The style of Nerval’s “Aurélia” 9783111343846, 9789027932846

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. THE WORD
2. WORD ORDER
3. INTENSITY
4. MIMETIC DEVICES
5. METAPHOR AND SIMILE
CONCLUSION
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

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DE PROPRIETATIBUS LITTERARUM edenda curat C.H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University Series Practica

109

The Style of Nerval's "Aurélia" by

William Beauchamp Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas

1976 MOUTON THE HAGUE - PARIS

© Copyright 1976 Mouton & Co. B.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

ISBN 90 279 3284 0

Printed in the Netherlands

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

7

1.

The Word Words Hyperbole Names. Borrowings Foreign Words Technicisms Occult and Religious T e r m s Word Groups Alliance de Mots Antithesis

12 12 12 13 15 15 16 18 22 22 24

2.

Word Order Displacement (Inversion) Adjectives Chiasmus Anticipation Disjunction

31 31 31 34 36 39

3.

Intensity Repetition Accumulation Rhythmic Accumulation T e r n a r y Groups Binary Groups

47 47 52 59 60 63

4.

Mimetic Devices Direct Discourse Interrogation Exclamation

70 70 74 78

5.

Metaphor and Simile

83

Conclusion

101

Selected Bibliography

105

Index

108

INTRODUCTION

Although wide critical interest has led to a considerable literature on Nerval in the last half-century, and particularly since the Second World War, few substantial studies have yet appeared on his style. (1) Astonishing as this may seem - language is, after all, what texts a r e made of - the situation is not atypical. Serious questions are thereby raised concerning the assumptions and priorities of the a c cepted criticism. The present study, it is hoped, will make a contribution to the growing movement, both in North America and Europe, to reverse this situation by shifting the focus of effort from traditional "études littéraires" to the elaboration of a more rigorous and immanent "science de la littérature". (2) Stylistic analysis is most usefully performed on individual texts, rather than a writer's entire production. There is no reason to a s sume that a single complex of stylistic structures characterizes an author's total output; within the space of one text, however, the investigator may presume a certain minimum consistency amenable to useful generalization. (3) In the case of Nerval, the text of Aurélia seems a useful starting point : with Sylvie, Les Chimères and sections of Le Voyage en Orient, it is generally considered his major work; if, as Jean Richer plausribly suggests, Aurélia provides a summa of Nerval's entire production, (4) it may offer as well an epitome of his mature style. Before outlining the method used in this study, a statement of c e r tain theoretical assumptions will clarify the general orientation: - "Literature is made of texts, not (authors') intentions." (5) - "Texts a r e made of words, not things or ideas." (6) - The literary phenomenon has to do with the relationship between reader and text - not author and text, not reader and author. (7) - In a literary text, the referential function is less important than the poetic (Jakobson) or stylistic (Riffaterre) function; (8) that is, what matters most is the relationship among signifiants. - "The response of the reader to a text is the causality pertinent to the explanation of literature." (9) This response is produced by the mechanisms of style. (10) Stylistics is thus a linguistics of style, "une linguistique du décodeur", (11) a linguistics of effects. - Any comprehensive analysis of a text, and any evaluation, must be preceded by an analysis of style. (12) - Style analysis is not inimical to the study of literary history, but complementary to it. (13)

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Although many questions are raised by each of these succinct affirmations , it is not possible here to review the details of a many-faceted debate which has been argued in detail over the last ten or more years. The method employed in the present study is derived essentially from the stylistics of Michael Riffaterre, (14) whose basic principles may be summarized as follows: - Literary texts are distinguished by the close control they exercise on the reader in the decoding process. By virtue of their low predictability, certain inescapable elements, encoded in the text, force the reader's attention, thereby governing his perception of the literary message. - Predictability allows a facile, elliptical decoding (reading) of a text; therefore, elements which cannot escape the reader's attention must be unpredictable. A stylistic effect occurs when in a verbal s e quence a linguistic pattern (formed by a group of features structurally or semantically related) is broken by an unpredictable element. The linguistic pattern may be called the context; the unpredictable element, the contrast; the two together, context plus contrast, form the stylistic device. (15) - The context just described is short and may be called a microcontext. That part of the literary message which precedes the stylistic device (microcontext + contrast) also influences the latter, either by reinforcing or weakening it, and may be called a macrocontext. The macrocontext is variable in length, beginning at the point where the reader perceives the existence of any continuous pattern (often, though not necessarily, at the beginning of a paragraph or other punctuation mark). - Macrocontext is as important a part of style as the stylistic device itself. Style involves the totality of the text, even if it is in the salient elements, i . e . , the stylistic devices, that style is most readily perceived. - If stylistic effects depend on contextual contrast, it follows that stylistic devices do not pre-exist, ready-made, outside a verbal s e quence. Further, the effects of structurally identical devices may vary from one context to another. The same form will, in one place, be stylistically active; in another, not. The same device will, in one occurrence, produce effect x; in another, effect y. In this respect, modern stylistics corrects classical rhetoric. - The stylistically active components of a text cannot be located by linguistic analysis, for their potential is realized not in the message itself but in the receiver of the message, i . e . , the reader. To identify these elements the investigator may therefore use readers as informants. Since, however, the readers' evaluations of content are likely to be subjective, their responses are used solely as signals pointing to the existence of a stylistic stimulus. Where several informants - critics, annotators, translators, compliant acquaintances, the investigator himself - agree, not on the interpretation but on the existence of an effect, a stylistic stimulus, has been pinpointed. The sum of these informants may be called a superreader (archilecteur). Let it be repeated: their sole function is to locate, not interpret, the

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stylistic stimuli. This technique operates as a check on the investigator (his bias, his fatigue, his exceptional familiarity with the text, etc.) and assures a greater degree of objectivity. (A check on the data furnished by the superreader is provided by the principle of contextual contrast: if no contrast occurs where superreader indicates a stimulus, then he has erred by addition and his signal can be discounted. ) - Independent stylistic devices frequently accumulate at the same point, exercising exceptionally tight control over the decoder. This phenomenon, convergence, is the most complex of stylistic forms and may serve as an additional criterion for the location of devices of style: even if a structure identified by the superreader as expressive does not present a clear contrast with its context, its stylistic value may be assumed if it is the locus of a convergence. (In some cases effects of style result from convergence alone, as in haiku, aphorisms, the beginning of any literary text.) - Since the linguistic code of reference changes in time, the reactions of a modern reader to an older text must sometimes be amplified by reference to literary history, philology, dictionaries contemporary with the text, and the like. - Once all stylistic stimuli have been located, they are then analyzed and described; at this stage - given the close relationship between language and style - linguistic methods are both pertinent and useful. The distribution, convergence, variants and constants of the stylistically active components gradually become clear, and the stylistic structures characteristic of the text are determined. The method sketched above offers major advantages: greater objectivity in the location of stylistically marked elements; comprehensiveness, for no component identified as marked may be ignored; protection against the danger of forcing stylistic data into preconceived molds - the major categories and their interrelationships become clear, gradually, only after the investigation is well under way. The method permits formulation of a series of precise, comprehensive, testable statements which elucidate both the text and the mechanisms by which the latter controls the reader; it allows the study of literary texts to benefit from the rigor of the methods of formal analysis. (16) The stylistician does not usurp the role of critic but rather provides a body of fundamental data without which no reliable, comprehensive evaluation of a text is possible. (17) NOTES (1) Occasional articles, such as Yves Le Hir's "La Versification de Gérard de Nerval" (Lettres Romanes, X, 1956), typically lack a sound methodology, and therefore pertinence. A notable exception is Henri Meschonnic's "Essai sur la poétique de Nerval" (Europe, 353, 1958, pp. 10-37) which, while offering many insights, does not pretend to be comprehensive. Published studies of individual poems

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are, from the viewpoint of rigorous stylistic analysis, almost uniformly grotesque. In most book-length studies, Nerval's style is treated only in passing, and where it does receive a few consecutive pages, the terminology is vague and impressionistic. George René Humphrey's L'Esthétique de la poésie de Nerval (Paris: Nizet, 1969), whose title implies at least some rigorous examination of language, is a jumble of impressionism, naïveté, and paraphrase, devoid of all coherent method. On the other hand, two impressive studies which, while not focusing specifically on style, treat closely related matters, have recently appeared: Karlheinz Stierle, Dunkelheit und Form in Gérard de Nervals "Chimères" (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1967) and Jacques Geninasca, Analyse structurale des "Chimères" de Nerval (Neuchatel: A la Baconnière, 1971). For a discussion of the latter book, see my review article, "From Astrology to Structuralism", Romanic Review, 64 (May, 1973). (2) See, for example: Georges Poulet, ed., Les Chemins actuels de la critique (Paris: Pion, 1967); Serge Doubrovsky, Pourquoi la nouvelle critique. Critique et objectivité (Paris: Mercure de France, 1968); Gérard Genette, Figures (Paris: Seuil, 1966); Roland Barthes, Critique et vérité (Paris: Seuil, 1966); Michael Riffaterre, Essais de stylistique structurale (Paris: Flammarion, 1971), esp. 261-284; Cesare Segre, "Structuralism in Italy", Semiotica, IV (1971), no. 3; and, more generally, various issues of new (or relatively new) journals such as Langue Franqaise, Poétique, Tel Quel, Communications , Langages, Semiotica, Diacritics, Lingua e stile, Strumenti critici, Littérature. (3) There is, moreover, the question of sheer labor: rigorous, comprehensive style analysis involves such meticulous, time-consuming investigation (with nine-tenths of the tentative results excluded from the final formulation) that few analysts could muster the stamina for a systematic examination of an entire corpus, or even all the major texts. (Moreover, the result of such an effort could be stultifying.) (4) Jean Richer, ed., Aurélia (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1965), v. (5) M. Riffaterre, "The Stylistic Approach to Literary History", New Literary History, H (Fall, 1970), 39. (6) Ibid. (7) Ibid. (8) Roman Jakobson, Essais de linguistique générale (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1963), 218; Riffaterre, Essais, 155, and "Sémantique du poème", CAIEF, no. 23 (May, 1971). (9) Riffaterre, "The Stylistic Approach to Literary History", 46. (10) Riffaterre, Essais, 31. (11) Essais, 153. (12) Essais, 264, 285. (13) Riffaterre, "The Stylistic Approach to Literary History". (14) For a detailed exposition of his theories and practice, see especially the Essais ; "The Stylistic Approach to Literary History"; "Sémantique du poème"; "La Métaphore filée dans la poésie surréaliste", Langue Franqaise, no. 3 (Sept., 1969), 46-60; "Le Poème comme représentation", Poétique, no. 4 (1970), 401-408; "Modèles de la phrase littéraire" in P. Léon et a l . , eds., Problèmes de

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l'analyse textuelle (Montreal and Paris: Didier, 1971), 133-151; "L'Explication des faits littéraires", in S. Doubrovsky and T. Todorov, e d s . , L'Enseignement de la littérature (Paris: Pion, 1971); "Système d'un genre descriptif', Poétique, no. 9 (1972), 15-30; "Sade, or Text as Fantasy", Diacritics 2 (1972), 2-9; "Dynamisme des mots: les poèmes en prose de Julien Gracq", Cahier de L'Herne, no. 20 (1972), 152-164; "Interpretation and Descriptive Poetry: A Reading of Wordsworth's Yew-Trees", New Literary History 4 (1973), 229-256. It goes without saying that weaknesses in the present study are to be attributed not to Riffaterre, but to the author. For criticisms of Riffaterre, see, for example, Jean Mourot, "Stylistique des intentions et stylistique des effets", CAIEF, 16 (1964), 71-79; Alain Hardy, "Théorie et m é thodes stylistiques de M. Riffaterre", Langue Française, no. 3 (Sept., 1969), 90-96. (15) A verbal sequence which functions as contrast to a preceding pattern may simultaneously establish a new pattern for a contrast to follow. (16) Daniel Delas, preface to Riffaterre, Essais, 12. (17) All page references concerning Aurélia a r e to the Oeuvres, ed. Albert Béguin and Jean Richer, 3rd e d . , Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, vol. I (Paris: Gallimard, I960). In identification of quotations, the abbreviation "M" stands for "Mémorables", the title of the last chapter of the work. It has sometimes been necessary to repeat textual examples: this implies no paucity of illustrative materials, but results from the density of the text and the tendency of devices to converge. In successive occurrences of the same example, different devices are stressed. Sometimes the repeated section serves as a context for the section that follows. Statistics concerning the frequency and distribution of stylistic devices are given regularly throughout the study, usually in parentheses. Such data are useful up to a point and so a r e included for the reader's information, but they are by no means decisive. In a general way, a device which occurs 30 or 40 times, often with striking effect, and in many parts of the text, can be judged more important for a global description of the style than one which occurs only four or five times - even though the latter, precisely because of its infrequency, may produce several of the most expressive segments in the entire work. In the future, statistical methods applicable with precision to style analysis may be developed; however, this is not the case at the present time.

1 THE WORD

At the level of the word, stylistic analysis reveals one of the hallmarks of the style of Aurélia: discretion. Nerval avoids the ostentatious, the self-consciously original. Against neutral contexts, even the most unobtrusive words can effect contrasts : stylistic payoff is achieved with modest means. Two major types of device can be distinguished: (1) those produced by terms which in themselves contrast with the context ( e . g . , a foreign word) ; (2) those whose effect depends on unexpected association of two or more terms, thus forming a stylistic group ( e . g . , oxymoron). (1) WORDS Hyperbole Of the first type, hyperbole - the occurrence of an exaggerated term in a context of proper ones - illustrates how stylistic efficacity can co-exist with stylistic discretion. Frequent (40 to 50 instances in the 53 pages of the Pléiade edition), hyperbole emphasizes, intensifies, often evokes emotion, yet is barely noticed. Sometimes it occurs as a relative superlative, where an absolute superlative would be normal: (2) II/l (p. 388): Ce qu'il me raconta ensuite est impossible a rendre: un rêve sublime dans les espaces //les plus vagues// de l'infini (....) II/2 (p. 390): //La plus morne// tristesse entra dans mon coeur. More often it occurs as a simple adjective: common words of measurement, for example, like mille, tout, infini, which are also clichés: l/l (p. 359): l'imagination m'apportait des délices //infinies// (= exaggeration of trfes grandes); 1/2 (p. 362): ses ailes brillaient de //mille// (= exaggeration of beaucoup de) reflets changeants. Certain cliché modifiers, whose strict meanings have been extended, result in emotive hyperbole: 1/3 (p. 364): je crus voir le ciel ( . . . ) s'ouvrir en mille aspects de

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magnificences //inoures//; 1/10 (p. 384): Alors je me reculai au trône, l'âme pleine d'un //indicible// orgueil; II/5 (p. 399): une averse //épouvantable// tombait dans le jardin. Hyperbole in Aurélia is quietly effective: inconspicuously, it highlights concepts, intensifies qualities, renders descriptions more vivid, emotions more poignant, helping to create that quality of moving simplicity, frequently admired but never accounted for. Names More numerous than hyperbole (about 100 occurrences) and more striking because of greater contrast with the context, expressive names are of two types: (1) exotic place names and (2) historical or legendary names of persons. Place names whose inclusion is not required by the material facts of the narrative occur over thirty times, usually in passages relating dreams or visions. Some of these, already established in French literary tradition as purveyors of daydreams, appeal to a complex of pre-existing associations: Constantinople, les pyramides, l'Inde (evocative of the mystical, idealized East, much in vogue in the literature of the time). Others impress by their bizarre spellings: les jardins de //Schoubrah//; les profondes grottes d'//Ellorah//; les parfums de V / / Yémen//. Each of the latter is, as well, linked to a striking sensory detail: Schoubrah to sumptuous Oriental gardens; Ellorah to grottoes, archetypal holy places; (3) Yemen to aromatic perfumes. Other names, through context, assume symbolic value. At the time of his first attack of insanity, the narrator had spent an evening with friends in Paris: 1/2 (p. 362): L'un d'eux, nommé Paul***, voulut me reconduire chez moi, mais je lui dis que je ne rentrais pas. "Où vas-tu? me dit-il. - //Vers l'Orient//!" Already exotic by contrast with the narrative's French setting, these names and others (Saardam, Moscovie, Pologne, la Baltique, la Néwa) are all the more conspicuous by virtue of their gratuitousness. When the narrator mentions Norway, it is not to report a fact (a voyage he made there) but to evoke the Nordic mists, which figure his own state of soul: "Une mélancolie pleine de douceur me fit voir les brumes colorées d'un paysage de Norvège éclairé d'un jour gris et doux" (M, 411-12). Below, Africa is not a detail from real life, but a symbolic setting for the cataclysms attendant upon a great flood that destroyed the world: "Trois des Eloîm s'étaient réfugiés sur la cime la plus haute des montagnes d'Afrique" (1/8, p. 378). All such names invite revery about distant lands ; it is not essential to know where, or what, Schoubrah, Ellorah, and Yemen are: the names suffice, the imagination imbues them with marvels of its choosing. The majority, moreover, evoke the mystical East, inviting

14 rapprochement with the vocabulary of religion and the occult (below). (4)

Names of persons, historical or legendary, (5) are twice as numerous as the preceding group (about 70 instances). The majority by far allude to religious figures - Christian, Graeco-Roman, Egyptian and Oriental, even Nordic and Celtic (6) - creating an atmosphere of legend and myth. A personal name may insinuate occult or supernatural overtones into an otherwise "realistic" passage. Speaking of the sanatorium room to which his esoteric books had been transported, the narrator writes: "C'est un capharnaum comme celui du //docteur Faust//" (II/6, p. 405). Implication: like Faust, the narrator, through his occult studies, has contact with supernatural powers. Or speaking of alleged Roman relics in his childhood Valois: II/4 (pp. 393-94): Un certain / / M a r s / / en bronze doré, une / / P a l las ou Vénus a r m é e / / , un //Neptune ou une Amphitrite// sculptés au-dessus de la fontaine du hameau, et surtout la bonne grosse figure barbue d'un dieu / / P a n / / souriant à l'entrée d'une grotte ( . . . . ) J'avoue qu'ils m'inspiraient alors plus de vénération que les pauvres images chrétiennes de l'église ( . . . . ) Implication: these are not only picturesque details; they help explain a deeply embedded tendency to accept mythological symbols as embodiments of living truth. Occasionally the supernatural is introduced by simple allusion to a book or author: 1/1 (p. 359): //Swedenborg// appelait ces visions //Memorabilia//; il les devait â la rêverie plus souvent qu'au sommeil; //l'Ane d'or d'Apulée//, / / l a Divine Comédie du Dante//, sont les modèles de ces études de l'âme humaine. Implication: And Aurélia will be another. More often, the expressive name is used to interpret ordinary events as marvelous. At Dr. Blanche's sanatorium, for example: "Versdeux heures, on me mit au bain, et je me crus servi par les Walkyries, filles d'Odin" (II/6, p. 402). Or when, in a state of mental agitation, the narrator sees a workman carrying a child on his shoulder: "je m'imaginai que c'était saint Christophe portant le Christ" (II/4, p. 396). The incongruity of mythological beings in Second Empire Paris underlines emphatically the central experience of the narrator's life: the interpénétration of reality (la vie) and dream (le rêve). Finally, expressive names occur most often in explicitly religious/ occult contexts (e. g., relations of visions) where, supported by convergent devices, they may be strongly emotive. The name may represent an archetype or symbol established in the culture at large : M (p. 410): Le ciel s'est ouvert dans toute sa gloire et j'y ai lu le mot pardon signé du sang de / / J é s u s - C h r i s t / / .

15 Emotivity is here linked to longings for transcendence, purification, freedom from guilt, eternal security, all epitomized by Jesus the savior, the sacrificial lamb. Or the name may embody exotic archetypes or symbols which, though empty of specific content for most readers, are charged by the context with supernatural reverberations: M (p. 411): Sois donc béni toi-même, 6 / / T h o r / / , le géant, - le plus puissant des fils d'//Odin//! Sois béni dans / / H é l a / / , ta mère, car souvent le trépas est doux, - et dans ton frère / / L o k i / / , et dans ton chien //Garnur//! These strange appellations, enmeshed in a complex of convergent devices suggesting a prayer (apostrophe, imperatives, repetition, enumeration), become mysterious counters for mystical unknowns. The proliferation of supernatural connotations; the intermingling of the fabulous and the mundane; revery induced by the exotic and bizarre - these are the effects of names, (7) which, for Nerval, are far more than convenient labels. Names conceal clues to previous incarnations ; they are hieroglyphs of hidden truths and essential r e alities, polarizations of cosmic meanings and correspondences. Names, in fact, provide the symbols that dominate Nerval's most important works. (8) Borrowings By far the largest single group of expressive words in Aurélia are those which contrast with the predominant level of the language used in the text (here, the "standard" written expression of a cultivated mid-nineteenth-century Frenchman): (9) such terms are imported, or borrowed, on the one hand from foreign tongues, on the other from the technical vocabularies of science, philosophy, and religion. Foreign Words Most of the dozen foreign terms (two of which - Eloîlm and Ferouer occur several times) embody occult or mythological concepts or symbols, thus combining the mystery of alien tongues with that of the supernatural. The foreign term may be a book title: "Cette //Vita nuova// a eu pour moi deux phases" (1/1, p. 359). Like Dante's work, Aurélia, too, centers on dream visions and ultimate purification through devotion to an ideal woman, mediatrix between heaven and earth. Or the adaptation of a book title: "Mémorables", modeled on Swedenborg's Memorabilia. It may be a name, as in a Latin hymn: "des voix enfantines répétaient en choeur: Christe ! Christe ! Christe!" (II/4, p. 397); the Arabie Mohamed instead of the French Mahomet (II/4, p. 397); Ferouer, (10) in the sense of Double, transliterated from the Persian; the frequently used Hebrew plural EloTm, spiritual

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beings that played a major role in Gérard's cosmology: "les sept p r e miers Eloïm qui s'étaient partagé le monde" (1/7, p. 375). The foreign word may be in the process of naturalization: (11) "Une déesse rayonnante guidait, dans ces nouveaux / / a v a t a r s / / (12) l'évolution rapide des humains" (1/8, p. 376). Nerval's italics suggest that the word is not yet assimilated; moreover, its original religious sense, incarnations of deities, seems attested by contextual association with "déesse rayonnante" and, in the preceding sentence, the indication that "des / / f o r m e s divines// se dessinaient sur la verdure". The borrowing may be a native word but with an alien meaning, as in the literal translation of a foreign t e r m . Concerning Vienna: "On sait que sur chacune des places de cette ville sont élevées de grandes colonnes qu'on appelle / / p a r d o n s / / " (M, p. 411). Or an unfamiliar word, which appears foreign (whether it in fact is, is beside the point, as long as it seems so): M (p. 411): Le serpent qui entoure le Monde est béni lui-même, car il relâche ses anneaux, et sa gueule béante aspire la fleur d ' / / a n x o k a / / , la fleur soufrée, - la fleur éclatante du soleil! An apparent importation, anxoka (13) is also a symbol. The reader may not know of what, but its connotations are clearly positive, for it is éclatante, linked to the sun, and it occurs in a passage whose keynote is the word béni. By their exoticism and mystery, foreign terms join a larger network of stylistic devices (including names, symbols, archetypes, technicisms) which, together, are mimetic of the narrator's occult experience of reality. Technicisms Technical terms - borrowed from the jargons of the professions, intellectual disciplines or the like - include any word which is perceived "avec un indice de spécialité" (Riffaterre). Such a term stands out because it belongs to a part of the language not habitual to the reader; though its meaning may be understood (and this is the rule in Aurélia), it is redolent of a specialized milieu and thereby emphatic. Certain terms are intrinsically technical and will appear so regardless of where or how they are used: 1/4 (p. 366): j'eus le sentiment que ces courants étaient composés d'âmes vivantes, â l'état / / m o l é c u l a i r e / / ( . . . . ) 1/4 (p. 369): Autant vaudrait demander compte â la fleur du nombre de ses pétales ou des divisions de sa / / c o r o l l e / / ( . . . . ) Others assume a technical quality because of context, either in a locution whose components, taken individually, are not technical but, taken together, are, or in the wider context of the sentence or passage:

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I I / l (p. 385): Le système fatal qui s'était créé dans mon esprit n'admettait pas cette royauté solitaire ( . . . ) ou plutôt elle s'absorbait dans / / l a somme des ê t r e s / / : c'était / / l e dieu de L u c r é t i u s / / , impuissant et perdu dans son immensité. Neither somme, nor êtres, nor dieu is technical in itself; but the complete phrases in which they appear embody concepts from pantheistic philosophy. The foreign Lucrétius instead of Lucrfece reinforces the technicism since Latin was the language both of Lucretius and, for many centuries, of European philosophy. Technicisms appear singly: "L'état //cataleptique// où je m'étais trouvé pendant plusieurs jours me fut expliqué scientifiquement" (1/5, pp. 371-72); or in clusters, especially in the more remarkable dream and vision relations: 1/4 (p. 366): mille fleuves pareils, dont les teintes indiquaient les //différences chimiques//, sillonnaient le sein de la terre comme les / / v a i s s e a u x / / et les / / v e i n e s / / qui serpentent parmi les / / l o b e s / / du cerveau. The principal domains from which technicisms derive (aside from religion and the occult which, because of their special importance, will be treated separately b'elow), are the physical sciences (physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology), the life sciences (biology, zoology, botany), and philosophy. Frequently they create an impression of lucidity, rational analysis, scientific reasoning, which counteracts in part the extravagance of the narrator's world-view. A scientific vocabulary seems to point to scientific truth - even if the reader does not quite understand how. If the narrator can write with such erudite precision, he must not at least be mad: II/6 (p. 403): Si / / l ' é l e c t r i c i t é / / , me dis-je, qui est le / / m a g n é tisme des corps physiques//, peut subir une direction qui lui impose des lois, à plus forte raison les esprits hostiles et tyranniques peuvent asservir les intelligences et se servir de leurs forces divisées dans un but de domination. Here the sense of rationality is augmented by the syntactic structure, which imitates that of deductive logic: if A, then B. In this respect, technicisms reinforce the effects of other style traits ( e . g . , conservatism of vocabulary, clichés, conventional literary forms) in reassuring the uneasy reader. There is no attempt to épater le bourgeois; Aurélia is far from the disorienting, chaotic language used by the surrealists to recreate similar experience of madness, hallucination, and dream. Paradoxically, then, the technical vocabulary confirms the text's tendency toward stylistic conservatism. One of the signs of Romantic reaction against Classical strictures, technicisms had long since won acceptance in French literature. A legitimate source of innovation and originality, even when ostentatious or incomprehensible, (14) they were used by major and minor authors, including Hugo, Balzac,

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Gautier. Yet in Aurélia few such words are not easily understood. Zénith, chrysalide, prisme, cénobitique, atome, octave, télescope achieve expressive effects (emphasis, authority . . . ) but do not mystify; the reader is affected, but not puzzled. Occult and Religious Terms Occult and religious terms, numbering some two hundred occurrences (the former half again as frequent as the latter), constitute the principal group of technicisms, as well as one of the most decisive style traits of Aurélia. The term "occult" here refers to all concepts and images related to the narrator's bizarre cosmology and quasi-mystical beliefs culled from many sources: alchemy, magnetism, astrology, theosophy, Freemasonry, the Cabala, several mythologies, Swedenborg, Apuleius, and others. (15) "Religious" refers to concepts and images drawn from Christian theology, liturgy, or practice and from the Bible. The two categories frequently overlap, for much Christian and Biblical terminology derives from pagan sources, and similarly, much occult terminology derives from religion - pagan, Jewish or Christian. Many occult terms are intrinsically technical: talismans, nécromants, cabalistes, arcanes. Others assume occult significance because of typographical emphasis, capitalization or italics: "le monde des Esprits" (1/1, p. 359); "le destin de l'Ame délivrée" (1/3, p. 364); "elles n'étaient pas en esprit comme moi" (1/9, p. 381); "l'autre ( i . e . , his "double") m'est hostile" (1/9, p. 381). Frequently, words which appear common enough in isolation a s sume occult significance because of context: either as symbols, or as expressions of specific occult doctrines: II/6 (pp. 401-402): Je m'imaginai d'abord que les personnes r é unies dans ce jardin avaient toutes quelque influence sur les astres et que celui qui tournait sans cesse dans le même / / c e r c l e / / y réglait la marche du soleil. "Cercle" is perceived as more than a casual configuration. The link with "soleil" activates one of its traditional values as emblem of the sun, sign of perfection and wholeness; moreover, the circular movement resembles a dance, form par excellence of magic, ritualistic symbolism. For the narrator, who imagines a cause-effect relationship between the circular motion of the sanatorium inmate and the course of the sun - on a realistic level absurd - both the form, circle, and the ritualistic dance seem to contain occult significance. Similarly, "étoile" in the following example: 1/2 (p. 362): je me mis à chercher dans le ciel une //étoile// que je croyais connaître, comme si elle avait quelque influence sur ma destinée. L'ayant trouvée, je continuai ma marche en suivant les rues dans la direction desquelles elle était visible, marchant

