to think."
30:51 We had never heard sentences like that. Yet there were masterpieces of literature. What could sparkle more in prose than a letter of Voltaire's—but not like that, not that poetic quality, not that poetic prose. That was new. Literary modernity would rush headlong into that kind of sentence, and it would soon give us Chateaubriand, Flaubert, Proust. It's extraordinary. You see, when I talk about music, I mean it in the broad sense. So, the one who says at the 15th bar we move from major to minor is speaking objectively.
Apologizing for being lyrical and melancholic on the day of the dead 31:21 That's what I'd like to do today with Nerval's text. Bring it back to an intelligibility—you see, I'm being careful here, I won't dare say scientificity, so as not to overreach—but to an objective intelligibility. Now, in the passage I just read to you, he apologizes for being lyrical. Which is proof, first of all, that Romanticism is indeed a thing of the past, since one feels the need to apologize for it to one's readers.
31:55 At the time when lyricism was fashionable, or was the dominant tone—that is, barely a few years earlier—he wouldn't have felt the need to apologize. And there it is again, four lines later: "it is the Day of the Dead that I am writing to you, forgive these melancholy thoughts." Now, I told you last time that what is most repetitive—don't forget that our lecture series this year continues our ongoing saga from repetition to liberation.
32:30 This is the second year, isn't it, devoted to this theme running from repetition—Ulysses—to liberation—Daedalus, thank you—mythological figures that are, aren't they, antonymous to one another. One goes from one carnage to another carnage, from the carnage of the massacre, from the sack of Troy to the massacre of the suitors, and the other flies away, frees himself from the constraint of the labyrinth, which was itself a place of carnage since fourteen young people, seven girls and seven boys, were devoured there each year.
33:10 I started with the girls, you see, I'm trying to be inclusive... Yes, "it is the Day of the Dead that I write to you, forgive these melancholy thoughts." And it's a melancholic who writes... No, I'm playing on the word here, not in the Romantic sense this time, but in the grave sense, the clinical sense—do you know what melancholia is? It's serious, ask the psychiatrists, it's among the most severe forms of depression. It's more than a simple depression, melancholia, it's on the border of psychosis.
33:40 Word for word—but here it's black, you know, melanin, all that, black humor, black mood—it's the black humor one can't escape, prisoner of a condom—me, I am the shadowy one, the widower, the unconsoled—you see, there's a logic to all this after all. It's rather incredible that one has to apologize for being melancholic on the Day of the Dead. Where were we exactly? That means we've become postmodern scoffers who no longer have the right to be melancholic.
34:15 That's it, but Nerval repeats it twice within one paragraph's distance. I'll repeat the first: "The lyricism of these observations should not surprise you." That means, "I've just noticed that I've been lyrical about autumn and all that," whereas up until then, you'll remember, from the start of the story up to now, it had been the remarks of a rather sardonic journalist. "The novel, I will eventually find it, this untraceable book." We were ransacking libraries without success. We kept making all these little transitions that were always opportunities to take a little jab at authority and censorship.
The digressions and their excuses; the plot of the abbé de Bucquoy 34:49 It was very amusing, marvelously written, that's pure Nerval. In short, we weren't in a subjective tone, we weren't suddenly in outpourings of feeling. You see? So what am I getting at? Why did I post this text? And why did I post it on the Day of the Dead? Well, that's because it's the season. Just so you know, it's not a whim of mine—listen, it's our holiday, all of us. But it's because, here, one really has to think it through—all the other digressions that make this text exasperating on first reading, and that have made many readers set it aside.
35:24 Except for those who, though exasperated—I've seen that many reacted that way, and it pleased me—are nonetheless under the spell of a charm by the end of it. They can sense that there's a stake here that wasn't grasped on first reading. It can't be that it's this disjointed, jumping from one thing to another. And yet that we had the patience to follow it that long means there was a charm in the proper sense, something that makes you stay, doesn't it? Like the song of the sirens. "I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren swims."
35:54 That's in El Desdichado. Now, I noted down, if you like—if any of you want to note it too—the digressions in the order they appear in this edition, right? The first is on page 48 and the last on page 77. Why did I note them down? Because today I'd like to classify them. You'll have time—I mean, if you like, I'll give you the list. Page 48, then 54, then 57, then 74, 75—some of them are very close together—77.
36:28 It's that, up to that point, up to the passage I read you an excerpt from, the digressions bore, as is most often the meaning of the word digression, on the plot, on the action, the pitch, call it whatever you like. I don't know—we suddenly change the plot altogether. We suspend the story being told in order to talk about something else. That's the ordinary meaning of digression. But what I just read, he apologizes—because every time there's a digression, he apologizes. Let me give you a sample.
36:59 Here, the first time, it's page 48, to show you that each time, the digression is accompanied by Nerval's awareness that it risks exasperating the reader, and thus by a protocol of apology. Here it is: "Forgive me these digressions"—page 48, that's the first time—"and I will keep you informed of the journey I am undertaking in search of the Abbé de Bucquoy. This eccentric and eternally fugitive character cannot always escape rigorous investigation." I'm going to dwell a bit on this digression, on this apology, sorry.
37:34 Up to that point, from the beginning, how many pages does that make? Seven or eight pages of the story. Let me remind the newcomers, very quickly, how it started: he was traveling, we don't really know what he's doing there, but never mind, he doesn't tell us, in Frankfurt, in the heart of Germany, and so at the heart of Europe, at the heart of the Central Bank—well, let's not get sidetracked, it's always central, Frankfurt. "Frankfurt is the navel of the world," Hölderlin said.
38:06 "Frankfurt am Main," not "Frankfurt an der Oder." I'm not talking about Frankfurt toward Poland, I'm talking about Frankfurt on the Main. So, he's in Frankfurt, at fair time, wandering through the stalls a bit, the way he does, he loves it, he's amazed, and after a quick glance at the furs coming from far-off Siberia—he speaks of Upper Siberia or the Caspian Sea—he stumbles into the section with the books. Even now, you know, the Frankfurt book fair is by far the largest book fair in the world, still today, publishers know it, and among the stalls he comes across a book that interests him as a bibliophile—not so much for its literary content, but he comes across the memoirs of a certain Abbé de Bucquoy who lived in the eighteenth century, who left the priesthood, who led a turbulent life, who was jailed a thousand times with his escapes, quite an exciting, thrilling adventure, who was in the Bastille, all that, and he wants to buy it, it interests him, the book is bilingual, in German and French, he explains to us that at the time Frankfurt served as a refuge
39:16 for French writers who were a bit sulfurous, from the Ancien Régime, who feared royal censorship—which is true—and who most often went to Holland. You know that if Descartes lived so long in Holland, it's because he could carry out the research he wanted without fearing the censorship of the Jesuits who were tracking him in Paris. For example, there's a very beautiful plaque—I've forgotten the name of the street, you know, near the Contrescarpe, the little street that leads to the stairs going down toward Rue Monge, whatever it's called—anyway, there's a little plaque there, or a house where Descartes lived, with a wonderful quote from Descartes: "I have, as it were, one foot here and one foot in Holland, so that my condition is free." It's magnificent. Well, so, he wants to buy it, and he searches his pocket with dignity, as he puts it, he doesn't have a penny—being very discreet, he doesn't dwell on it, he'd already spent too much money on other, unimportant books—he no longer has money to buy it, then, I'll cut to the chase, he says, "I'll be in Paris in two days," I'm summarizing the plot very quickly, he's on the way back—we'll see the importance of spatial movement in this story—here we start in Frankfurt, next stop, Paris, "I'll be in Paris in two days," Paris, capital of the book, I'll find the book everywhere. Well, and, having arrived in Paris,
40:27 not only does he not find it, but he finds Paris, I quote, "the world of letters in Paris in a state of inexpressible terror"—strong words—an amendment had just been passed, I'll say quickly, since I've already mentioned it, the Riancey amendment, named after the man who drafted it, under the Guizot ministry, very reactionary, an amendment that told authors: you write history, you write novels, don't mix the two—does that surprise you, that the state concerns itself with literary genres, it's interesting, it's rare, quite something. In other words, don't write serial novels, because with Monsieur Dumas, you never know—The Three Musketeers, are we in history, in fiction, what is that? You ask me why it bothered them, I'll tell you quickly, it's that the readership of the newspapers in which these serials appeared, really, especially Eugène Sue, who had an enormous success, The Mysteries of Paris, etc., Dumas, Nerval—that was the readership of the barricades, they wanted more of it. It's against that readership, it's not just that he sometimes used history for subversive purposes and all that,
41:38 a bit like, conversely, in American cinema, every time they talk about the North-South conflict, look, Gone with the Wind—I mean the American North-South—it's always the Southerners we're nostalgic for, as the fine role, it's natural, it's a bit the noble loser, whereas the North, well, those are bureaucrats, people like you, like me, who think about business, whereas we know the true values, we have slaves, we know the true values. Well, I'll go quickly, I'm sure you'd nuance more than I do.
