シルヴィ — ジェラール・ド・ネルヴァル
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Sylvie: souvenirs du Valois Author : Gérard de Nerval Commentator : Andrew Lang Translator : Lucie Page Release date : August 13, 2012 [eBook #40492] Most recently updated: October 23, 2024 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40492 Credits : Produced by Marc D'Hooghe (From images generously made available by the Hathi Trust) *** START OF MOSHER 1896 GÉRARD DE NERVAL. Of all that were thy prisons--ah, untamed, Ah, light and sacred soul!--none holds thee now; No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou Art free and happy in the lands unnamed, Within whose gates, on weary wings and maimed, Thou still would'st bear that mystic golden bough The Sybil doth to singing men allow, Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed. And they would smile and wonder, seeing where Thou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind, Dreamily murmuring a ballad air, Caught from the Valois peasants, dost thou find A new life gladder than the old times were, A love more fair than Sylvie, and as kind? ANDREW LANG. CONTENTS SYLVIE ET AURÉLIE.—ANDREW LANG GÉRARD DE NERVAL SYLVIE: I A WASTED NIGHT II ADRIENNE III RESOLVE IV A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA V THE VILLAGE VI OTHYS VII CHAÂLIS VIII THE BALL AT LOISY IX HERMENONVILLE X BIG CURLY-HEAD XI RETURN XII FATHER DODU XIII AURÉLIE XIV THE LAST LEAF APPENDIX SYLVIE ET AURÉLIE. IN MEMORY OF GÉRARD DE NERVAL. Two loves there were, and one was born Between the sunset and the rain; Her singing voice went through the corn, Her dance was woven 'neath the thorn, On grass the fallen blossoms stain; And suns may set and moons may wane, But this love comes no more again. There were two loves, and one made white Thy singing lips and golden hair; Born of the city's mire and light, The shame and splendour of the night, She trapped and fled thee unaware; Not through the lamplight and the rain Shalt thou behold this love again. Go forth and seek, by wood and bill, Thine ancient love of dawn and dew; There comes no voice from mere or rill, Her dance is over, fallen still The ballad burdens that she knew: And thou must wait for her in vain, Till years bring back thy youth again. That other love, afield, afar Fled the light love, with lighter feet. Nay, though thou seek where gravesteads are, And flit in dreams from star to star, That dead love thou shalt never meet, Till through bleak dawn and blowing rain Thy soul shall find her soul again. ANDREW LANG. GÉRARD DE NERVAL. Il a toujours cherché dans le monde ce que le monde ne pouvait plus lui donner. LUDOVIC HALÉVY. He has been a sick man all his life. He was always a seeker after something in the world that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all. WALTER PATER. I. Of Gérard de Nerval, whose true name was Gérard 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,—Théophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, Arsène 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 Halévy have retold with great feeling the history of Gérard, his early triumphs, his love for Jenny Colon,—the Aurélie 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 passages out of Sylvie , and favours us with a specimen of Gérard's verse. "I translated these fragments," he tells her, "long ago in one of the first things I ever tried to write. The passages 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 Gérard: "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 Gérard collected and put into the mouth of Sylvie, the pretty peasant-girl." One more quotation from Mr. Lang, and we are done. Sylvie and Gérard have met, and they go on a visit to her aunt, who, while she prepares dinner, sends Gérard 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 t