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Abstract

At the very beginning of the Nervalian world lies an image that repeats itself infinitely, and the perpetual return of “the same one” results in an obsession with the image of a mother who disappeared when he was a child. Nerval never stops looking for this mother, who in spite of her absence, lived on through substitutive representations—the mise en abyme of resemblances. Indeed, critics find that the various female figures in Gérard de Nerval’s works are not only inseparable but repetitive of one supreme model of “the one and only,” “the universal Mother.”In the world of theater to which he is passionately attached, he admires an actress as the “muse of absence,” not a real woman but the incarnation of an “image.” In this phantasmagoric image, he catches a glimpse of the presence of “the one and only,” that is, the eternal mother figure. Since what he is looking for is not the love itself but a fantasy or the impossible, his attempt to save his pure love is destined to fail. Put differently, love is an object that is always already lost for Nerval. His quest for “the one and only” comes from a feeling of abandonment linked to the premature disappearance of his mother and the unhappy love that Nerval experiences with the cantatrice Jenny Colon. By analyzing his works such as, Sylvie, Octavie, and Corilla, it is easy to see how he transposes the events of his private life, especially with regard to Jenny Colon, to a myth. Retracing the different stages of the metamorphosis of the ideal figure of Jenny Colon—who is loved, lost, and forever pursued—affirms that Nerval’s encounter with her is the most significant event of his life that greatly influenced his oeuvre. His love for Colon is a testimony of his search for a maternal love that was absent in most of his life.

At the very beginning of the Nervalian world lies an image that repeats itself infinitely, and the perpetual return of “the same one” results in an obsession with the image of a mother who disappeared when he was a child. Nerval never stops looking for this mother, who in spite of her absence, lived on through substitutive representations—the mise en abyme of resemblances. Indeed, critics find that the various female figures in Gérard de Nerval’s works are not only inseparable but repetitive of one supreme model of “the one and only,” “the universal Mother.”In the world of theater to which he is passionately attached, he admires an actress as the “muse of absence,” not a real woman but the incarnation of an “image.” In this phantasmagoric image, he catches a glimpse of the presence of “the one and only,” that is, the eternal mother figure. Since what he is looking for is not the love itself but a fantasy or the impossible, his attempt to save his pure love is destined to fail. Put differently, love is an object that is always already lost for Nerval. His quest for “the one and only” comes from a feeling of abandonment linked to the premature disappearance of his mother and the unhappy love that Nerval experiences with the cantatrice Jenny Colon. By analyzing his works such as, Sylvie, Octavie, and Corilla, it is easy to see how he transposes the events of his private life, especially with regard to Jenny Colon, to a myth. Retracing the different stages of the metamorphosis of the ideal figure of Jenny Colon—who is loved, lost, and forever pursued—affirms that Nerval’s encounter with her is the most significant event of his life that greatly influenced his oeuvre. His love for Colon is a testimony of his search for a maternal love that was absent in most of his life.