42:12 And so, there we are, where one does history, where one says novel, and there he says, I have to find the book, because I promised your readers, I promised you and your readers, that I would tell the story of this fellow, and it mustn't be suspected that it's fiction, otherwise you'll have to pay the fine, it's a fortune, enough to shut up shop, it's a few centimes per issue, a million... And so, you see, we get a chase through libraries, that's the whole first part, up to that point, and, without success—we'll see with what mischievous pleasure Nerval manages not to find it, one day because the library is closed for the holidays, another time because it's under repair, a third time because it's infested with rodents that came in the crates of books, the mouse of Athens or the rat of Russia, well, any excuse will do not to find the book, and since he doesn't find it, in the meantime he tells us what he tells us, and that's what we're reading here.
43:09 And literary criticism—not my purpose here, but I'll mention it for those interested—has noted that it was a very modern device to do what would today be called an anti-novel. Not finding the book that would justify his publishing it, he says, in the meantime, I'll talk about something else, about the plot. So the digression is almost the essential thing, if you will. Now, the first digression I'm going to read you follows—we've been in the library from the start, we haven't changed subject, broadly speaking we're looking for the book, taking our time.
The Library of Alexandria: clearing the Arabs of the charge of ignorance 43:42 And then, from time to time, he criticizes the way the National Library is run, he says there are admirable, devoted people serving people, schoolchildren who come to copy the translation of their Latin passage, people who come in to warm up, etc. In short, and above all the laxity of the lending practices, which means things aren't checked and collections get depleted, books don't come back, well, he's talking about things like that as a good bibliophile, he says: "The Republic of Letters is the only one that should be somewhat imbued with aristocracy, for one will never contest that of science and talent."
44:19 "The famous Library of Alexandria"—here's the digression—"was open only to scholars or poets known for works of some merit, but hospitality there was also complete." And those who came to consult the authors—we're two or three centuries after Christ, I mean, in the so-called Alexandrian period, Hellenistic Greece as it was called. And so, on that note, yes, but hospitality there was also complete, and those who came to consult the authors were housed and fed free of charge for as long as they pleased to stay.
44:52 And on that note, allow me—second digression within the digression—allow a traveler who has trodden its ruins. Nerval was going to publish the Voyage en Orient in the wake of Les Filles du feu. His second great prose work, where he speaks of himself—he's the one traveling. But he still takes refuge in the genre of travel literature, a somewhat outward-facing literature—it's not there that one recounts one's diary—but still. And at the time, everyone was making their journey to the Orient. Lamartine made his, Chateaubriand made his, Taine was going to say his prayer on the Acropolis, because one always had to pass through Athens on the way to the Orient, even back then.
45:33 There. So, that's very Nervalian, fitting into what everyone else is doing so as not to make waves, while being of a staggering originality—it's not entirely within a conventional disguise. And so, "allow a traveler who has trodden its ruins and questioned its memories to vindicate the memory of the illustrious caliph Omar from this eternal burning of the Library of Alexandria." That's why I'm going to read the passage all the way through. Because in tradition—and this is Nerval doing it in order to set the record straight—it was said that it was those bastard Arabs, those bastard Muslims, who had burned—it's no small loss to humanity—the Library of Alexandria.
46:17 That's completely false, historians know it. Omar never set foot in Alexandria, whatever many academicians may have said. He didn't even send an order on this point to his lieutenant Amrou. The Library of Alexandria and the Serapeum, or house of aid, which was part of it, had been burned and destroyed in the fourth century by the Christians, who moreover massacred the famous Hypatia in the streets. A Pythagorean philosopher, the last survivor of the Presocratics, was massacred in the streets of Alexandria on that occasion.
46:47 And she was a woman. The famous Hypatia, Pythagorean philosopher. "These are, no doubt, excesses that cannot be blamed on religion." You see, Nerval is clever. I'm not the one saying "those barbarous Christians." "These are, no doubt, excesses that cannot be blamed on religion. But it is good to clear of the charge of ignorance those unfortunate Arabs whose translations preserved for us the marvels of Greek philosophy, medicine, and science"—summarized in the whole process that leads to the Renaissance.
47:19 I don't know. Via Spain most often. So, I repeat, these unfortunate Arabs whose translations preserved for us the marvels of Greek philosophy — essentially Aristotle — of medicine and of Greek sciences, adding their own works to it. So it's well established, algebra is an Arabic word. Algebra means a dislocated limb that has been put back. Think of the terms of an equation. Algebra of the moderns and analysis of the ancients, to speak like Descartes. Analysis is geometry. That's existed since the Greeks, but algebra is modern.
47:49 That's the Arab contribution. Adding their own works which ceaselessly, listen carefully, pierced with a sharp ray the stubborn fog of the feudal epochs. Hold on, in these transitions, he says some things. First, you find again the opposition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Did you notice the last sentence? The works of the Arabs pierced with their sharp ray the stubborn fog of the feudal epochs. I'm not settling the matter on substance. Because nowadays it's fashionable to say that everything was better before Taylor.
48:31 Which ceaselessly pierced with a sharp ray the stubborn fog of the feudal epochs. Why am I talking about this? Because at the end — I'm changing genre completely, but I'm staying with Nerval — if I take El Desdichado, the tercets, where there's a problem of identity. Am I Love or Phoebus, Lusignan or Biron? You know, that whole passage where identity hesitates between several figures. Which, for someone suffering from psychic troubles, is not entirely indifferent, all the same. Am I Love or Phoebus, Lusignan or Biron?
49:01 My brow is still red from the queen's kiss. I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren swims. That's not Christian, that siren. And twice victorious I crossed the Acheron. That's not nothing, that. That's not the Christian hell. Modulating in turn on Orpheus's lyre — I've quoted that to you several times. Well, the last line, you should know it by heart. I'm sure you know it. It's pitiful. The sighs of the saint and the cries of the fairy. The sighs of the saint, Christianity.
49:32 The cries of the fairy, paganism. You couldn't be more concise and at the same time produce such a finished expression, like a coat of arms. It carries the most current issues. Doesn't it? We're overwhelmed by waves of neo-paganism. Which says nothing to me. Even if my name comes from there. I remind you, by the way, that originally it's the peasants. Pagus, that's the district. And since Christianity first settled in the cities, and particularly among slaves in ancient Rome, the countryside remained pagan far longer than the cities.