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pour ainsi dire au-devant de mon destin, et voulant apercevoir //l'étoile// jusqu'au moment où la mort devait me frapper. A polyvalent archetype to begin with, "star" assumes a symbolic character because of its mysterious influence on the narrator's destiny; its mesmerizing effect; its association with his supposedly imminent death. And indeed, we soon learn, it is on this star that all the kindred souls of the dead await him ; there he will be reunited to Aurélia (who, as Jenny Colon, had been an "étoile de comédie"). (16) The following instances show relatively common words ("hiéroglyphe" excepted) which, in context, refer to precise occultist tenets : 1/4 (p. 368): La terre où nous avons vécu est toujours le théâtre où se nouent et se dénouent nos destinées ; nous sommes les //rayons// du / / feu central// qui l'anime et qui déjà s ' e s t affaibli ( ) I I / l (p. 387): //L'alphabet magique, l'hiéroglyphe mystérieux// ne nous arrivent qu'incomplets et faussés soit par le temps, soit par ceux-là mêmes qui ont intérêt à notre ignorance; retrouvons la //lettre perdue// ou le //signe effacé//, recomposons la //gamme dissonante//, et nous prendrons force dans le monde des esprits. The fact that most readers do not understand these references is, stylistically, beside the point. It suffices that the context suggest the occult: the reader then draws from the terms whatever suggestions their habitual meanings provide; imagination supplies the rest. In the second quotation, for example, the reader need not know of the relationship between the Tarot cards and harmonics (17) in order to experience the sense of mystery, symbolism and cosmic significance conveyed by "la gamme dissonante". Like occult terms, the religious vocabulary is often technical intrinsically, evoking specific aspects of institutional Christianity: un pfere de l'Eglise (1/9, p. 381); l'apôtre (= one of the twelve) (II/l, p. 386); anachorète ( I I / l , p. 388); examen de conscience (before confession) (H/4, p. 393); la providence (II/4, p. 395); l'Ave Maria (II/4, p. 397); and repeated mention of God, the Virgin Mary, and Christ. Equally often, the terms are common to both Christianity and other religions, especially pagan cults of initiation like that of Isis, by which Nerval was fascinated. Whence a whole group of words dealing with the question of purification and election. Hell and hopelessness: the narrator had been plunged into "le sein du //désespoir//" (M, p. 413); " / / L ' a b î m e / / a reçu sa proie!" (II/2, p. 391). Petition of the divinity: "elle (Aurélia) pouvait / / p r i e r / / pour moi" (II/2, p. 391); "Il fallait que ton //voeu// lui fût porté par une âme simple" (II/6, p. 408). Penance, reparation, trials: " Peut-être Dieu se contenterait-il de c e / / s a c r i f i c e / / " (II/3, p. 392); " m a vie actuelle ne serat-elle pas une suffisante //expiation//?" (II/6, p. 404); " e l l e (la divi-

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nité de mes rêves) me dit: ' / / L ' é p r e u v e / / à laquelle tu étais soumis est venu à son terme ( . . . ) ' " (II/6, p. 408); "cette série d' / / é preuves// que j'ai traversées" (M, p. 414). Forgiveness and salvation: "Et qu'importe mon / / s a l u t / / m ê m e ? " (II/2, p. 391); "mon Dieu, / / p a r d o n n e z / / ! " (II/2, p. 391); "Il me semble que c'était la consécration du / p a r d o n / / des / / c i e u x / / " (II/5, p. 399); "Le / / c i e l / / s ' e s t ouvert dans //toute sa g l o i r e / / - et j'y ai lu le mot / / p a r d o n / / ( . . . . ) " (M, p. 410). In a dozen or so instances, Biblical or liturgical allusions t r a n s form the text into an inspired visionary revelation, like the Scriptures themselves. Though relatively few in number, these passages a r e striking because of emotivity, greater length, and the density of convergent devices. The allusion may be direct: 1/8 (p. 378): l'inondation pénétra les sables, remplit les tombeaux et les pyramides, et, //pendant quarante j o u r s / / , une / / a r c h e / / mystérieuse se promena sur les m e r s ( . . . . ) M (p. 410): Quand sa houssine légère toucha / / l a porte de nacre de la Jérusalem nouvelle// ( . . . . ) Equally often the allusion is indirect, achieved through diction and structure: 1/8 (p. 378): Un fléau plus grand que les autres vint tout â coup rajeunir et sauver le monde. La constellation d'Orion ouvrit au ciel / / l e s cataractes des eaux// ( . . . . ) (18) M (p. 409): Sur un pic élancé de l'Auvergne a retenti la chanson des pâtres. / / P a u v r e Marie! reine des cieux//! c'est à toi qu'ils s'adressent pieusement ( . . . ) //Hosanna! paix à la t e r r e et gloire aux cieux// ! In the second quotation, the first phrase echoes the openings of two popular Catholic prayers, the Ave Maria and the Salve Regina; the second parodies the hymn sung by the heavenly host at the birth of Christ. M (p. 411): Sois donc béni toi-même, 6 Thor le géant, - le plus puissant des fils d'Odin! Sois béni dans Héla, ta mère, car souvent le trépas est doux, - et dans ton f r è r e Loki, et dans ton chien Garnur. The mysterious names of alien Nordic gods are invoked as in a Catholic litany (a prayer addressed to God, Christ, the Virgin, or the saints and characterized by the regular repetition of proper names, honorific titles, and imperatives of petition or praise). By implication, the mythological divinities are assimilated to Christian theology. (Compare: Héla ta mère, Marie ta mère; fils d'Odin, fils de Dieu, i . e . Christ). Which is in fact the case, for in the final reconciliation envisioned in the "Mémorables," Christ in his mercy neither damns

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nor destroys the pagan gods, but includes them in his universal absolution. II/2 (p. 390): "Non, me dis-je, //je ne suis pas digne// de m'agenouiller sur la tombe d'une chrétienne; n'ajoutons pas une profanation à tant d'autres ! . . . " Both Biblical and liturgical, this phrase recalls the Domine non sum dignus, prominently recited six times at every Catholic Mass by priest and congregation, in Latin or the vernacular, just prior to Holy Communion. The hallowed context (cf. m'agenouiller, chrétienne, profanation) in which the phrase appèars increases the likelihood of this association: only the pure of heart dare approach the Eucharist - or Aurélia's grave. II/5 (p. 400): L'idée que j'étais devenu semblable à un dieu et que j'avais le pouvoir de guérir me fit //imposer les mains// à quelques malades, et, m'approchant d'une statue de la Vierge, j'enlevai la couronne de fleurs artificielles pour appuyer le pouvoir que je me croyais. Imposition of the hands, used in curing the ill (cf. thaumaturgy, the miracles of certain saints) and in exorcising devils, is also associated with the Catholic sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and holy orders. The narrator believes he has power, like the priest or saint, to dispense supernatural gifts. Significantly, the majority of the religious terms and allusions occur not in factually oriented statements, of a biographical nature for example, but in passages evoking pathological states, visions, dreams, hallucinations, and the occult. Whence, two conclusions: 1) their primary function is not denotative and direct, but connotative, oblique: they insinuate the radically religious nature of the narrator's experience of reality; 2) they tend to fuse and blend with the terminology of the occult. Isis and Christ, angels and magicians, magnetism and Messianic salvation are all part of the same world-view. Both religious and occult terms, then, tend to produce similar effects. They force attention, like all technicisms, by contrast with the non-technical context. Many are affective, either because they coincide with archetypes (e.g., abîme, feu, astres, nuit, salut, firmament, cieux; all the more so if the archetype is elevated, through capitalization, to the stature of a transcendent category: Ame, Esprit) ; or because of allusions to figures already emotionally charged in the culture at large (e.g., la Vierge, le Christ, mon Dieu); or because of the sense of immanence of the supernatural, whether beneficent and glorious (e.g., roi de gloire, mystiques splendeurs, transfigurée et radieuse, Hosanna) or threatening and sinister (e.g., l'autre, l'énigme fatale, les esprits hostiles). By their number and wide distribution, religious and occult terms are mimetic of the mystical optic with which the narrator views all things: his illness, his life, the universe. Reality is steeped in supernatural meaning. The casual introduction of even the most singular

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terms and images among the homely details of everyday life - a hymn from some past existence sung while walking home from a dinner party on the Right Bank, a blood-reddened globe rolling through the sky above the Tuileries - , the absence of explanation or other concession to common sense, (19) insinuate into the reader that same melding of fabulous cosmology and pedestrian reality, "l'épanchement du songe dans la vie réelle", which is the narrator's vision or world-view, and of which Aurélia is the textual embodiment. WORD GROUPS All the terms examined thus far are stylistically effective because of contrast with the larger context ( e . g . , tehnicisms in non-technical discourse); others, however, depend for their effects on association (and contrast) with a second, nearby term, with which they form an isolable stylistic group. Alliance de Mots In alliance de mots (20) (about fifty occurrences), the association of terms is unexpected, implausible, because of 1) apparent incompatibility, or 2) modification of a conventional pattern. The device, which often involves paradox and/or opposition, forces the reader to r e evaluate both terms in light of their unaccustomed union. Its basic mechanism is simple: an initial term, by denotation or connotation, limits the range of plausible second terms; an implausible second term then follows. 1/3 (p. 364): et je n'essayerais pas de décrire ce que j'éprouvai ensuite dans une série de visions insensées peut-être, ou / / v u l gairement maladives// . . . (The adverb plausibly modifies aspects of intellect, manners, or speech, but not illness.) 1/10 (p. 383): et fécondant pour ainsi dire l'inerte matière, qui se revêtait d'une //végétation instantanée// d'appendices fibreux, d'ailerons et de touffes laineuses. (Of all possible modifiers of végétation, which implies the slow, gradual process of growth, instantanée is among the least predictable.) I I / l (p. 387): Ce n'était autre chose que le feu même qui, étant / / u n composé d ' â m e s / / , formulait instinctivement la demeure commune. By extension, the term alliance de mots may also describe the incongruous juxtaposition, within the same passage, of both Christian and pagan elements. This occurs notably in the "Mémorables" and creates the impression that both groups, Christian and pagan, a r e but facets of a single, unitary religion:

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M (p. 410): et l'arc de lumière éclatait dans les mains divines d'//Apollyon//. (21) Le cor enchanté d ' / / A d o n i s / / résonnait â travers les bois. M (p. 409): Sur un pic élancé de l'Auvergne a retenti la chanson des pâtres. / / P a u v r e Marie! reine des cieux//! c'est à toi qu'ils s'adressent pieusement. Cette mélodie rustique a frappé l'oreille des / / c o r y b a n t e s / / . Ils sortent en chantant â leur tour, des grottes secrètes où / / l ' A m o u r / / leur fit des abris. - //Hosanna! paix à la t e r r e et gloire aux cieux//. In fixed or frequently used expressions, surprise results if a familiar element is replaced by an unaccustomed homologue. The effect - dependent on recognition of the underlying structure and, consequently, of the modification - resembles that of the renewal of a cliché. (22) 1/2 (p. 362): je dissertais avec deux amis ( . . . ) sur la peinture et sur la musique, définissant à mon point de vue / / l a génération des couleurs// et le sens des nombres. (Couleurs replaces its homologue in expressions like la génération des corps vivants, la génération des plantes, la génération des idées, and especially la génération des sons.) II/6 (p. 407): d'autres femmes de races diverses et dont les corps dominaient de plus en plus, présentaient sur les autres murs / / u n fouillis sanglant de membres et de t ê t e s / / ( . . . ) (Cf. un fouillis de papiers, un fouillis d'étoffes, un fouillis de broussailles.) In many instances the two terms of an alliance de mots seem not only implausibly joined, but mutually exclusive. Such pairs comprise the oxymoron of rhetoric, a condensed paradox, an antithesis in miniature: 1/1 (p. 361): une amitié //plus forte dans sa douceur// succéda à. de vaines protestations de tendresse. 1/5 (pp. 370-71): ils vivaient là ( . . . ) //pacifiquement vainqueurs// des masses aveugles qui avaient tant de fois envahi leur héritage. 1/5 (p. 370): des pavillons ( . . . ) peints et sculptés avec une / / c a p r i cieuse patience// ( . . . . ) In other instances, the terms are not strictly antithetical, but form nonetheless an opposition, if only on the level of positive-negative, honorific -pejorative : 1/8 (p. 379): ils se rejoignent dans un //hideux b a i s e r / / ( . . . . ) M (p. 412): cette chimère //attrayante et redoutable//. 1/8 (p. 378): Un / / f l é a u / / plus grand que les autres vint tout â coup

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//rajeunir et sauver// le monde. 1/6 (p. 374): elle semblait //s'évanouir// dans sa propre //grandeur//. (Her bigness should make her more noticeable; instead it makes her less so.) The principal effect of all alliance de mots is emphasis of the component terms (and concepts). Incongruity, surprise, a certain disconcertion: the reader focuses more intently in order to decode the message; he is forced to readjust habitual conceptions: the message is reinforced. Alliance de mots, moreover, can achieve a high degree of specificity with respect to feelings and visions for which there are no proper terms. The vast majority of alliances occur precisely in occult passages, where the improbable obtains and conventional vocabulary is often lacking. Paradoxically, the alliance itself may even assume the character of a (freshly invented) proper term. Antithesis Like alliance de mots, antithesis (23) - important for its frequency (nearly one occurrence per page) and the strength of its effects results from the linking of two terms (or groups of terms). Here, however, the focus is not association, but dissociation. In alliance, syntax tends to fuse the component terms (noun + adjective; adverb + adjective; noun + de + noun); in antithesis it sets them apart. Syntactic structuring of antithesis is achieved through parallelism of various kinds: homologous positions in similarly constructed phrases or clauses ; dependence of both antithetical terms on the same third term; the conjunctions ou and et, one term of the antithesis preceding, the other following. In most cases the accessory device of repetition (especially of relational words) underlines the parallel; frequently, so too does asyndeton. Most often the antithetical terms are strict dictionary antonyms ; frequently they are general or abstract as well : externe-interne, macrocosme-microcosme, synthèse-analyse, passé-avenir, bienmal . . . (24) Many antithetical pairs represent archetypal concepts, part of the immediate experience of all men: jeune-vieille, bon-mauvais, gai-triste, peines-joies, grand-petit, jour-nuit, mort-vie, terre-ciel, and thus favor evocation of the narrator's primordial obsessions. In the majority of cases antithesis includes only one pair of opposing terms; in the ten or so instances where two, or even three, reinforcing pairs occur, the effect is stronger: 1/4 (p. 368): par un phénomène analogue à celui du temps qui concentre un //siècle d'action// dans une / / minute de rêve//. 1/9 (p. 381): peut-être //l'un est-il promis à la gloire et au bonheur//, //l'autre à l'anéantissement ou à la souffrance éternelle//?

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On the one hand, antithesis may be characteristic of thoughtful discourse, the result of careful delineation of what is_and is not meant and in what respects; on the other, it risks obtruding - it is neat, orderly, attractive - to the detriment of other, more relevant meaning. Occasionally Nerval succumbs to this temptation; most often, however, antithesis is integrated into the discourse - as when polar opposites convey both emotivity and the sense of all-inclusiveness: II/6 (p. 403): Captif en ce moment sur la terre, je m'entretiens avec le choeur des astres, qui prend part //à mes joies et à mes douleurs//! (That is, in all the aspects of my life, a life which knows the full range of human emotions.) II/6 (p. 406): J'ai retrouvé avec joie ces humbles restes de mes années alternatives //de fortune et de misère//, où se rattachaient tous les souvenirs de ma vie. (Not every year was one of fortune or poverty; but all - in this dramatic, vicissitudinous existence are included between the two extremes. ) Antithesis may be an important convergent device in the forging of a striking formula, the kind that inevitably invites quotation: Il/l (p. 386): "L'arbre de //science// n'est pas l'arbre de //vie//!"; (25) H/6 (p. 404): "un atome peut tout//dissoudre//, un atome peut tout //sauver//!" In such a sentence antithesis may be inextricably bound up with chiasmus: "Il y avait de quoi //rendre fou un sage//; tâchons qu'il y ait aussi de quoi //rendre sage un fou//" (II/6, p. 406). Alongside formal antithesis there exists an equal number of implicit ones, i.e. oppositions whose terms, though antithetical, are not clearly etched by parallel syntax. This difference does not necessarily diminish effectiveness: an implicit antithesis may be less, more or equally expressive. The determining factors are the number and kind of contrasted terms, the mechanism of the opposition, and context. Sometimes the structure of implicit antithesis is quite close to formal parallelism: "et //une amitié plus forte dans sa douceur// succéda à //de vaines protestations de tendresse//" (1/1, p. 361); "//purs// quoique //ayant vaincu l'ignorance// ( . . . . ) " (1/5, p. 371). This is especially true when the contrasted elements are clauses, subordinate or independent: II/l (p. 388): c'est lui ( . . . ) qui emporte à jamais dans son ciel //celle qu'il m'eût donnée// et //dont je suis indigne désormais//! II/3 (p. 393): //Dieu m'avait laissé ce temps pour me repentir//, et //je n'en avais point profité//. Elsewhere implicit antithesis is formed of quite disparate, unparallel syntactic elements, usually with a diminution of effect: II/2 (p. 391): Une //nuit profonde// m'entourait, la maison loin-

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taine //brillait comme éclairée pour une f ê t e / / ( . . . . ) (modified noun vs. verb + complement) 1/1 (p. 360): "Quelle folie, me disais-je, d'//aimer ainsi d'un amour platonique// //une femme qui ne vous aime plus//!" (infinitive + complement vs. noun object + complement) The specific means which, in lieu of parallelism, may point up the opposition in implicit antithesis are numerous. For example: - the phrase à la fois II/l (p. 388): une conversation avec un être / / à la f o i s / / différent et participant de lui-même, (both A and not-A) - the negative ne . . . que 1/1 (p. 360): je leur donnais pour l'état constant de mon esprit ce qui //n'était que//surexcitation fiévreuse. - antonymous indefinite pronouns 1/6 (p. 373): et //chacune// était ainsi un composé de / / t o u t e s / / (....) All antithesis, formal and implicit, is emphatic: it underlines, stresses, attracts attention. Despite frequent convergence with paradox, antithesis suggests order and logic, tight intellectual control. Whether this impression of reason survives scrutiny is, stylistically speaking, beside the point; for the reader the impression remains. Sometimes the logic stands up: 1/9 (pp. 380-81): Je ne sais comment expliquer que dans mes idées, les événements terrestres pouvaient coQicider avec ceux du monde surnaturel, cela est plus facile / / à sentir qu'à énoncer clairement//. Sometimes, one may have doubts : II/l (p. 386): peut-être touchons-nous à l'époque prédite où la science, ayant accompli son cercle entier / / d e synthèse et d'analyse, de croyance et de négation//, pourra s'épurer elle-même (....) In either case, order in form seduces the reader, whether he comprehends or not, into assuming some kind of logic in thought. Like technicisms, antithesis flatters his rational bias, allaying possible uneasiness (26) in the face of affirmed mysteries. Aside from its value for emphasis and clarity, the polar tension of antithesis quite simply corresponds to Nerval's dualistic view of the

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world. His preoccupations - nowhere more so than in this text - r e volve around a series of antinomies : good-evil, guilt-expiation (pardon), hope-despair, dream-reality, present-past, salvation-damnation, the moi-the double, this world-the other world, center-circumference, above-below... (27) Antithesis is a linguistic grid imposed on all r e ality: 1/4 (p. 368): La matière ne peut pas plus périr que l'esprit, mais elle peut se modifier //selpn le bien et selon le mal//. //Notre passé et notre avenir// sont solidaires. 1/9 (p. 381): Les Orientaux ont vu là deux ennemis: / / l e bon et le mauvais// génie. " / / S u i s - j e le bon? suis-je le mauvais//?" me disais-je. En tout cas, l'autre m'est hostile... Dealing as it does in primordial concerns, antithesis is often emotively charged: II/6 (p. 404): O terreur! voilà l'éternelle distinction du bon et du mauvais. Mon âme est-elle / / l a molécule indestructible, le globule qu'un peu d'air gonfle, mais qui retrouve sa place dans la nature//, ou / / c e vide même, l'image du néant qui disparaît dans l'immensité//? M (p. 413): et je bénissais l'âme fraternelle qui, //du sein du désespoir//, m'avait fait rentrer dans / / l e s voies lumineuses de la religion//. No simple accident of a supposed human precondition to think in binary oppositions, antithesis in Aurélia is a form of specific meaning, (28) embodying, in part, the particular optic of a narrator whose view of the cosmos is radically dualistic (rent by forces of good and evil, which promise eternal happiness and threaten eternal suffering), whose view of himself is dualistic (torn between a thirst for purity and pardon and a bias toward sin and guilt), and whose direct experience of existence is felt in extremes of pleasure and pain. NOTES (1) See Michael Riffaterre, "Le Contexte stylistique", in Essais de stylistique structurale (Paris: Flammarion, 1971). (2) See Riffaterre, Le Style des Pléiades de Gobineau (New York: Columbia University P r e s s , 1957), 63: "le superlatif relatif présente la qualité comme un degré suprême par rapport à tous les autres . . . on conçoit que cette référence au monde entier, à toutes les possibilités analogues, si elle s'use et n'éveille pas l'attention en emploi normal, prenne un relief extrême lorsqu'elle ne convient pas au contexte." In the quotations from Aurélia, suspension points inside parentheses indicate omissions made by me; suspension points with no parentheses

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are Nerval's own. So are all italics. Double slashes identify the portion(s) of the passage specifically under discussion. (3) In fact, Ellorah (India) contains ancient underground temples; however, the reader need not know this for the stylistic effect to occur. (4) Africa and Asia: Afrique (three occurrences), Asie (three), Orient (two) ; (Moorish) Grenada, les montagnes de la Lune, Ethiopie, Egypte, le Caire (two), les Pyramides; Constantinople, Stamboul, SainteSophie (the church), Schoubrah, Bosphore, Beyrouth, la Jérusalem nouvelle (the heavenly city of the Apocalypse), Yémen; Inde, Himalaya, Ellorah (total: twenty-six occurrences). Northern and eastern Europe: Saardam, Weimar, Cronstadt, Norwfege, Baltique, Néwa, Pologne, Russie, St. Petersbourg, Moscovie (total: ten occurrences). (5) Only once in Aurélia does Nerval fully identify a contemporary person: "je crus reconnaître dans un des habitués le père Bertin des Débats" (II/5, p. 400). Heine is simply "un poète allemand". His friends Georges Bell and Paul Chenavard a r e simply Paul and Georges. Dr. Blanche is "mon excellent médecin". Whatever its motivation, this reticence favors concentration on the events of the narrative and their deeper significance; identification of real and relatively wellknown people, especially to a contemporary audience, might distract attention. (6) What is striking in Nerval is the amalgamation of all of these and their acceptance as living, mutually complementary realities. (7) What the following critics say concerning Les Chimères is largely applicable to Aurélia as well. Jean Richer, Gérard de Nerval et les doctrines ésotériques (Paris: Editions du Griffon d ' O r , 1947), 105: "Derrière chaque nom de Dieu antique évoqué par Nerval... il y a un ensemble de souvenirs précis constituant une idée force. Cetusage des noms propres rappelle l'emploi des noms-idées dans la poésie de Victor Hugo." Raymond Jean, 128: "l'extraordinaire usage que fait Nerval des noms propres - et qui est certainement une des sources les plus précises de la poésie des Chimères " Marie-Jeanne Durry, Gérard de Nerval et le mythe (Paris: Flammarion, 1956), 175: "Isolés au début des v e r s . . . ils (proper names) sont les éclatantes apellations dont use une sorcellerie évocatoire... ils sont des excitants, comme tout le jeu des initiales, des majuscules, des italiques." See also Anita Grossvogel, Le Pouvoir du nom. Essai sur Gérard de Nerval (Paris: Corti, 1972). (8) The chapter titles in Part One, "Thèmes et types universels", of Jean Richer's Nerval, Expérience et Création (Paris: Hachette, 1963) are revealing: (1) Prince d'Aquitaine, (2) Napoléonide, (3) Faust. Hélène, (4) Faust. Satan. Cain, (5) Saba. Erythréa. Lilith, (6) P e r e grinus, (7) Prométhée. Pandora. So, too, many of Nerval's own titles: Myrtho, Horus, Antéros, Delfica, Artémis, Angélique, Sylvie, Isis, Aurélia, etc. For significance the author attributed to his own name, see Richer, 29-49, 388-91. (9) In the case of Aurélia, the "standard" written expression of the culture at large and the dominant expression of the work generally coincide. Thus elements which seem imported in one of these systems will also seem so in the other. Different problems would arise if the

29

dominant expression of the work were, for example, colloquial or sub-standard (the speech, say, of a working-class first-person n a r rator): in such a context "standard" written expression would then appear as the imported and so stylistically significant element. (10) See Richer, Expérience, 16: "Dans l'Essai sur l'Histoire du Sabéisme du Baron de Boch, il (Nerval) trouve la notion de ferouer, qui est bien celle d'archétype platonicien: 'Les Ferouers, ou p r e miers modèles des êtres, qu'Ormusd crée pour combattre Ahriman,' le mot apparaîtra dans Aurélia (1-9), mais avec le sens double." (11) In contemporary English, both restaurant and double entendre are importations; the latter is still felt as foreign, the former is not. (12) The Complément du Dictionnaire de l'Académie (1842) gives the word avatâra; Dauzat (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue f r a n çaise) attests to the word in 1822. (13) This word, written angsoka, appears in two French works as early as 1830, one of them the translation of a text from India; it is later used several times by Nerval's close friend, Théophile Gautier. See Georges Matoré, Le Vocabulaire et la société sous Louis-Philippe (Geneva: Droz, 1951), 277. Its bright red color links the anxoka to sulphur, which, in the alchemical evolution of matter, represents the stage (developing purification, reason, and intuition) immediately prior to achievement of the Great Work. See J . E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, t r . Jack Sage (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), 301-302; also Richer, Expérience, 434; Nerval, Aurélia, critical edition by Jean Richer (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1965), 121, note a. (Hereafter, the latter work will be referred to as "crit. ed.") (14) See Riffaterre, "Comment décrire le style de Chateaubriand", Romanic Review, LUI (1962), 131. Concerning unfamiliar names of plants: "il suffit que le contexte indique qu'il s'agit de plantes, et de plantes que nous ne pouvons en général imaginer: la description ne nous fait pas voir la réalité, elle nous fait rêver de couleurs et de formes différentes de ce que nous c o n n a i s s o n s . . . . " (15) See in particular Richer, both Doctrines and Expérience, and Marie-Jeanne Durry. (16) Richer also associates the star with spiritual faith, poetry, m e diation between heaven and earth through its rays, Venus-Astarte, the star of the Magi, the "étoile flamboyante" of Freemasonry, and the star pictured in the seventeenth enigma of the Marseilles Tarot (Doctrines, 109; Expérience, 388-90, 466). (17) See Richer, Doctrines, 106: "Chaque lame du Tarot, suggérant une multitude de sens harmoniques, résume les rapports subtils qui unissent les différents octaves de la gamme universelle des correspondances. " (18) "En style biblique, portes ou écluses qui sont supposées retenir les eaux célestes" (Littré). (19) The narrator does often qualify an occult or hallucinatory passage with expressions like "il me semble comprendre", "je crus", "étrange", "bizarre"; however, he then continues to attribute validity to the insights and visions expressed. For a discussion of these "formule di atténuazione", see Maria Luisa Belleli, "Dramma e Linguaggio in Aurélia", crit. ed., 305; François Constans, "Aurélia

30 ou l'Itinéraire de la délivrance", crit. ed., 256; and especially Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction à la littérature fantastique (Paris: Seuil, 1970), 42-45. (20) Riffaterre defines alliance de mots as "le rapprochement de deux vocables qui n'ont pas de rapport dans la norme de la langue" (Gobineau, 83). The term seems to have no graceful English equivalent. (21) The avenging angel of the Apocalypse. (22) Renewal of clichés can produce striking and original effects and was widely used by other authors of the nineteenth century (Hugo, for example, Gobineau, the decadents). In Aurélia, however, only two or three muted instances of the device occur - another indication of Nerval's stylistic discretion. (23) For Fowler (The Concise Oxford Dictionary) antithesis is a "contrast of ideas expressed by parallelism of strongly contrasted words"; Morier (Dictionnaire de poétique et de rhétorique) says that with this device "on établit un violent contraste entre deux idées afin que l'une mette l'autre en évidence". (24) SeeW.K. Wimsatt, The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1941 and 1963), 43: "Abstraction and generality are conditions which favor antithesis. Not things but aspects of them can be contrasted in words. The more a writing deals with aspects as such, that is, with abstractions, the more plastic it is and shapable into the exact oppositions of antithesis. Generality and abstraction are concentration of meaning into the pure forms which admit sharp contrast." (25) A translation of Bryon's Manfred, line 12: "The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. " (26) What Frederick C. Crews says of the larger form of a work may be relevant here also: "Form is being increasingly recognized not only as an aid to perception but as a vehicle of pleasure, including the pleasure of reducing the anxieties that other aspects of the work bring into play." "Literature and Psychology", in Relations of Literary Study, ed. James Thorpe (New York, 1967), 83. (27) See, for example, Belleli, crit. ed., 308-318; Kurt Scharer, Thématique de Nerval (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1968), passim. (28) See Wimsatt, 12: "Sentences are expressive; so also are declensions, and conjugations; they are expressive forms. They express, not ideas like 'grass' or 'green', but relations. The so-called'devices', really no more devices than a sentence is a device, express more special forms of meaning, not so common to thinking that they cannot be avoided, like the sentence, but common enough to reappear frequently in certain types of thinking and hence to characterize the thinking, or the style. They express a kind of meaning which may be discussed as legitimately as the more obvious kinds such as what a man writes about - the vanity of human wishes or the River Duddon. "

