The Chimeras by Gérard de Nerval

First published:Les Chimères, 1854 (English translation, 1965)

Type of work: Poetry

The Poem

In the series of the twelve sonnets he grouped together under the title The Chimeras, Gérard de Nerval exploits ambiguities that resemble the creatures of his title. The chimera, a monster depicted in Greek mythology, is a hybrid creature combining elements of a lion, a goat, and a serpent. In its later derivation, the word refers to something fanciful or imaginary that does not exist. Nerval plays on both senses of the word: His poems recall mythic past times, and they also produce a somewhat fictitious portrait of Nerval himself.

Nerval separately titled each of the first six sonnets and the last but grouped the remaining five into a sonnet sequence entitled “Christ on the Mount of Olives.” An analysis of the work, however, shows it to be composed of four parts, with the first and the last poems forming separate units. According to that model, the opening sonnet, “El Desdichado,” presents the persona of Nerval himself. The next five sonnets, each bearing as title a name from antiquity (Myrtho, Horus, Antéros, Delfica, and Artémis), evoke the gods and goddesses of pre-Christian times. “Christ on the Mount of Olives” portrays the new leader, to whom the pagan gods must yield their power, in extremely human terms. Finally, “Vers dorés” (golden lines) returns to a perception of humanity in the present.

The autobiographical “El Desdichado” draws on Nerval’s personal crisis of mental illness, seen here as a descent into Hell, and Nerval’s identification of himself, through the lineage of his family, with heroes from French history. The linking of the poet’s descent into Hell with that of the mythic musician, Orpheus, sets up a contrast of pagan and Christian referents within the poem, a dualism that leads to the poet’s question concerning his own identity.

The opening quatrain introduces the complexity of the poem and Nerval’s multiple perceptions of his own persona with a large number of separate references. In the first line, he describes himself as “somber and widowed,” by implication separated from the woman he loves, as Orpheus was separated from Eurydice. In the second line, however, he is “the prince of Aquitaine at the abolished tower,” a figure from a period of French history.

In the following lines the words “star” and “sun” are written in italics to emphasize the affinity of these similar objects. Their symbolic references, however, differ. When Nerval says “My star is dead,” he seems to refer to the woman whose absence causes his widowed state. However, when his starry lute carries as a chivalric device “the black sun of Melancholia,” he refers to the engraving by Albert Dürer in which an angel meditates sadly on the passing of time.

The second quatrain remains much more unified, as Nerval cries out from the tomb in which he sees himself and desires the happiness he knew in the past on a trip to Italy. The symbolic flower (again italicized) that represents this experience anticipates the further flower imagery of “Artémis.” Meanwhile, the rose growing together with grapevines, although it reflects a pattern of planting common in vineyards, parallels the combining of different elements in the rest of the poem.

The simple declarations in the quatrains become a question in the tercets, as multiple allusions reflect Nerval’s confusion about his true identity as a character from pagan antiquity (Cupid or Phoebus) or from Christian France (Lusignan or Biron). In whichever guise he goes on the descent into Hell, to which he twice “crossed the Acheron river,” he is in the process marked by a woman because his “forehead is still red from the queen’s kiss.” The identity of the woman remains ambiguous. Nerval, as Orpheus, sings alternately of “the saint” and “the fairy,” mythic women who represent Christian and pagan cultures.

The ensuing five sonnets constitute an excursion through pagan antiquity. The first, “Myrtho,” invokes the “divine enchantress” whose name recalls the myrtle plant and who is linked both with the Italian scene of “El Desdichado” and with the more distant “brightness of the Orient.” The quatrains portray a seduction of the poet by the female spirit as muse. First he becomes drunk from the cup of wine she holds and worships the pagan Bacchus. Then he declares that “the Muse has made me a son of Greece.” Perhaps Nerval means simply that he writes poetry based on Greek tradition, but, given Nerval’s propensity for identifying himself with figures from the past, this claim to kinship can also be taken quite literally. The tercets in this poem refer to an eruption of Vesuvius that Nerval sees as having resulted from a French conquest of Naples. Such a conquest brings the Christian culture of France into direct confrontation with the pagan culture of antiquity still associated with southern Italy. Thus “the pale Hydrangea is united with green Myrtle” as the plants, like the rose and the vines of “El Desdichado,” symbolize the fusion of unlike elements.

With “Horus,” Nerval returns to his earliest point in history, to ancient Egypt where the male god, Kneph, attempts to dominate the female Isis. She denounces him, however, and observes that he is dying. She declares that “the eagle has already passed, and a new spirit is calling me.” This new spirit is that of the Greek gods who would replace those of Egypt. Isis, dressed in new garments, is transformed into Cybele, but for such gods as Kneph, there is no future. This passing of the legacy of divine power parallels stories told of the coming of Christ, who would similarly eclipse the Greek gods.

The triumph of the new gods does not lead to an era of peace. In “Antéros,” Nerval returns to the first-person narrative that he abandoned in “Horus” to describe himself as “descended from the line of Antaeus,” a son of Neptune who gains his strength from the earth. He is an angry figure devoted to revenge, the force that “marked his forehead” just as the queen’s kiss marked Nerval in “El Desdichado.” Nerval claims that in this guise he again combines opposing forces, “the paleness of Abel” and the “redness of Cain.” He resembles Abel in that he will be killed as the Greek gods yield to Jehovah, but he acts as Cain when he “plants the old dragon’s teeth,” a gesture through which Cadmus, in antiquity, was said to plant the seeds that would produce a crop of avenging warriors.