50:05 And so the term that designated the peasants ended up meaning pagans — pagan in the non-Christian sense. So today's opposition, especially among the neo-Nietzscheans, you know, Nietzsche's fury against Christianity — Nietzsche goes so far as to say 'aut Christus, aut Zarathustra,' either Christ or Zarathustra. I remind you that I'm not giving the literary explication of this text, but the philosophical explication. There's plenty to do.
50:36 Because here, you see, I've barely just quoted the first digression and he's already using that whole dispute — the burning of the library of Alexandria, that file — to score a point about the Renaissance against the Middle Ages. And to show you that this is a theme and not a chance passage, so that I'm not adding a subjective interpretation of my own, I ask you to turn, if you have the book, much further ahead to the...
The chapel of Chaalis, courtly love and Parsifal 51:08 I'll put the tenth letter. Yes, that's it. I'll give you the page. I'll give you the Cerval. There. Page 120, if you have the text. So there, we've left the library, we've left Paris, I won't go back over that.
51:39 We've done the most important stretch of walking, which is the heart of the story, and which I'll dwell on at much greater length afterward. And we've arrived almost at Rousseau's tomb, since the abbey of Chaalis is 3 km from Rousseau's tomb. All of this is 40 km from Paris. I can't recommend enough that you go before the snow prevents you. No, it's magnificent in winter too. But still, you don't have to be cold. So go there. So they're in the ruins of Chaalis. I say ruins because Chaalis is marked like that on the map, it's a fairly large...
52:11 There's nothing, there's no town. There's an abbey, splendid. There's a Renaissance-style château in which Henri IV sheltered his love affair with Gabrielle d'Estrées. Closed. And a French-style park. And the ruins — no, it's the ruins of the abbey, I said, that's all. There. And a chapel, sorry, excuse me, in flamboyant Gothic, well, late Middle Ages, it's the same thing. Completely wild with its gargoyles.
52:41 And so it was the gamekeeper's son who was showing us the château. So, a local peasant, the gamekeeper's son, abbey of Chaalis in 1840, abandoned for a long time. Excuse me. Excuse me, it's the next page, page 121, because I'm taking it a bit earlier. We went back down to see the chapel. It's a marvel, it's the wild chapel I was telling you about. It's an architectural marvel. The soaring of the pillars and the ribs, the sober and fine ornamentation of the details. He goes on giving his travel account, his little Michelin guide, so to speak, for you, for us.
53:15 The sober and fine ornamentation of the details revealed the intermediate period between flamboyant Gothic and the Renaissance. Well, well. A borderline between Middle Ages and Renaissance, we agree. Late Middle Ages, early Renaissance. We're not far from our problem. You'll see, it won't fail. But once inside, we admired the paintings which seemed to me to be from this latter period, so Renaissance. You'll see some rather low-cut saints, the gamekeeper's son tells us. Indeed, one could make out a sort of glory painted in fresco — fresca, you know, in Italian that would mean a water-based painting.
53:47 On the side of the door, perfectly preserved despite its faded colors, except for the lower part, covered with distemper paint, but which won't be difficult to restore. And here begins this little paragraph. The good monks of Chaalis — those are Christians, the monks of Chaalis, they're monks, it's not even the regular clergy — wait, it's not even the secular clergy, it's the regular clergy who live under the austerity of the rule. The good monks of Chaalis would have wanted to remove certain nudities that were too showy, in the Medici style. Well yes, from Italy, which always brings us things from hot countries.
54:21 Debauchery. I'm not joking — compare the Song of Roland to the Arthurian cycle, right? I don't know, to Lancelot, or Perceval, and Forcerie, to Tristan, to the matter of Brittany, as it was called, admirably. The Song of Roland, let's say, bagatelle — there isn't much of it. We see one woman, it's the beautiful Aude, we say the beautiful Aude, we never see her. I mean, she waits in her castle for the story to end. Afterward, we get 4000 magnificent laisses — I'm in the middle of speaking ill of the Song of Roland.
54:53 I say, that's not where you should look — what French word did I use? Bagatelle, it's untranslatable. Bagatelle is France. We'll have to wait, you know this, for the counts of Toulouse, the court of the counts of Toulouse, the troubadours, etc., for a new genre to suddenly appear, courtly love, where love is going to be somewhat at the center of things. And that comes to us through the Arabs. Yes, Toulouse, Spain, yes, there's a logic to all this, before it emigrates into the mists of Brittany, Great Britain.
55:24 It's interesting to find Toulouse again in these same things. Since I'm on the subject, in his poetico-musical testament, since it's the same, in the notion of the lyric drama, I'm thinking of Wagner, of course, Parsifal, this work which was the occasion of the definitive break between Nietzsche and Wagner. Too much is too much. Siegfried, again — it's Nietzsche speaking. You'll read that in Beyond Good and Evil, in the part called Peoples and Fatherlands, at the end.
55:54 Siegfried, that's still fine, the hero who breaks the laws — that pleases him, Zarathustra. He smashes the pile, he breaks the old values. Siegfried's sword is Zarathustra's hammer, that's good, the beautiful blond beast. But then, Wagner's last hero, he was doddering, he's an idiot — but if you slap him on one cheek, he turns the other. At the same period when Dostoevsky writes The Idiot, and Flaubert writes Saint Julian the Hospitaller, perhaps Flaubert's most disturbing text. It's rather odd, what's happening at that moment.
56:26 It's the sick and the epileptics who take over from the Siegfrieds. It's odd. Nietzsche detested pathology. You know what he's talking about. Now, Wagner sets his Parsifal, his Perceval, so the quest for the Grail — the Grail is supposed to be housed in a castle located in the Pyrenees. You see why I'm talking about this? It's not a digression. We come back to a transition between the Arab world and the Christian world.
56:59 And so, I'm not going to tell you the whole story — it's a pity, because it's not bad. 'Too much blood and I don't like hysterical women,' Nietzsche said after reading the story. He didn't like women in general, but hysterical women even more, poor old man. And in Wagner, you're well served on that front. A parenthesis — I'm talking about women and Wagner, it's inexhaustible. But Brahms, it's dreadful what I'm about to say, because I'm ratting him out. Brahms was impotent. We know everything through the women. In my opinion, it must have been after this Clara Schumann business.
57:29 But let's not stray. So Brahms, Nietzsche makes a treacherous allusion. That's why I'm bringing it up. In one text he says, there's in Brahms a kind of infinite longing. He's alluding to the infinite melody. And he says, thirty steps further on, you have the Wagnerian women. Granted, there's an impotent man, and then, inaccessibly further off, bacchantes, the Wagnerian women who are women. There, four hundred lovers wouldn't be enough for them. There. That's to tell you that...
57:59 Now, why am I bringing this up? Because in the Grail castle, they're chaste. They don't know women, it's a society of men. They guard the Grail. They partake a bit of the blood of Christ every Friday. So they're invulnerable in battle against those wretched infidels. Well yes. They're Templars, they're warrior monks. They're not there to fool around. And then, until the day when one of these monks, one of these warrior monks, a bit like the Teutonic knights further east, couldn't manage to extinguish desire within himself.
58:30 I'm quoting the source material, I'm not inventing anything. And who laid a guilty hand upon himself, as they say in a rather labored periphrasis for having castrated himself. This abominable crime, and a lot of blood in this story, got him cast out of the Grail community, and to take revenge he settled in the desert. The desert is what separates the Grail from the rest of the world, from you, from me. You see the symbol — you need to cross the desert to reach the absolute. You have to pass through, that's it, not everyone can reach the Grail just like that. You need grace to show the way. He settled in the desert, and there, what does he do?