2

WORD ORDER

The stylistic devices examined thus far have all focused on the word (or word-group) itself: contextual contrasts (context + contrast = stylistic device) have occurred primarily at the semantic level of d e notation and connotation. We turn now to a second major group, based not on semantics but syntax; these are the devices of word order. Rarely is word order rigidly fixed; though not as free as its parent Latin, French nearly always allows flexibility in placing a word within a sentence. (1) Alternative orders provide, at every turn, a major resource of style. Two principal groups of devices occur: 1) displacement, or inversion, i. e . , reversal of the normal order (AB-BA, as in complement before subject-verb, verb before subject): and 2) disjunction, i . e . , the separation, or disjoining, of the members of a syntactic group by an intruding member or members: A(x,y.. .)B. In both cases contextual contrast is caused by syntactic expectations that are unrealized. Momentary surprise is produced: 1) in the case of displacement, at encountering immediately an element normally preceded by another ( e . g . , a new sentence begins, not with the customary subject but a series of adverbs); 2) in the case of disjunction, at the intrusion of an unexpected word or word-group (a structure is begun (context), completion is expected; structure is interrupted (contrast) and completion delayed). Together with other, individual effects, the devices of word order always produce some degree of emphasis, (2) and often emotivity. (3) DISPLACEMENT (INVERSION) Adjectives No part of speech has more freedom of position in modern French than the adjective. (4) If Nerval's use of adjective displacement is discreet compared, say, to Hugo's, instances nonetheless abound, creating subtle stylistic consequences. What Godin calls l'adjectif en apposition (5) occurs only once: the epithet(s) precedes the noun, which is unannounced by any article or other actualizing element, and seems for an instant to hang in a void, unattached. The adjective(s) is set off by commas: n/6 (pp. 404-405); / / P â l e et déchiré//, le croissant de la lune s'amincissait tous les soirs et allait bientôt disparaître ( . . . . )

32

The focus is not the moon-crescent itself but wanness, raggedness. Displacement emphasizes the mood of debilitation and death. In an inverse contruction (a single instance), the epithets occur after the noun, but separated from it ( i . e . , delayed and therefore highlighted) by a relative clause: 1/10 (p. 382): Un mauvais génie avait pris ma place dans le monde des âmes; pour Aurélia, c'était moi-même, et l'esprit désolé qui vivifiait mon corps, //affaibli, dédaigné, méconnu d'elle//, se voyait à jamais destiné au désespoir ou au néant. Positional emphasis is reinforced by accumulation and asyndeton, and the three participial adjectives, in turn, form a disjunction that delays and emphasizes the predicate. In a partially similar structure (eight instances), an adjective is separated from its noun-subject by the verb; here (except after verbs like être, rester, devenir), the expected form is adverbial: Il/l (p. 385): Lorsque l'âme flotte //incertaine// entre la vie et le rêve ( . . . . ) A neutral construction would read: "Lorsque l'âme incertaine flotte . . . " or "Lorsque l'âme flotte d'une manière incertaine... " As placed by Nerval, the adjective is "literary", expressive. (6) Similarly: 1/3 (p. 364): et une divinité, toujours la même, rejetait en souriant les masques furtifs de ses diverses incarnations, et se réfugiait //enfin insaisissable// (7) dans les mystiques splendeurs du ciel d'Asie. Not only is the adjective expressive by its post-verbal position but, because of volume (four syllables + the two syllables of the a c companying adverb), it functions as a disjunctive element, delaying completion of the predicate. By far the most frequent type of adjective displacement is anteposition of the epithet where postposition is felt to be the norm (about fifty instances). Most adjectives have no fixed place; with the exception of a small group whose meanings vary (une abbaye ancienne une ancienne abbaye), positions before or after the noun are interchangeable. (8) Most epithets, however, favor one or the other and, in the opposite slot, are expressive. Even adjectives commonly thought to be immobile (e.g. beau, petit . . . before the noun; color words after) may be inverted for stylistic effect. In Aurélia preposed epithets often stress that aspect of the noun most important to the context. When such an aspect is already implied in the very denotation of the noun, then both words evoke the same idea (9) and intensification occurs: "l'étourdissement d'un //joyeux// carnaval" (1/1, p. 360). Among other things, a carnival is by nature "joyeux"; the preposed adjective both emphasizes and intensifies what, for this context, is the key point: it is the din and gaiety which cause the narrator to forget his sorrows. Similarly:

33

1/10 (p. 383): Ce monstre était comme traversé d'un jet de feu qui l'animait peu à peu ( . . . ) formant les veines et les artères et fécondant pour ainsi dire 1'//inerte// matière ( . . . . ) Emphasis of "inerte" (lifelessness) activates an implicit antithesis with "fécondant" (life) which, in turn, calls attention to the paradoxical, miraculous nature of the reported phenomenon: life is infused into that which was intrinsically (cf. the classical epithète de nature) lifeless. Emphasis of a noun's key quality need not imply fundamental inherence; the preposed epithet may simply convey an idea more important to the context than that of the noun itself: 1/7 (p. 374): //EgoTste// pensée que ma raison devait payer plus tard par d'amers regrets. What matters is not the thought as such but its selfishness, for the latter is the cause of the narrator's remorse. The noun "pensée" is hardly more than a prop. Stress is further increased by the adjective's initial position in the sentence (the result of ellipsis: cf. "C'était une égoïste pensée... " or "Quelle égoïste pensée... ") and by its length (three syllables to the noun's two). (10) Similarly: 1/2 (p. 361): l'accent divin de la pitié donnait aux //simples// paroles qu'elle m'adressa une valeur inexprimable. Stress of "simples" prepares for contrast with the hyperbolic "inexprimable", underlining a disproportion between cause and effect (although A, nonetheless B). Emphasis of the preposed epithet need not, as above, eclipse the noun, but may simply intensify a certain quality, as if by the addition of très or si : II/6 (p. 408): j'attribuais à mon //ardente// volonté (= ma volonté si ardente) ce commencement de guérison. M (P. 412): C'est ainsi que je m'encourageais à une //audacieuse// tentative (= une tentative très audacieuse). Such intensification may apply to an adjective already emphatic, hyperbolic or superlative: 1/10 (p. 384): l'âme pleine d'un //indicible// orgueil. (Note also the expressive cadence mineure.) II/2 (p. 390): / / L a plus morne// tristesse entra dans mon coeur. Finally, anteposition may render an epithet emotive: II/2 (p. 391): Il me semblait la voir comme â la lueur d'un éclair, pâle et mourante, entraînée par de //sombres// cavaliers.

34 By displacement, "sombres" suggests not only a literal meaning (the horsemen are perhaps solemn, perhaps clothed in black) but a figurative one (they are evil, malevolent, threatening); archetypal undertones of primeval darkness, as opposed to light, infuse the word with menace and fear. Adjective displacement, especially anteposition, helps explain how a text that strikes readers as "deeply moving", "elegant", "graceful", also seems so "simple" and "unadorned". Displacement, like many other devices, is unobtrusive as well as effective. The reader is affected - he senses emotion; intensification of key qualities; emphasis that sets a mood, stresses an idea or strengthens an opposition - but is rarely conscious of why or how. Chiasmus Anteposition of the epithet sometimes serves as an accessory device to chiasmus, important because of frequency (twenty instances), wide distribution and - unlike simple adjective displacement - striking effects. Chiasmus involves reversed order in the second of two pairs of homologous words or expressions: 1 - 2: 2* - 1'. (11) The reversal may involve displacement ( e . g . , of an epithet, a subject, a complement), but often the word order is neutral, the sense of reversal stemming solely from the internal pattern of the group. Perception of elements as pairs may depend on semantics (they convey concepts from the same field of experience) ; on morphology (adjective - noun noun - adjective); or on both, as when one of the elements is repeated. Always convergent with other devices, chiasmus varies in effect but always includes some degree of emphasis. It suggests movement, continuity, completion: a pattern is initiated, developed, and brought to a conclusion. "There is an unbroken sense of movement . . . , 1 introducing 2 by an explicit logical connection, 2 introducing 2' by an implication of juxtaposition and analogy, 2' introducing 1' by another explicit connection and 1' reminding us by analogy of 1" (Wimsatt). For example: 1/8 (p. 377): Les bocages que j'avais vus si verts ne portaient plus que de pâles(l) fleurs(2) et desfeuillages(2') flétris(l'). "Pâles" implies a noun; "fleurs", in turn, establishes one side of a parallel whose other member, the homologue "feuillages", is implied by et (both are nouns, both denote vegetation); "flétris" perfects the symmetry, mirroring its homologue "pâles" (both are adjectival, both connote debilitation). The sentence is farther structured by alliteration (three f's) and by implicit antithesis (the entire chiasmus vs. the preceding "bocages . . . si verts"). Chiasmus may activate an accumulation (six instances): emphasis by chiasmus, of terms whose semantic similarity might otherwise produce no stylistic effect leads to perception of that similarity and thus to intensification (of an idea, mood, etc. ). In the preceding example, chiasmic stress of "fleurs", "feuillages", "flétris" (all

35 evoking plant life) and of "pâles" which, like "flétris", suggests debilitation, leads to intensification of the idea "moribund vegetation". The latter now possesses sufficient strength to function as the second pole of an antithesis that envelopes the entire sentence: healthy, green vegetation ^ moribund vegetation. Similarly: 1/7 (p. 376): au milieu de l'inextricable(l) réseau(2) d'une végétation^') sauvage(l'). Similarity among (1), (2), and (1') leads to intensification of the notion "twisted, tangled vegetation" - the essence of the vision being evoked: creation struggling to emerge from chaos. By its reversed order, chiasmus may be mimetic of logical content, as in the paradox: both AB and BA. The logical schema coincides with the formal one: 1 - 2, 2' - 1': 1/4 (p. 368): Nous vivons(l)(A) dans notre race(2)(B) et notre race (2')(B) vit en nous(l')(A). In such cases (five instances), chiasmus is always reinforced by binary rhythm, which punctuates the paradoxical statements; and by repetition, which provides a screen of sameness against which the reversal is more sharply etched. Of the five words in clause one, three are repeated exactly (nous, notre, race), one in another form (vivons-vit), one by a synonym (dans-en) - all in inverse antimetabolic order; recognition of sameness in the two components is facilitated by brevity (the global structure can be seen at a glance). The net result is an emphatic, aphoristic formulation of a striking, puzzling idea. (12) Memorable, eminently quotable, such aphorisms always express insights or tenets important to the narrator's esoteric world-view: M (p. 412): Il (le sommeil) est la consolation(l) des peines(2) de nos journées ou la peine(2') de leurs plaisirs(l'). Here chiasmus converges with a double, paradoxical antithesis: consolation (1) / peine (2'); peine (2') / plaisirs(l'). When the day (wakefulness) has brought sorrow or pain, sleep brings compensatory dreams; but when the day has brought pleasures and peace, sleep brings nightmares and anguish. The effects of sleep are the reverse of those of wakefulness. Where binary rhythm would otherwise be weak, asyndeton may underline the two reversed elements by juxtaposition: 1/4 (p. 369): mais comment établir les centres individuels émanés (1) d'eux(2), dont ils(2') émanent(l')? In all these cases a neat, geometric structure fuses with a paradoxical or mysterious concept, and the reader is induced by clarity of form to accept, as if somehow explained, a meaning which he does not really understand.

36

A final example unites in a single instance all the principal effects of chiasmus noted above - emphasis of the constituent terms ; intensification of concepts; mimesis: M (p. 410): Un soupir, un frisson d'amour sort du sein gonflé de la terre, et le choeur des astres se déroule dans l'infini; il s'écarte (1) et revient sur lui-même(2), se resserre(2') et s'épanouit(l'), et sème au loin les germes des créations nouvelles. The first four verbs of the five-verb series form a semantic chiasmus, in which the extreme terms suggest expansion and the middle terms contraction. The context of cosmic fertility (terre = feminine principle, choeur des astres = masculine principle) and the connotations of certain words early in the sentence (soupir, frisson d'amour, sein gonflé), invest these verbs with sexual undertones: the four verbs of the chiasmus suggest sexual rhythms, while the fifth, culminant verb denotes fecundation (sème au loin). Schematically: expansion- contraction, contraction-expansion — scattering of seed. Punctuated by a sharp binary rhythm (cf. asyndeton), chiasmus underscores a double antithesis of tension and release ((1) ^ (2), (2') ^ (1')), ending on a strong note of release (s'épanouit) that leads directly to the concept of ejaculation (sème). A sibilant alliteration insinuates itself throughout: s'écarte . . . sur . . . se resserre . . . s'épanouit . . . sème. Whether mimetic, intensive, or emphatic, whether accenting a paradox or contributing to an aphorism, chiasmus depends ultimately for stylistic power on its well-marked symmetry. The pattern of progression and continuity - even if not consciously apprehended - orders and simplifies the linguistic materials. If the concept is elusive or baffling, the form is not. Mystery has been caught in some kind of geometric fixity, which seems not only rational but comprehensive, unified, and definitive as well. Anticipation Like chiasmus, anticipation (twenty instances) often creates an illusion of logic and clarity. By anticipation is meant the displacement of a complement (direct object, indirect object, adverb or adverbial phrase) to the beginning of its sentence or clause: the displaced element "anticipates" a formulation to follow, about whose structure little is known since neither subject nor predicate has yet provided any orientation. Poised in a kind of void, the displaced term provokes curiosity, uncertainty; it results in either emotive effect or logical emphasis, or a combination of both. Sometimes the preposed element provides possible explanations for perplexing affirmations to follow: 1/3 (p. 363): //Soi-t par hasard, soit par l'effet de ma forte préoccupation//, je tombai comme foudroyé, à la même heure que la veille.

37

Sudden collapse into total unconsciousness, at a preordained time and for no apparent reason, is implausible: the narrator might be fabricating the incident to support his contention that occvtlt forces had decreed his imminent death. The displaced phrases foresee and defuse this objection. Similarly: 1/4 (p. 367): J e le reconnus pour le même qui m'avait parlé par la voix de l'oiseau, et, //soit qu'il me parlât, soit que je le comprisse en moi-même//, il devenait clair pour moi que les aïeux prenaient la forme de certains animaux pour nous visiter sur la terre ( . . . . ) The narrator is about to enunciate a bizarre belief. Since the passage concerns a vision, both the belief and the manner of its discovery elude normal criteria of verisimilitude; still, he chooses, in the preposed binary group (soit . . . . soit), to explain. A kind of rationality is maintained even in the realm of the non-rational. In the examples above, anticipation is explanatory, cognitive; below, an emotive, non-cognitive aspect is present as well. As above, the displaced element favors acceptance of what is to follow: 1/8 (p. 377): / / C ' e s t dans le centre de l'Afrique, au delà des montagnes de la Lune et de 1|antique Ethiopie// qu'avaient lieu ces étranges mystères ( . . . . ) Both at the cognitive level (Ethiopia is linked to the Queen of Sheba, whose people were renowned for their occult arts) and the non-cognitive one (the exotic place names suggest primitive rites and t r a ditions) , the displaced element establishes the plausibility of these weird mysteries. The non-cognitive aspect may even dominate: 1/2 (p. 363): - / / s u r une colline, entourée de vastes solitudes//, cette scène devenait le combat de deux Esprits et comme une tentation biblique. The archetypes "colline" (a "high place", associated in many t r a ditions with divine revelations, spiritual encounters) and "vastes solitudes" (connoting infinity, the mystery of the universe) evoke a mythic, epic setting and mood for the Apocalyptic image that follows. Similarly: 1/8 (p. 378): //Au pied des arbres frappés de mort et de stérilité, aux bouches des sources t a r i e s / / , on voyait sur l'herbe brûlée se flétrir des enfants et des jeunes femmes énervés et sans couleur. The striking archetypal symbolism in the displaced elements (tree and fountain, ancient symbols of the life-force in man and in all things, (13) are sterile and dry: the entire universe seems threatened by attrition) presents the pathetic women and children of the main clause as victims of some cosmic cataclysm. In the three preceding examples, anticipation caused both cognitive

38 and emotive effects; below, its effect is almost entirely emotive: 1/8 (p. 377): //longtemps// j'y avais gémi dans la captivité, ainsi qu'une partie de la race humaine. II/2 (p. 389): O larmes bénies! //depuis longtemps// votre douceur m'était refusée ! By displacement, the initial words are transformed from statements of fact into affective comments on what follows : it is not length of time which is at stake, but length of time as linked to suffering in captivity, or to longing for assuagement which does not come. Emotive anticipation may occur in a sentence whose content is e s sentially rational, analytic: II/2 (p. 390): //Mais opposer ce vague amour d'enfance à celui qui a dévoré ma jeunesse//, y avais-je songé seulement? Displacement of the indirect object, together with the following interrogation, conveys the narrator's strong feelings of surprise, incredulity, emphatic negation. Or it may occur in a mystical, non-rational passage: M (p. 410): Sois bénie, 6 première octave qui commenças l'hymne divin! //Du dimanche au dimanche// enlace tous les jours dans ton réseau magique. At the cognitive level, the displaced phrase simply means "forever, unceasingly"; but at the emotive level, reinforced by repetition and alliteration, it appeals to all the connotations of "dimanche" (a holy day, a day of worship and praise, a day of beginnings and resurrection); it evokes an endless cycle of cosmic praise, in which all days (between the two Sundays), all time are implicated; it reinforces the religious enthusiasm engendered also by the convergent devices of apostrophe, imperative, symbol, metaphor. A particularly striking kind of emotive anticipation occurs when the displaced element is disproportionately long (and packed with stylistic devices); this results, by contrast, in acute relief of the element that follows, which is disproportionately short (and relatively simple). Menaced by the hostile "other", his "double", who threatens by deceit to marry Aurélia, the narrator resolves to muster all his strength to fight the fatal spirit to the end: 1/9 (p. 382): //Quoi qu'il fasse dans l'ombre et la nuit//, j'existe, et j'ai pour le vaincre tout le temps qu'il m'est donné de vivre sur la terre. Through contrast with the initial clause (four times as long and tinged with sinister archetypes), the simple, two-syllable "j'existe" conveys a strong sense of determination: the forces of life resolve to engage the powers of darkness.

39 The most striking instances of this type, indeed of all anticipation, relates the narrator's joy when his books are delivered to him at the sanatorium: II/6 (p. 406): //Mes livres, amas bizarre de la science de tous les temps, histoire, voyages, religions, cabale, astrologie, à réjouir les ombres de Pic de la Mirandole, du sage Meursius et de Nicolas de Cusa, - la tour de Babel en deux cents volumes//, - on m'avait laissé tout cela! Ail major effects of the device are here united: curiosity, increasingly whetted the longer completion of the structure is delayed; momentary ambiguity, as "mes livres" turns out to be not the subject but the direct object; emphasis of both the displaced and the delayed elements, sharply contrasted in length and complexity (the former converging with accumulations, allusions, exotic names, asyndeton, metaphor); explanation of what follows (the narrator's zest for the Orient and the occult is by now well known: insistence on the nature of his newly found books accounts for the exclamation); emotion (pleasure, enthusiasm) as he savors each serialized detail. Anticipation (14) in Aurélia is emphatic or emotive. When emphatic, it usually explains what is to follow, and is often convergent with accumulation; when emotive, it evokes a mood or setting for the rest of the sentence and is convergent with symbols and archetypes. On the one hand, it serves logic and reason; on the other, allusiveness and suggestion - supposed contraries whose fusion is a fundamental characteristic, and novelty, of the style of Aurélia. DISJUNCTION Similar in certain respects to anticipation, disjunction (fifty instances) is the single most frequent device of word order in the text, and the most important. Disjunction occurs when a syntactically or morphologically necessary, expected element ( e . g . , object after transitive verb) is delayed by the intrusion of one or more unnecessary, unexpected elements: A(x,y . . .)B. Like anticipation, disjunction provokes momentary uncertainty, suspension, until the completive element appears. Its effect is strong, (15) and always includes emphasis - of the intruding, disjunctive element (surprise), but especially of the delayed one. Occasionally (four instances) disjunction is affective: n / 2 (p. 391): je résolus aussitôt de détruire les deux papiers que j'avais retirés la veille du coffret: la lettre, / / h é l a s ! / / que je r e lus en la mouillant de larmes ( ) M (p. 411): Tout à coup, / / ô merveille//! je me mis à songer à cette auguste soeur de l'empereur de Russie ( . . . . ) In each case the disjunctive interjection, emotive in itself, interrupts

40 a syntactical pattern; continuation of the sentence, as if nothing had happened, emphasizes the delayed element by contrast; the latter is also colored by affectivity. In the first example, the interjection conveys the narrator's grief at Aurélia1 s death: mention of the letter, the last she ever wrote him, provokes an emotive interruption even before the thought can be completed. In the second case, the poetic "Ô" introduces an irrepressible outburst of admiration at the glorious dream of the Russian princess, one of the many anima-figures ( 16) which populate the pages of Aurélia. Emotivity may result simply from the explicit content of the intruding phrase: l / l (p. 361): de sorte que je fus réduit à lui avouer, //avec l a r m e s / / , que je m'étais trompé moi-même en l'abusant. Attention is forced to the disjunctive "avec larmes" (accentuated by comma-pauses), and consequently to the emotion it denotes ; the rest of the sentence is then perceived in the light of this affective coloring. Much more often, the effect of disjunction is not emotive, but cognitive, rational, analytic : it emphasizes distinctions and relationships; it explains, it discriminates. Such is the case when the two components of a disjunction form some kind of opposition (thirteen instances): II/2 (p. 389): et j'ai adoré, //selon les rites païens//, celle dont le dernier soupir a été consacré au Christ. The oppostion païens / Christ explains, for the lucidly reasoning narrator, why he deserves punishment: he has offended the Christian God. The discriminating character of disjunction is even clearer in an opposition of the type: (not A, but)B: (17) 1/9 (p. 380): Je me représentai amèrement la vie que j'avais menée depuis sa mort, me reprochant, //non de l'avoir oubliée, ce qui n'était point arrivé, m a i s / / d'avoir, en de faciles amours, fait outrage à sa mémoire. The principal statement is: "me reprochant . . . d'avoir . . . fait outrage à sa mémoire." To insure precision, the narrator first states in the intruding element what is not to be understood, establishing an opposition with what is to be understood. Curiosity concerning the latter is whetted by the preliminary denial and by delay: emphasis results. The negative disjunctive element is reinforced by the parenthetical "ce qui n'était point arrivé"; and still another disjunction ("en de faciles amours") intervenes after enunciation of the original delayed element has begun ("d'avoir . . . " ) . In short, the complement announced by "reprochant" does not finally appear until sixteen words later, accentuated by two (or three) delaying elements and an opposition. Similarly: 1/9 (p. 380): Le même Esprit qui m'avait menacé ( . . . ) passadevant

41

moi, //non plus dans ce costume blanc qu'il portait jadis, ainsi que ceux de sa race, m a i s / / vêtu en prince d'Orient. A special kind of disjunction-opposition, whose intruding element is formed by a compound-relative clause, contrasts appearance and r e ality (six instances). Both terms of the opposition may be expressed. 1/1 (p. 360): je leur donnais pour l'état constant de mon esprit / / c e qui n'était q u e / / surexcitation fiévreuse. Logical schema: although apparently A ("état constant"), in reality B ("surexcitation fiévreuse"). The intruding element highlights the delayed one sufficiently to insure its effectiveness as the second term of an opposition. This resembles the preceding (not A, but)B type, for in both cases A is denied in order better to focus on B. More often, this kind of opposition is implicit, both poles residing, through irony, in one and the same term. The disjunctive ce qui or ce que-clause impugns the delayed term: what the latter seems to denote is in fact denied by implication. Or, what it denotes is true in one respect, but false in another: 1/1 (p. 359): l'imagination m'apportait des délices infinies. En r e couvrant / / c e que les hommes appellent// la raison, faudra-t-il regretter de les avoir perdues ? "La raison" is the name commonly given to the state of mind in question: to that extent the term is accurate; what the disjunctive element impugns is the connotation that "raison" is the highest, the best state of consciousness to which man ought to aspire. The delayed term e m bodies an implicit opposition: "raison" as summum bonum (according to common-sense bourgeois values) / "raison" as inferior to other, non-rational states of consciousness. Disjunction thus serves to express a subtle distinction: although apparently A, in reality B (or not-A). Similarly: 1/1 (p. 360): il me semblait que je déplaçais ainsi les conditions du bien et du mal; les termes, pour ainsi dire, de / / c e qui e s t / / sentiment pour nous autres Français. Irony, initiated by "ce qui est", is reinforced by italics; implicit opposition arises between "sentiment" as understood by the French and "sentiment" as it really is, or as it is understood by others. Also: 1/3 (p. 363): Seulement, mes actions, insensées en apparence, étaient soumises à / / c e que l'on appelle// illusion, selon la raison humaine ( . . . . ) In the largest group of rationally oriented disjunctions (twenty instances), the intruding element provides explanatory details necessary, or useful, for comprehension of the delayed element. Most often the relationship is that of cause to effect (thirteen instances).

42

II/2 (p. 390): Une glace t r è s haute se trouvait d e r r i è r e nous. En y jetant p a r hasard un coup d'oeil, il me sembla reconnaître A***. Elle semblait t r i s t e et pensive, et tout à coup, / / s o i t qu'elle s o r tit de la glace, soit que, passant dans la salle, elle se fût reflétée un instant a u p a r a v a n t / / , cette figure douce et chérie se trouva p r è s de moi. Very s i m i l a r in this c a s e to anticipation, the disjunctive elements offer two possible causes for the b i z a r r e apparition. Since the action takes place in a d r e a m , where anomalies abound, either the commonsense explanantion or the fantastic one is acceptable; but because of the explanatory cause-effect structure - and this is the point - the dream is perceived as already scrutinized, already evaluated by lucid reason. Another causal disjunctive ("passant dans la salle") o c c u r s in the second soit-clause, reinforcing this impression of analytic scrutiny. Similarly: I I / l (p. 388): un ê t r e , à la fois différent et participant de l u i - m ê m e , et à qui, / / s e croyant m o r t / / , il demandait où était Dieu. (Cause (disjunctive element): the person believes himself to be dead and in the a f t e r - w o r l d . Effect (delayed element): this explains why he asks where to find God. ) II/6 (p. 408): et maintenant rappelle-toi le jour où tu as imploré la Vierge sainte et où, / / l a croyant m o r t e / / , le délire s ' e s t e m p a r é de ton esprit. (Cause (disjunctive element): the n a r r a t o r b e lieves the Blessed Virgin, his source of solace and comfort, is dead. Effect (delayed element): he is plunged into a delirium of grief and anguish.) The explanatory tendency of disjunction often invites multiplication of detail; in such c a s e s , the disjunctive element may converge with accumulation. A single sentence may contain two, o r t h r e e disjunctions, o r a disjunction within a disjunction. Thus despite the text's habitual concision and a tendency toward parataxis, it is occasionally characterized by complexity, a certain sweeping plenitude: I I / l (p. 386): Mais pour nous, / / n é s dans des jours de révolution et d ' o r a g e s , où toutes les croyances ont été b r i s é e s , - élevés tout au plus dans cette foi vague qui se contente de quelques pratiques extérieurs et dont l'adhésion indifférente est plus coupable peutê t r e que l ' i m p i é t é et l ' h é r é s i e / / , - il est bien difficile, / / d è s que nous en sentons le b e s o i n / / , de r e c o n s t r u i r e l'édifice mystique dont les innocents et les simples admettent dans leurs coeurs la figure toute t r a c é e . The five accumulated participial p h r a s e s and relative clauses of the f i r s t disjunctive element capsulize the religious situation of a whole generation of Frenchmen, enumerating a s e r i e s of causes to explain the effect a s s e r t e d in the delayed element. Just as enunciation of the latter finally begins, a second disjunctive intervenes ("dès que nous

43

en sentons le besoin"). The basic structure of the sentence is simple, formed of one principal and one subordinate clause: "Mais pour nous . . . il est bien difficile . . . de reconstruire l'édifice mystique dont, etc." On this loom, however, the disjunctions weave a hypotactic fabric that, delaying full comprehension until completion of the implicit antitheses at the very end (nous ^ les innocents et les simples; reconstruire ^ toute tracée), resembles a classical period. Despite occasional emotive effects, disjunction in Aurélia is predominantly rational, explanatory, analytic. Through emphasis, especially of the delayed element, it draws attention to whatever is most important; it distinguishes and qualifies; it explains and establishes relationships ; it negates and denies in order more precisely to affirm. Disjunction strengthens one of the major characteristics of the style of Aurélia: the tendency to scrutinize and order in the light of reason phenomena which are often bizarre and non-rational, rendering them more palatable to "common sense". If not fully explained, they have at least been examined and organized, they appear in the forms of grammar and logic, not in those of oneiric and hallucinatory chaos. Aurélia is an account of madness, visions, and dreams; but one composed with incisive lucidity. Finally, by its asyndetic facility for inserting details into almost any part of a sentence, disjunction contributes to effects of comprehensiveness and intensity, major traits of the text in general and especially of the devices of repetition and accumulation, with which disjunction is sometimes convergent. These important devices will be examined in the following chapter.

