OCTOBER NIGHTS BY GÉRARD DE NERVAL
It is worth fumbling around in the past and reading an author who lived almost two hundred years ago, not only to discover that not much has really changed in the human nature during the last few thousand years, but also to learn quite a lot from it. Therefore, I headed off to town and came back with the double issue of “Literatura na Świecie” (“Literature Around the World”) (3-4/2008). The photograph on the cover caught my eye: a distinguished-looking man with a high forehead and patriarchal moustache daringly, with a focused face, stares directly into the camera. Here’s an extinct race of nineteenth - century realists; I have a hunch about a piece of a properly written, solidly completed, elegant novel of the old kind, unpretentious and without the smell of vanguard. The guy on the cover is Gérard de Nerval. I have to admit that apart from accidental snippets of information, I didn’t really know anything about him, which has encouraged me to read the text even more. First pages horrified me. If it hadn’t been for my good mood and friendly attitude caused by the author’s appearance (and a stock of cooled beer in the fridge), Nerval would have probably ended up in a box with leprous books waiting for transport to a second-hand bookshop. The Salt Smugglers. The Story of Father de Bucquoy (Przemytnicy. Historia księdza de Bucquoy), because this work opens the review of the latest and not yet published in Poland Nerval’s texts, is an awful twaddle. It is neither an academic dissertation with a historiographical bent nor a fictional tale with an admittedly good, but completely spoiled by the narrator plot. Weird abbreviations, shallow descriptions, lengthy and humdrum auto-commentaries, lousy jokes and ridiculous digressions, a completely insipid language – this is what is hidden behind the promising title of The Salt Smugglers. Perhaps the author’s behaviour can be a bit excused by the fact that he wrote the piece for the daily paper and was under the pressure of censorship. But what can explain his bowing to this pressure and writing for the daily? I somehow sailed through this muddy river of text but I do not recommend that kind of accomplishments to anyone. Let’s reverently bow to Ryszard Engelking for his heroic deed, of translating something so horrible, and let’s go on to October Nights (Paris, Pantene, Meaux), a text definitely better, which talks about wandering around restricted Parisian areas and dives, hanging half-way between Purgatory and Hell. It’s a diary – a life record of, to be specific, three long nights and three different places. Places, that were located nearby each other in France, and well known to Nerval. The writer went there to rest from his great foreign journeys for which he was famous (among many others, he took a year-long trip to the East). He is now a mature man, in the middle of his way (as he writes himself) not yet suspecting that he will die soon at his own hands by hanging himself in one of Parisian dead ends. Similarly to Charles Baudelaire’s or Paul Verlaine’s stories, what is present here are the motifs of absinth, encountered freaks bizarre individuals populating lower layers of the city, old prostitutes, street peddlers, labourers, beggars, tricksters, notorious liars and other figures of this type. In this short story Nerval juxtaposes the dirty delights of Paris at night with the flower-scented, pure idyll of little towns. He is attracted to sin and holiness, dissipation and kindness, in spite of the fact that in reality he is a man who lives on the side of the brightness and is fascinated by the darkness and depravity only as an object of observation and literary description. Today Nerval’s “hell” wouldn’t frighten even a preschooler judging from the restrained and mild way in which it is described. Nerval is careful not to get too deep into the Parisian gutter, because he probably fears of his life. He suffers from periodic recurrences of his mental illness, so he fears twice as much of going insane again after too intense experiences. He tries to be sedate, self-controlled, kindly winks at what he sees, abandons the descriptions of more shocking scenes; his feelings are stable, placed within the bounds of reason, they are predictable, understandable, easily described in words, which is a pity. If Nerval had loosened his tie, drunk more absinth, lost self-control, crossed the line between madness and normality, he might have been more absorbing. And so we have a very nice Summer Night Dream instead of disgusting, infested, whoring around, boozy Paris. If Nerval had spread his arms and jumped into the sewers with the smile of a lunatic on his face…, hmm, then he would have become Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Henry Miller, Witkacy, Charles Bukowski… and not just Gérard de Nerval. Of course, it’s not his fault that sex, deviation, cynicism and street language will enter literature no sooner than 50 years later. If it had happened in his times, we would definitely have had something to read. Then Erofeyev would never have gone from Moscow to Pietuszki for fear of committing plagiarism. A literary code of Romanticism didn’t allow Nerval to do what he perhaps should have done, namely, break away from the normality and sail into deep waters of insanity. Nerval was fighting with his mental illness. Madness didn’t come into play as far as literature was concerned. In its repertoire, literary code had, of course, wild and haunted youngsters, obsessed with the vision of prophets, but their lunacy was like a lipstick on a priest’s face, it was rather a stylistic procedure than a real experience or a prisoner’s fantasy (de Sade). A romantic wildness was aristocratic, high-flown, often pretentious, far-fetched and simply made-up. Moreover, it had to be sacred, it had to take place against the background of struggles of great ideas and historic powers. Or, the other way round, be the effect of hidden, mysterious powers beyond the human reason. Nerval’s insanity was physical and, in the understanding of those days, not literary. It abounded in upsetting depressions, strung-outs and abstinence syndromes after the withdrawal of hashish or absinth, confusion, poverty, split personality, a feeling of hounding and loneliness. Not very sublime states, dripping with physiology, monotonous, exhausting, bullying the brain and organs, more constipation, vomit and stomach problems than sky-high rises of an inspired soul. This kind of illness couldn’t fit the canon. After the first attack in 1841, Nerval fought with the madman label till the end of his life. The madman from the label was exactly this romantic type, possessed spirit, sensitive, delicate man to whom he felt of course, no relation. Writing The Salt Smugglers and dressing up as a historian- scientist, he tried to prove his normalcy and emotional balance. He didn’t want to copy the pattern of paper insanity, spread in the literature, and at the same time he couldn’t find a language for his own madness. It’s another division in his life – sham normality in his writings and real madness in everyday life. But this is what makes Nerval so interesting in spite of all, in spite of the boredom, lengths and sometimes trashy sentimentalism. His work and life show that some authors were born too early, that language of the age limited their possibilities to express themselves and thus significantly lowered the value of their achievements. Nerval should have been Strindberg’s peer, then instead of timid October Nights, he might have written something even more diabolical than Inferno.
So why is it worth reaching into the past and reading an author who lived almost two hundred years ago? Because one can learn at least this one valuable thing, though banal but today a little forgotten. A writer is always leading, and if not leading, he’s at least standing to the side, that’s why contemporary to him language and its current rules of speaking or the selection of subjects limit him. And there’s a very tough head needed to breach the wall of time.
Igor Kędzierski
Translated by Klaudia Makowska
Discussed journals: Literatura na Świecie