59:01 The opposite of a desert is what? It's the Orient. That's where I started from. An oasis, water, flowers, flower-girls, can you imagine? Plants, below it's a corolla and above it's boobs. I'm telling you what's in the text. I'm not inventing anything. There was a very beautiful staging on YouTube by a very great director, it's Syberberg, the one who made Ludwig, Requiem for a Virgin King, right?
59:32 You'll tell me what you think if you watch the images from the second act. Now, Wagner's stage directions, when the idiot arrives and all the flower-maidens surround him — they've already made a great many Grail knights succumb, including the sorcerer, since he's become a sorcerer, the fallen angel, who uses them to build an army of darkness that will one day seize the Grail and extinguish it, because what's unbearable is this light. The sorcerer sees clearly that the idiot isn't falling for it — the flower-maidens, the hips, the breasts, he's an idiot.
1:00:07 So they have to send him the chief seductress. Kundry, the character Wagner took seventy years to conceive, honestly, who is a composite of all his fears. Let's not stray. She was Herodias, that's in the text, she's had past lives, she was Herodias, the rose of hell, well anyway. I'll finish with the stage directions. He says she must appear on a couch adorned with oriental decorations and arabesques. Automatically — it's not Hollywood yet, but it's not far off.
1:00:39 You see, when you see in the sword-and-sandal epics Samson and Delilah, it's not very far off. Samson's strength, the hero drained by the wily Delilah and her belly dance. Watch the film, you see what I mean? Those are the classics. There, that's where we stand. I'm not joking. Indeed, all these angels and all these saints had the effect of loves and nymphs with bare throats and thighs. And that, for a chapel! The apse of the chapel offers, in the spaces between its ribs, other still better preserved figures in the allegorical style used after Louis XII.
Renaissance and Middle Ages; the Germanic tropism toward the mother's tomb 1:01:13 We turned to leave, we noticed above the door the coats of arms — good, let's move on to something else. You see this wasn't an isolated thing, my story about the Arabs whose works pierced with sharp ray the stubborn fog of the feudal epochs. That means the opposition Renaissance versus, and therefore the Cainite temptation, as Nerval says somewhere — Cain against Abel, you see, against Christian law, etc. The flesh and all that — there's still resistance in the writing, you see, and elsewhere in a text, I'll give you a fragment, he speaks of the Renaissance, he says the Renaissance is a magnificent gateway, granted, a gateway that ushers us into modernity, you see — don't make me say that I'm for the Renaissance, with Nerval, against the Middle Ages, first because it's much more complicated than that, and Nerval, in Aurélia, will make a return to Christianity, exactly like Hölderlin — no one has tried to give a presence back to vanished Greece, to ancient Greece, like Hölderlin, no one, no work has, and at the end he keeps coming back to the mysterious vaterländische Umkehr, the patriotic turning-around, suddenly he says to himself
1:02:23 the last of the gods, the one who came last, the Syrian — we recognize the figure of Christ, who came to put an end to the great Greek day and who inaugurated the night we're still in — it's him I miss, I make myself say what I haven't said — anyway, we don't know about what comes next, we don't have to read between the nights for now. I'm insisting on this theme of the opposition between Renaissance and Middle Ages. Now, I return to my text, so I return to the fact that it is the Day of the Dead that I'm writing to you — sorry, these melancholy thoughts, and to astonish you once again, I hope, I do manage a little to make you wonder that one should have to apologize for being melancholy on the Day of the Dead. But that seems obvious to me, can you imagine, it's terrible to have to apologize for that. I'm not retelling his personal story, we saw it last time — Nerval never knew his mother, since his father, like the whole Romantic generation, the fathers were men of action
1:03:33 who were in the Grand Army, they plowed through Europe from Spain to Russia. The generation of sons comes after — that's you, that's me, we're in cafés, in cafés, in labs, I don't want to exaggerate, in classrooms, well anyway, it's still not the same, it's not the generation of the brutal transformations that happened just before, and it's everyone's story, isn't it, not just the Oedipal triangle — but in Nerval's case, it doesn't happen every day, all the same, that a mother be so in love with her husband that she abandons the newborn, who therefore practically never saw his mother, in any case never saw her at an age when memory takes hold and leaves traces. She abandoned him to follow her husband during the campaigns, and she never came back, since even now, you know, she's buried somewhere in Poland, near the town of Glogau, because of fevers she supposedly caught crossing a bridge loaded with corpses near the Berezina, etc.
1:04:35 so there, we had seen that this explains a lot of things, I'll come back to it, and we'll see that it isn't reducible to that at all, but it's true there are plenty of things we don't understand, like for instance this Germanic tropism in Nerval — every time he crosses the Rhine, he draws closer to his mother's grave. Take the letter to Georges Bell, a friend — letter to Georges Bell, a letter written while traveling, and you'll see the triad: the pen moving across the paper, Nerval's steps moving on foot toward the east, toward the Orient, or toward Germany, or toward the Valois, which is northeast of Paris — always the same directions, in the direction opposite to the sun's course, so opposite the course of time — all of that is the same movement, that of writing, that of travel. I can't illustrate it better than with this letter he writes to a friend, you see — he writes it on June 1st, '54, we're less than a year from his death, it's his last great journey, he's never gotten this close — it was complicated to travel far in those days — to his mother's grave in Poland, since this time he went as far as Leipzig, but for now, here, he's only reached Strasbourg
1:05:46 oh marvel, upon touching the banks of the Rhine I found my voice and my faculties again, my voice had... yesterday evening I wrote a sonnet on the trip from Baden to Strasbourg — that's the fourth time he's done Baden-Strasbourg, Strasbourg-Baden, you see, he was someone — someone said it, not me, I'd love to have coined such a lovely phrase — he was one of those for whom borders are not lines but spaces, the banks of the Rhine — so that's four or five times he's done Baden — Baden is right across when you're in Strasbourg — I wrote a sonnet on the train trip from Baden to Strasbourg, for I'm coming back from Baden, from the Hotel of the Sun to the Hotel of the Flower, I no longer stay at the Raven — it was gloomy — there's a district in Strasbourg, those who know Strasbourg know the Raven district, in the center, he was staying there — he's playing a bit on words, the raven is the shadowy one, the widower — I no longer stay at the Raven, it's gloomy, but I already feel myself blazing again like a star for a while extinguished, I have rekindled myself at this old sun of my finest days — this letter, downright illuminating — the illumination comes from the journey itself and not from just any journey
1:06:56 from the fact that one reaches an edge, a limit, a border, a passage. Now, how did we arrive at this passage that I read to you right at the start — those who are not hunters don't understand enough of the beauty of autumn landscapes, don't let it fool you — I told you last time, I hope we remember, to look closely at what reason Nerval finds to give us to explain why we go from here to there, spatially, in terms of what Aristotle calls local displacement, the simplest of movements — why from Paris do we go to Compiègne, why from Compiègne to Ermenonville, why from Frankfurt — you see, I asked you to look closely at the reasons he gives, quite simply. So indeed, I'll go back a bit relative to this passage about 'It is the Day of the Dead that I'm writing to you,' and it's the famous fourth letter where there's this great turn, isn't there, which — that's on page 64 — in which you find this: up to that point we were in the libraries, and we've just learned that the book won't go on sale, according to the latest inquiries, before an auction that won't take place until November 20th
The fourth letter: Longueval and the appearance of Angélique 1:08:06 and since he's writing this in late October, well, you see, that's exactly what he wanted — we have time, we have to write and do something else, because readers are waiting for their serial, they're waiting for copy — so what do we do? Well, you'll see the answer — we're in Paris for now — I had the idea of going to the Archives of France — we have someone here who knows the archives well, the rue des Archives, I mean the Archives of France, which were still on the rue des Archives at the time, they hadn't yet moved, as they did very recently, to the suburbs, because now they're enormous in volume — I had the idea of going to the Archives of France, where I was given the authentic genealogy of the Bucquoys — as long as I haven't found the book, I look into their family a bit — their family name is Longueval — last time I pointed out that we didn't have this, it's a new element, but already Longueval echoes the surname of the family of the Abbé de Bucquoy, and for the first time we see there's a connection between this Abbé de Bucquoy, who until then was just an interesting book, nothing more