NOTES (1) See Riffaterre, Gobineau, 92-95; Charles Bally, Traité de stylistique française, 3rd ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1951), vol. I, 311313; Morier, 211-16; Marcel Cressot, Le Style et ses techniques, 4th ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), 173-99; J . Marouzeau, Précis de stylistique française, 5th ed. (Paris: Masson, 1965), 175-88; Stephen Ullmann, Style in the French Novel (Oxford: Basii Blackwell, 1964), 146-88. (2) See Wimsatt, Samuel Johnson, 69-70: "The usual purpose of any writer in inverting is to obtain relevance through order, and especially that kind of relevance known as coherence, which means sequence or continuity. Or, since continuity is maintained by a series of emphases, we may say that the purpose of inversion is emphasis." (3) Riffaterre, Gobineau, 93: "le problème est . . . non pas d'exprimer les faits tels qu'ils sont, mais de telle manière que le lecteur les remarque, les admette, les assimile. La phrase n'est pas le calque de la pensée, elle en est la traduction en fonction du but, qui est de convaincre le lecteur ou de lui faire ressentir des émotions au gré de l'écrivain . . . Dans la mesure où c'est possible grammaticalement, le terme qui résume le mieux l'énoncé, ou qui est porteur

44 de l'émotion la plus forte, ou qui est affectif par rapport à un énoncé d'ordre intellectuel, ou qui est le plus facile à exprimer, ce terme tend à être antéposé." (4) Moreover, as the classical centuries marked the reign of the noun, so the nineteenth saw the revival of the adjective, neglected since the Renaissance. See M . E . I . Robertson, L'Epithète dans les oeuvres l y riques de Victor Hugo publiées avant l'exil (Paris: Jouve, 1926), 60: " L e XVTIe siècle fut impitoyable pour les vieux mots, les mots de dialecte, les mots bas, les mots étrangers. 'Mais ce sont les épithètes surtout' dit M. Brunot 'qui sont victimes d'un vrai massacre'." And 75-76: "l'épithète à l'avènement de Victor Hugo était presque inexistante. Ayant connu au moment de la Pléiade une splendeur éphémère, elle était tombée, à l'époque classique, à un rôle tout à fait subordonné; elle était abstraite, imprécise et incolore, et ses fonctions littéraires étaient réduits à celle d'ornement inuntile ou de terme de remplissage. Chateaubriand et Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, en l'employant dans leur prose d'une façon nouvelle pour atteindre à la précision pittoresque, lui avaient préparé un avenir jusqu'alors insoupçonné. Il restait maintenant à lui faire une place, et une place de toute première importance, dans la poésie lyrique: c'est ce qu'a fait Victor Hugo." (5) Henri J. G. Godin, Les Ressources stylistiques du français contemporain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948), 30. (6) See Grevisse, Le Bon Usage, 149, par. 206, for other examples: "la neige TOMBE abondante. Il PART furieux . . . Ma barbe POUSSE blanche (J. Cocteau, La Difficulté d'être, 37)." (7) In the critical edition (1965), Richer has changed his reading of this text to the one quoted here; in the Pléiade edition (1960) we find: "et se réfugiait enfin, insaisissable, dans les mystiques splendeurs n (8) On the position of the epithet, see Ullmann, Style, 6-9; Cressot, 191-96; Marouzeau, 180-85; Godin, 21-30; R. A. Sayce, Style in French Prose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 22-28. (9) According to Mayer, in the group epithet-noun, if the two words remain relatively independent, "le sens de l'adjectif a ou prend une signification générale et vague. Il tend de plus à limiter sa valeur logique à une de ces qualifications que Clédat appelle essentielles, c'est à dire qu'il ne comporte aucune valeur pittoresque, précise ou descriptive mais ajoute au nom une notion de grandeur ou de petitesse, d'ancienneté ou de nouveauté, de vérité ou de fausseté, de beauté ou de laideur, de bonté ou de méchanceté." If, moreover, the preposed adjective and its noun are more closely fused, "l'adjectif n'est plus autre chose qu'un augmentatif ou un diminutif de l'idée contenue dans le nom. L'épithète de nature est un stade très avancé déjà dans cet acheminement vers la locution nominale." Gilbert Mayer, La Qualification affective dans les romans d'Honoré de Balzac (Paris, 1940), 45. (10) Cressot, 192: "Une autre tendance est la cadence majeure. Substantif et épithète se succéderont par ordre de masse croissante, la cadence mineure produisant un heurt qui peut s'accompagner d'un e f fet expressif. "

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(11) Chiasmus is "the criss-cross placing of sentence members that correspond in either syntax or meaning, with or without word repetition" (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics). See also Wimsatt, Samuel Johnson, 71-73. (12) Furthermore, if the two extreme terms are isolated, a secondary chiasmus-within-a-chiasmus appears: nous(l) vivons(2) . . . vit (21 ) en nous (!'). (13) Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, 107, 328. (14) Another kind of displacement commonly used by contemporaries of Nerval is inversion of the subject. Occasionally this occurs in Aurélia as a side-effect of anticipation, for after certain complements in initial position such inversion is normal: 1/2 (p. 363), "Dans cette étoile sont ceux qui m'attendent." The inverted subject is indeed expressive: not directly because of inversion, but because, in final position, the mystery and ambiguity of the periphrasis linger a moment longer (cf. neutral order: "ceux qui m'attendent sont dans cette étoile"). Only once is subject inversion expressive in itself: 1/8 (p. 379): Partout mourait, pleurait ou languissait //l'image souffrante de la Mère éternelle//. Inversion is reinforced by the archetypal image and by the threeverb accumulation which acts as a disjunction. That Nerval almost never employs this device is another sign of his stylistic discretion. See Maurice Grevisse, Le Bon Usage, 5th ed. (Paris, 1953), par. 186; Robert Le Bidois, L'Inversion du sujet dans la prose contemporaine (1900-1950) étudiée plus spécialement dans l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust (Paris: Editions d'Artray, 1952), 339-341; Ullmann, Style, ch. 4; Riffaterre, Gobineau, 97. (15) See Riffaterre, review of Stephen Ullmann, Style in the French Novel, Word, XV (1959), 404-405; Gobineau, 94-95, 105-108. (16) Best known of Jung's archetypes of the collective unconscious, the anima represents the unconscious feminine side of a man, the image of Woman which he projects onto particular women; the anima often assumes the form of fabulous or queenly figures (in Nerval, for example, Isis, the Queen of Sheba, the Virgin Mary). See C. G. Jung, Psyche and Symbol, ed. Violet S. de Laszlo (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958); The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, trans. R. F. C. Hull, in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (New York: Pantheon) IX, pt. I (1959). (17) See Wimsatt, Samuel Johnson, 38: "By every affirmation something incompatible is implicitly denied; and what is denied, or what it would be relevant to deny explicitly, varies with what it is relevant to affirm. Each thing is all that it is in virtue of not being many other things, but it is what it is in each respect in virtue of not being some other particular thing. An inkwell stands on the table inasmuch as it does not stand on the floor. It stands on the table inasmuch it does not stand under the table. It stands on the table inasmuch as it does not roll off. The negative defines the positive. The more peculiar and complex the affirmation the more it may need the emphasis of negation, the more negation itself, elaborated in its own aspects, may become a relevant and parallel meaning, until which

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is superior and which is subordinate is hardly to be told, rather the two as a pair of reflecting, reciprocal movements are the true theme of the discourse. This is characteristic of all thoughtful writing . . . . "

3

INTENSITY

Certain devices are stylistically effective by the simple fact of volume. If repeated, the most neutral word stands out, and its value is intensified. This repetition may be identical, or may involve terms that are approximately synonymous; the latter case will be called a c cumulation. This chapter.treats first identical, non-accessory repetition; then accumulation in general; finally rhythmically structured accumulation, dependent for its effect on accessory repetition and asyndeton - multiple groups, ternary groups, and binary groups. REPETITION Identical repetition, often of tool words, is usually accessory toother devices, a stylistic slave. Such instances, examined later, we call anaphora, to distinguish them from repetition as a primary device (occurring alone, or as one among equals), which will be examined now. Primary, or independent, repetition (35 instances) is always emphatic and intensive: it highlights, underlines, reinforces. Sometimes its principal effect is cognitive: it underscores the importance of an idea; much more often, the principal effect is emotive: in such cases repetition often converges with exclamation and apostrophe. Repetitions whose effect is primarily cognitive usually involve more than one word; these words are repeated only once; the two occurrences are usually separated by intervening terms. The repeated words - grammatical, relational - may seem quite secondary: II/6 (p. 404): //C'est ainsi que// les dieux antiques ont été vaincus et asservis par des dieux nouveaux; / / c ' e s t ainsi//, me dis-je encore, en consultant mes souvenirs du monde ancien, / / q u e / / les nécromants dominaient des peuples entiers ( . . . . ) Repetition of the initial phrase underscores the important cause-effect relationship between the preceding sentence, which details a method of spiritual dominance through electro-magnetism, and the results of this method's application as reported here. The relationship itself is what is stressed: that method produced these results. Certain cosmic puzzles are thereby elucidated for the narrator. More often, primary repetition (whether cognitive or emotive) involves substantive words (nouns, verbs, adjectives):

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II/6 (p. 404): Je me sentais plongé dans //une eau f r o i d e / / et //une eau plus froide e n c o r e / / ruisselait sur mon front. Repetition of the noun and adjective underscores a physical sensation which (in one case metaphorically, in the other realistically) is a sign of the narrator's acute state of anxiety. Repetition of the substantive word may include morphological variation (four instances), usually to produce a paradox or aphorism: II/6, (p. 404): En / / m e prouvant// que j'étais bon, je / / m e prouv a i / / que j'avais dû toujours l'être. Proof of the first proposition leads, by a paradoxial nonsequitur, to "proof 1 of the second. That I am good now does not necessarily imply that I have been good always. Repetition signals the narrator's psychological need, even at the expense of logic, to convince himself of his goodness in the past, including past existences, in order to free himself from fear of eternal doom. Similarly: I I / l (p. 387): Quand on se sent / / m a l h e u r e u x / / , on songe au / / m a l h e u r / / des autres. The personal experience of unhappiness leads, by association, to a more general awareness. Perception of the link between the first clause and the second, the particular and the general, self and others, is accentuated by variant repetition of the crucial word. Three times as often as cognitive, the primary effect of non-accessory repetition is emotive. Unlike the preceding examples, emotive repetitions usually involve only a single word; this word may be r e peated more than once; often its occurrences are juxtaposed, no other words invervening. In its simplest form, emotive repetition consists of a name r e i t e r ated in exclamatory apostrophe, as in the epigraph to Part Two: "Eurydice! Eurydice!" This sets the tone and implies the subject matter of the six following chapters: Nerval-Orpheus will seem, despairingly, to lose the beloved Aurélia-Eurydice. Similarly, the liturgical "Christe! Christe! Christe! . . . " repeated by the pleading, mysterious voices of a children's choir, embodies the narrator's desperate hope that, as the world nears its end, Christ may still live and be mercifiil. Emotion is impatient, compulsive; it is obsessed with its cause, and fixes on the word which names it - Christ, the last hope; Eurydice, forever lost. This word, repeated and juxtaposed, may link two different sentences, by opening the second after ending the first (eight instances). This is the anadiplosis of rhetoric, a device mimetic of a common type of spoken interchange in which the second speaker, aroused by something in the statement of the f i r s t , repeats the crucial word or phrase. The narrator, for example, relates the dream of a sick friend, in which the latter encounters a spirit, probably his double, "à q u i ( . . . )

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il demandait où était //Dieu//. 'Mais //Dieu// est partout, lui répondait son esprit ( . . . . )"' (Il/l, p. 388). Reinforced by the affective mais, repetition conveys surprised enthusiasm - surprise that the question had to be asked in the first place, enthusiasm at the exciting truth contained in the answer. Similarly: II/4 (pp. 397-98): J e pensai que l'on avait réuni dans l'église voisine (Notre-Dame-des-Victoires) un grand nombre d'enfants pour invoquer / / l e Christ//. "Mais / / l e Christ// n'est plus, me disaisje; ils ne le savent pas encore!" Exclamatory repetition conveys the narrator's amazement that "they" are unaware of the stupendous "truth" that Christ is dead. Similarly motivated repetition occurs occasionally within one and the same sentence (four instances). A single speaker who is emotionally aroused repeats, in thought or speech, the crucial concept. The second occurrence of the word is reinforced by addition of a farther motive to account for the affectivity: "C'est moi maintenant qui dois //mourir et mourir sans espoir//" (II/l, p. 385). That the narrator feels doomed to imminent death is cause enough for dismay; but (this is the additional motive) that he must die without hope - of reunion with Aurélia, eternal happiness, escape from eternal torment - reduces him to anguish. Below, the addition of encore to the second occurrence underscores just the opposite emotion: the narrator's perseverance in hope despite fate's unceasing hostility: II/3 (p. 392): Avec cette idée que je m'étais faite du rêve comme ouvrant à l'homme une communication avec le monde des esprits, / / j ' e s p é r a i s . . . j'espérais encore//! Repetition is reinforced by convergent anticipation: the delayed element and the repeated one are identical, both devices highlighting the same short fragment. Structures such as these are mimetic of interior movements: beset by strong feelings, thought tends toward ellipsis and obsession with the word(s) denoting the cause of the emotion. Intensity increases in cases like the following (three instances) where, convergent with exclamation, apostrophe and the imperative, two or more series of repetitions interweave, fragmenting the sentence into short paratactic rhythms. The result is not so much rational discourse as a rush of cries issuing from the heart: II/l (p. 385): Elle, pourtant, croyait à Dieu, et j'ai surpris un jour le nom de Jésus sur ses lèvres. Il en coulait si doucement que j'en ai pleuré. O //mon Dieu//! //cette larme, - cette l a r m e / / . . . Elle est séchée depuis si longtemps. //Cette l a r m e / / , //monDieu//! rendez-la-moi ! This tear represents the narrator's lost capacity for Christian faith, fused in his mind with Aurélia (both represent solace and interior harmony): the passage is an urgent prayer for the return of faith,

50

precondition of reunion with Aurélia in the next life. Emotion dominates: the narrator cannot at first enunciate a logical thought; he blurts out the two key notions: "mon Dieu" (to whom his plea is addressed) and the symbolic "cette larme". He breaks off. He formulates a complete sentence - short, exclamatory, regretful. He cries out again the two key notions, which are emphasized by inversion, then veers into the swift, culminant plea: "rendez-la-moi!" Of the two repeated elements, "cette larme" is the more remarkable, for while an invocation of God might be expected to interrupt the discourse, the same is not true of "cette larme". Everything from "O mon Dieu!" to the end forms one sentence, disjointed by emotion; the final imperative is the delayed element of a long disjunction. A more nearly neutral rendition would read: "O mon Dieu, rendez-moi cette larme séchée depuis si longtemps!" Although affective because of other devices (apostrophe, imperative, symbol, exclamation), this version pales before the recurrent, elliptical cries of the original. Similarly: n/2 (p. 391): - //Mon Dieu! //pour elle et pour elle seule//! //mon Dieu//, pardonnez! m'écriai-je en me jetant à genoux. A special kind of emotive repetition, which unlike the,preceding examples involves the recurrence of longer fragments, even whole sentences, and often at considerable intervals, resembles a refrain or leitmotiv. Often lyrical, it may assume a liturgical, antiphonal character; not surprisingly, four of seven instances occur in the "Mémorables". Relatively infrequent, this device is particularly striking. The repeated phrase may be the haunting, emotional keynote of a whole passage: II/2 (p. 391): Une certaine heure sonna . . . Je me dis: Il est trop tard! Des voix me répondirent: //Elle est perdue//! Une nuit profonde m'entourait; la maison lointaine brillait comme éclairée pour une fête et pleine d'hôtes arrivés à temps. "//Elle est perdue//! m'écriais-je, et pourquoi? . . . Je comprends, - elle afait un dernier effort pour me sauver; - J'ai manqué le moment suprême où le pardon était possible encore ( . . . ) Et qu'importe mon salut même ? L'abîme a reçu sa proie ! //Elle est perdue// pour moi et pour tous ! . . . " Symbolism, interrogation, exclamation, italics, all contribute to the tone of nervous affectivity, but none so much as the recurrence of the brutal "elle est perdue", its content so stunning that it must be repeated in order to be fully grasped and also to provide release for the pain of irretrievable loss and abandonment. Repetition of a phrase may create the liturgical effect of a litany, as in this solemn warning to the Germanic god Thor: M (pp. 410-411): //Malheur à toi, dieu// du Nord, - //qui brisas// d'un coup de marteau la sainte table composée des sept métaux les

51 plus précieux! And again six lines later: //Malheur à toi, dieu-// forgeron, / / q u i / / as voulu / / b r i s e r / / un monde ! The first enunciation of the warning opens the passage; the second a repetition in part of identical words, in part of similar structures - brings the passage to a close: together the two steep the whole in an atmosphere of threatened retribution. The liturgical, prayer-like effect is stronger still in the triple repetition of "Hosanna! paix à la terre et gloire aux cieux!" (409410), which occurs in the "Mémorables" at the end of paragraphs one and ten, and again, under the shortened form "Hosanna!" at the end of paragraph thirteen. Though dispersed, the three Hosannahs form a group, for each stands in sharp contrast to the pagan-mythological context. Already emotive as a culturally established formula for exuberant praise of God, with joyous Christmas-story overtones, the recurrent Hosannah intensifies the dominant tone of religious enthusiasm and unifies the passage in the manner of an antiphon. Once, in these same pages, an entire paragraph is repeated (with one short variation): M (p. 409): Sur les montagnes de l'Himalaya, une petite fleur est née. - Ne m'oubliez pas! (1) - Le regard chatoyant d'une étoile s'est fixé un instant sur elle, et une réponse s'est fait entendre dans un doux langage étranger. - Myosotis! The recurrence, ten paragraphs later, begins: "Sur la cime d'un mont bleuâtre une petite fleur est née" and continues, as above, to the end. (2) The paragraph itself is suggestive rhythmically of a stanza of verse: Sur les montagnes de l'Himalaya une petite fleur est née. - Ne m'oubliez pas! Le regard chatoyant d'une étoile s'est fixé un instant sur elle, Et une réponse s'est fait entendre dans un doux langage étranger. - Myosotis !

(10) (8) (5) 0) (8) (10) (8) (4)

Rhythm, symbol, archetypes, metaphor, parataxis, exclamation evoke lyrical joy and wonder, which, as in the refrain of a song or hymn, are intensified by repetition. In one instance the leitmotiv effect is achieved by repetition of the structure of a sentence, without repetition of major words. The first part of the preceding example, which begins paragraph two of the "Mémorables", repeats thé form and tone of the opening fragment of paragraph one (p. 409). (Recognition of this similarity may be con-

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scious or not; most stylistic devices probably work their effects below the threshold of awareness. ) 1. Sur/ un pic élancé / de l'Auvergne/ 2. Sur/ les montagnes/de l'Himalaya/ 1. a retenti la chanson des pâtres. / Pauvre Marie! 2. une petite fleur est née. / - ne m'oubliez pas ! Each sentence begins with the same preposition, followed by a noun complement denoting mountains, the archetypal "high places" of r e ligion and mythology; two more identical tool words (de 1') then introduce symbolic place names (the Himalayas evoke the mystical East, and Auvergne, for Nerval, is linked with his mythical ancestry; both are variants of the same mountain, privileged places in which the original harmony of the world has been miraculously preserved). (3) Then follow subject-verb groups of comparable length, each evoking a pastoral image; finally, each sentence culminates in a short exclamation, typographically emphasized, one involving the Virgin (anima figure), the other the mysterious flower (possibly an archetype of interior harmony, similar to the lotus-mandalas of the East, (4) in which case it is-comparable to the Virgin as a symbol of solace and psychic wholeness). Given "their proximity, their homologous positions at the beginning of the first two paragraphs of a prose poem, and their striking similarity of structure and content, the second of the two occurrences reinforces and intensifies the lyricism and affectivity already produced by the first and creates a refrain-like sense of coherence and continuity. Independent repetition helps especially to account for the emotion, the deep feeling which permeates the text: above all, it is affective. The mechanism and effects of repetition, however, are not limited to reproduction of identical terms; similar intensification occurs when an idea recurs in synonymous or closely related forms, as in the extremely important variant device, accumulation. (5) ACCUMULATION Accumulation is the juxtaposition of two, (6) three or more elements which are nearly synonymous, or similar, or which evoke or illustrate the same concept, feeling or image. Most often these elements are of the same syntactic and semantic nature (all nouns, all archetypes , all verbs of motion). Accumulation derives from association of ideas: a fact or concept, important in context, is underscored by the presentation not of one, but several, or many, of its facets, each savored separately, one suggesting another, some affirming what it is, others what it is not. Accumulation lends itself to portrayal of phenomena that imply multiplicity: crowds, chaos, global visions, progressive movement or change. While the principal effect of repetition was intensified emotion, the most frequent function of accumulation is the evocation, through

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amassed detail, of landscapes, physical or moral portraits, subtle states of mind, dream visions, hallucinations. Accumulation is thus a major source of concreteness and precision. It creates a kind of Realism of the irrational: a dream or cosmogonie vision, presented by means of selected suggestive details as in Realistic fiction, can seem as vivid, plausible, even commonplace as anything in "real" life. Accumulation is also a major source of Aurélia's pictorial brilliance. (7) For these reasons, and because of its high frequency (three occurrences per page, including the rhythmic groups to be examined in the following sections, or about 85 instances if the rhythmic groups are excluded), accumulation is one of the two or three most important elements of the style of Aurélia. (8) Accumulation lends itself, often in its simplest form of accretion of one-word elements, to depiction of progressive movement or visual change, frequent phenomena in the narrator's visions. In a portrayal of the rivers of molten metal that criss-cross the interior of the earth, he stresses the dominant impression of flowing, pulsating motion in three accumulated verbs: "Tous //coulaient, circulaient et vibraient// ainsi ( . . . . ) " (1/4, p. 366). Or, describing an apparition in the heavens: "Chaque région, peuplée de figures radieuses, / / s e colorait, se mouvait et se fondait// tour à tour ( . . . . ) " (1/3, p. 364). Each verb conveys some aspect of visual change: change from shadow or greyness to color, change of position, change of contour and identity as one region blends into another. The relatedness of the different verbs is underscored by a common syntactical element, the repeated reflexive, se. Similarly: II/3 (p. 392): Je vis ensuite se former vaguement des images plastiques de l'antiquité qui //s'ébauchaient, se fixaient et semblaient représenter des symboles// dont je ne saisissais que difficilement l'idée. Not only parallel forms, but alliteration contributes to a sense of unity (s'ébauchaient, se fixaient, semblaient,symboles), and progression is conveyed by gradation of both volume (the third element is three times as long as each of the other two) and meaning (the plastic images are first sketchy, then clear, and finally transformed into symbolic representations). In a more complex example portraying the work of wondrous goldsmiths, the basic three-word accretion is reinforced by additional, negative elements, creating an opposition: 1/10 (p. 383): Les ornements n'étaient //ni martelés, ni ciselés//, mais / / s e formaient, se coloraient et s'épanouissaient// comme les plantes métalliques qu'on fait naître de certaines mixtions chimiques . The first two terms, underlined by repetition ("ni") and asyndeton, negate the normal methods used in such work and thereby highlight the extraordinary ones presented in the next three elements. The latter, reinforced by repetition of the reflexive pronoun and by progress-

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ive gradation of meaning (formation — coloration — expansion, as of a blooming flower), mimic the process by which these ornaments spontaneously come into being. All five elements, though divided into opposing groups, blend into one large accumulation, since each details an aspect of the same phenomenon. In a vast panorama of movement and change, the accumulated e l ements may be entire clauses : 1/8 (p. 376): Les variations se succédaient à l'infini, la planète s ' é clairait peu à peu, des formes divines se dessinaient sur la verdure et sur les profondeurs des bocages, et, désormais domptés, tous les monstres que j'avais vus dépouillaient leurs formes bizarres et devenaient hommes et femmes. The predominant theme of the sentence - continuous variation, as announced in clause one - is illustrated by examples in each of the three succeeding clauses: in two, a gradual passage from darkness to light; in three, the apparition of contours where before there had been none; in four, the metamorphosis of monsters into human beings. All stress change in progress by use of the imperfect tense. The a c cumulation moves from the least dramatic to the most dramatic of the three illustrations, from the shortest to the longest (each clause doubles the length of the preceding one), creating a crescendo effect. Finally, as a stylistic herald for the climactic hallucination of clause four, the disjunction, "désormais domptés" - striking for its alliteration and assonance - highlights the delayed element, which the p r o gressive build-up has, in a general way, already conditioned the reader to expect. The accumulated clauses, all focusing on various aspects of visual movement and change, converge to present a single, intense, comprehensive vision of cosmic transformation. Not only movement and change, but multi-faceted phenomena of many kinds invite accumulation of detail : landscapes, moods, portraits, states of mind or soul . . . Recounting a complex dream, in which he is transported back to primitive, happier times among mysterious ancestors, the narrator describes a landscape which reminds him of Flanders, alleged home of his forebears : 1/4 (p. 367): / / l e champ entouré de bosquets à la lisière du bois, la rivière et le lavoir, le village et sa rue qui monte, les collines de grès sombres et leurs touffes de genêts et de b r u y è r e s / / , image rajeunie des lieux que j'avais aimés. No less than thirteen nouns converge to evoke a tranquil country scene, so ordinary that the reader tends to forget this is a dream, a setting for the gradual symbolic elaboration of occult revelations. Imperceptibly, the accumulation leads the reader into the narrator's dreamworld without disturbance of common-sense prejudice. Like the n a r rator himself, the reader feels no qualitative difference in his perception of vie or rêve. A landscape, or setting, may be symbolic; here a house embodies

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a mood: 1/6 (p. 372): Les vieux meubles luisaient d'un poli merveilleux, les tapis et les rideaux étaient comme remis à neuf, un jour trois fois plus brillant que le jour naturel arrivait par la croisée et par la porte, et il y avait dans l'air une fraîcheur et un parfum des premières matinées tièdes du printemps. The visual, tactile, olfactory details create a feeling of freshness, symbolic of the narrator's interior renewal. This is no ordinary house: its furniture's sheen is "merveilleux" (very bright, but also miraculous); the daylight which suffuses it is supernatural; the newness of its ancient appurtenances (tapis, rideaux, meubles) represents a re-newal - as does the culminant, epitomizing image of spring (rebirth), which rounds off a progressive gradation of volume among the four accumulated clauses. Renewal in the house and in nature symbolizes spiritual renewal in the narrator's soul: the rebirth of joy and confidence after a period of depression and despair. Here is a portrait of one of the narrator's close friends, who is gravely ill: I I / l (p. 388): J'entrai dans une chambre d'hospice, blanchie à la chaux. Le soleil découpait des angles joyeux sur les murs et se jouait sur un vase de fleurs qu'une religieuse venait de poser sur la table du malade. C'était presque la cellule d'un anachorète italien. / / S a figure amaigrie, son teint semblable à l'ivoire jauni, relevé par la couleur noire de sa barbe et de ses cheveux, ses yeux illuminés d'un reste de fièvre, peut-être aussi l'arrangement d'un manteau à capuchon sur ses épaules//, en faisaient pour moi un être à moitié différent de celui que j'avais connu ( . . . ) il y avait en lui un apôtre. The visual details, enumerated one by one, highlighted by stark contrasts between light and dark, unified by connotations of monastic austerity (anachorète, amaigrie, capuchon) and religious mysticism (illuminés, apôtres), form an instance of "transposition d'art": a painting in words. The nudity of the surrounding room focuses all attention on the immobile subject, drawn, wan, with luminous eyes, who seems posed, stylized, even to the detail of a hooded cloak, which not only contributes to the monastic mood but recalls the painter's weakness for ample garments and the virtuoso treatment which their folds invite. The mood of ascetic mysticism prepares for the narrator's interpretation of his ill friend in the subsequent lines as a seer, a manifestation of the double. Character portraits are equally common: here the narrator describes a young veteran at Dr. Blanche's sanatorium: II/6 (p. 407): je rencontrais un être //indéfinissable, taciturne et patient, assis comme un sphinx aux portes suprêmes de l'existence

//.

