TO ALEXANDER DUMAS.
When it was currently reported that Gérard de Nerval had become insane, Alexander Dumas, who was then publishing that amusing journal Le Mousquetaire, endeavored to explain and interpret the poet's peculiar form of mental alienation. Gérard, who presently came to himself, as was his wont, took note of the study, and in return dedicated to Dumas his Filles du Feu, thus acknowledging the obligation conferred by the great novelist in inditing the epitaph of the poet's "lost wits."
This dedication, now done into English for the first time, is interesting and important, as embodying the author's own interpretation of his singular mental constitution. He confesses that he is unable to compose without incarnating himself in his creations so thoroughly as to lose his own identity. In illustration, he throws into the text the tragic history of a mythical hero. It is easy to trace in this story of a nameless prince, unable to prove his lofty origin, involved in a network of misfortunes through the crafty machinations of the arch plotter La Rancune (malice) and abandoned by his mistress, the beautiful guiding Star of his destiny, allegorical allusions to the poet, the heir of genius and of glory, unable to prove or justify his noble birthright, his highest impulses misunderstood and trampled upon by a heartless and vulgar world.
LUCIE PAGE.
I dedicate this book to you, my dear Master, as I dedicated Lorely to Jules Janin. I was indebted to him for the same service that I owe to you. A few years ago, it was reported that I was dead, and he wrote my biography. A few days ago, I was thought to have lost my reason, and you honoured me by devoting some of your most graceful lines to the epitaph of my intelligence. Such an inheritance of glory has fallen to me before my time. How shall I venture, yet living, to deck my forehead with these shining crowns? It becomes me to assume an air of modesty and beg the public to accept, with suitable deductions, the eulogy bestowed upon my ashes, or rather upon the lost wits contained in the bottle which, like Astolpho, I have been to seek in the moon, and which, I trust, I have now restored to their normal place in the seat of thought.
Being, therefore, no longer mounted upon the hippogriff, and having, in the popular conception, recovered what is vulgarly termed reason,—let us proceed to the exercise of that faculty.
Here is a fragment of what you wrote concerning me, the tenth of last December:
"As you can readily perceive, he possesses a subtle and highly cultivated intellect, in which is manifested from time to time a singular phenomenon which, fortunately, let us hope, has no serious import to himself or his friends. At intervals, when preoccupied by literary toil, imagination goaded to frenzy masters reason and drives it from the brain; then, like an opium-smoker of Cairo, or a hashish-eater of Algiers, Gérard finds again the talismans that evoke spirits. Now he is King Solomon waiting for the Queen of Sheba; then by turns Sultan of the Crimea, Count of Abyssinia, Duke of Egypt, or Baron of Smyrna. Next day, he declares himself mad and relates the whole series of events from which his madness sprung, with such a joyous abandon, such an ingenious fertility of resource that one is ready to part with his wits in order to follow such a fascinating guide through the desert of dreams and hallucinations, sprinkled with oases fresher and greener than any which dot the route from Alexandria to Ammon. Finally, melancholy becomes his muse of inspiration, and now, restrain your tears if you can, for never did Werther, René, or Antony pour forth sobs and complaints more tender and pathetic!"
I shall now endeavour to explain to you, my dear Dumas, the phenomenon which you mention above. There are, as you well know, certain writers who cannot invent without identifying themselves with the creations of their imagination. You remember with what conviction our old friend Nodier related how he had the misfortune to be guillotined in the Revolution. The narrative was so convincing that we wondered instinctively how he had contrived to fasten his head on again.
Understand, therefore, that the ardour of production may conduce to a like result, that the author incarnates himself, as it were, in the hero of his imagination so completely that he loses himself and burns with the imaginary flames of this hero's love and ambition! This was precisely the effect produced upon me in narrating the history of a personage who figured under the title of Brisacier, about the time of Louis XV, I believe. Where did I read the fatal biography of this adventurer? I have found again that of the Abbé of Bucquoy, but I cannot recall the slightest historical proof of the existence of this illustrious unknown. What for you, dear Master, would have been but a pastime,—you, who have with clever artifices so bewildered our minds concerning the old chronicles, that posterity will never be able to disentangle truth from fiction, and is certain to credit your invention with all the characters from history that figure in your romances—this became for me a veritable obsession. To invent, is in reality only to recollect, says a certain moralist. Finding no proofs of the material existence of my hero, I suddenly came to believe in the transmigration of souls, not less firmly than Pythagoras or Peter Leroux. Even the eighteenth century, in which I believed myself to have lived, was full of these illusions. Do you remember that courtier who recalled distinctly that he was once a sofa? Whereupon Schahabaham exclaimed with enthusiasm, "What, you were once a sofa! why, that is delightful!—Tell me, were you embroidered?"