1:09:16 of an 18th-century figure, and Nerval's personal life, because Longueval echoes the Valois, the province in which Nerval spent his childhood, which is his mother's province, and finally Longueval ends like Nerval, and Nerval, I remind you, for those who know a bit of Italian, means the dark valley, the shadowy one, the widower — go ahead and say there's chance in all this, or afterward — go ahead and say, which is even more foolish, still, that it's fantastic that Nerval thought of all this — no, he didn't compute it in his head, he does better than think, he says it, that's the expression — and as we're just beginning to have opportunities to verify it, I'll develop this later — so, I had the idea, in the Archives of France, their family name being Longueval, in going through the numerous files relating to this family, I made a most fortunate discovery — it's a manuscript of about 100 pages on yellowed paper in faded ink — there's a lot of the past in all this — on yellowed paper in faded ink, whose leaves are bound together with ribbons of faded pink, and which contains the story of Angélique de Longueval
1:10:26 I've taken a few excerpts which I'll try to link together with a faithful analysis — it's only now that we understand the title of the story, once we've reached a dead end in that truly Kafkaesque passage, the first part of the story where all we do is rush down the shelves and staircases of the Parisian libraries without success, amid their dust and their vermin — he has to allude to the region, to the Valois, for suddenly — not the heroine's name, but the heroine herself — to emerge — each of the stories has a woman's first name as its title — I've taken a few excerpts which I'll try to link together with a faithful analysis — so we now learn that this title originates from the memoirs — which was bold for the time — of a young woman of the 17th century, so a generation before that of the Abbé, an ancestress of the Abbé's if you will — and the rest, I'll tell you in Nerval's own voice, or rather, no, he'll say it later — of which he himself says it's a confession bolder in some respects than that of Rousseau
1:11:36 or of Saint Augustine — and that's not to say — as you know the origins — there, so, what a strange text — we can't manage to find the book, and he's going to tell us another story that isn't even his own, he's going to read it to us, he's going to trot alongside the story of Angélique — so we have, in parallel, the search for the book continuing, which we still haven't found, and in parallel, the story of the beautiful Angélique de Longueval, told by herself, a 17th-century account — so I advise those who get confused to skip, on a first reading, all the passages where he relates, where he reports Angélique's confession to us, and to read them fully on a second pass, so as not to break the continuity of the initial investigation — that's a friendly piece of advice. I continue this strange passage — in going through the files — why strange?
1:12:32 because here he was of a clinical precision when he was in the library, he examined the least manuscript through a magnifying glass to see whether it was Bucquoy or du Bucquoy, with a particle or without one, he even said one must do a scientific analysis of the manuscripts — and here it's extraordinarily vague, he's telling us the reasons for which he's going to change territory, look how vague the reasons are — in going through the numerous files relating to this family, I made a discovery, so it's due to chance, a most fortunate one — then, look closely — a host of documents and pieces of information on the Longuevals and the Bucquoys — a host of documents referred me to other documents — I'm reading the text — which must exist — say, which must, which must exist — at the library of Compiègne — I sense we're going to take a walk, we're going to be in Paris — if you have a bit of the topology of the places, I say this for those who aren't familiar — when you go from Paris northeast to Compiègne, that's the old northern road, when there wasn't — you're forced to pass through his region, it's halfway, well before Compiègne, you have Senlis, Ermenonville, Loisy, Thiamau
1:13:42 the Valois, for those who think painting, the most famous painting by Corot, Souvenir de Mortefontaine, painted one of the ponds of Mortefontaine, which is the village of Nerval's mother — I'll dwell just a little more on this fatal toponym, because a spring is meant to water, a mother is meant to nourish — Mortefontaine — even at the source there's already death, it's terrible, this fatal toponym — Souvenir de Mortefontaine by Corot, if you look closely there's nothing but water, mist, ponds — so you see, I'm repeating this sentence to show you the extent to which he — how do we say it in slang, in French, go on — he takes us on a — sorry, a verb, 'balade,' he takes us for a walk — that's already something, because in slang terms it also means we don't quite know where he's taking us — but there's even more, yes, he embarks us — embarks how — for Cythera
Autumn, the season of the journey and of death; the three unities 1:14:52 was conceived in transparent mists — you'll see — a host of documents and pieces of information on the Longuevals and on the Bucquoys referred me to other documents which must exist at the library of Compiègne — the next day was All Saints' Day itself — I did not fail, on this occasion, in distraction and study — the libraries are closed until November 20th, the book won't go on sale tomorrow, it's a holiday, we're going for a walk, guys, and besides it's the right season for it — why is it the right season, can anyone see why it's in autumn or never that one must go for a walk — because it's the season of what — we just saw it — what does vegetation do in autumn — it dies — thank you — you all know this, everyone loves this — a song, everyone loves a bit of death, yes, a bit melancholic, this song, the autumn leaf carried off by the whirling wind, it's caduc, cadere, cadaver, yes, it's no big deal
1:16:02 do you remember the beautiful line from Senancour that I read you last year — spring is more beautiful in nature, but man has done so much that autumn is sweeter — there's a historical dimension in autumn, there's an anthropological dimension, isn't there — man is the animal who knows he's going to die, yes, autumn is the season — go on, I'll say it in French, you know the expression, go on, finish it — to leave is to die a little, since we have the good fortune to have, among us, foreigners, which is an honor for us, and of a Romance language — is there an equivalent expression that links departure and death — to leave — can you repeat, please — to leave is to die a little — it's exactly the same — yes, it's departure par excellence — look at Baudelaire, 'Chant d'automne,' look in Les Fleurs du mal: soon we shall plunge into the cold shadows; farewell, bright light of our too-short summers! Already I hear falling with funereal shocks the wood resounding on the courtyard pavement — well yes, it was firewood, wood had to be chopped up.
1:17:12 In the courtyards, the scaffold that is built has no deeper echo — you see, it's linked to death in Nerval, whether brutally or as a gentle melancholy. Now, there I had quoted for you Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir: "A tender heart, that hates the vast black void of the past, gathers up every relic" — at the moment when the light is about to go out, one looks back toward the past. A tender heart that hates what comes at night — the vast black void of the past — gathers up every relic. "And, as if it had not fallen from the sky, the sun has drowned in its congealing blood, your memory in me shines like a monstrance." So, I'm in the process of saying that it's no accident if all of a sudden he takes us off toward Compiègne on All Souls' Day — it's the moment for the walk, it's the season for the walk. And there I come to my theme of the three unities, because this text which people say is disjointed
1:18:22 which discourages every reader, where the plot keeps changing all the time — it has a fabulous homogeneity. It answers the three fundamental questions: where are we? — unity of place; unity of time; unity of action, right? Unity of place — where are we? Well, unity of time, let's start there, since we've just seen it: we are on All Souls' Day, we are in autumn, we are at the decline of the day, at dusk, of the year, never mind of vegetation — we'll see afterward, even buildings, we'll see the ruins at Senlis — the girls' voices, which are slightly veiled, like those of misty countries — it's he who says all that. So we are in that kind of country. That's the second point, that was 'when are we?'