56 All accumulated elements focus on aspects which convey mystery: the first adjective asserts that the young man eludes classification he is a being apart; the next two imply silence, separation, passivity: uncommunicative, catatonic, he sheds no light on himself; patient (suffering?) and gentle, he does not react in the face of adversity. Finally, the single physical detail, "assis", reinforcing passivity by immobility, is immediately translated to the moral plane by a simile: physical immobility suggests quietness of spirit, hidden secrets, contact with the world beyond death. Within the accumulation a sense of climax is produced by gradation, of both volume (the last element is much longer than the three preceding ones) and meaning (each of the three adjectives points to some aspect of personality, but the final element moves the description from the realistic plane of observation to that of the mystical). Similar to the character sketch, depiction of a complex state of mind or soul requires presentation of at least several different aspects : II/6 (p. 404): Je reportai ma pensée à l'éternelle Isis, la mère et l'épouse sacrée; //toutes mes aspirations, toutes mes prières, se confondaient dans ce nom magique, je me sentais revivre en elle, et parfois elle m'apparais s ait sous la figure de la Vénus antique, parfois aussi sous les traits de la Vierge des chrétiens//. Anxious about his chance of salvation, the narrator finds momentary consolation in his patroness, Isis. Clause one states the fact of his recourse to the goddess, and each of the three following clauses details one of the ensuing effects : 1) every fiber in him focuses on her as a last, desperate hope; 2) he feels a surge of new optimism; 3) Isis has variants in the anima-symbols of Venus and Mary (mother) and can thus slake his (and man's) primeval thirst for both whore and angel, sex and solace, titillation and tranquillity, "la mère et l'épouse". By singling out various facets of a complex phenomenon, accumulation fixes for the reader a state of feeling compounded of anxiety, pleading, ebullience, mysticism, longing, love, consolation, and emphasizes the element common to all of these: the narrator's absorption in the anima-figures of his fantasies. One effect common to all instances of accumulation is emphasis of the (multi-faceted) phenomena in question since proportionately more time and attention are devoted to them; as well, multiplication of the concrete, the sensual, and the specific creates a sense of realistic precision. Many of the examples above present two seemingly contradictory traits: completeness and compression. Depiction of the phenomena seems comprehensive, yet few words have been used. Accumulation, which by definition involves multiplication of words, phrases, clauses, in fact functions as a vehicle of concision; much is conveyed by little. The specific details grouped in the accumulation often connote, by a kind of metonymy, more than they explicitly state; each one suggests others which are not mentioned. In the case of the taciturn, sphinxlike young man at the sanatorium, the traits given imply others

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(whether or not they are consciously articulated by the reader) : certain physical characteristics (for example, he is surely thinrather than stout); his rare movements (surely slow, hesitant, rather than positive or swift) and facial expressions; certain intimations of his past history; notions about his day-to-day existence in the sanatorium . . . What the reader apprehends seems greater than the volume of words warrants. In this respect, certain accumulations are not unlike symbols, archetypes, metaphors, which also suggest more than they state, and are sources of both multiple meaning and relative compression. Not all instances of accumulation, however, depict physical phenomena or states of mind; sometimes the device emphasizes an important idea; it explains, illustrates, stresses. II/6 (p. 404): //L'heure de notre naissance, le point de la terre ou nous paraissons, le premier geste, le nom, la chambre, et toutes ces consécrations, et tous ces rites qu'on nous impose, tout c e l a / / établit une série heureuse ou fatale d'où l'avenir dépend tout entier. The narrator is struck by the fact of man's thralldom to astrological influences. The primary effect of the seven-part accumulation is not provision of astrological information (though this occurs secondarily) but emphasis of number: the abundance of exterior determinations which mark men irrevocably for happiness or disaster is appalling. This multiplicity underscores a frightening truth: man is not free. Additional emphasis of multiplicity results from the anaphoric insistence of the five initial definite articles; the decreasing length of the first five elements, so that the third, fourth, and fifth, through contrast, create an impression of rapidity, as if detail were heaped on detail; polysyndeton ("et toutes ces consécrations, et tous ces rites"); anaphora again ("toutes c e s " , "tous ces") - especially the final, summative "tout", which embraces everything in the preceding enumeration. Accumulation here functions also as disjunction; as more and more elements are amassed in the subject, suspense develops with regard to the increasingly delayed predicate. The convergence of disjunction and accumulation, the latter operating as the disjunctive element in the former, is not infrequent. On a few occasions accumulation in Aurélia assumes truly massive proportions, turning into a vast metonymy. In the most striking instance, the narrator, returning to the sanatorium for an extended period, finds that his friends have transported there many of his personal belongings. Delighted, he lovingly enumerates the objects he finds, and gradually the accumulation becomes a review of his entire life: each major period of his existence, each major event, every preoccupation and principal interest is represented by certain keepsakes, which are in fact métonymie images, each epitomizing - because in some way associated with - one of the principal threads of the narrator's biography: (9) II/6 (pp. 405-406): J ' a i trouvé là tous les débris de mes diverses fortunes, les restes confus de plusieurs mobiliers dispersés ou

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revendus depuis vingt ans. C'est un capharnatim comme celui du docteur Faust. Une table antique à trépied aux têtes d'aigles, une console soutenue par un sphinx ailé, une commode du dix-septième siècle, une bibliothèque du dix-huitième, un lit du même temps, dont le baldaquin, à ciel ovale, est revêtu de lampas rouge (mais on n'a pas pu dresser ce dernier); une étagère rustique chargée de faïences et de porcelaines de Sèvres, assez endommagées la plupart; un narguilé rapporté de Constantinople, une grande coupe d'albâtre, un vase de cristal; des panneaux de boiseries provenant de la démolition d'une vieille maison que j'avais habitée sur l'emplacement du Louvre, et couverts de peintures mythologiques exécutées pas des amis aujourd'hui célèbres; deux grandes toiles dans le goût de Proudhon, représentant la Muse de l'histoire et celle de la comédie. Je me suis plu pendant quelques jours à ranger tout cela, à créer dans la mansarde étroite un ensemble bizarre qui tient du palais et de la chaumière, et qui résume assez bien mon existence errante. J'ai suspendu au-dessus de mon lit mes vêtements arabes, mes deux cachemires industrieusement reprisés, une gourde de pèlerin, un carnier de chasse. Au-dessus de la bibliothèque s'étale un vaste plan du Caire; une console de bambou, dressée à mon chevet, supporte un plateau de l'Inde vernissé où je puis disposer mes ustensiles de toilette. J'ai retrouvé avec joie ces humbles restes de mes années alternatives de fortune et de misère, où se rattachaient tous les souvenirs de ma vie. On avait seulement mis à part un petit tableau sur cuivre, dans le goût de Corrège, représentant Vénus et l'Amour, des trumeaux de chasseresses et de satyres, et une flèche que j'avais conservée en mémoire des compagnies de l'arc du Valois, dont j'avais fait partie dans ma jeunesse; mes armes étaient vendues depuis les lois nouvelles. En somme, je retrouvais là à peu près tout ce que j'avais possédé en dernier lieu. Mes livres, amas bizarre de la science de tous les temps, histoire, voyages, religions, cabale, astrologie ( . . . ) on m'avait laissé tout cela ! Just as Aurélia itself is a summa of the narrator's life and work, (10) the serialized details of this voluminous accumulation form a condensed summa of the same thing: an epitome within an epitome. An image, as well, of tragic irony. At the very moment the narrator hopes at last to be able, with the help of Dr. Blanche, to transcend his mental affliction, achieving salvation both as man and writer (the composition of Aurélia seemed to be a major step in this direction), he in fact unwittingly depicts the terminus of his career: not only his person, but his whole past is now imprisoned within the four walls of a room in an insane asylum. His dreams of theatrical success, his pilgrimages across Europe, Africa, and the Near East, all his frenetic activity in the world of Parisian journalism, the search for ideal love, the strivings to storm, here and now, the gates of heaven this is where they all end. Thus far, emotive effects of accumulation have been occasional and secondary. This may seem strange in a device apparently suited to the effusions of deep feeling. However, for accumulation to produce

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strong emotivity, one or both of the accessory devices of anaphora (repetition) and asyndeton are usually required, informing the group with a strong rhythmic pattern. RHYTHMIC ACCUMULATION In many instances of accumulation the reader perceives not only a series of semantically related details (focus on meaning) but also discrete phonological units forming a rhythmic group (focus on the material qualities of the words). This rhythm implants the accumulation more firmly in the reader's mind. For such a rhythm to exist, each unit of the accumulation must be clearly perceived as both distinct and yet related; this perception is determined by anaphora, or asyndeton, or both. Anaphora, defined here as auxiliary repetition, often of short, grammatical words, provides an element common to all members of the group, underscoring their similarity. Asyndeton, the omission of conjunctions between words, phrases or clauses, underscores the individuality of each element by insuring equal stops between all members of the group. Asyndeton emphasizes the discreteness of the rhythmic units, anaphora their resemblance: both contribute to perception of rhythm. Without the aid of one or both, accumulation is not rhythmically significant - as has been the case with the "simple" or "free" accumulations examined thus far. In Aurelia the most frequent types of rhythmic accumulation are binary groups and ternary groups. Multiple groups, which contain more than three elements, are rare and will be examined first. The following instance is exemplary, of both the structural and the expressive possibilities in rhythmic groups. The narrator is formulating the theory of correspondences: II/6 (p. 403): tout dans la nature prenait des aspects nouveaux, et des voix secretes sortaient //de la plante, de l'arbre, des animaux, des plus humbles insectes//, pour m'avertir et m'encourager. Anaphora (de la, de 1', des, des) provides a common element that draws into close relationship the four parallel nouns, each denoting one aspect of living nature; asyndeton (conjunction omitted between elements three and four) maintains a pattern of equal stops between all members of the group: all the noun phrases thus form similar but independent, co-equal rhythmic blocks. As often, especially in the most striking cases, the elements of the group form a progressive, or ascending, gradation, both of volume (element four is longer than any of the first three) and meaning (the culminant superlative reaffirms the earlier idea of "tout": if even the meanest insects, i . e . , the lowliest forms in nature, "speak" to him, then by implication so too do all the higher forms). The entire accumulation illustrates and emphazies the initial "tout dans la nature"; what is stressed is number, all-inclusiveness - by the variety of examples, and by asyndeton,

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which leaves the series open-ended (an et after animaux would function as a termination-sign; its omission creates the impression that, if the narrator wished, the list could be prolonged). As well as emphatic, the group is emotive. Emotion is already implicit in the insistence on a single point by so many examples; further, the plosive, anaphoric de and des punctuate the successive illustrations; finally, asyndeton is mimetic of the elliptical expression often associated with emotion: the relational gives way to the substantive, to juxtaposition. Ellipsis and affectivity converge in the next example as well, but without asyndeton; anaphora alone imposes the rhythm, supported by progressive gradation. The narrator recounts a glorious and consoling dream that assures him of salvation; a cosmic music is heard, and he apostrophizes the blessed octave that enfolds all in its harmony: M (p. 410): / / L e s monts te chantent aux vallées, les sources aux rivières, les rivières aux fleuves, et les fleuves à l'Océan//; l'air vibre, et la lumière brise harmonieusement les fleurs naissantes . Strict parallel structure is imposed on the four elements of the group by repetition of les before each of the noun subjects and of à plus the definite article (aux, à F) before each of the noun objects; chain-like repetition (concatenation) of two of the nouns from one member to the next (rivières-rivières, fleuves-fleuves) stresses both continuity and the supportive device of progressive gradation. The latter advances from the smallest body of water to the greatest: sources — rivières — fleuves — Océan (the capital O reinforces the idea of vastness). The rhythm, actualized by anaphora, reinforced by ellipsis and gradation, and reminiscent of the Old Testament, implants in the reader's mind the successive glorifications of the blessed octave (te). Affectivity is especially strong, due to the word "chantent" and the many archetypes, but especially to the liturgical insistence of repeated structures and words. Multiple groups are rare in Aurélia (four or five instances) for, though on occasion they may be highly expressive, rhythm tends after a certain point to blur amid bulk and volume. Preference is accorded the more condensed groups, like the ternary, frequent not only in Aurélia (some twenty-three instances), but in nineteenth-century writers generally. Ternary Groups The three components of a ternary group are similar in meaning, in accessory devices, or in grammatical and syntactic structure, or in all of these at once; anaphora or asyndeton or both are always convergent. Usually concise, perceivable at a glance, the triad imposes on the materials an order rarely given in reality; its very form, independent of the meanings of the words, implies rationalization of com-

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plexity. The triad tends toward the pithy, the aphoristic, the summative, sometimes sculpting memorable phrases or sentences that epitomize whole sections of the narrative. In addition, its effect is often emotive. Aside from emphasis, which is a constant, particular effects of a triad vary with context: 1/8 (p. 378): / / l a splendeur des chambres royales, la majesté des portiques, l'éclat des vêtements et des p a r u r e s / / , n'étaient qu'une faible consolation aux ennuis éternels de ces solitudes. The compound subject, because rhythmically reinforced (anaphora, asyndeton, exact parallelism) and thereby stressed, functions more effectively as the first pole of an opposition, whose second term is "ennuis éternels de ces solitudes". A triad may be mimetic. The narrator describes a little settlement visible from the sanatorium: II/6 (p. 405): //On crie, on chante, on rit aux é c l a t s / / ; c'est gai ou triste à entendre, selon les heures et selon les impressions. Though short, the anaphoric element (on) is striking because of initial position and the brief intervals of its recurrence. Brevity and juxtaposition (asyndeton) produce a staccato spontaneity suggestive of the sense: a haphazard jumble of exuberant human noises. Elsewhere, a nearly identical structure creates an aphorism, which formulates one of the major themes of the text: II/6 (p. 403): "Comment, me disais-je, ai-je pu exister si longtemps hors de la nature et sans m'identifier à elle? //Tout vit, tout agit, tout se correspond// ( . . . . ) Unlike on in the preceding example, the anaphoric tout, whose plosive punctuates each member of the group, represents a key idea: every single existent, without exception, is implicated in the mysterious network of correspondences. The formula is further structured by assonance (vit - agit) and progressive gradation in volume (2 syllables — 3 syllables — 5 syllables). Triads, and rhythmic groups generally, are often emotive; in such cases, groups may proliferate, reinforcing one another. Here, in a dream, a Spirit answers the question: where is God? II/l (p. 388): "Mais Dieu est partout, lui répondait son esprit; il est en toi-même et en tous. / / I l te juge, il t'écoute, il te conseille;// c'est toi et moi, qui pensons et rêvons ensemble, - et nous ne nous sommes jamais quittés, et nous sommes éternels!" In a succession of doublets and triads, the aroused speaker underscores his various points, all of which converge on a central idea: God's presence in each and all. The first group, a doublet, confirms God's ubiquity: "en toi-même et en tous. " The triad then elaborates

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the first of these terms: in swift anaphoric staccato (recurrent t_), the speaker details God's interaction with the individual: "il te juge, il t^ écoute, il te conseille". Two loosely constructed doublets follow, then a third, highly structured one. (11) The five groups tend, by juxtaposition, to blend into one vast, emotive accumulation. Similarly, in a dream, the narrator encounters a race of blessed men whose mountain Utopia has enabled them to maintain their primitive goodness: 1/5 (p. 371): Eh quoi! / / n i corrompus, ni détruits, ni esclaves; purs, quoique ayant vaincu l'ignorance; conservant dans l'aisance les vertus de la pauvreté// ! The first member of the principal triad is formed, in turn, of a subordinate ternary group; the latter is emotive because of its proximity to the preceding exclamation, its insistent rhythm, and the repetition of the emphatic negative particle (ni). Virtue is affirmed by denying depravity. Whence admiration, for the faults denied are widelythought to be endemic in men so civilized. In the next two members, the v i r tues attributed are paradoxical: these men are pure and moral despite education and affluence. Nominal (adjectival) style intensifies affectivity; in the entire sentence there is not a single subject or verb. Nominal style, and ellipsis generally, are often symptomatic of emotion; for the latter - to the detriment of logical or grammatical relations frequently favors exclusive concentration on those concepts which are its cause. Many triads are reinforced by the ancillary device of gradation: gradation in volume or in meaning; gradation which is progressive (ascending) or retrogressive (descending). Though by far the less frequent, the retrogressive variety is no less effective. Here the narrator asserts that when one passes through a mental breakdown and seeks to strengthen a still fragile equilibrium, I l / l (p. 386): c'est dans la pensée religieuse que l'on doit chercher des secours; - je n'en ai jamais pu trouver dans cette philosophie, qui ne nous présente que / / d e s maximes d'égoi'sme ou tout au plus de réciprocité, une expérience vaine, des doutes a m e r s / / . Retrogression in volume is mimetic of retrogression in sense, the gradual deflation of mood: from bad to worse, from disappointing to depressing, from egoism to futility to bitterness. The triad ends on a note of demoralization. Gradation may be retrogressive in volume, but progressive in meaning. The narrator has just interpreted a dream as proof of eternal separation from Aurélia: II/l (p. 388): "Dieu est avec lui! (his divinely-favored double) m ' é criai-je; mais il n'est plus avec moi! O malheur! / / j e l'ai chassé de moi-même, je l'ai menacé, je l'ai maudit//! Horrified, the narrator can only rehearse aloud his crimes. Focus

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is on the abhorrent acts, the verbs: progressive gradation underscores their increasing gravity: from sin (he has chased the divine messenger away), to active revolt (he has threatened him with violence) , to the irrevocable act of spite and anger (he has cursed him to hell). As gravity and emotion increase, the length of the members diminishes (seven syllables to five to four). Though increasing emotion often elicits an increase in volubility (example: tu es lâche, tu es vilain, tu es détestable!), here it produces the opposite effect. Increasing tension caused by the list of crimes is reflected in a decreasing inclination to verbalize, so unspeakable are the infractions. The briefest formulation has the strongest impact. Similarly: 1/4 (p. 369): Autant vaudrait demander compte / / à la fleur du nombre de ses pétales ou des divisions de sa corolle . . . . au sol des figures qu'il trace, au soleil des couleurs qu'il produit//. As meaning ascends from one archetype to the next (fleur — sol — soleil), volume diminishes, and emotions increase. Reason resigns before the mystery of the universe: the sentence - and chapter - ends in wonder and silent awe. Progression in both sense and volume is the most frequent kind of gradation, as in the revelation of Isis-Aurélia to the narrator: II/5 (p. 399): "Je suis //la même que Marie, la même que ta mère, la même aussi que sous toutes les formes tu as toujours aimée//. A chacune de tes épreuves, j'ai quitté l'un des masques dont je voile mes traits, et bientôt tu me verras telle que je suis . . . " Anaphoric stress of même (= identity) highlights the central idea: the symbolic polyvalence of the goddess, who is the amalgamation of all the narrator's beloved anima-figures. The sense progresses from one identification in each of the first two elements (goddess = Virgin Mary, goddess = mother) to multiple identifications in the final one (goddess = all others he has ever and always loved). The last, climactic element, three times as long as either of the first two, is reinforced by a convergent disjunction, whose intruding term emphasizes universality ("sous toutes les formes") and whose delayed element emphasizes the abiding love of Woman ("tu as toujours aimée"). Affectivity, emphasis, strict order in the linguistic materials these effects, often enhanced by accessory gradation, are shared by binary groups as well. Similar in many ways to triads, they are, however, less conspicuous, less prone to attrition, and twice as numerous (47 instances). Binary Groups Binary groups exemplify two principal tendencies of the stylistic structures of this text: distinctness of outline (cf. chiasmus, antithesis) and concision (cf. asyndeton, ellipsis). Whereas the triad may tend

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to be oratorical because of volume, the doublet reflects spoken style. It combines expressiveness and simplicity, intensity and r e s t r a i n t . It often s e e m s to operate imperceptibly. (12) Because of brevity, binary groups require particularly strong s t r u c tural reinforcement in o r d e r to be stylistically operative. As with t r i a d s , the principal accessory devices a r e anaphora and asyndeton, but with two notable differences. F i r s t , anaphora may take the form of synonymy or near-synonymy r a t h e r than identical repetition. Secondly, asyndeton is m o r e crucial h e r e than in t r i a d s : anaphora, e s pecially if based only on synonymy, may not be strong enough to individuate the two m e m b e r s , while asyndeton, with its neat sculptural break, invariably i s . From a formal viewpoint, binary groups a r e divisible into those which occur singly (by f a r the l a r g e r category) and those which occur in p a i r s (six or seven instances). From the viewpoint of semantics and effect, each of these categories is in turn divisible into three roughly equal sub-categories: descriptive, cognitive, and emotive. Single doublets frequently provide swift, pointillistic description of a person, scene or state of being. Two details, two strokes s u f fice to evoke a face, c h a r a c t e r , mood or vision. Moreover, a c c e s s ory asyndeton implies open-endedness: m o r e elements could be added, but the details already given suffice to suggest other, implicit ones. Here, f o r example, is a human figure: 1/2 (p. 361): Aussitôt, en baissant les yeux, je vis devant moi une femme / / a u teint blême, aux yeux c a v e s / / , qui me semblait avoir les t r a i t s d'Aurélia. J e me dis: "C'est sa m o r t ou la mienne qui m ' e s t annoncée!" Etched by anaphora, asyndeton, brevity and exact parallelism, the doublet captures the image of a sickly woman. (The hollow eyes and wan complexion suggest other details: thin, f r a i l , suffering . . . ) Emphasis on debilitation anticipates the following sentence, where the n a r r a t o r sees the hallucination as an omen of death. The doublet succeeds in sketching a portrait and focusing attention but it does not obtrude. The pointillistic doublet may evoke a decor: II/4 (pp. 395-96): La m o r t d'un de mes amis vint compléter ces motifs de découragement. J e revis avec douleur / / s o n logis, s e s t a b l e a u x / / , qu'il m'avait montrés avec joie un mois auparavant (....) The sight of the dead f r i e n d ' s personal belongings - modestly emphasized by the doublet - i n c r e a s e s the n a r r a t o r ' s sorrow and leads, in the passage that follows, to reflections on his own mortality. Usually longer than the descriptive type, the cognitive doublet is illustrative or explanatory: a complex idea or state needs clarification. Here, the n a r r a t o r has just begun relating his f i r s t long period of i n sanity:

65 1/3 (p. 363): A dater de ce moment, tout prenait parfois un aspect double, - (13) et cela //sans que le raisonnement manquât jamais de logique, sans que la mémoire perdit les plus légers détails de ce qui m'arrivait//. The two clauses, punctuated by the negative conjunction, stress the narrator's maintenance of rational faculties even during a period of apparent madness. Whence an antithesis formed of the binary group and the preceding clause: although A (= everything took on a dual appearance, i . e . , a mental disorder set in), nonetheless, contrary to common-sense expectation, not-B (= no suspension of the reasoning faculty), and not-B' (= no suspension of the faculty of memory). Intensification in the binary group is reinforced by progressive gradation; the second element is more emphatic because of the superlative: his memory retained not only important details, but even insignificant ones. In a cognitive doublet the second term often elucidates the first; progressive gradation is usually convergent: Il/l (p. 383): Lorsque l'âme flotte incertaine //entre la vie et le rêve, entre le désordre de l'esprit et le retour de la froide r é flexion/ / ( ) The succinct formulation of the doublet's first member is striking but unclear; the second member is logical and precise: vie means the "normal" state characterized by the dominance of reason; rêve is disorder or non-reason. The first member, through its polar archetypes, evokes various affective connotations ; the second provides intellectual clarity; together they stress the complexity and importance of this crucial concept. Further emphasis is provided by convergent antitheses (vie / rêve, désordre de l'esprit ^ froide r é flexion) and a chiasmus: (vie (1), rêve (2), desordre de l'esprit (2'), froide réflexion (!')). (14) Since emotion frequently expresses itself in repetition and asyndeton, the binary group, dependent on both of these for its very existence, is often emotive. The emotive doublet may be exclamatory, each term containing an inverted epithet, as in the following apostrophe: M (p. 407): //Chastes amours, divins soupirs//! enflammez la sainte montagne... The conventional character of these structures implies no banality. Used with restraint, convergent with other devices, they are often highly expressive. Equally conventional and expressive is the doublet which converges with a first-peron imperative to produce an enthusiastic exhortation, a sense of determination, resolution, and exalted purpose: 1/1 (p. 387): //retrouvons la lettre perdue ou le signe effacé, r e composons la gamme dissonante//, et nous prendrons force dans

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le monde des esprits. The emotion already inherent in the hortatory command is intensified by repetition of the identical structure and emphasized by the strong asyndetic beat. The emotive doublet may also be mimetic: II/2 (p. 389): et j'y courus, / / l e coeur palpitant, la tête perdue//. II/2 (p. 390): / / J e rougis, je f r é m i s / / en dispersant ce fol assemblage. In the first example, unable to find Aurélia's grave (a failure he interprets as a bad omen), the narrator races home to find the paper on which its exact location is noted. His frenzy is reflected in the articulation of the verb and the two noun phrases: swift, juxtaposed, unorganized by logical connectives. Ten lines later (example two), searching for "le papier funèbre", again he is frantic; the rapid succession of the two unlinked verbs parallels the rush of emotive r e actions. In both instances, emotion is not only intensified, but dramatized. Emotion is especially intense if the second member of the doublet is nearly an exact repetition of the first. The group strikes hard, twice, on exactly the same point: II/l (p. 385): "Tout est fini, tout est passé!" The narrator believes he is damned beyond saving, he will never see Aurélia again. Anguish and despair stem less from the vocabulary than from anaphoric insistence on the two key ideas ("everything", "over"), stark asyndeton, the initial alliterative plosives (tout), and brevity, all of which produce the strong binary rhythm. Although most doublets occur singly, whether descriptive, cognitive or emotive, occasionally two binary groups combine, either one within the other, or one after the other in close succession. The r e sult is like that of a longer, three or four-part multiple group. Here is the description of certain inhabitants of a mysterious city: 1/5 (p. 369): / / l e u r air vif, résolu, l'accent énergique de leurs t r a i t s / / me faisaient songer aux races indépendantes et guerrières des pays de montagnes ( . . . . ) The principal group, delineated by the two nouns (leur air, l'accent), contains a subsidiary doublet of two adjectives (vif, résolu), and both fuse into a single accumulation, intensifying the central notion, vigor. The clipped, terse rhythm created by the juxtaposition of short words is mimetic of the energy that the words denote. Similarly, in a cognitive, or illustrative, pair of doublets, the n a r rator describes the relationship which unites the events of the physical world with those of the world of spirits : II/l (p. 387): / / L a t e r r e , ses habitants et leur h i s t o i r e / / étaient le théâtre où venaient s'accomplir les actions physiques qui p r é -

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paraient l'existence et la situation des êtres immortels attachés à sa destinée. The second member of the principal binary group ("ses habitants et leur histoire") is itself formed of a subordinate doublet, and the three nouns together (terre, habitants, histoire) intensify the notion: physical, real world. The double illustration of the first term, la terre, by the two others focuses attention so that the subject can function more effectively as the tenor of a simile, whose vehicle is le théâtre. Without this intensification, the simile would be weakened (cf. " L a terre était le théâtre où venaient s'accomplir... "). In a final example, whose effect is emotive, the two doublets, r e inforced by progressive gradation, are successive. In a dream the narrator runs toward what he thinks is a hostile spirit; the latter turns calmly around - it is his "double": 1/9 (p. 380): / / O terreur! 6 c o l è r e ! / / //c'était mon visage, c ' é tait toute ma forme idéalisée et grandie// . . . The tone of horror and rage is set at once in the first, exclamatory doublet. In the second, progression in volume (5 syllables — 13 syllables) coincides with realization of the extent of similarity (first only the face; then the entire figure, blown up and stylized into some kind of sinister icon), which in turn causes the increase in emotion, accentuated especially by the word toute. The binary group is a major source of one of Aurélia's principal qualities: expressive compression. Concision co-exists with intensity, affectivity, comprehensive detail. Though the doublet shares many characteristics with the triad - both are sculptural, they impress meanings on the consciousness, they reduce chaos to ordered simplicity; both tend toward the pithy and aphoristic; both invite convergent gradation - still they differ in that the triad at times is oratorical, while the doublet, close to spoken style, remains "natural", discreet. Its brevity usually excludes the declamatory and fosters the text's characteristic restraint. All the devices of intensity examined in this chapter depend on a very simple mechanism: accumulation of words around the same or similar concepts. Their common effect is intensive reinforcement of sense images (description), ideas, emotions. They render the "real" as well as the oneiric and hallucinatory; a sense of meticulous accuracy characterizes both. Devices of intensity often converge with asyndeton, ellipsis, parataxis, and suggest more than they explicitly state: precision and economy; multiplicity and compression. So much is conveyed in so short a space, without congestion. All that is essential to understanding the capital experience of the narrator's life, the fusion of vie and rêve, is given. Actually, most of the details have been omitted: whole periods of time are skipped over; episodes are summarized in a phrase. But the essence (the reader feels) has been caught - through the selection, intensification, and emphasis of characteristic, connotative details. Of this the various devices of intensity are the major stylistic vehicles.