“Delfica” predicts the revenge of displaced gods. With another allusion to the dragon’s teeth, Nerval affirms that “the Gods you weep for will return.” The final tercet, however, sees the ancient sibyl “asleep under the arch of Constantine.” For the moment, Christianity triumphs over pagan culture.

The imagery of “Artémis” is the most complex in The Chimeras. The rose, or hollyhock, held by the queen, could identify her with the queen in a deck of cards, thus justifying the sequence of thirteen in the first line, or with a figure of love or of death. There appear, however, to be two female figures in conflict. The white rose representing the Christian saint will fade because, as Nerval affirms in the last line, “the saint of the abyss” is stronger. This must be the Artémis of the title, Apollo’s sister, noted in Greek tragedy for her conflict with Aphrodite.

After five sonnets devoted to pagan gods, the subsequent five-sonnet sequence turns to Christ as the exponent of the religion that replaced the old gods. Yet the Christ shown on the Mount of Olives is himself facing death. According to Christian belief, his death is the essential sacrifice for the redemption of humanity, but the Christ readers see here, with his “thin arms” and his despairing cry, is a very human figure. Power may have passed to him, but at this tragic moment, he seems about to lose it again.

Nerval did not create this humanized representation of Christ. In “Le Mont des Oliviers” (1844), Alfred de Vigny portrays Jesus in a similar state of despair. In both poems he is abandoned by his sleeping apostles, and in both he fears, as he does in Nerval’s first sonnet, that “God no longer exists.”

In the second and third sonnets, Nerval turns from the personal suffering of Christ to his attempt to ease human suffering. At first, Christ fails to find the reassuring presence of God in the vastness of the universe. Then, tormented by the harshness of his fate, he seeks God within himself. He sees his death not as a part of redemption but as the extinguishing of the last hope for religion. In the fourth sonnet, Christ desires death merely as an end to his personal suffering. Ironically, Judas appears as an ineffective figure, and the only one who can ease Christ’s torment is Pontius Pilate, who condemns him.

The final sonnet of this sequence returns to figures from pagan mythology, comparing Christ with Icarus in his vain attempt to win heaven. Only “for a moment” Olympus totters toward the abyss. With the reference to Cybele, the goddess of resurrection, it appears that the old gods may survive. Their oracle, however, remains silent. The last line affirms that only the transcendent God understands the divine mystery.

Neither Christ nor the pagan gods can have the last word in Nerval’s The Chimeras. After each religion comes and perishes, the work ends with “Vers dorés,” in which a pantheistic spirit in nature dwarfs human understanding. This sonnet puts the flower imagery of “El Desdichado,” “Myrtho,” and “Artémis” in a new context. Animals, plants, and even stones contain souls that are hidden from human comprehension. This assertion leads Nerval to the view that humans must respect nature rather than putting it to “impious usage.” Yet the power contained in nature may also be a threat to humanity. An eye hidden within a rock wall may be looking out, and all matter is capable of action. In the context of revenge established in some of the earlier sonnets, the nonhuman elements of the world may be ready for their own revenge.

Nerval’s The Chimeras grew out of ambivalent feelings that haunted his life, but beyond that it crystallized a mood of religious incertitude prevalent in the nineteenth century. In the third sonnet of the sequence, Christ sees himself “between a dying world and another being born.” Nerval’s review of the past is also an attempt to foresee the future.

Bibliography

Burwick, Frederick. Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Examines the concept of “poetic frenzy” as it was understood in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Analyzes the techniques Nerval used in The Chimeras to relate his visionary experiences.

Jones, Robert Emmet. Gérard de Nerval. New York: Twayne, 1974. This standard biography provides a chronology of Nerval’s life and a selected bibliography. Chapter 2 on Nerval the poet analyzes the elements of his earlier works that contributed to The Chimeras and offers a partial interpretation of the work.

Knapp, Bettina L. Gérard de Nerval: The Mystic’s Dilemma. University: University of Alabama Press, 1980. Offers an extensive consideration of Nerval’s life and earlier work. Chapter 20 gives a line-by-line reading of the twelve sonnets of The Chimeras, incorporating paraphrases that amount to an analytical translation of the work.

Nerval, Gérard de. Selected Writings of Gérard de Nerval. Translated and edited by Geoffrey Wagner. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957. Contains an introduction that provides information on aspects of Nerval’s life that influenced his poetry. Discusses The Chimeras in the context of Nerval’s other work. Includes translations of the principal works, including all of The Chimeras except “Christ on the Mount of Olives.”

Sowerby, Benn. The Disinherited: The Life of Gérard de Nerval, 1808-1855. London: P. Owen, 1973. This biography, with its convenient chronology of Nerval’s life, focuses on events rather than Nerval’s work. Includes some comments on The Chimeras, chiefly in the last chapter.

Winston, Phyllis Jane. Nerval’s Magic Alphabet. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Chapter 4 is devoted to The Chimeras, citing principally “Antéros” and “Delfica.” Provides an intellectual context for the work but limited interpretation of the text.