1:19:13 We are on All Souls' Day, or the season of death. Where are we? We are in the land of death, we are in the West — and there I would like you to remember what we worked on last year, because otherwise there's no point — if you don't accumulate what we've done, I wouldn't want our talks to be like something seen in the rear-view mirror, going off never to return, right? There has to be a minimum that stays. Now, I had made a long development, precisely after the study of Baudelaire's La Cloche fêlée and Harmonie du soir, on the fact that modernity, being modern, being Western, right?
1:19:50 is consenting, for part of it, to what Rimbaud understands very well at the end of A Season in Hell, right? "Autumn already" — that's how the last part of A Season in Hell begins. Well yes, I can't help it, it's nevertheless very different — it's no more different than... Nerval, that Rimbaud is from Nerval — Rimbaud bangs on the table, whereas Nerval is all courteous and timid, gentle Gérard. But still the themes are the same: "Autumn already — but why regret an eternal sun, if we are engaged in the discovery of divine light — far from people who die on the seasons." Rimbaud had understood that it might be time not to be ecological, not to be within natural cycles, and to get away from people who die on the seasons. "And I have lived, golden spark of natural light" — it's he who says all that. It's not — well after all, you are the salt of the earth, as it's said in the Gospel — if the salt loses its savor, with what shall it be salted? And yes, because I haven't commented on it from the start, but you see we're doing it indirectly, the title of the collection, Les Filles du feu
1:21:00 autumn is the declining fire, the West is the fire that declines — it's a bit paradoxical because it's the most dynamic region of the world all the same, the West, economically, militarily, politically, as domination, commercially it's shifting a bit with China and the crisis among China's rivals, well roughly speaking. So that's not it, it's not the matter of power there — what's declining is the manner, the relationship to the world that we had. And there I come back to the opposition Christianity/paganism: from the moment transcendence de-divinized the entire world around us, it brought about our relationship to the everyday, to death, it iconoclasted — forgive the barbarism — it iconoclasted the world around us. And now, so that you understand what I mean, which sounds a bit cryptic, as Thomas would say, I'm going to decrypt it a little
1:22:10 precisely, and ask you to take hold of the text that was distributed to you, which I'm going to read in parallel with the continuation of the passage where he has this fit of melancholy from which he catches himself — forgive me, reader, I was a bit melancholic like that, but it is All Souls' Day after all, there we go. And I take it up again: "It is All Souls' Day that I write to you" — right, that's the passage I'm going to read in parallel, and I'll go on into what follows. "It is All Souls' Day that I write to you, forgive these melancholy thoughts. Having arrived at Senlis the day before, I passed through the most beautiful and the saddest landscapes one could see in this season" — so let me remind you that all this had already become old-fashioned by the time Nerval was writing it — the reddish tint
Reading: the road to Flanders, Senlis and the round of little girls 1:23:20 of the oaks and aspens against the dark green of the lawns, the white trunks of the birches standing out amid the heather and the brushwood — we are very far from the world of libraries and journalistic banter — and above all the majestic length of that road to Flanders. It started from the Porte de la Villette, where today you still have the Rue de Flandre, if you look closely, because that was the direction for going to Flanders, quite simply — I'm telling you as an aside, but still, because there is no Flanders — French Flanders is much further away, human geography shifts. If you go into that area, 40 km from Paris, from Notre-Dame, you come to a little hill just past Roissy, not far from Paris, called Saint-Witz, a commune, W-I-T-Z, Witz — that's not a name from around here, it sounds Flemish, Witz, it means 'spirit/wit' in Germanic, the word 'esprit,' it's the English 'wit.' And 3 km from there, in a small limestone dip, you have a village called Vaudherland, V-A-U-D-H
1:24:30 that's not German, it's Flemish, D-H-E-R-L-A-N-D, Vaudherland — meaning that through this flat country from Belgium to the northern gates of Paris, up to Roissy, in what is called France stricto sensu, which is a historical division of the Île-de-France, there was a lot of passage through. I remember huge, huge fields of tulips that were grown to be sold to the flower shops of Paris, back when there wasn't yet the Roissy airport where it now stands. So when Nerval sees a bit of Flemish everywhere, because of the country of his childhood, that's not entirely absurd. "And above all the majestic length of this road to Flanders, which rises sometimes so as to show off a vast horizon of misty forest — all this had inclined me to reverie. On arriving at Senlis I saw the town in festive mood" — well, we wake up — "the bells whose distant sound Rousseau loved so much" — Rousseau, late 18th century, that's decline too, as a connotation — the bells whose distant sound Rousseau loved so much rang out on all sides, young girls strolled in groups through the town or stood before the doors of houses, smiling
1:25:40 and chattering. "I don't know" — it's the Parisian speaking — "whether I am the victim of an illusion, but I have not yet been able to meet an ugly girl in Senlis; that perhaps is not shown" — no, the blood is generally beautiful, and there follows a delirious ecological explanation for the beauty of the girls of Senlis — look at this — "which no doubt is due to the pure air, the abundant food, and the quality of the waters. Senlis is a town isolated from that great movement of the Chemin de fer du Nord" — you see, the critique of industry isn't new — it's because of industry that the girls are ugly in Paris, you have to mix things — look at the markets, when they come from — excuse me, not between us guys, but we understand each other — when they come from the suburbs, it's capital right nearby, I don't know, from Malakoff, on foot, she sees the... she goes under the ring road, her walk changes as soon as they're inside Paris, I don't know, there's some magic trick, it's more supple, more coquettish, it's incredible, the same girl — well, he exaggerates, I've never seen — yes, "Senlis is a town isolated from the great movement of the Chemin de fer du Nord, which draws the population toward Germany. I never knew why the Chemin de fer du Nord passed through our region and made an enormous bend that partly encloses Montmorency, Luzarches, Gonesse
1:26:51 and other localities deprived of the privileges which ought to ensure a direct route. It is probable that the persons who instituted" — and that's not delirium — "who instituted this railway line took care to make it pass through their own properties" — and it's the industrialists who had the railway pass through their factories, that's well known. And that's why Nerval's countryside around Senlis is still preserved today — you see, at times I too am an ecologist, for good causes — it is isolated from the A1 highway and the railway lines by a whole series of hills. It's true nothing much has changed. There is no contrast more striking than the plain of France, as far as the eye can see it's beets and grain, so it's not very pretty for the landscape even if it's very rich, and as soon as you've crossed the hill of Saint-Witz you go down, you're going to see what he calls one of the most beautiful sheepfold-countrysides in the world. "It was natural on a feast day to go see the cathedral" — it is very beautiful, for now I'm not making the comparison, we're getting there — it is very beautiful and newly restored, one of the most beautiful in all Christendom, it's Flamboyant Gothic — it is very beautiful and newly restored, with the escutcheons sown with fleurs-de-lis representing the arms of the town, which they had taken care to put back up over the side door. The bishop was officiating and the nave was filled with châtelaine notability — there's a kind
1:28:01 of going back in time, we're a bit in the Ancien Régime — châtelaine and bourgeois notability who still meet, as Nerval says, in that locality. And there comes the chapter on the young girls — now I ask you to listen carefully, or read, for those who have the text in front of them, both, because we'll need to remember every detail in relation to the Aurélia text that we have on the loose sheet. "On coming out of the cathedral I was able to admire, under a setting ray of sunlight, the old towers of the Roman fortifications, half-demolished and covered with ivy. Passing near the priory, I noticed a group of little girls who were sitting on the steps of the doorway; they were singing under the direction of the tallest, who, standing before them, clapped her hands to mark the beat." "Come now, young ladies, let's start again" — there's always one bigger girl who plays a bit the grown-up, the little ones aren't keeping up — "I want to hear that little girl there, on the left, the first one on the second step. Come on, sing alone" — there, we go from the chorus, right, to the soloist. Imagine the little girl, all shy, she must sing alone, and the little one begins to sing