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NOTES (1) Nerval translates myosotis by the German Vergissmeinnicht, whence the literal French rendition: ne m'oubliez pas. See crit. ed., 115, note b. (2) It has been suggested that this reprise may be due to a printer's error (Oeuvres, I, 1274, n. 7 to p. 410). However, both Richer and Constans are now of the opinion that Nerval intended it (crit. ed., 119, note b). On the refrain-like aspect of this passage see also: Richer, Doctrines, 19-24, and François Constans, "Le Soleil noir et l'Etoile ressuscitée", La Tour Saint-Jacques, 13-14 (1958). (3) Richer, Expérience, 491. (4) See C.G. Jung, "Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower", Psyche and Symbol (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), 318326. (5) Riffaterre suggests the term "accumulation" rather than the t r a ditional "enumeration"; the latter implies a calm, precise, exact a c counting, while the former suggests the usual "feeling" of the device, characterized by the writer's effort to keep adding on to the original expression as if to capture more fully the idea or phenomenon in question (Gobineau, 133-34). (6) Doublets are so common to the language that they rarely possess stylistic significance unless reinforced by accessory devices (repetition, asyndeton). Thus there are no examples of two-part accumulation until the section on binary groups. (7) See, for example, Raymond Jean, 111-12. (8) Many occurrences of the device are short, some no longer than three words ; thus despite high frequency the text does not turn into an endless catalog of details. Further, non-rhythmic accumulations with only three elements occur more than twice as often as those with more than three. (9) Cf. D.S. Mirsky writing on Whitman: " The separate fractional images of the 'Song of the Broad-Axe' are endless métonymie images, examples, specimens of the elements comprising democratic constructiveness." Quoted in Wellek and Warren, Theory of Literature (New York, 1956), 3rd ed., 195. (10) See Richer, crit. éd., p. v: Aurélia "contient vraiment la somme de l'expérience nervalienne". (11) The latter doublet is intensified by one of the few occurrences in Aurélia of polysyndeton (et . . . et), whose effect here is, approximately, "not only . . . but in addition . . . " (12) The most frequent comments of reader-informants concern Aurélia's clarity, simplicity, grace, delicacy, purity, power; when questioned, however, they are unable to pinpoint sources of these qualities. (13) This is the text of the crit. ed. (1965); the text in the Oeuvres (1960) does not contain the dash, but is otherwise identical. (14) Occasionally a binary group is accessory to a single antithesis, highlighting the opposed terms; but this is not a major use. When a binary group, as here, underscores two successive antitheses (one in each member of the group), the principal effect is not stress of the

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antithetical terms as such but intensification of the concept: opposition. Neither antithesis nor binary rhythm is used by Nerval in a perfunctory way: though one easily invites convergence with the other, they only occasionally coincide. Similarly, binary rhythm rarely converges with chiasmus ; when it does, it reinforces less the chiasmus itself than the paradox which the chiasmus, too, is highlighting. Binary rhythm in this text is intimately linked to meaning; its use is rarely, if ever, gratuitous.

4

MIMETIC DEVICES

Vividness, or the illusion of immediacy, one result of the sensory details and emotive syntax associated in the last chapter with accumulation, is also a very important effect of the mimetic devices - direct discourse, interrogation, and exclamation. These evoke not physical environments, but thoughts, speech, and emotion, and account in large part for Aurelia's affectivity and the illusion of the real. Speech and thought are recreated, not recounted. The narrator's past doubts, perplexities, and emotions are reflected in the linguistic structures themselves. Language mimics as well as states; imitates as well as imparts. Such, at least, are the illusions fostered in the reader. (1) Immediacy, affectivity, spoken style - these effects of the mimetic devices imply still another: reader-involvement. Often the reader seems more an interlocutor than the solitary decoder of a written message. Apparent reproduction of the verbal modes of affectivity forces him to empathize. In certain interrogations, he is directly invited to consider puzzling problems. Mimetic devices often produce abrupt changes of pace in the narrative, forcing the reader into renewed attention - an important result for a text composed almost entirely of descriptive narration, with little plot action or conflict among characters. Conventional as they are (interrogation and exclamation are especially common among the Romantics), (2) the mimetic devices so permeate Aurelia (about 150 occurrences) that any description of its style would be seriously inadequate without insistence on their role. Conventionality does not equal banality or attrition of effects. (3) The most widely recurrent devices may be stylistically effective if they contrast with their context. (4) DIRECT DISCOURSE Direct discourse is the exact (real or alleged) reproduction of a speaker's words, whether formulated in speech or only in thought, and is usually set off by quotation marks or a dash. In Aurélia direct discourse (30 to 40 instances) serves most often not to present dialog, i.e. verbal exchange between interlocutors, but the narrator's thoughts at a moment in the past, or else words spoken aloud by him but to which there is no response. Most instances of direct discourse involve a single quoted segment, often brief, isolated in a macrocontext of narration or description;

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one nearly universal effect is thus change of pace. By abruptly introducing into the passage a difference of tense or mode (e.g. , imperative), a difference in intonation or rhythm ( e . g . , short paratactic phrases), direct discourse relieves homogeneity and precludes monotony; further, the change in mode of discourse requires adjustment in the mode of perception, forcing renewed effort and attention on the decoder. In a very long paragraph dominated by verbs in the i m perfect, the narrator (below) starts to recount an important dream; suddenly the text veers into the historical present, followed by a direct quotation: II/6 (p. 408): . . . Cette nuit-là j'eus un rêve délicieux, le premier depuis bien longtemps. J'étais dans une tour si profonde du côté de la t e r r e et si haute du côté du ciel, que toute mon existence s e m blait devoir se consumer à monter et à descendre. Déjà mes forces s'étaient épuisées, et j'allais manquer de courage, quand une porte latérale vint à s'ouvrir; un esprit se présente et me dit: //"Viens, f r è r e ! . . . " / / Je ne sais pourquoi il me vint à l'idée qu'il s'appelait Saturnin. The nearest previous instance of direct discourse is a full page away. Change of mode, immediacy, the contrasting brevity of the quotation all force the decoder's attention. Most instances of direct discourse in Aurélia work similar effects. At the same time, other more important effects occur. Direct discourse may highlight a particularly startling or important idea (six or seven instances). The latter, set apart typographically (quotation marks), grammatically (change of tense), rhythmically (brevity), and mimetically, impresses itself on the reader's awareness: 1/6 (p. 374): Disant ces mots, je marchais péniblement à travers les ronces, comme pour saisir l'ombre agrandie qui m'échappait; mais je me heurtai à un pan de mur dégradé, au pied duquel gisait un buste de femme. En le relevant, j'eus la persuasion que c'était le sien . . . Je reconnus des traits chéris, et, portant les yeux autour de moi, je vis que le jardin avait pris l'aspect d'un cimetière. Des voix disaient: "//L'Univers est dans la n u i t / / ! " The voices in the narrator's dream utter a mysterious dictum, whose archetypes (l'Univers, augmented by capitalization; la nuit), r e inforced by the symbolism of the macrocontext, evoke a mood of death, hopelessness, doom. The sentence is important because it epitomizes a passage that marks a juncture in the narrator's spiritual progression. Its heightened expressiveness becomes apparent when this formulation is compared to the alternative, indirect d i s course: "Des voix disaient que l'Univers était dans la nuit." In another passage, the narrator as a boy, raised by an uncle whose avocation was the study of Roman antiquities, seeks a solution to the confusion caused by exposure to both pagan and Christian iconography: II/4 (p. 394): Embarrassé au milieu de ces divers symboles, je

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demandai un jour à mon oncle ce que c'était que Dieu. "Dieu, c'est le soleil," me dit-il. The quoted phrase preserves all the pithy immediacy-of the uncle's formula which, in indirect discourse, would be muted: "Il m'a dit que Dieu était le soleil." Through direct quotation in a long macrocontext of narration (even the boy's own question is reported indirectly), the assertion is put into focus. The idea it contains is important, moreover, for it helps explain the origins of the narrator's tendency, so evident throughput Aurélia, to fuse pagan and Christian symbols. More frequently than ideas, direct discourse emphasizes emotional highpoints in the narrative (some 16 instances). Such moments are often epitomized in directly quoted exclamatory or interrogative phrases. Below, the narrator has pursued the dream-vision of a woman (Aurélia, the goddess) into a garden; there she gradually enlarges and is lost in immense nature. " 'Oh! ne fuis pas! m'écriaije . . . la nature meurt avec toi!' " (1/6, p. 374). The direct quotation intrudes at a point of emotional pitch, both mimicking and underlining the narrator's consternation. In another dream, after the elusive Aurélia has told him they will see each other again, the narrator is overcome with a joy in which he dares not believe: II/2 (p. 391): En un instant, je me représentai son mariage, la malédiction qui nous séparait . . . et je me dis: "Est-ce possible? reviendrait-elle à moi?" "M'avez-vous pardonné?" demandai-je avec larmes. Mais tout avait disparu. Direct quotation - by exact "reproduction" of the brevity, parataxis, repetitiveness and intonation of emotive language - heightens focus and poignancy at a moment of extreme stress. Whatever other effects they produce, all the preceding examples result as well in a sense of immediacy, or mimetic evocation; this is the one universal and most important effect of the device. Most instances entail some change of pace, some affectivity, some emphasis of an idea; but all, without exception, are mimetic. They exactly reproduce (or create the illusion of reproducing) the thoughts or words of the narrator, or other personage, from a moment in the past; they recreate for the reader (or give the illusion of recreating) the exact texture of things, as experienced, as formulated, under the direct impetus of events - and not as retold. Direct discourse may evoke the essence of a particular scene. Below, the narrator is convinced that the world is about to end; alone and frightenend, he seeks the comfort of a human presence: II/4 (p. 398): J'apaisai ma faim avec un petit gâteau pour me donner la force d'aller jusqu* à la maison du poète allemand. En entrant, je lui dis que tout était fini et qu'il fallait nous préparer à mourir. Il appela sa femme qui me dit: "Qu'avez-vous ? - Je ne sais, lui dis-je, je suis perdu." Elle envoya chercher un fiacre,

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et une jeune fille me conduisit à la maison Dubois. No description or commentary, just a paratactic report of facts. The narrator's warning is reproduced indirectly; direct discourse is reserved to capture the essential mood of the scene: the muted alarm of the woman (Qu'avez-vous ?), the narrator's helplessness ( je ne sais), his pathetic recognition that once again he has succumbed (je suis perdu). Impact stems above all from the austere immediacy of the few spoken words. Similarly below, after many attempts to penetrate the catatonic wall isolating the young soldier in the sanatorium, the narrator begins to make progress: M (p. 413): Un jour, enfin, il ouvrit les yeux un seul instant, et je vis qu'ils étaient bleus comme ceux de l'esprit qui m'était apparu en rêve. Un matin, à quelques jours de là, il tint ses yeux grands ouverts et ne les ferma plus. Il se mit aussitôt à parler, mais seulement par intervalle, et me reconnut, me tutoyant et m'appelant frère. Cependant il ne voulait pas davantage se résoudre à manger. Un jour, revenant du jardin, il me dit: "J'ai soif." J'allai lui chercher à boire ( . . . . ) The two quoted words epitomize the young man's ingenuousness. There is no preamble, no conventional formula. An isolated being who exists outside the bounds of social intercourse, he enunciates a need (request) with the shamelessness and confidence of a child. Direct discourse captures the essence of a character and a scene. The mimetic effect also operates frequently when the narrator is alone. Below, he has been wandering in an irrational, aimless quest all over Paris: II/4 (p. 396): Désespéré, je me dirigeai en pleurant vers NotreDame -de-Lorette, où j'allais me jeter au pied de l'autel de la Vierge, demandant pardon pour mes fautes. Quelque chose en moi me disait: "La Vierge est morte et tes prières sont inutiles." The reader "hears" the same interior voice the narrator heard, the exact words unmuted by.the awkward que's of indirect discourse, its imperfect tense removed in space and time, its oblique mes. The vividness of direct quotation contrasts with the remoteness of the indirect alternative: "Quelque chose en moi me disait (que) la Vierge (était) morte et (que) (mes) prières (étaient) inutiles." For an instant the reader feels that he is present; the narrator's conviction, the reality of the interior voice are immediate, convincing. Through many such passages the reader is led to grasp the precise quality of the narrator's bizarre experiences, reactions, and emotions. Plausibility is increased; unusual phenomena are less easily dismissed as the meaningless vagaries of a disturbed mind. Direct discourse frequently converges with the other two mimetic devices, since exclamation and interrogation are both characteristic of spoken style. The latter, moreover, are not limited to quoted

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speech; frequently they variegate and enliven the narration itself with effects similar to those of direct discourse. INTERROGATION Interrogation occurs as often outside quoted discourse as within it. A question is rarely posed with the expectation of an answer, and its effect is never wholly cognitive: interrogation is invariably expressive. Like direct discourse, it almost always results in change ofpace and emphasis. Usually occurring singly, with no subsequent response, the question contrasts with a macrocontext (often long) of narrative or description. For example, after a lengthy, mythical evocation of the Creation, characterized by successive accumulations and ample declarative sentences, a new paragraph begins with the brief question: "Qui done avait fait ce miracle?" (1/8, p. 376). Contrast in length, intonation, and orientation (from assimilation of data and images to questioning) changes the pace and draws attention to the sentence, underlining the mysteriousness of what has just been described. Variegation and emphasis are such obvious effects of most occurrences of interrogation that insistence is unnecessary. As with direct discourse, interrogation's most important single effect is mimetic: in its very form (word order, intonation, conjunction-free directness), it embodies the doubts, questions, ambiguities and emotions which abound in the narrator's mind. Instead of relating, "I was puzzled by such and such a vision", the narrator reproduces the structure allegedly formulated in the past to embody that puzzlement: "What can (could) this vision portend?" Instead of reporting, "Anxiously I wondered if this figure represented my double", he says: "Could this be my double?" The utterance mimics in form what it expresses in meaning. Far from ornamental, interrogation in Aurélia is integrated and significant. Doubt, perplexity, searching are crucial elements of the narrator's experience; a device which renders them immediate and palpable (37 examples) is a major component of style. The mimetic effect of interrogation operates with or without convergent direct discourse, in genuine dialog or when the narrator is alone. Below, he is conversing, in a dream, with a long dead ancestor: 1/4 (p. 368): nous sommes les rayons du feu central qui l'anime (la terre) et qui déjà s'est affaibli... -Eh quoi! dis-je, / / l a t e r r e pourrait mourir, et nous serions envahis par le n é a n t / / ? -Le néant, dit-il, n'existe pas dans le sens qu'on l'entend ( . . . . ) The question - conversational in style by its maintenance of declarative word order - not only reports, but embodies in its very structure the narrator's puzzlement and incredulity, making these vivid for the reader. More often than dialog, questions convergent with direct discourse

75 reproduce the thoughts or words of the solitary narrator: II/4 (p. 395): Je me dis: "J'ai bien mal usé de la vie, mais si les morts pardonnent, c'est sans doute à condition que l'on s'abstiendra à jamais du mal, et qu'on réparera tout celui qu'on a fait. //Cela se peut-il?// . . . Dès ce moment, essayons de ne plus mal faire, et rendons l'équivalent de tout ce que nous pouvons devoir." The brief interrogation embodies, first, a legitimate question and, second, emotion - nascent excitement and determination, which come to the fore in the subsequent hortatory imperatives. Outside direct discourse, interrogation is embedded in the narrative itself and often functions as free indirect discourse (Bally's discours indirect libre). (5) Below, during his dream-visit to the ville mystérieuse, the narrator notes certain men different from the others: n / 5 (p. 369): toutefois c'est au milieu d'une grande ville et d'une population mélangée et banale qu'ils savaient maintenir ainsi leur individualité farouche. //Qu'étaient donc ces hommes?// Mon guide me fit gravir des rues escarpées et bruyantes ( . . . . ) The question is not asked by the narrator now, as he reflects on the past, but is one which occurred to him then. The context suggests this, and so does insertion of the emotive, conversational done. The question is a reported thought from the past. But reported how? Direct discourse would have given: "Que sont donc ces hommes? me dis-je." And indirect discourse: "Je me demandai ce qu'étaient donc ces hommes. " Here, though the decoder knows that, verb tense excepted, these are words reported from the narrator's past, there are no quotation marks, no governing verb, no conjunction. Free indirect discourse often combines the advantages of the other two methods: (6) the emotive and expressive features of spoken language are maintained yet the question is more concise even than in direct quotation, for no governing verb is required, no me disje or me demandai-je. On the one hand, the interrogation blends into the narrative; on the other, it creates a change of pace, forcing the decoder to move, with no explicit transition, from the narrative plane to that of reported speech, and back again. Similarly, in the next example, after recounting a strange and troubling dream, the narrator writes: 1/7 (p. 374): Ce rêve si heureux à son début me jeta dans une grande perplexité. //Que signifiait-il//? Je ne le sus que plus tard. Aurélia était morte. Mimetic, immediate, uncluttered, the interrogation reproduces the very question (verb tense aside) which the narrator put to himself in the past. Suspense and perplexity are stressed; reinforced by the following sentence, which functions as a disjunction between question and answer, they anticipate the startling enunciation of the final statement: Aurélia is dead. The decoder, forced into increased partici-

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pation, moves swiftly from narration to mimetic evocation, and back to narration. In a final example, mimetic re-creation through free indirect discourse is total. As Part Two begins, the narrator, recounting the past, feels that all is lost, damnation is inevitable; he wishes God had the power to change hell into oblivion. Suddenly he catches himself, struck by the thought of the Christian God: I l / l (p. 385): //Pourquoi donc est-ce la première fois, depuis si longtemps, que je songe à l u i / / ? Le système fatal qui s'était créé dans mon esprit n' admettait pas cette royauté solitaire . . . The question retains the present tense, here a kind of historical p r e s ent; the original formulation is reproduced exactly. Free indirect discourse is limited in Aurélia to the reporting of thoughts (not spoken words), and almost always to thoughts in the form of interrogation (16 instances) or exclamation (6 instances). Less supple a device than, say, in Flaubert, it nonetheless provides an additional means of introducing subtle mimetic structures into the narrative, especially in accounts of reveries, feelings, and self-analysis. After the mimetic function, interrogation's principal effect is r e a d e r involvement. Frequently the question exists not only in the mind of the narrator, presently or in the past, but is directed also to the reader. Interrogation thus becomes a device for creating suspense and inviting the reader's participation. Occasionally reader involvement is the primary effect: 1/8 (p. 378): Seulement, je vois encore debout, sur un pic baigné des eaux, une femme abandonnée par eux (les Eloim), qui crie les cheveux épars, se débattant contre la mort. Ses accents plaintifs dominaient le bruit des eaux . . . / / F u t - e l l e s a u v é e / / ? Je l'ignore. Interrogation here is not free indirect speech; nor is the narrator questioning now what happened in the past: both then and now his ignorance on this point is certain. What this formulation (rather than: J'ignore si elle fut sauvée) does, is create a moment of suspense. The interrogation is directed by the narrator to the reader, articulating and augmenting the latter's curiosity - as well as preparing for the contrastive deflation of the cryptic answer: "Je l'ignore. " Much more often, reader-involvement is not the primary effect, but ancillary to mimetic evocation of the narrator's state of mind. Below, the latter has been meditating on the obstacles reason places in the way of religious faith: II/l (p. 386): "L'arbre de science n'est pas l'arbre de v i e . " / / C e pendant, pouvons-nous rejeter de notre esprit ce que tant de générations intelligehtes y ont versé de bon ou de f u n e s t e / / ? L'ignorance ne s'apprend pas. The narrator is speaking in the present, about philosophical problems

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raised as he ponders a state of confusion in Ms past; for a moment he has moved into a general, timeless realm in which he considers the perennial conflict between faith and reason. Although the question is rhetorical, the very fact of posing it suggests that the narrator is attempting to convince and justify himself. (He has not, after all, overridden reason to return to the practice of Catholicism.) Simultaneously, the reader feels drawn into the problem - as if the narrator were addressing him, too, and seeking his support. A particularly effective form £>f reader-involving interrogation is the infinitive sentence. Below, the narrator tells of meeting Aurélia at a party after a falling-out and long separation: 1/2 (p. 361): un jour, me trouvant dans une société où elle faisait partie, je la vis venir à moi et me tendre la main. //Comment interpréter cette démarche et le regard profond et triste dont elle accompagna son salut//? The question is mimetic of the narrator's own state of mind; but in addition, by its lack of actualizing features (no time, no person, no number) the infinitive focuses attention on the idea of interrogation itself. Absence of actualization (in particular, "je" and the firstperson verbal morpheme) .allows the decoder to react as if the question were directed to him. He participates in the puzzle. A final type of interrogative reader-involvement might more accurately be called reader-seduction. Throughout the text, the narrator presents bizarre viewpoints which fly in the face of conventional common sense. Sometimes he couches these startling affirmations in the form of questions, as if he himself were still in doubt (to a point, perhaps he still is) ; he involves and disarms the reader by seeking counsel and solliciting approval. The passage below concerns the narrator's resolve to systematically encode his dreams in words, in order to extract their secret meaning: M (p. 412): "N'est-il pas possible de dompter cette chimère attrayante et redoutable, d'imposer une règle à ces esprits des nuits qui se jouent de notre raison?" The interrogative structure allows for a certain doubt, and at once the reader's possible objections are weakened. Similarly, concerning man's two existences - the life of dream and the life of waking reality: M (p. 412): "Après un engourdissement de quelques minutes une vie nouvelle commence, affranchie des conditions du temps et de l'espace, et pareille sans doute à celle qui nous attend après la mort. //Qui sait s'il n'existe pas un lien entre ces deux existences et s'il n'est pas possible à l'âme de le nouer dès à présent//?" The reader is less likely, after this modest "Qui sait s i . . . ? " , to assert categorically that no, such a thing is absolutely impossible. Throughout the preceding discussion of interrogation, reference

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has been made to another of its major effects: affectivity. Almost every interrogation in Aurélia is to some degree emotive. A question like the following, 1/10 (p. 384): Le cri d'une femme, distinct et vibrant, empreint d'une douleur déchirante, me réveilla en sursaut! ( . . . ) J e me précipitai à terre et je me mis à prier avec ferveur en pleurant à chaudes larmes. - //Mais quelle était donc cette voix qui venait de résonner si douloureusement dans la nuit//? while reader-involving and mimetic of perplexity, is also mimetic of emotion (alarm, surprise, impatience), evoked especially by mais and done. Often, in fact, a phrase or sentence which appears to be an interrogation is in reality an exclamation (7) (18 instances). Most of these are so-called rhetorical questions. Thus, after making a lengthy defense of reason versus faith, the author pauses: "//Qu'ai-je écrit l à / / ? Ce sont des blasphèmes. L'humilité chrétienne ne peut parler ainsi" (n/1, p. 386). The apparent interrogation is not a question at all; the narrator knows perfectly well what he has just written, and so does the reader. It is an exclamation of revulsion, self-accusation and disbelief. Similarly, a few lines later: "//Un pacte avec Dieu lui-même//? . . . O science! 6 vanité!" And again, convinced that he is damned and forever separated from Aurélia: " / / E t qu'importe mon salut m ê m e / / ? L'abîme a reçu sa proie" (II/2, p. 391). At a certain point, then, interrogation fuses with exclamation, and shares with it many similar effects. EXCLAMATION Nothing imprints a thought more deeply than affective intonation and the exclamatory forms which it entails. Without such forms language would be dull, communication would suffer; not only do they convey emotion, they comment on the discourse. (8) In speech, affective intonation strikes the ear; in writing it is symbolized by typographical indications or explicit linguistic structures, or both. There are three ways, on the written page, to indicate exclamation: by an exclamation point, a question mark (where interrogation is not primarily a question, but a device of affectivity), and certain linguistic signs such as quel + noun; si + adjective or adverb; initial mais; exclamatory particles like 6, hélas, eh quoi; que de + noun; deictic c'est . . . qui (que); inversion; and so forth. Nerval uses all of these, singly or in combination. Exclamation (65 occurrences, not counting the interrogative variety) may occur with or without special punctuation, with or without structural indications; it may be short or long, single or multiple, elliptical or complete. It converges with a variety of other devices: direct discourse, since exclamation is characteristic of spoken style; apostrophe, ellipsis, and the imperative which almost always involve

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emotivity; antithesis, which in Aurélia usually includes surprise; repetition or accumulation, often symptomatic of the narrator's emotional stake in an idea; italics, regularly used to highlight concepts which have affective import for the narrator. Like its two sister devices, exclamation usually provides variegation. Below, the narrator has taken to creating on the walls of the sanatorium garden a series of frescoes depicting the favorite images of his daydreams : 1/7 (p. 375): Une figure dominait toujours les autres: c'était celle d'Aurélia, peinte sous les traits d'une divinité, telle qu'elle m ' é tait apparue dans mon rêve. Sous ses pieds tournait une roue, et les dieux lui faisaient cortège. Je parvins à colorier ce groupe en exprimant le suc des herbes et des fleurs. - / / Q u e de fois j'ai rêvé devant cette chère idole//! Straightforward description has been proceeding for half a page; all the sentences are declarative and, with minor exceptions, respect regular syntax. Then suddenly, the macrocontext is broken: an exclamatory word (que), an emotive circumstantial complement in initial position (que de fois), exclamatory punctuation - and the entire tone of the passage is changed. An equally frequent effect is reader-involvement, which has two main causes: 1) stimulation of attention by change of pace; 2) the "contagious" quality of emotion, the human tendency to empathize. Thus the narrator's feelings, in the "present" as he comments or in the past which he evokes, are not only registered by the reader as a fact; they are often shared by him as well. Empathy occurs readily if the situation involves common human experience: when the narrator has lost the woman he loves and cries out, "Maintenant il est trop tard!" (II/3, p. 392), empathy is instantaneous. Even in situations related to the narrator's delusions, however, the simple fact of exclamation moves and involves up to a point. The narrator has been wandering through Paris in a state of manic distraction: II/5 (p. 399): J'allai ensuite visiter les galeries d'ostéologie. La vue des monstres qu'elles renferment me fit penser au déluge, et, lorsque je sortis, une averse épouvantable tombait dans le jardin. Je me dis: "//Quel malheur! Toutes ces femmes, tous ces enfants, vont se trouver mouillés//! . . . " Puis, je me dis: "//Mais c'est plus e n c o r e / / ! c'est le véritable déluge qui commence." Though the reader may not understand the narrator's concern, he is touched by the latter's distress and pitiable condition. A third effect of exclamation is emphasis. By infusing a statement with affectivity, exclamation forces attention to its intellectual content. At the beginning of II/2 (p. 389), the narrator examines his c u r rent position regarding Christianity, which he has so long ignored: " . . . Mais si cette religion dit vrai, Dieu peut me pardonner encore. Il peut me la (Aurélia) rendre si je m'humilie devant lui; //peut-être

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son esprit reviendra-t-il en moi!//" The emotive effect (excitement, hope), symptomatic of the importance the narrator accords the idea, draws attention to the idea itself, underlining the fact that, after a period of despair, the narrator again finds reason for hope. Without emotive exclamation, there is no emphasis: the clause would not so clearly mark another turning point in the narrator's erratic spiritual journey. Emphasis, reader-involvement, and variegation are all common, but secondary effects of exclamation; the primary effects, operative in all instances, are mimesis and affectivity. The two, in fact, are inseparable. Closely associated both with spoken language and emotion, exclamation reproduces precisely those aspects of the former which most clearly result in the latter; it reproduces the very structures in which emotion, undiluted by reflection, is "spontaneously" formulated. Compare: "Cette conviction me rendit heureux" - which leaves the reader informed but probably unmoved - with "Quel bonheur je trouvai dans cette conviction!" (1/5, p. 372) - which informs and moves at the same time. In the following example, the narrator describes a state of despair from which nothing can distract him: II/4 (p. 394): Les visions qui s'étaient succédé pendant mon sommeil m'avaient réduit à un tel désespoir, que je pouvais à peine parler; la société de mes amis ne m'inspirait qu'une distraction vague; mon esprit, entièrement occupé de ces illusions, se refusait à la moindre conception différente; je ne pouvais lire et comprendre dix lignes de suite. Je me disais des plus belles choses: "//Qu'importe! cela n'existe pas pour m o i . / / " The description proceeds in four parallel statements linked by semicolons: each begins with its grammatical subject, each is a declaration, conveying one aspect of the narrator's condition; the tone is reportorial. Then comes the exclamation: he is indifferent even to beauty. Mimetic and direct in a context of reportorial indirectness, it reproduces the exact words and structures of the narrator's own despairing cry, part question, mostly exclamation: "Qu'importe!" The entire description, its logical content and its emotion, is compressed and epitomized: if even beauty cannot touch him, his despair is indeed total. Exclamation may occur in free indirect discourse. Struck by the idea that each man has a "double", the narrator reflects on the possible consequences: 1/9 (p. 381): " ( . . . ) En tout cas, l'autre m'est hostile . . . Qui sait s'il n'y a pas telle circonstance ou tel âge où ces deux esprits se séparent? ( . . . ) " Un éclair fatal traversa tout à coup cette obscurité . . . //Aurélia n'était plus à m o i / / ! . . . " The sentence does not report the narrator's sudden illumination in the past, it recreates it. The simple, direct authenticity, the affective intonation, indicated on the written page by ( !), convey the depth

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of emotion experienced at that instant. Isolated at both ends by suspension points and announced by the ominous metaphor in the preceding sentence, the exclamation explodes on the reader's awareness as it did on that of the narrator. Its double effect of mimesis and affect ivity pervades and determines the decoder's act of perception. Despite differences in emphasis, the three mimetic devices - direct discourse, interrogation, and exclamation - resemble each other closely in their principal effects. Singly, each is notable by its frequency; together, they comprise a formidable mass affecting every page of the text. Mimetic, they account in large measure for the illusion of immediacy and realism produced in the reader by the text of Aurélia. What might easily have seemed a compendium of generalizations, explanations, and clinical details, seems instead a vivid re-creation of a harrowing mental and spiritual crisis. Reader-involving, they force participation in the narrator's emotions, doubts and perplexities. The attentive reader cannot r e main objective and neutral; subtly, consistently, he is lured into an attitude of empathy and good will. Affective, these devices contribute largely to evocation of the entire spectrum of emotions which suffuse and characterize so great a portion of the text and which are implicit in the very subject matter. A years-long "descent into hell", an interminable wrestling match with the Angel on whose outcome depends sanity, life, and salvation this is the subject; and it is very often the simple mimetic devices which capture and recreate its multiple tensions and tonalities. NOTES (1) On the question of realism and verisimilitude, see for example Tzvetan Todorov's essay, "Introduction au vraisemblable" (1967), included in his Poétique de la prose (Paris: Seuil, 1971). (2) Bruneau and Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à nos jours, XII, 333-335. (3) See Riffaterre, "L'Etude stylistique des formes littéraires conventionnelles", in Essais. (4) The popularity of a device seems to indicate expressive potential. If mediocre authors abuse it, this does not preclude that the same technique can, in the hands of an artisan, be an effective stylistic tool. Unfavorable judgments based on the presence of traditional or conventional methods derive from the prejudice that linguistic originality and innovation (both taken in a narrow sense) are prerequisites of literary excellence. Such a bias excludes from the ranks of notable writers not only Nerval but a Madame de Lafayette, a Benjamin Constant, a Gide . . . (5) A useful survey of free indirect discourse, with specific reference to Flaubert, can be found in Stephen Ullmann, Style in the French Novel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964), 94-120. (6) Ullmann, 117: "Free indirect style combines the advantages of the

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two orthodox methods. The author is not committed to an exact r e production of words or thoughts; yet he is able to dispense with explicit subordination and to retain the emotive and expressive features and the very inflexions of the spoken language." (7) On the relationship between interrogation and exclamation, see Bally, I, 269-275. (8) Bally, I, 307-309. A general discussion of exclamation is found on pp. 269-277.

