I came to Gerard de Nerval's short novella Sylvie 1) through a comparison I heard made with Madame Bovary through its exploration of love as an end in itself, the state of being "in love with love" and the eternal and 2) through Proust's fascination with it - the influence it had is really obvious to see as this is a book absolutely obsessed with memory and the places, things, sensations etc. that go with them as well as the worldly sadness as we watch a world that feels most real and natural to us - that of our childhood, in particular - disappear or alter beyond recognition, places changing shape, people disappearing from our lives and so on. As I also suggested, it's very much a novel about a man and his lifelong intoxication and infatuations with women, specifically three of them - we begin with the actress Aurelie, but as it turns out this is but an illusion, a case of her being mistaken for a girl he saw only once in his childhood but who coloured every romance and the trajectory of his life ever since, Adrienne. She is contrasted with the Sylvie of the title who represents a more realistic love, one he at first ignores only to run back towards by which point it's all too late.

Adrienne is most interesting for her only appearance early in the book, one which is never forgotten as even while pursuing Sylvie our narrator seems to really be looking for her, as when he considers detouring into a convent, as Adrienne had disappeared from life when she was sent to a convent some years after the meeting (and perhaps his love for Sylvie is part of his attempt to relive and capture at least part of the memory of that unforgettable day). Maybe this is me projecting my own nature more widely but I feel like all of us have an Adrienne of kinds, a dream and ideal we're forever chasing after that lies just beyond and out of reach from wherever we go, an unquenchable desire for completion that is impossible in an imperfect existence; reading this brought out that side of me for definite, and the potent evocation of lost worlds and memories that exist as the only fragments of them made me feel a deep sadness for the same events and people in my own life. A beautiful, entrancing work. ( )

Ti si apre un mondo. come solo con i libri migliori capita... Non mi è ancora mai capitato tra le mani un libro che, come questo, sia capace di usare solo colori pastello senza risultare fastidioso.
Si tratta di una favola per adulti e la magia che a Gerard de Nerval riesce è quella di un vero affabulatore!In questa edizione è altamente apprezzabile anche la post-fazione ed il commento di Umberto Eco! Caldamente consigliato a chiunque! :-) ( )

Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855) was a French Romanticist and insane Parisian Bohemian, he (in)famously walked around with a pet lobster on a leash of blue silk ribbon. He was friends and collaborator with the Romantic era A-list, including Victor Hugo, Dumas etc.. but he never found monetary success and gave up early, hanging himself to death from a Latin Quarter street banister after a series of mental breakdowns. Yet not before writing what some consider the best French romantic poetry and prose of the era, including a hashish-filled travel book to the "Orient". His life-story reminds me of Syd Barret, a crazy diamond; or perhaps William Foster Wallace. He was a man of his times who took his art beyond the safety margins.

Sylvie is a novella that Marcel Proust called a "masterpiece". Umberto Eco spent three years studying it at University and read it continuously from youth. Harold Bloom included it in his The Western Canon (1994).

It's a lyrical piece with strong Romantic elements and, amazingly for its age, proto-modernistic symbolism. Grecian allusions, Medieval landscapes, Renaissance paintings come alive. Bring your historical dictionary. It concerns love lost, namely how an un-named narrator recounts when he was a younger man and managed to screw up three opportunities to obtain three woman. The women can be seen as allegorical of course and the work takes place on multiple levels, from the romantic to the literal to the psychological to the historical. It's one reason so many very smart people have been taken in by its charms as you can keep reading it over and over. It's also just a nice story on the surface that is universal, an older man looking back at youthful loves lost, told in a charming way with exotic settings.

There are a lot of translations around, I read an old one from the 19th century (intro by Andrew Lang), which in some ways better captured the lyricism and period flavor lost in some newer ones, but was also more difficult to follow the storyline. If your willing to read it slowly and carefully I think it's a good (and cheap) option, but Penguin Classics also has a newer translation (among others), and there is one from 1922 that is freely online.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2010 cc-by-nd ( )

A short novel of love and illusion. A story flows like a small river in a spring sun light.