1:29:11 in a weak but well-pitched voice — a weak voice — "Les canards dans la rivière," another tune I was rocked with as a child — childhood memories are revived when one has reached the midpoint of life; it's like a palimpsest manuscript whose lines are made to reappear by chemical processes. The little girls took up together another song" — another memory — "'Three girls, two in a meadow, my heart flies away as you please.' 'These little rascals,' said a good peasant who had stopped near me to listen to them, 'but you're too sweet, now you must dance.' The little girls got up from the steps and danced a strange dance which reminded me of that of the Greek girls on the islands" — he mixes places — they all get, as we say around here, into single file, then a young boy takes the hands of the first girl and leads her backward while the others link arms, each holding the one behind her companion; this forms a kind of serpent that moves first in a spiral and then in a circle, and which draws tighter and tighter
The dream from Aurélia, an inverted image of the Senlis scene 1:30:21 around the listener — that's the narrator, the listener there, forced to listen to the song — and when the round tightens, to embrace the poor children who do this graceful thing to the stranger passing by. I'm not commenting — I told you I don't like interpretation, I want to do analysis. We move on to Aurélia — now there, no connection at all, a complete change of genre, we're no longer in travel literature, in the chronicle, even if we saw that it was tinted with subjectivity in the last lines — but here, outright, Nerval's doctor, very ahead of his time, had said: if it can relieve you, transcribe your dreams onto paper, do it. It's to him that we owe Aurélia, whose unfinished manuscript was found in the coat of poor Gérard, Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, on the evening of January 25, 1855, when it was freezing cold and a night shelter had just refused to open its door for him. So here is this dream: "A dream I had again confirmed me in this thought. I suddenly found myself in a room that was part of my grandfather's dwelling" — he had just been speaking of a maternal uncle, the mother's brother
1:31:31 "I suddenly found myself in a room that was part of my grandfather's dwelling; it seemed only to have grown larger; the old furniture gleamed with a marvelous polish, the carpets and curtains looked as if made new again; a daylight three times brighter than natural daylight came in through the window and the door, and there was in the air a freshness and a scent of the first warm mornings" — first warm mornings, sorry — "of spring." Why did I add 'warm'? Doesn't anyone notice something before we do the analysis together, comparing the two texts, of the young girls: 'On coming out I was able to admire, under a setting ray of sunlight, the old towers of the Roman fortifications, half-demolished and covered with ivy' — already, what season are we in, in Angélique? Let's recap — what season are we in? 'It is All Souls' Day that I write to you' — thank you — we're in autumn, so the decline of the year — that's not interpretation, it's not connotation, it's denotation, it means autumn. 'I was able to admire'
1:32:42 'under a setting ray of sunlight' — I'm not interpreting — it's not bright light, it's not the Greek midday or the mistral gust over Aix-en-Provence — and yes, to dispel the impressionists' mists, the post-impressionists had to head off, one to Aix, Cézanne, another to Arles, Van Gogh, and the third even as far as Tahiti, to find bright light, red on green or yellow on blue, and not Nerval's stubborn mists. There, what season are we in?
1:33:21 the word is right there in the text, isn't it? "And there was in the air a freshness and a scent, a first morning of spring." As for the light: "a daylight three times brighter than natural daylight" — I'm not inventing anything — a daylight three times brighter than natural daylight; and as for the carpet and the curtain, they "looked as if made new again," "a daylight three times brighter than natural daylight came in through the window." In other words — the scientists can correct me if I'm wrong — but you take the first text multiplied by minus one, you get the second. I'm half-joking, but very seriously, it's exactly the previous text placed in front of a mirror, everything is reversed. You take the same elements in both texts, you have characters, buildings — except that in Angélique the buildings, the Roman towers, are in ruins, and there, 'the room seemed only to have grown larger' — that's exactly what he says, so there it's the restoration of the building, on the contrary it's no longer the abolished tower, it's the restored tower. You see, 'a dream I had again confirmed me in this thought, I suddenly found myself in a room'
1:34:31 'that was part of my grandfather's dwelling; it seemed only to have grown larger' — that's stated, it's not interpretation. So the buildings are in both texts, so it's not the nouns, it's the epithets and attributes that need to be looked at. The light is in both, but there's a declining light in one, right, and one three times brighter than natural daylight in the other — vivid in the other. So make a two-column table, you put the nouns on the left: light, building, character — we haven't seen it yet but it's going to be the most striking — plants, deciduous plants — we'll see in a moment that it's overrun with plants, the garden near the room where he is — and character. And then, above, horizontally, as a heading, you put Angélique, Aurélia, and you'll see it's exactly the reverse. So let's move to the characters: 'Three women were working in this room' — back to the dream — 'three women were working in this room'
The feminine voice in Nerval: Nuits d'octobre, griot, Adrienne 1:35:41 'and represented, without exactly resembling them, relatives and friends of my youth' — for now we have no indication of age — 'it seemed that each had the features of several of these people; the outlines of their faces varied like the flame of a lamp, and at every moment something of one passed into another — the smile, the voice, the tint of the eyes, the hair, the height, the familiar gestures were exchanged as if they had lived the same life, and each was thus a composite of all three, like those types that painters copy from several models.' 'The eldest spoke to me in a vibrant and melodious voice' — the voice is not weak here, it's vibrant, we didn't have the voice — there, another noun, I'm just making a small aside solely about the voice: if there's one theme that recurs, perhaps the most recurrent in Nerval, in whatever context, whether in Paris, in Germany, in the psychiatric asylum, or anywhere, as soon as he hears a woman's voice singing — and in a certain way, namely a voice that is still fresh, as he says, that hasn't been spoiled by conservatory lessons, that doesn't yet sing the fashionable things, you see what I mean — a spontaneous voice, let's say, Nerval is literally seized, fascinated
1:36:52 he is the prey of the signifier, as it will later be said. You see it even in his most famous poem: 'I dreamed in the grotto where the mermaid swims' — it's the figure of the water-nymph, of the mermaid, there are several illustrations for those interested. It's in Les Nuits d'octobre, which are perhaps one of his most phantasmagorical and, at the same time, most humorous works, an entire night spent in Les Halles, the only place in Paris where no one sleeps, where he visits odd places, cafés where the musicians have their eyes bandaged so they can't see what the customers are doing while dancing — you see, it's the underground of the Paris of that time. Well, he continues his nocturnal walk with a friend as far as Pantin — Pantin is dark Paris, 'Pantruche' some call it, let's not go that far — it's he who writes it like that, there's a lot of humor — let's not go as far as Pantruche. And there, at Pantruche, he stumbles into a banquet taking place in a back room of a dance-hall in Pantruche at 2 in the morning, and in the back room there's a gathering of masons, of Freemasons, and they're about to go in, they're asked: are you a mason? And Nerval's friend — he always has a friend
1:38:02 we'll see it in Angélique too — makes the appropriate signs, so they're allowed in. And no, they're not asked 'are you a mason,' they're asked 'are you of the trade' [du bâtiment]. And when his friend gets them let in, Nerval says: after all, it's true, we are of the building — poets are builders. Amphion, who set the rhythm for the building of the Parthenon with the chords of his lyre, was 'of the building.' You see, it's said that in Athens, while the Parthenon was being built, Amphion, to encourage the musicians of the time, right, a bard, to encourage the workers, right, to draw the chords of his lyre — I, who was in Africa, told you last time about the griot, you remember, when you see the harvest, it's a crucial moment because things have to move fast, the rains have come, the harvest has to be brought in fast so there can be another rain, and so people can eat, so they try to eat this year a little more than usual. The harvest is a serious matter — the civil servants, there are none left in the offices, they're all in the villages helping with the harvest, everyone's there, it's vital. And well, you see the guys there, dripping with sweat, with the boubou, the daba, that's the hoe