5

METAPHOR AND SIMILE

As numerous as the mimetic devices, images (1) (about 125 metaphors, 50 similes) form the last of Aurélia's characteristic devices of style. Despite their abundance, the reader is often unaware of them: most images are simple, i . e . , composed of a single metaphorical term, without extension or convergence of other images (even where convergence or extension does occur, the development is rarely lengthy); (2) most images are clear, i . e . , readily decoded, rarely disconcerting; most are integrated into their context, i . e . , they attract little attention to themselves. The discretion and concision characteristic of the text as a whole preside over the images as well. Sobriety of context allows a "modest" image to achieve considerable stylistic pay-off; when a more elaborate image does occur, it is all the more effective for being exceptional. Examination of images according to Richardson's categories of tenor, vehicle, and ground uncovers certain useful data - not, however, where most expected. Classification of vehicles by the domains of reality from which they are drawn (e.g., peasant life, warfare, animals . . . ) , though perhaps the most popular approach, (3) often leads to little more than a series of lists; in Aurélia, in any case, only one such vehicle group contains more than a handful of examples. Eighteen vehicles are drawn from religion, particularly Catholic custom and ritual: "J'avais fait de ce coffret une sorte de //reliquaire//" (II/2, p. 390); "dans l'espèce d'//examen de conscience// auquel je me livrais" (II/4, p. 393); "c'était presque / / l a cellule d'un anachorète italien//" (Il/l, p. 388); "Sa figure expressive, et presque //cénobitique//" (II/4, p. 395); "Une //profanation//de mes souvenirs" (1/1, p. 360). Others evoke paradise, miracles, choirs, confessor, the Tower of Babel. Together with heightened expressiveness, the principal effect of this group is to underline the strong religious-mystical bias of the text: the narrator's yoking of religious vehicles to profane tenors suggests the hidden, spiritual significance that persons, events, and objects regularly assume for him. The remaining vehicles, the vast majority, are drawn from a great variety of domains, forming no other significant groups. Examination of tenors proves more fruitful: three subject groups regularly elicit the emphasis and expressiveness provided by metaphor. The first such group, as with the vehicles noted above, has to do with religion (15 instances) - though here, rather than secondary details of Catholic custom and worship, the focus is on the concept of faith itself and other fundamental tenets. God, for example, is compared to light (vehicle): "L'Esprit de 1' Etre-Dieu, reproduit et //pour

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ainsi dire r e f l é t é / / sur la t e r r e , devenait le type commun des âmes humaines(.... )" (H/1, p. 397). Through reflection, each man is united to God as his image, and all men are united to each other since each is equally an image of God. In an elaborated comparison, Christian faith is viewed as an edifice, a house - ancient symbol of the repository of wisdom and tradition; (4) it is a haven, a coherent whole formed of interconnected parts: I I / l (p. 386): Il est bien difficile, dès que nous en sentons le besoin, de reconstruire //l'édifice mystique dont les innocents et les simples admettent dans leur coeur la figure toute t r a c é e / / . The basic image-word, édifice, is reinforced by reconstruire and tracée ( e . g . , as applied to the plans of a building), the two words forming an implicit antithesis. For the narrator Catholicism offers a nostalgic promise of peace and security, but, unlike the simple of spirit, he cannot "enter", for it is also "un / / j o u g / / qui sur bien des points offenserait encore ma raison" (II/4, p. 393). In a convergence of metaphor with several other devices, pride the principal sin of Christian theology and the narrator's own vice is evoked in all its heinousness: "De telles pensées(... ) ont sur le front / / l e s éclairs d'orgueil de la couronne de Satan//" (II/l, p. 386). Thoughts (the narrator's) are personified; their brow is topped by Satan's crown, whose coruscations suggest intellectual pride because of their meretricious brilliance. The narrator associates himself with evil incarnate, precisely in regard to the latter's principal and unforgivable sin. Whether faith, God, pride, or other tenors evoking soul, spirits (ombres), spiritual trials of initiation and purification (épreuves), or supernatural mysteries, this first group highlights important motifs of Aurélia - all related to the fundamental tenets of religion, and all preoccupations of the narrator who, in the course of the narrative, progresses from a state of religious indifference, through numerous hesitations and doubts, to a state of religious belief. The focus on r e ligion deriving from the tenors is more significant than that provided by the vehicles. In the first place, the tenors deal with fundamental concepts, while the vehicles evoke accidentals. Further, the latter may be chosen out of habit, facility, or a certain illustrative appropriateness which does not necessarily imply any deep involvement with religion. On the other hand, related tenors which consistently elicit metaphoric emphasis and intensification almost certainly hold a position of intellectual or affective importance. A second group of tenors, twice as numerous as the first (33 instances) , centers on phenomena related to the fusion of dream and life: dream, sleep, disorientation, confusion, bizarre interior sensations; and, both as complement and contrary of these, lucid reason. In the opening sentence, the polarity of dream and life is at once posited and effaced: "Le Rêve est une seconde vie" (1/1, p. 359). Dream, like the waking state, is an autonomous mode of consciousness whose perceptions are as valid as those of reason. Elevation of the archetype rêve, through capitalization, into a transcendent cat-

85 egory and the surprising, paradoxical equation of apparent opposites, through the authoritative copula, turn the metaphor into a striking aphorism, which epitomizes the entire text. (5) In a slightly more developed image, dream becomes a chimera: M (p. 412): N'est-il pas possible de //dompter cette chimère attrayante et redoutable//, d'imposer une règle à ces esprits des nuits que se jouent de notre raison? Like the fire-breathing monster of mythology (part lion, part goat, part serpent), dream is undisciplined, incongruous, untamed (cf. the reinforcing verb, dompter); but it is also a superficially deceptive fancy, an alluring enigma whose mystery can hopefully be fathomed and articulated by lucid reason (this hope becomes explicit in the following parallel clause). The birth of this hope, and the resolve actively to bring it to fruition, mark a critical juncture in the narrator's development. Strange and bizarre, the narrator's experience induces unusual sensations and perceptions that can be rendered only through comparisons. Referring to a whole period of his life, he writes: "Lorsque //l'âme flotte// incertaine entre la vie et le rêve ( . . . . )" (II/l, p. 385); his habitual state of awareness is one with the twilight world of sleep, suspended between perception and non-perception, reality and dream. In a singular state of depression, guilt, anxiety and frustration, he evokes his état d'âme in one of the most striking images of the entire text: 1/10 (p. 382): Je ne puis donner ici qu'une idée assez bizarre de ce qui résulte de cette contention d'esprit. / / J e me sentais glisser comme sur un fil tendu dont la longueur était infinie//. Mental-emotional-physical tension produces the feeling that might r e sult from sliding along an endless taut wire: some kind of highly concentrated, unremitting nerve-ache sensation, coupled with an archetypal sense and fear of falling. The image suggests, through the tactile-visual-kinetic sensation, that for which the language has no denotative vocabulary. Its striking quality results from the total dissimilarity of tenor and vehicle (the only fully developed instance of its kind in Aurélia) and from the multiplication of concrete detail (glisser, fil tendu, longueur . . . infinie). Irrationality is mimetic of the hallucinatory. While these and similar images emphasize and valorize the nonrational aspects of the narrator's experience, another group emphasizes his simultaneous preoccupation with the concept of lucid reason, commonly thought to be not only the normal but the highest plane of mental activity. Exaltation of rêve implies no denigration of vie, for it is precisely with the instrument of lucid reason that he resolves to extract from the dream experiences their hidden meanings. There is no irony when he writes: "Les soins de l'art m'avaient rendu à la santé sans avoir encore ramené dans mon esprit / / l e cours

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régulier de la raison humaine//" (1/7, p. 375). "Régulier" implies that human reason is orderly, disciplined, desirable. Esteem for reason is explicit when the narrator speaks of his hesitation to e m brace Catholicism: II/l (p. 386): Il ne faut pas / / f a i r e si bon marché de la raison hum a i n e / / , que de croire qu'elle gagne quelque chose à s'humilier tout entière, car ce serait accuser sa céleste origine . . . A moment later, referring to God: "quel est le père qui se complairait à voir son fils //abdiquer devant lui tout raisonnement et toute f i e r t é / / ! " Reason even offers a means of struggle against the hostile double: "Luttons contre l'esprit fatal avec / / l e s a r m e s / / de la tradition et / / d e la science// ( )" (1/7, p. 382). Contrary to the conventional wisdom, however, reason is not all, and that is the main point. Discussing the inadequacies of rationalist philosophy compared to religion, when in moral crises we seek solace and support, the narrator writes: "elle (la philosophie) lutte contre les douleurs morales en anéantissant la sensibilité; //pareille à la chirurgie, elle ne sait que retrancher l'organe qui fait s o u f f r i r / / " (II/l, p. 386). The effectiveness of the image derives principally from its development, unusually lengthy for Aurélia: to the basic equation, la philosophie = la chirurgie (metonymy for: les philosophes = les chirurgiens) , are added the supporting ones : sensibilité (part of the soul) = organe (part of the body); angoisses morales = douleurs physiques; and anéantir (moralement) = retrancher. The notion of surgery not only provides a neat, illustrative point of comparison, but it insinuates a thoroughly negative attitude toward the tenor, philosophy. Whereas the situation at hand - a severe spiritual and mental crisis calls for human sympathy and a patient, gradual, therapeutic approach, the vehicle connotes clinical indifference, laced with reactions of menace and fear latent in the notion of cutting. Metaphoric emphasis on both reason and dream states underlines the narrator's preoccupation with the modes and validity of human p e r ception. (If his dream perception is valid, he will resolve certain pressing anxieties: he will be able to believe in the immortality of the soul, the continued existence of all those he has ever loved, the possibility of salvation and, above all, ultimate reunion with Aurélia in the other world). Such concepts (tenors) regularly elicit the expressiveness and connotative precision provided by metaphor. The preceding tenor-group, as well as the next and largest (about 38 instances) - tenors which are also symbols - involve images the overwhelming majority of which occur in passages dealing with the narrator's occult world-view. In fact the proportion of all metaphors and similes in occult passages, as well as that of symbols and archetypes, is markedly higher than in the text as a whole. (6) Thus, whether in the tenors themselves, or occasionally in vehicles, or in the developmental material accompanying the image, there is frequent convergence of metaphor/simile with symbol/archetype. Certain of these symbols are conditioned by the structures and content of the narrative and completely integrated with them, like the

87 young soldier and Aurélia herself; others are consecrated by convention, such as the forget-me-not (myosotis), the mysterious city, the serpent that encircles the globe (Uroboros); still others, besides whatever special values they may have in this text, awaken archetypal echoes: light, fire, blood, earth, moon, sun, stars. Metaphoric stress of symbols (tenors) underlines their importance and alerts the reader to hidden meanings. Tenor-symbols include two noteworthy sub-groups: those which converge with personification (8 instances) and those convergent with visual imagery. During a primeval, mythical age in central Africa, "un soleil / / i m placable// //dévorait// ces contrées" (1/8, p. 377). Intransigeance (implacable) makes of the sun a stern, vengeful being capable of thought and emotion; in the accompanying verb-metaphor the neutral idea, destroy, is intensified and rendered affective by the notions of weakness, helplessness (contrées = prey) and violent annihilation (soleil = predator). Not only does the sun destroy the land, it ravages it, engulfs it, obliterates it utterly. The preceding personification makes of this a willful, premeditated act. "Sur les montagnes de l'Himalaya //une petite fleur est née//. - Ne m'oubliez pas!" (M, p. 409). The forget-me-not, or myosotis, symbol of purity, tenderness, and simplicity, (7) of friendship and fidelity, is "born" (like an infant Savior?) in the Orient, cradle of mysticism, and in one of the" "high places" universally sacred to religion. (8) It is a pledge of hope and nascent expectations. In the continuation of the preceding: "Le //regard chatoyant d'une étoile// s'est fixé un instant sur elle, et une réponse s'est fait entendre dans un doux langage étranger. - Myosotis!" The star, mediatrix between heaven and earth, symbol of spiritual faith and guidance, poetry, and of Aurélia herself, (9) becomes an eye, that is, by metonymy, a seeing, perceptive being, the heavenly analogue, or correspondent, of the personified terrestrial flower. (10) The flower "answers" the star; the doux langage étranger metaphorically represents the mysterious system of non-verbal "communication" operative among participants in the great network of universal correspondences. (11) "//Un soupir, un frisson d'amour// sort du //sein gonflé de la t e r r e / / ( . . . . ) " (M, p. 410). A woman by its sighing and love-shiver, the earth is even more so - a mother - by its swollen womb; the three complementary metaphors, whose convergence renders the sentence so effective, make of the earth the universal mother, source of fertility and life, protectress, and conscious participant in the process of creation. Personification of archetypal symbols - earth, sun, star, flower points to the narrator's belief in the sentience and awareness of all beings, (12) and to their capacity for active participation in the mysterious phenomenon of universal correspondence. The second sub-group of tenor-symbols, those convergent with visual imagery, is much larger. In fact, visual imagery - most, but not all of which coincides with images and/or symbols - is a hallmark of the text. Visual imagery may be static or dynamic; (13) The dynamic is more common and usually more vivid because of the additional element of motion or change.

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Static visual imagery tends to be brief, undeveloped, and focused on a single object or single aspect of an object: "Le ciel s'est ouvert dans toute sa gloire, et j'y ai lu / / l e mot pardon signé du sang de J é s u s - C h r i s t / / " (M, p. 410). What is seen is the word gardon written in red; what is important in the metaphor is not the obvious comparison ink = blood, via the ground: colored liquid, but the connotations of the religious symbol, blood of Christ: Calvary, redemption, salvation - and on a more primitive, archetypal level: sacrificial victim placating the gods, as well as a whole folkloric tradition in which solemn and fateful agreements are sealed or signed with drops of blood from the contracting parties. Similarly: "Je crus alors me trouver au milieu d'un vaste charnier où l'histoire universelle était / / é c r i t e en traits de s a n g / / " (II/6, p. 407). Again what matters most are the connotations of the combined metaphor, archetype, and visual image; reinforced by the word "charnier", they are negative rather than positive, evoking death, revulsion, violence, horror. Two static visual images, complementary and mutually reinforcing, may combine. When the narrator first sees the young soldier in the sanatorium, the latter is " / / a s s i s comme un sphinx// aux / / p o r t e s suprêmes de l'existence//" (II/6, p. 407). The principal visual element, "sphinx", evokes the monument at Giza and, by association with Egyptian architecture, imparts to the notion "portes" (vague in itself because of its link to the abstract "existence") a temple-like quality of massive grandeur. At the symbolic level, the inscrutable, enigmatic soldier-sphinx keeps guard over the ultimate meaning of the universe. (14) Here, that meaning lies beyond the gates which mark the point of contact between this world and the other. It is p r e cisely the soldier's pathological qualities - immobility, silence, total withdrawal - which for the narrator make of him a point of convergence between vie and rêve. (15) Through the soldier, the narrator will try to enter into direct contact with the supernatural. Visual imagery may be rendered vivid by the use of color, especially if the latter is incongruous : II/4 (p. 397): Je crus que les temps étaient accomplis, et que nous touchions à la fin du monde annoncée dans l'Apocalypse de saint Jean. Je croyais voir / / u n soleil noir dans le ciel désert et un globe rouge de sang au-dessus des Tuileries//. (16) "Soleil", source of light, clashes with its modifier, "noir"; the mythical blood-red globe - which could plausibly describe the sun if it were not known that the latter was now black - hangs incongruously, unidentified, above the center of a contrastingly "real", contemporary Paris. Moreover, the two heavenly bodies also contrast: the one dark, subdued; the other fiery and bright. Both produce negative reactions: they announce the end of the world. The soleil noir, (17) an archetype of disaster and impending doom, evokes associations of death and mourning, chaos, eclipse, the primeval fear of night; the sun, principle of light and day, has been extinguished by the forces of darkness. The redness of the bloody globe evokes associations of wounds, deaththroes, destruction and slaughter. Visions and archetypes converge

89 to produce an exceptionally powerful effect. Dynamic visual imagery is more frequent than static and usually more vivid: f i r s t , because to the pictures evoked by the principal obj e c t s ) is added the dimension of change or motion; secondly, because evocation of s u c c e s s i v e states often requires verbal development that furnishes additional visual details. The motion or change in question i s usually slow, gradual, and regular rather than rapid, sudden or violent: 11/1 (p. 387): le s o l e i l , pareil à la plante qui le représente, qui de sa tête inclinée suit la révolution de sa marche c é l e s t e , semait sur la terre l e s g e r m e s féconds des plantes et des animaux. Both the tenor-symbol, sun, and the vehicle-symbol, heliotrope, d e scribe their respective arcs in a slow, steady, circular movement. The primary s i m i l e is supported by two convergent metaphors ¡blossom of plant = tête, sun = sower (semait), (18) both of which focus attention on reinforcing visual details: the bending blossom; the life-giving s u n - r a y s , b e a r e r s of metaphorical s e e d s . Sun and flower are symbols of fertility and new creation. Flower "corresponds" to sun, both in its movement and in its dropping, or sowing, of s e e d s ; one is s m a l l , the other large; one below, one above; one on earth, one in heaven: "ce qui e s t en haut est comme ce qui e s t en bas. " (19) Motion in the next example, though regular and steady, i s multiple and complex: 1/4 (p. 366): Je m e sentais emporté par un courant de métal fondu, et m i l l e fleuves p a r e i l s , dont l e s teintes indiquaient l e s différences chimiques, sillonnaient le sein de la terre comme l e s vaisseaux et l e s veines qui serpentent parmi l e s lobes du cerveau. The principal visual elements - rivers of molten metal (tenor-symbol), blood v e s s e l s , and veins (vehicle-symbol) - are reinforced by numerous auxiliary ones: teintes ; a second possible value of veines : veins of metal as well as veins of blood; and a s e r i e s of motion words - e m p o r t é , courant, sillonnaient, serpentent - which produce a dominant s e n s e of flowing sinuosity. Molten metal i s an alchemical symbol of the c o n junction of opposites, (20) of unity; blood, to which it is compared, links and nourishes all parts of the brain and body. The spherical brain i s an image of the spherical world - and the sphere is a symbol of oneness. The complex of molten rivers and the complex of v e s s e l s and veins both form inextricable networks - unities - that reflect the oneness of the spheres which contain them. As the brain i s the activitycenter of the human being, in constant interaction with the r e s t of the body, so the mundus subterraneus, (21) the center of the earth, and those who live there, are linked in occult correspondence(s) to the life and activities of the rest of the planet. Developed s i m i l e and visual imagery, entwined in a complex of symbols and archetypes, recreate an occult hallucination. Motion often involves expansion and diminution:

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H/4 (p. 397): J e pensai que la terre était sortie de son orbite et qu'elle errait dans le firmament comme un vaisseau démâté, se rapprochant ou s'éloignant des étoiles qui grandissaient ou diminuaient tour à tour. The swelling and shrinking of the star-islands, as the earth-ship approaches them or drifts farther away - an optical effect in the eye of the beholder - creates a hallucinatory impression of fluidity and constant change typical of many of the narrator's visions. Expansion may occur in very simple images: "je vis enfin //s'élargir, ainsi qu'une vaste coupole//, un horizon nouveau" (1/4, p. 367); "La terre ( . . . ) s'éclaircissait peu à peu par //l'épanouissement du feu central//" (1/10, p. 382). But it also characterizes some of the most powerful visual evocations in the entire text: 1/6 (p. 374): La dame que je suivais, développant sa taille élancée dans un mouvement qui faisait miroiter les plis de sa robe en taffetas changeant, entoura gracieusement de son bras nu une longue tige de rose trémière, puis elle se mit à grandir sous un clair rayon de lumière, de telle sorte que peu à peu le jardin prenait sa forme, et les parterres et les arbres devenaient les rosaces et les festons de ses vêtements; tandis que sa figure et ses bras imprimaient leurs contours aux nuages pourprés du ciel. J e la perdais ainsi de vue à mesure qu'elle se transfigurait, car elle semblait s'évanouir dans sa propre grandeur. Object, picture, gesture - all symbols - accumulate in successive clauses that focus on the regal anima-figure of Isis-Aurélia. The spiraling blooms of the "rose trémière" (hollyhock), which figure the successive incarnations of an identical principle, (22) reinforce a similar suggestion in the corruscating, successive folds of the "robe en taffetas changeant" which seem constantly to flow one into the other, simultaneously multiple yet one: together, flower and robe symbolize the composite nature of the Woman herself, who is a fusion of so many figures, ideas, and desires. (23) Suffused by a bright ray of light suggestive, like a halo, of blessedness, election, divinity - she grows larger and larger, fusing first with the garden and then with all nature. She becomes one with the universe; like Mary - Regina Coeli and the Mystical Rose (24) - she is assumed into heaven to abide in the realm of the blessed, while the narrator, abandoned, remains behind. The entire vision, as he later finds out, is a presage of the death of the "real" Aurélia, Jenny Colon. The abundance of visual imagery recreates the visionary nature of the narrator's experience of reality. In large part, the narrator thinks in pictures ; hallucinations, apparitions, and dreams are his preferred modes of investigation. Visual imagery is less a device of description than a mimesis: it evokes the mode, and sometimes the end-result of the narrator's encounter with reality. Its frequent dynamism - characteristic of the realm of dream where objects may fuse, planets wander, and persons slide through the center of the earth - suggests fluidity, interaction: between this world and the

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other, as well as among all things within both realms, there exist innumerable connections; each intermingles with all and all with each, in an eternal, unitary flux of correspondences. The regular convergence of visual imagery with symbol/archetype and metaphor/simile reinforces the mystical-occult bias of Aurélia, the non-discursive approach to realities that resist rational categories. For much of the narrator's experience, no ready-made formulations exist in the language; he therefore has frequent recourse to the connotative, suggestive, and affective. In this, Nerval joins a long tradition of mystical writers, from Novalis or William Blake back to the John of the Apocalypse. After tenor and vehicle, examination of the grounds (25) reveals that significant numbers of images center around two major concepts, which happen also to be cornerstones of the narrator's world-view. Since the essence of what an image is seems to lie in the interaction of tenor and vehicle, relations discerned in the ground may be more revealing than heretofore believed, all the more if, as here, these relations reinforce important data already known from other components of the text. In each of these two groups of grounds, every image is an actualization of a structure, or relationship, common to all; each group is composed of variants of the unifying structure. The different vehicles which actualize the structure may be called codes. (26)

The first of the two major ground structures is that of impeded perception (18 instances). The perceiver is aware of a physical, mental or spiritual reality that is significant, important; however, interference with perception, sensory or mental, occurs, and the object is perceived either not at all or only imperfectly. Within this structure, a first set of grounds emphasizes the notion of concealment. A covering is evoked whose function is to hide, as in a mask-code (2 instances). In the following example, the narrator sees visions above him in the sky: "et une divinité, toujours la même, rejetait en souriant //les masques furtifs de ses diverses incarnations// ( . . . . ) " (1/3, p. 364). That the goddess embodies some important meaning is clear; but the meaning itself is not. Each of her incarnations is like a mask through the ground: concealment of true identity (significance) through a physical covering or misleading appearance. Perception of the truth is impeded; when one mask is thrown off, another lies beneath. Similarly, disturbed by thoughts of ahostile double, the narrator writes: 1/9 (pp. 381-82): Un instant même, cette pensée me sembla comique en songeant à Amphitryon et à Sosie. Mais, si ce symbole grotesque était autre chose, - si, comme dans d'autres fables de l'antiquité, c'était la vérité fatale sous //un masque de folie//? What appears to be madness may in fact be covering a horrible truth. (27) The mask-code has a variant in that of the veil (2 instances): "J'employai toutes les forces de ma volonté pour pénétrer encore le mystère dont //j'avais levé quelques voiles//" (1/10, p. 382). Under-

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standing a mystery is like lifting successive veils ( e . g . , from a woman's face). The beholder is lured, but the object is hidden. A second set of grounds, while still implying concealment, focuses on the notion of barrier through a gate-code (4 instances): 1/1 (p. 359): J e n'ai pu percer sans frémir / / c e s portes d'ivoire ou de corne// qui nous séparent du monde invisible. (28) From one viewpoint, the more common, a gate is an entry (the gates of heaven); from another, a barrier (the gates of a city closed at night). Here the context suggests both aspects, although the emphasis - contrary to the sense of the Homeric allusion, in which the gates allow the free flow of dreams - is on the latter: the notion of barrier, obstacle, is underlined by the verbs percer and séparent. Thus the point of convergence between life and dream (tenor) is a gate (vehicle) via the ground: separation, obstruction. Dream is the prime source of contact with the invisible world, the ultimate truths; yet, between us and them looms a formidable obstacle. This reversal of the gatesymbol becomes explicit when the narrator resolves to extract the meaning of his dreams: "Pourquoi, me dis-je, ne point enfin forcer ces portes mystiques, armé de toute ma volonté ( . . . . ) ? " (M, p. 412). "Mystiques".underlines the revelatory character of dream; attainment of revelation, however,- requires aggressive action: like a fortress, the gates must be breached (forcer). Finally, a third set of grounds focuses on the notion: imprecision of perception. Sleep, pre-condition of dream, dulls the faculties: "les premiers instants du sommeil sont l'image de la mort" (1/1, p. 359); "un //épanouissement// nébuleux saisit notre pensée" ( i / l , p. 359); "Après un //engourdissement// de quelques minutes, une vie nouvelle commence ( . . . . ) " (M, p. 412). Precisely at the threshold of the other world, when the mysteries of the universe are most accessible, perception all but ceases. Even when, moments later, the moi slowly awakens to a new existence, its perceptions remain less than clear: l / l (p. 359): C'est //un souterrain vague qui s'éclaire peu a peu//, et où se dégagent de l'ombre et de la nuit les pâles figures gravement immobiles qui habitent le séjour des limbes. Puis le tableau se forme, une clarté nouvelle illumine et fait jouer ces apparitions bizarres ( . . . . ) The dynamism of the visual imagery underlines change, passage from the less distinct to the more distinct (s'éclaire peu à peu, se dégagent, se forme); yet, once a certain clarity has been achieved, lighting effects, almost theatrical in nature (illumine et fait jouer), create a hallucinatory phantasmagoria. Visiting the subterranean regions, the narrator has glimpsed hidden truths; suddenly he wonders, "étais-je allé trop loin dans ces hauteurs qui donnent / / l e v e r t i g e / / ? " (1/5, p. 369). Mental disorientation (tenor) becomes vertigo (vehicle) through the ground: malfunction of faculties. Tantalizing truths beckon, but perception fails.

