Sylvie: souvenirs du Valois Part 1

Sylvie: souvenirs du Valois.

by Gerard de Nerval.

GeRARD DE NERVAL.

I.

Of Gerard de Nerval, whose true name was Gerard Labrunie, it has been finely said: "His was the most beautiful of all the lost souls of the French Romance."(*) Born in 1808, he came to his death by suicide one dark winter night towards the end of January.

The story of this life and its tragic finale was well known at the time to all men of letters,--Theophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, a.r.s.ene Houssaye,--friends who never forgot the young poet even after he went the way that madness lies. For it was insanity,--a nostalgia of the soul always imminent--that led him into the squalid _Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne_, in which long forgotten corner of old Paris his dead body was found one bleak belated dawn. And this was forty years ago.

In later days Maxime du Camp and Ludovic Halevy have retold with great feeling the history of Gerard, his early triumphs, his love for Jenny Colon,--the Aurelie of these _Souvenirs du Valois_,--and how at last life's scurrile play was ended.

(*) See _A Century of French Verse_, translated and edited by William John Robertson (4to, London, 1895).

II.

One of Mr. Andrew Lang's most genuine appreciations occurs in an epistle addressed to Miss Girton, Cambridge; where, for the benefit of that mythical young person, he translates a few pa.s.sages out of _Sylvie_, and favours us with a specimen of Gerard's verse.

"I translated these fragments," he tells her, "long ago in one of the first things I ever tried to write. The pa.s.sages are as touching and fresh, the originals, I mean, as when first I read them, and one hears the voice of Sylvie singing:

_'A Dammartin, l'y a trois belles filles,_ _L'y en a z'une plus belle que le jour.'_

So Sylvie married a confectioner, and, like Marion in the 'Ballad of Forty Years,' 'Adrienne's dead' in a convent. That is all the story, all the idyl."

And just before this he has said of Gerard: "What he will live by, is his story of Sylvie; it is one of the little masterpieces of the world.

It has a Greek perfection. One reads it, and however old one is, youth comes back, and April, and a thousand pleasant sounds of birds in hedges, of wind in the boughs, of brooks trotting merrily under the rustic bridges. And this fresh nature is peopled by girls eternally young, natural, gay, or pensive, standing with eager feet on the threshold of their life, innocent, expectant, with the old ballads of old France upon their lips. For the story is full of these artless, lisping numbers of the popular French muse, the ancient ballads that Gerard collected and put into the mouth of Sylvie, the pretty peasant-girl."

One more quotation from Mr. Lang, and we are done. Sylvie and Gerard have met, and they go on a visit to her aunt, who, while she prepares dinner, sends Gerard for her niece, who had "gone to ransack the peasant treasures in the garret." "Two portraits were hanging there--one, that of a young man of the good old times, smiling with red lips and brown eyes, a pastel in an oval frame. Another medallion held the portrait of his wife, gay, _piquante_, in a bodice with ribbons fluttering, and with a bird perched on her finger. It was the old aunt in her youth, and further search discovered her ancient festal-gown, of stiff brocade, Sylvie arrayed herself in this splendour; patches were found in a box of tarnished gold, a fan, a necklace of amber."

This is the charming moment chosen by M. Andhre des Gachons as the subject of his _aquarelle_, reproduced in colour as frontispiece to the present edition.

III.

In thus bringing out a fresh version of _Sylvie_, not to include the all too few illusive lyrics "done into English" by Mr. Lang, his exquisite sonnet on Gerard, and the lovely lines upon "Sylvie et Aurelie," were a deplorable omission. The sonnet exists in an earlier form; preferably, the later version is here given.

Of De Nerval's prose little has yet found its way to us. His poetry is fully as inaccessible. Things of such iridescent hue are possibly beyond the art of translation. They are written in an unknown tongue; say, rather, in the language of Dreamland, "vaporous, unaccountable";--a world of crepuscular dawns, as of light irradiated from submerged sea caverns,--"the mermaid's haunt" beheld of him alone.

IV.

With what _adieux_ shall we now take leave of our little pearl of a story? And of him who gave us this exquisite creation of heart and brain what words remain to say?

Thou, Sylvie, art an unfading flower of virginal, soft Spring, and faint, elusive skies. For _thee_ Earth's old sweet nights have shed their tenderest dews, and in thy lovely Valois land thou canst not fade or die.

Thy lover, child, fared forth beneath an alien star. For _him_ there was no true country, here;--no return to thy happy-hearted love: the desert sands long since effaced the valley track. Only the far distant lying,--the abyss that calls and is never dumb, urged his onward steps.

And these things, and this divine homesickness led him, pale nympholept, beyond Earth's human sh.o.r.es. Thither to thee, rapt Soul, shall all bright dreams of day, all lonely visions of the night, converge at last.

SYLVIE:

(SOUVENIRS DU VALOIS.)

_AN OLD TUNE._

_GeRARD DE NERVAL._

_There is an air for which I would disown_ _Mozart's, Rossini's, Weber's melodies,--_ _A sweet, sad air that languishes and sighs,_ _And keeps its secret charm for me alone._

_Whene'er I hear that music vague and old,_ _Two hundred years are mist that rolls away;_ _The thirteenth Louis reigns, and I behold_ _A green land golden in the dying day._

_An old red castle, strong with stony towers,_ _The windows gay with many coloured gla.s.s;_ _Wide plains, and rivers flowing among flowers,_ _That bathe the castle bas.e.m.e.nt as they pa.s.s._

_In antique weed, with dark eyes and gold hair,_ _A lady looks forth from her window high;_ _It may be that I knew and found her fair,_ _In some forgotten life, long time gone by._

(ANDREW LANG.)

SYLVIE

(RECOLLECTIONS OF VALOIS.)

I.

A WASTED NIGHT.

I pa.s.sed out of a theatre where I was wont to appear nightly, in the proscenium boxes, in the att.i.tude of suitor. Sometimes it was full, sometimes nearly empty; it mattered little to me, whether a handful of listless spectators occupied the pit, while antiquated costumes formed a doubtful setting for the boxes, or whether I made one of an audience swayed by emotion, crowned at every tier with flower-decked robes, flas.h.i.+ng gems and radiant faces. The spectacle of the house left me indifferent, that of the stage could not fix my attention until at the second or third scene of a dull masterpiece of the period, a familiar vision illumined the vacancy, and by a word and a breath, gave life to the shadowy forms around me.

I felt that my life was linked with hers; her smile filled me with immeasurable bliss; the tones of her voice, so sweet and sonorous, thrilled me with love and joy. My ardent fancy endowed her with every perfection until she seemed to respond to all my raptures--beautiful as day in the blaze of the footlights, pale as night when their glare was lowered and rays from the chandelier above revealed her, lighting up the gloom with the radiance of her beauty, like those divine Hours with starry brows, which stand out against the dark background of the frescoes of Herculaneum.

For a whole year I had not sought to know what she might be, in the world outside, fearing to dim the magic mirror which reflected to me her image. Some idle gossip, it is true, touching the woman, rather than the actress, had reached my ears, but I heeded it less than any floating rumours concerning the Princess of Elis or the Queen of Trebizonde, for I was on my guard. An uncle of mine whose manner of life during the period preceding the close of the eighteenth century, had given him occasion to know them well, had warned me that actresses were not women, since nature had forgotten to give them hearts. He referred, no doubt, to those of his own day, but he related so many stories of his illusions and disappointments, and displayed so many portraits upon ivory, charming medallions which he afterwards used to adorn his snuff-boxes, so many yellow love-letters and faded tokens, each with its peculiar history, that I had come to think ill of them as a cla.s.s, without considering the march of time.