1:39:12 the old tool, which here wasn't metallic, would be almost neolithic like that, busy, hurried, dripping with sweat under a scorching sun you can't imagine, and you have, 5 cm from him, equally dripping, the griot with his armpit drum — for specialists, the doundoun, it depends a bit on the ethnic group — doing the rhythm, that famous work music, the work song, from which almost all the blues comes, all the repetitive and haunting and downtrodden side of a certain American music at its origins, which nevertheless conquered the world — the free world was conquered by the music of slaves, bravo, that, that is dialectics. So, well, you see the female voice — and of course I saved the best for last, the most famous passage, for those who have read Sylvie, Nerval's most-read work, the famous song of Adrienne, this childhood memory of little tales, of childish rounds, pre-adolescent — I was the only boy
1:40:22 in this round — memory arranges things well, memory has done away with all the other boys, I was the only boy — 'in this round, into which I had brought my companion, still very young, Sylvie, a little girl from the neighboring hamlet, so lively, so fresh, with her black eyes, her regular profile, her slightly tanned complexion' — in short, the brunette, the peasant girl, the one who embodies life. 'I had scarcely noticed, in the round in which we were dancing, a tall and beautiful blonde called Adrienne. Suddenly, following the rules of the dance'" — you know those dances where there are rules, dances like that, the mystery of childhood into which one cannot enter, and the pretty one had to sing in order to — no, 'suddenly, following the rules of the dance, Adrienne found herself placed alone next to me,' and the round and the singing were turning more quickly than ever — you see it's taking on a fantastical color — 'and the pretty one had to sing to earn the right to rejoin the dance'
1:41:32 there we get to it — 'and immediately, in a fresh and penetrating voice, slightly veiled like those of girls from misty countries' — as if this veil for the eye made a veil for the ear too, it's a beautiful thing as an image — 'thus in the forest where my spirit exiles itself, an old memory sounds at the full blast of the horn' — that's not Nerval, that's Baudelaire, look how alike it is — the two aesthetics have nothing to do with each other, in Le Cygne, Baudelaire, the swan, the bird, it ends like this: 'thus in the misty forest where my spirit exiles itself, an old memory sounds at the full blast of the horn.' So: 'in a fresh and penetrating voice, slightly veiled like those of girls from misty countries, she sang one of the old ballads' — well, then he talks about the ballad, he described her as she sang — look how he lingers on the characterization of the voice, independently of what she's singing — 'as she sang, the shadow descended from the great trees, and the rising moonlight fell on her alone, isolated from our attentive circle; each stanza ended with those quavering trills that young voices bring out so well when they imitate, with a modulated tremor, the trembling voice of the old.' To what extent Nerval
Truth is not reality; the outpouring of the dream 1:42:54 is sensitive to voice — there are plenty of other examples. So I note that the little girl's voice is veiled at Senlis, on an autumn day and at sunset, in front of ruined buildings — you're beginning to guess where I'm heading philosophically, that reality doesn't count for much in all this, there's a deep truth to the text but truth is not reality — we'll better understand the disjunction between the two terms. Yes, tell me — okay, so I'll finish the characters anyway. 'The eldest spoke to me in a vibrant and melodious voice that I recognized as having heard in childhood, and I don't know what she was saying to me that struck me by its profound rightness, but it drew my thoughts onto myself, and I saw myself dressed in a small brown coat of ancient cut, entirely woven by needle with thread as fine as that of spiderwebs' — in short, they've just dressed him — it was elegant, graceful, he speaks of his coat, and impregnated with sweet scents; I felt myself all rejuvenated and quite spruce in this garment that came from their fairy fingers; I thanked them, blushing, as if I were nothing but a small child before great and beautiful ladies. I'll stop there, we'll see the rest next time
1:44:04 but that's enough for me, because what are we witnessing? You'll have noticed there was an adult amid the little girls; now there's a kid, almost a baby, not far from swaddling clothes — the outfit he describes, if you look closely, elegant, impregnated with sweet scents, woven by their fairy fingers — and there's a child practically in front of, as he says, great and beautiful ladies. Everything has been reversed — which proves indeed that the relationship to Senlis, coming back to Senlis, one cannot say 'that was the dream, so it's normal, it's the imaginary,' whereas at Senlis it is real. There are indeed at Senlis Roman towers, undeniably; there is indeed at Senlis a cathedral, undeniably; but truly nothing forbids, in genuine reality, right, a girl from singing in a thunderous voice, or the sunset in front of Senlis cathedral, or that he arrived there at noon rather than that he happened to arrive at noon, right, that he saw the girls sing at noon or in the morning rather than at sunset. The fact that it's superimposed shows that it belongs to the same order, that of the imaginary — the setting around him has changed sign, but it's exactly the same procedure. We are inside a text, we are not in reality — that's where I wanted to arrive. It's time to see
1:45:15 that the whole of reality was absorbed into Nervalian speech. There we are, we are only beginning to penetrate the Nervalian world, but I wanted us to enter it a little this time through the texts and not only through the contexts. So it's five to — that's it, that's a bit short for questions — that's it — ah yes, that makes me think, all the more so since I had promised Philippe I would answer his question during the session, but I had promised him I would answer during the session, since his question coincided so closely with what I had planned for this evening. His question was — Philippe, correct me if I betray your thought — rereading Angélique, it seemed to him to be of the order of dream, in the end, that it seemed disjointed like that, that's exactly what you were saying, it was a bit like flashes of different dreams that he was trying to piece back together. We have just seen that you were entirely right, you hadn't done this comparative reading, you notice it obeys exactly the same logic as a reported dream
1:46:25 which is in Aurélia — so you saw very well. He always — when he himself names a phrase that has become famous in Aurélia — 'here began what I would call, for myself, the outpouring of the dream into real life.' Well, I'll come back to that next time. I use a madman to speak about ourselves, because when there's an excess, one sees the general case better — just as Freud says neurosis, a fortiori psychosis, but neurosis allows us to better understand these normal neuroses, which are not at all pathological, which we all have, called the dream, the slip of the tongue, the parapraxis, etc.
1:47:05 Now I'll end on this for today: what we are in the process of observing, this outpouring of the dream into real life, this confusion of the real and the imaginary, and above all their arrangement — the imaginary does not mean the arbitrary. One last aside: I'm tired of 'imagination to power,' for the time we're coming out of that period — I'm not saying it doesn't exist, imagination has been in power, look at the newsreel footage of the Nuremberg ceremonies in 1937, there you have the imaginary in power, the reconstruction of ancient Rome with the eagles — there's no imagination in that, beware of imagination in power. No, I'm not talking about that kind of imagination, I'm talking about the one that is common to us all — that's where it gets interesting, that's where it becomes, next time we'll see that the Nerval case does nothing but amplify structures that are at work in all of us. Do you remember
1:48:16 that last year's seminar, I had ended it by telling you that we all love the same thing, which had somewhat surprised you, right? But not at all — me, I love the little redhead, me, I love the tall brunette, the little brown-haired boy, the pimply one — with the boys I'm a bit more into the drooling type — there, the old one, there. So I hope this has convinced you that with Angélique we have not been dealing with a totally disjointed and capricious text, but that, on the contrary, it has a homogeneity that has nothing to envy in Sylvie, the major text. There we are, we'll dig deeper into that aspect next time. Thank you.
