1979 – 11 min – Colour 16 mm – Optical sound track.

  (Drawing by Marc-Éric Chambon.)

Gerard de Nerval is a French romantic poet, who lived from 1808 to 1855. His well-known sonnet El Desdicbado has inspired many writers, especially surrealists.

He wrote in the preface of The Maids of Fire (which includes El Desdichado):

“And since you were so ill-advised as to quote one of these sonnets composed in a dreamy supernaturalist state, as the Germans would say, you have to hear all of them. You will find them at the end of the volume. They are not really more obscure than Hegel’s metaphysics or The Memorables by Swedenborg, and would loose their-charm in being explained, were it possible ; at least, grant me the merit of expression ; – the last insanity which probably will remain with me, will be to believe myself a poet. Criticism has to cure me.”

The film translates each word of Nerval’s poem into an image, and keeps the sequence of the French verses. It does not try to find out the sense of the Desdichado, but only one sense – the one of a contemporary reader.

The Fate

I am the Gloomy, – the Widowed, the Inconsoled
The Prince of Aquitaine with abolished Tower:
My Only Star is dead, – and my constellated lute
Bears the black Sun of Melancholy.

In the night of the Grave, Thou who have consoled me,
Give me back the Posillipo and the sea of Italy
The flower that pleased so much my desolate heart
And the bower where Vine-branch with Rose allies. 

Am I Eros or Phoebus ?. Lusignan or Biron ?
My forehead is red still from the kiss of the Queen
I dreamed in the Cave where swims the Siren. 

And I have twice victorious crossed the Acheron:
Modulating round and round on Orpheus’lyre
The sighs of the Saint and the screams of the Fairy.

Gerard de Nerval

Credits

El Desdichado, upon a François Letaillieur’s idea, has been directed by Pierre Jouvet, based on Gérard de Nerval’s poem.