Lost in the Fold: Space and Subjectivity in Gérard de Nerval's "Généalogie" and Sylvie

Abstract

One of the first victims of, and rebels against, modernity, Gerard de Nerval attempted to redefine the boundaries of his own subjectivity through a remapping and enveloping of both internal and external, remembered and perceived space. The folding of space frees the subject from logical constraints and allows for nearly limitless recreations of the self. Nerval's use of the fold coincides with the definition provided by Gilles Deleuze in Le Pli. According to Deleuze, the fold is the philosophical and aesthetic figure that structures the work of Leibniz and the Baroque. Deleuze's reading of the Baroque proposes that, le propre du Baroque est non pas de tomber dans l'illusion ni d'en sortir, c'est de realiser quelque chose dans l'illusion meme, ou de lui communiquer une presence spirituelle qui redonne a ses pieces et morceaux une unite collective. (2) In this sense, we could call the folds of Nerval's texts baroque; the and Sylvie realize through folds in the text the illusion of the unity of the subject, a unity based on the inextricability of folds in matter to the folds of the perceiving or hallucinating subject. Inside and outside, memory and reality are confused and hallucinated in the fold, which is the site of a perpetually shifting subject. Through a crossed reading of Nerval's obscure and one of his most illustrious works, Sylvie, this essay explores the liberating possibilities as well as the eventual dangers of a spatial conceptualization of the subject. The juxtaposition of the and Sylvie uncovers the centrality of the fold to Nerval's spatial and textual imagination. In these two texts, he abandons the logical, modernist Cartesian grid in favor of the ambiguous, curved fold, as the distinction between inside and outside disappears in the pleats of his convoluted narrative. Nerval's folds manipulate space itself to envelop the subject in the world. Nerval's quixotic quest is to unify his visions, to create his illusions at will, to make the world conform to his desire. I. Il n'y a pas de Nuits des temps The document commonly referred to as Nerval's Genealogie fantastique (3) presents an extraordinary enfolding of social and psychic space through the condensation of hundreds of genealogical annotations onto a single manuscript page. Probably composed at the end of March 1841 during Nerval's first internment in the clinic of Dr. Esprit Blanche, (4) the predates the Voyage en Orient and anticipates the obsessions of Les Filles du feu (1854) and Aurelia (1855). According to Jean Richer, the first version of Aurelia (also from 1841) presents remarkable similarities to the Genealogie, which suggests that 1841 may indeed be the defining moment of Nerval's imagination. (5) Richer and Jean-Pierre Richard have done considerable work to situate the within Nerval's opus and to interpret the development of the inner logic of the manuscript. (6) However, the form of the Genealogie, its quality as image, has literally been overlooked, despite the fact that the tension between the visible and readable is key to the interpretation of this labyrinthine text. The is devoted to three uneven parts of Nerval's inner world: his father's family (Labrunie), his mother's family (Laurent), and his literary pseudonym (Nerval). As many critics have remarked, Nerval is the anagram of his mother's maiden name (LAVRENt), a partial anagram of his father's name (LAbRVNiE), and the name of his maternal uncle's property, the clos de Nerval. Nerval claims that the property near Senlis was an ancient Roman camp and traces the name back to the twelfth Roman emperor, Nerva. The literary/textual name Nerval links the two families Labrunie and Laurent and situates them in space and epic time. The sets out to create the matrix from which Gerard Labrunie de Nerval emerges. The goal of the drawing and the lineage is to make sense (both as meaning and as direction) of the disparate origins of the self. …