93 Perception may also blur in states of wakefulness, when dream has invaded life: "J'entrai dans un état d'esprit confus où les figures fantasques ou réelles qui m'entouraient / / s e brisaient en mille apparences fugitives//" (1/3, p. 365). The phenomenon of imprecise perception is best illustrated in an image from the last pages of the "Mémorables": M (p. 413): Je crus comprendre qu'il existait entre le monde externe et le monde interne un lien; que l'inattention ou le désordre d'esprit en faussaient seuls les rapports apparents, - et qu'ainsi s'expliquaient la bizarrerie de certains tableaux, //semblables à ces reflets grimaçants d'objets réels qui s'agitent sur l'eau troublée//. The distortion in.certain paintings, like reflections on rippling water, figures man's hazy dream intimations of eternal truths. Realities are glimpsed, but unclearly. Through a great effort of attention and intelligence, the narrator proposes, by fixing the true meaning of his dreams, to overcome this obstacle to clear understanding. (29) The grounds of all the preceding images - whether actualized in codes of mask, veil, gate or any of the other vehicles - suggest an impediment to mental or physical perception. An object or truth is sensed, but not clearly; perception is impeded, either through a characteristic of the object itself, or through inadequate faculties in the perceiver, or because of an obstacle placed between perceiver and perceived. All the images are related as actualizations of this common structure. Impeded perception suggests certain major preoccupations of Aurélia. Concealment of meaning via symbol is a principal characteristic of dreams, and dream relations occupy a large proportion of the text. (30) Concealment of cosmic truths in the "symbols" of material existents is characteristic of the theory of correspondences, of alchemy and of ancient Christian tradition (nature mirrors the attributes of God), all sources of Nerval's world-view. The truths to which these symbols point are perceived confusedly (for St. Paul, we see through a glass, darkly; for Baudelaire, the pillars of Nature's temple "laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles"). The confusion stems from the nature of the relationships, or correspondences, which unite all existents: things logically discrete flow one into the other sense into sense, material into spiritual, dream into life, this world into the other - effacing boundaries, blurring distinctions. Yet it is precisely this confusion which signifies the ultimate oneness of all being, and this leads to the second major structure of grounds: interdependence of apparent disparates (17 instances). The grounds of all the following images involve interrelationship and unity. A first set evokes unity of contiguous parts in a linear whole through a chain-code (31) and its variants (5 instances), whence the solidarity of all members of the same lineage, living and dead: (32) "Nous vivons dans notre race et notre race vit en nous. Cette idée me devint aussitôt sensible ( . . . ) il me semblait voir //une chaîne non interrompue d'hommes et de femmes// en qui j'étais et qui étaient

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moi-même ( . . . . ) " (1/4, p. 368). Elsewhere the narrator is r e proached in a dream for infidelity to the race (family) : II/3 (p. 392): Le rêve devint confus. Des figures de personnes que j'avais connues en divers temps passèrent rapidement devant mes yeux. Elles défilaient, s'éclairant, pâlissant et retombant dans la nuit //comme les grains d'un chapelet dont le lien s'est b r i s é / / . The chain has become a rosary. The unity of links/beads is broken and the units scatter, because the narrator has been disloyal. The circularity (symbol of unity) already implicit in the rosary becomes explicit below, where the chain, circling the globe, links all members of the same spiritual family: II/6 (pp. 402-403): Cette pensée me conduisit à celle qu'il y avait une vaste conspiration de tous les êtres animés pour rétablir le monde dans son harmonie première, et que les communications avaient lieu par le magnétisme des astres, //qu'une chaîne non interrompue liait autour de la t e r r e les intelligences dévouées à cette communication générale// ( . . . . ) Elsewhere a snake provides a variant of the chain, by its division into pieces representing men and comparable to broken links : 1/8 (p. 379): Combien d'années encore le monde aura-t-il à souff r i r , car il faut que la vengeance de ces éternels ennemis se r e nouvelle sous d'autres cieux! Ce sont / / l e s tronçons divisés du serpent qui entoure la t e r r e / / . . . Séparés par le fer, ils se r e joignent dans un hideux / / b a i s e r / / //cimenté par le sang des hommes//. The circular snake (33) encompassing the globe symbolizes the (destroyed) unity of the world. Warring men (tenor) equal "tronçons divisés" (vehicle) through the ground: separation, disunity. Mankind then makes contact again, through war: by the spilling and mixing of blood is achieved the ultimate reconciliation envisioned by Nerval. Though the final adhesion (baiser) is "hideux", it is still a union; though it entails spilled blood, it is still "cimenté". (34) A second set of grounds, suggesting intertwinement and inextricability, is actualized in a network-code (3 instances): rather than the single line of chain, rosary or snake, there is a whole complex of lines. All creation, animate and inanimate, is implicated in a total unity: magnetic rays form "un réseau transparent qui couvre le monde, et dont les fils déliés se communiquent de proche en proche aux planètes et aux étoiles" (II/6, p. 403). In the great hymn of harmony in the "Mémorables" (p. 410), the cosmic octave, (35) symbol of oneness, is apostrophized: "Du dimanche au dimanche / / e n l a c e / / tous les jours dans ton / / r é s e a u / / magique." In the first metaphor, days are laces intertwined in a cosmic pattern of wholeness. In the second metaphor, notes and musical harmonies are like threads through intertwinement in a network and

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through complementariness, as in a system (e.g., of roads). A similar linking of disparates is achieved in the following instance through the ground of (electrical) attraction: "les chants, les danses et les regards (sont) //aimantés de proche en proche//" (II/6, p.403). Songs, (36) dances (37) and looks are linked like concrete, magnetizable objects; everything in creation "corresponds" to something else: "des couleurs, des odeurs et des sons, je voyais ressortir des harmonies jusqu'alors inconnues" (II/6, p. 403). A third set of grounds centers on the symbolism of musical harmony (4 instances). In a prehistoric vision, even primitive beasts seek to accord their bleatings with the divine octave : 1/8 (p. 376): Tout à coup une singulière harmonie résonna dans nos solitudes, et il semblait que les cris, les rugissements et les sifflements confus des êtres primitifs / / s e modulassent// sur cet air divin. Heavenly bodies are members of a choir - " / / l e choeur des astres// se déroule dans l'infini" (M, p. 410) - through the grounds: units perceived as a group; whiteness (cf. surplices, angels); relationship to the supernatural (a choir sings the praises of God; the stars are implicated in the destiny of the universe); and most importantly, it is the "astres" which, by their orbital movement, produce the musical notes that blend into the divine octave, symbol of universal oneness and harmony. Similarly: "Captif en ce moment sur la terre, je m'entretiens avec //le choeur des astres//, qui prend part à mes joies et âmes douleurs" (H/6, p. 403). Finally, a fourth set of grounds evokes, through a theater-code (2 instances) a kind of mime which underlies the unity between this world and the other. One of the inhabitants of the subterranean regions tells the narrator: "La terre où nous avons vécu est toujours //le théâtre où se nouent et se dénouent nos destinées//" (1/4, p. 368). And elsewhere: II/l (p. 387): La terre, ses habitants et leur histoire, étaient //le théâtre où venaient s'accomplir les actions physiques qui préparaient l'existence et la situation des êtres immortels attachés à sa destinée//. Actions and events on earth determine what occurs in eternity. The two realms are analogues; beings and events in the one depend on beings and events in the other. The temporal and the eternal are related in countless specific details, if not actually identical. (38) The Nervalian view of correspondences is thus complete: not only the entire physical universe, but the spiritual realm as well is embraced in this all-inclusive oneness. This unity of the two realms is also expressed in the most quoted image in all of Aurélia: "Ici a commencé pour moi //l'épanouissement du songe dans la vie réelle" (1/3, p. 363). Like liquid, dream (source of contact with the invisible world) seeps all-pervasively into everyday life. The division between dream and life is effaced; the essential

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unity of experience is restored; the distorting dichotomy between reason and religion, intellect and faith, material and spiritual, body and soul is obliterated. In all the preceding images the grounds - musical harmony, mime, attraction, adhesion, intertwinement - actualize the same structure: unity, correspondence among disparates. Each image concretizes one aspect of a pervasive system of relationships: links among all members of the same ancestral line, between dreaming and waking, the dead and the living, stars and men, this world and the next. In the last pages of the text, everything blends in a hymn of joy, wholeness and universal salvation. Throughout this chapter, images have been analyzed from the point of view of intellectual and sensory content, with successive focus on vehicle-domains, tenor-domains, visual imagery and symbol, and the structure of grounds. A final insight is provided by one of the formal characteristics of the images, the so-called copula-link metaphor (those in which tenor and vehicle are joined by the verb "être"). Since the copula is the most explicit and direct way of linking the proper term to the metaphoric one, (39) copula-link metaphors are assertive, categorical, and the reader does not feel inclined to question them, however odd the association. The copula-link thus lends itself to originality and paradox. The same may be said of simile, whose form is clear and direct; the use of pointer-words, such as comme, provides a comfortable sense of tradition, which alleviates some of the shock of a bizarre association of terms. This view accords with the discreet character of Nerval's style in general and of his images in particular. In the text, copula-link metaphors and similes account, in fact, for a disproportionately high number of the more original, more striking images. (40) Though images abound in Aurélia, their generally discreet character allows them to operate almost unnoticed. Modestly - and only occasionally with a certain flair - they work subtle effects : they intensify and emphasize, they pose a momentary puzzle to be decoded; they explain intellectually or illustrate concretely; they create or sustain an atmosphere; they insinuate connotations, value judgments, emotions - and, in short, engineer the reader's perceptions. Most images produce several, even all, of these effects. Each conveys more than is at first apparent. Multiple effects, together with economy of expression, produce a compressed energy. Far from being ornamental - even when they are clichés - images, so frequent in Aurélia, are a major source of its concise effectiveness. NOTES (1) The word "image" refers to both metaphors and similes; I have found no general functional distinction in this text between the two. "Imagery", used below, refers to sense impressions, as in "visual imagery". (2) Although extended and multiple images do account for a higher proportion of the more striking cases, development is no prerequisite

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for effectiveness. (3) See, for example, Stephen Ullmann, The Image in the Modern French Novel (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University P r e s s , 1960). (4) Cirlot, Dictionary of Symbols, 146. (5) The subtitle of Aurelia, which was to have been the principal title, is Le Rêve et la vie. (6) Aurélia contains approximately 175 images or an average of 3.3 per page in the Pléiade edition; excluding the exceptions noted below, these images are evenly distributed. In nine particular pages of the text, however, each of which focuses on some important aspect of Nerval's occult preoccupations, we count 62 images, an average of 7 per page, or more than double the over-all proportion: p. 359 rêve, vie and sleep; p. 373 - the dream of the ancestors and the symbolic garden in which the goddess is transfigured; p. 386 - religion; p. 388 - visit to the f r ê r é mystique, the narrator's double; p. 403 the theory of correspondences; pp. 409-410 - the hymn of joy and triumph in the "Mémorables"; pp. 412-413 - rêve, sleep, the young soldier. (7) See Morier, 112. (8) Cf. the Judaic Mt. Sinai and Mt. Tabor; the Greek Mt. Olympus; the Hindu Mt. Meru, the Nordic Himingbjor, the Moslem Mt. Caf (Cirlot, p. 209); the Christian Mount of Olives. (9) See Richer, Doctrines, 109. (10) Doctrines, 24: "La fleur est une image de l'étoile qui la contemple, le myosotis, plante lunaire réfléchit la lumière du soleil. Ce qui est en haut est comme ce qui est en b a s . " (11) Other instances of speech metaphors in similar contexts are found elsewhere in Aurélia: "des voix secrètes sortaient de la plante, de l'arbre, des animaux, des plus humbles i n s e c t e s ( . . . . ) " (II/6, p. 403); in Baudelaire's "Correspondances" where trees "laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles", and scents, colors and sounds "se répondent"; and in the latter's "Invitation au voyage", where, in "notre chambre", Tout y parlerait A l'âme en secret Sa douce langue natale. (12) Elsewhere in Aurélia, the narrator speaks of communication between himself and "le choeur des astres" (II/6, p. 403). Cf. also "Vers dorés", the closing poem of Les Chimères, in which this theme receives its most ample expression. (13) That is, in the one case, the visual object(s) is evoked in a state of immobility; in the other, in a state of motion or change. (14) See Cirlot, 289. (15) Cf. the old tradition which held that the insane were close to God. Perhaps the narrator is here unconsciously trying to justify himself: his own "madness", too, may be divine folly. ( 16) Most visual imagery is convergent with metaphor or simile but not all. Occasionally, as here, an instance of the latter is cited. In any case, such examples are always convergent with symbol or archetype - and at what point symbol becomes distinct from metaphor is

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still debatable. (17) The primary source of this visual symbol (as well as the following one) is probably the Apocalypse, mentioned in the preceding sentence: "je vis l'Agneau ouvrir le sixième sceau ( . . . ) le soleil noircit comme un tissu de crin, la lune entière devint rouge sang, les étoiles du ciel se mirent à choir sur la t e r r e " (Apoc. 6/12). The symbol of the soleil noir had become popular with the Romantics. Heine - whose works Nerval knew well - uses it in La Mer du nord (1826); Gautier, the young Nerval's roommate, in his poem "Mélancolia" (1834), inspired by the DUrer engraving in which the symbol also appears ; Hugo, in La Légende des siècles ("Inferi") and in "Ce que dit la Bouche d'Ombre" (line 186); Baudelaire, in the Petits poèmes en prose ("Le Désir de peindre"); Nerval himself, elsewhere, in "El Desdichado", "Le Christ aux oliviers" (II) and Le Voyage en Orient; Rimbaud, in "L'Eclatante Victoire de Saarebrtick"; even Proust, in the "Combray" section of his novel (Pléiade, I, 65). For a list of articles dealing with this symbol, see James Villas, Gérard de Nerval: A Critical Bibliography, 1900 to 1967 (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri P r e s s , 1968). (18) Both are further examples of personification: flower and sun b e come intelligent agents. (19) See note 10, above. (20) Cirlot, 134. (21) Cirlot, 357; crit. e d . , 19, note b. (22) See Richer, crit. e d . , 35, note a: "Dans le sonnet 'Artemis', la même fleur paraît avec un sens voisin, puisqu'il s'agit de retour cyclique." (23) Aurélia, Isis, the Virgin Mary, Queen of Sheba, Venus, Sophia, Mme. Labrunie, mother and spouse, lover and consoler, and every woman the narrator ever loved, or thought he loved, or by whom he was fascinated in life, history or legend. A strikingly similar vision occurs at the very end of Balzac's La Peau de chagrin (Classiques Gamier), 298-299. (24) Richer, Doctrines, 122-26. (25) That is, the aspects which tenor and vehicle seem to have in common and with reference to which they are associated to form an image. (26) See Riffaterre, "La poétisation du mot chez Victor Hugo" and "Les Chats de Baudelaire" in Essais. (27) Cf. Kurt Schârer, Thématique de Nerval (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1968), 178-179, on "le thème de l'obstacle qui empêche la reconnaissance". Also the chapter from Nerval's own Voyage en Orient entitled "Le Masque et le voile" (Pléiade, II, 118-122). (28) See The Odyssey,XIX, 560-565 (tr. by Robert Fitzgerald): "Two gates for ghostly dreams there are: one gateway of honest horn, and one of ivory. Issuing by the ivory gate are dreams of glimmering illusion, fantasies, but those that come through solid polished horn may be borne out, if mortals only know them". And Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language (New York: Grove P r e s s ,

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1957), 115-116: "One of the earliest expressions of the view that dreams can be the expression of either our most rational or our most irrational powers is found in Homer. He assigns two gates to dreams: the horny one of truth, the ivory one of error and delusion (referring to the transparent qualities of horn, whereas ivory is not transparent). The ambiguous nature of dream activity could hardly be expressed more clearly and concisely." Also Théophile Gautier's Au Sommeil: Sommeil, fils de la nuit et frère de la mort . . . Par la porte d'ivoire et la porte de corne, Les Songes vrais ou faux de l'Erèbe envolés . . . (29) Proust, one of the first to recognize Nerval's talent, writes in a similar vein about Marcel's resolve, through a great effort of concentration and intelligence, to extract the true meaning of his involuntary memory experiences. (30) See Richer, Experience, 20: "Le fluide univers où toute chose est en même temps autre que ce qu'elle paraît être, où les formes et les idées s'évanouissent et se fondent les unes dans les autres, nous est accessible et familier: c'est celui du rêve et de la rêverie (....)" (31) See Cirlot, 41: the chain implies "bonds and communication ( . . . ) On the plane of earthly existence it is the symbol of matrimony, each link actually or potentially corresponding to a blood relationship: father and mother, sons and daughters, brothers." (32) See J . - P . Richard, "Langage et race chez Nerval", Cahiers du Sud, XLII (1955), 367-68. (33) See Cirlot, 274-75; also Richer, Expérience, 434: "Nerval connaissait certainement le sens cosmique de l'image du serpent Ouroboros, allusion au retour éternel et aux cycles de la création, si souvent reproduit dans les livres d'alchimie." (34) Richard, Expérience, 369. (35) From the earth's distance from the planets, moon and other moving bodies, calculated with respect to the intervals between the tones and semi-tones of the musical scale, was deduced the harmony of the world and the spheres. "The relationship between the bodies depends on their distance from the centre, the slower and nearer bodies giving forth deeper notes; and the swifter, a higher note; the combination of the whole yielded the cosmic octave." Enid Starkie, Arthur Rimbaud (New York: New Directions, 1968; original publication, Oxford, 1961), 337. (36) Cirlot, 215: "Singing, as the harmonization of successive, melodic elements, is an image of the natural connexion between all things, and at the same time, the communication, the spreading and the exaltation of the inner relationship linking all things together. " (37) Dance can symbolize the union of space and time. It may also be the symbol of the act of creation. Further, "dances performed by people with linked arms symbolize cosmic matrimony, or the union of heaven and earth - the chain-symbol ( . . . . ) " (Cirlot, 72-73). (38) See Dennis G. Sullivan, "The Function of the Theater in the Work of Nerval", Modern Language Notes, LXXX(1965), 610-17, and Schârer, Thématique, 217. (39) See Christine Brooke-Rose, A Grammar of Metaphor (London:

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Seeker and Warburg, 1958 and 1965). Brooke-Rose's other major grammatical categories of noun-metaphors are: simple replacement, the genitive link, the link with the verb "to make", and pointing formulae (such as the demonstrative adjective). In addition, she distinguishes verb metaphors (transitive and intransitive) and those formed by auxiliary words, such as adjectives, adverb, pronouns, possessives and whole phrases. (40) Out of thirteen copula metaphors in our text, eight are striking - triple the average for all images. (Example: "Le Rêve est une seconde vie.") Similes account for almost half of the striking images, whereas in the text as a whole they are outnumbered by all types of metaphor at a ratio of more than two to one. (Example: "Pareille à la chirurgie, elle (la philosophie) ne sait que retrancher l'organe qui fait souffrir. ") Simile in particular is used in a comparable way by Lautréamont (see Peter Nesselroth, Lautréamont's Imagery (Geneva: Droz, 1969), 21 ff.).

CONCLUSION

Throughout the preceding chapters I have attempted - exhaustively, and as objectively and concisely as possible - to identify, describe, and group all the major stylistic devices of Aurélia; to underline their relationships in structure and effect; to indicate their principal convergences; in short, to clarify the mechanisms by which style governs the reader's reactions to the text. It is now possible to summarize in a few global concepts the principal effects of the écriture of Aurélia: discretion (simplicity), c l a r ity (logic), suggestion, compression, mimesis (verisimilitude),emotivity. Precise stylistic causes have been adduced for each of these traits: the same device has been seen to actualize diverse effects; conversely, the same effect is actualized by various devices. The sense of discretion, or simplicity, is produced first of all by the global macrocontext - the dominant register of the text viewed in its entirety: word order is usually regular; sentences, clauses are usually short; parataxis is frequent and often sustained; the p r e dominant vocabulary is that sanctioned by the written style of the period. Moreover, stylistic devices mimetic of spoken style abound: direct discourse, interrogation, exclamation, binary groups. Finally, devices which had occurred, often with startling effect, in numerous Romantic texts of the preceding twenty-five years - adjective d i s placement, hyperbole, technicisms, metaphor and simile - are here unobtrusive by comparison. They are thus doubly marked: intratextually, by contrast with a neutral context; intertextually, by contrast with the literary milieu. The sense of clarity, or logic, is produced, f i r s t , by devices that seem to explain or analyze: disjunction, which distinguishes, qualifies, establishes relationships, negates and denies in order more precisely to affirm; anticipation, whose effects are often the same; technicisms, which invoke the authority of science at a time when science is s a c ralized. In other cases, clarity of thought is insinuated, rightly or wrongly, by clarity of form: antithesis, with its binary oppositions; chiasmus, doublets and triads (convergent: asyndeton, anaphora, g r a dation), with their sculptural contour; all, by their tendency toward gnomic distillation. In addition, antithesis, chiasmus and anticipation frequently converge with archetypes or symbols, achieving a fusion of clarity and mystery, logic and paradox, "life" and "dream". Suggestion, or allusiveness, the sense of multiple hidden meanings, is produced by several of the text's most important devices: the occult/religious vocabulary, occurring most often in "realistic" p a s s ages, insinuates the radically mystical nature of the narrator's ex-

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perience of reality; names irrelevant to the material facts of the narrative, frequently convergent with occult/religious terms, suggest legend, myth, exoticism. Both these devices produce a fusion of pedestrian reality (life) and fabulous cosmology (dream).-Visual imagery - often convergent, like all the devices of suggestion, with archetype and symbol - substitutes pictorial connotation for inexistent proper terms. Metaphor and simile, allusive by their very structure, emphasize several of the major mystical themes of the text: the all-pervasiveness of religion (vehicle group, tenor group 1); the modes and validity of human perception (tenor group 2); the role of symbols (tenor group 3); impeded perception (ground structure 1); the interrelationships of apparent disparates (ground structure 2). Compression, or concision with density, is produced principally by two devices, both of which activate much with little. Metaphor and simile, by implying more than they state (value judgements, emotions, allusive meanings), result in a connotative precision both comprehensive and concise. Accumulation, free and rhythmic, evokes the e s sence of things by selection and emphasis of characteristic details; the latter function métonymie ally, connoting other, related details which, however, remain unstated. Paradoxically, a device whose basic mechanism is multiplication contributes to the effect of compression. Mimesis of both life and dream, and of their fusion, is the product of many different devices. Direct discourse is mimetic of the solitary narrator's thoughts or spoken words; interrogation, of his doubts and questions; exclamation, repetition, and again interrogation, of his emotion. All four devices, and their effects, frequently converge; all create in the reader a sense of immediacy and verisimilitude, physical or psychological. Accumulation provides concrete detail, pictorial vividness, the sense of meticulous precision: the realistic illusion of life (as in the portrait of a real person), the realistic illusion of dream (as in the account of a hallucination). In the latter case, accumulation may converge with striking visual imagery; this, in turn, mimics the visionary nature of the narrator's experience of reality, recreating the modes, and sometimes the end-products, of his special optic. Occult/religious vocabulary and names (often convergent) imitate, in contexts of life, the fusion of life and dream. As do alliances de mots when, by linguistic mimesis of the irrational, improper combinations evoke bizarre phenomena for which no proper terms exist. Finally, emotivity - i . e . , emotion elicited in the reader either directly, as in the liturgical passages of the "Mémorables", or indirectly, as through empathy with the narrator - is a principal or accessory effect of most stylistic devices in the text. Emotivity is closely linked to mimesis: mimesis of life, through linguistic structures associated with emotionally charged ideas (interrogation, exclamation) or structures which mimic the speaker's obsession with the cause of emotion (repetition, binary and ternary groups); mimesis of dream, through suggestion of the mythical, the mysterious, the primordial (occult/religious vocabulary, names, visual imagery, archetype/symbol, paradoxical antitheses).

103 The six characteristic traits enumerated above, together with their actualizing mechanisms, are often complementary. Discretion (simplicity) complements clarity (logic): both elicit the good will of the reader, flattering his bias for reason and common sense, mitigating the extravagance of numerous passages. Mimesis and emotivity are complementary: both elicit the reader's involvement, his empathy for the narrator; they recreate the experience of madness and illumination, effacing the barrier between life and dream. Suggestion and compression are complementary: they render the text essentially poetic, focusing attention on the signifiants, the écriture. Together, all produce a fusion of apparent simplicity (syntactic and lexical) with puzzling (semantic) complexity. This fusion seems to characterize other of Nerval's later texts as well, Sylvie for example, and Les Chimères. The écriture of Aurélia - at once realistic and suggestive, direct and indirect, compressed and comprehensive, emotive and analytic provides an unusually adequate vehicle for actualization of the text's essential message: the fusion of life and dream. If this distillation of the results seems simple, even obvious, it is a simplicity achieved only through meticulous sifting of the data, and it offers several advantages over the "appreciations" of the more impressionistic criticism: 1) the results are comprehensive and precise; 2) they are based on testable evidence; 3) each general statement may be nuanced through reference to the specific analyses in the principal chapters. If the present study does indeed provide a reasonably thorough, a c curate account of the style of Aurélia, further work is nonetheless r e quired to achieve a complete understanding of how the text functions at all levels: in particular, a structural analyse de récit, followed, if possible, by integration of the data thus obtained with those presented here. (1) The method used here can be easily adapted to other texts; it is to be hoped that more stylistically and linguistically-oriented studies will soon appear to elucidate the productions not only of Nerval, but other works as well. For, implausible as it seems, very little is yet known about the characteristic mechanisms of most literary texts, "minor" or "major": their style, their semantic and narrative structures - in short, all the encoded systems by which, when read, they orient the act of literature. NOTE (1) Cf. Roland Barthes, Critique et vérité (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 6162: "(La science littéraire) aura deux grands territoires, selon les signes dont elle traitera; le premier comprendra les signes inférieurs à la phrase, tels les anciennes figures, les phénomènes de connotations, les 'anomalies sémantiques' (Todorov), etc., bref tous les traits du langage littéraire dans son ensemble; le second comprendra les signes supérieurs à la phrase, les parties du discours d'où l'on peut induire une structure du récit, du message poétique, du texte discursif, etc. Grandes et petites unités du discours sont évidemment

104

dans un rapport d'intégration (comme les phonèmes par rapport aux mots et les mots par rapport à la phrase), mais elles se constituent en niveaux indépendants de description. "

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albérès, R . M . , Gérard de Nerval (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1955). Audiat, P . , L'Aurélia de Gerard de Nerval (Paris: Champion, 1925). Bally, Charles, Traité de stylistique française, 2 vols., 3rd ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1951). Barthes, Roland, Critique et vérité (Paris: Seuil, 1966). Béguin, Albert, Gerard de Nerval suivi de Poésie et mystique (Paris: Stock, 1936). , L'Ame romantique et le rêve (Paris: Corti, 1939). , Gerard de Nerval (Paris: Corti, 1945). Brooke-Rose, Christine, A Grammar of Metaphor (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1965). Brunot, Ferdinand, Histoire de la langue française, Vol. XII by Charles Bruneau (Paris: Armand Colin, 1948). Cellier, Léon, Gérard de Nerval, Connaissance des Lettres (Paris: Hatier, 1963). Chatman, Seymour and Samuel Levin, e d s . , Essays on the Language of Literature (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967). Cirlot, J . E . , A Dictionary of Symbols (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962). Constans, François, "Le Soleil noir et l'Etoile ressuscitée", La Tour Saint Jacques, 13-14 (1958). Cressot, Marcel, Le Style et ses techniques, 4th ed. (Paris: P r e s s e s Universiatires de France, 1959). Durry, Marie-Jeanne, Gérard de Nerval et le mythe (Paris: Flammarion, 1956). Fordham, Frieda, An Introduction to Jung's Psychology, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966). Fromm, Erich, The Forgotten Language (New York: The Grove P r e s s , 1957). Godin, Henri J. G., Les Ressources stylistiques du français contemporain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948). Grevisse, Maurice, Le Bon Usage, 7th ed. (Paris: Beuthner, 1961). Jakobson, Roman, Essais de linguistique générale (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1963). Jean, Raymond, Nerval par lui-même (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1964). Jung, C. G., Psyche and Symbol (Garden City (New York): Doubleday Anchor, 1958). , The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (= The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 9, Pt. 1) (New York: Pantheon Books, 1959).

106

Le Bidois, Robert, L'Inversion du sujet dans la prose contemporaine (1900-1950) étudiee plus spécialement dans l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust (Paris: Editions d'Artrey, 1952). Marouzeau, J . , Précis de stylistique française, 5th ed. (Paris: Masson, 1965). Matoré, Georges, Le Vocabulaire et la société sous Louis-Philippe (Geneva: Droz, 1951). Mayer, Gilbert, La Qualification Affective dans les romans d'Honoré de Balzac (Paris: Droz, 1940). Morier, Henri, Dictionnaire de poétique et de rhétorique (Paris: P r e s s e s Universitaires de France, 1961). Nerval, Gérard de, Oeuvres, ed. Albert Béguin and Jean Richer, 2 vols., 3rd ed., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1960, 1961). , Aurélia, ed. Jean Richer (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1965). Proust, Marcel, "A propos du 'style' de Flaubert", Nouvelle Revue Française, 76 (Jan. 1, 1920). Richard, J. - P . , "Langage et race chez Nerval", Cahiers du Sud, XLII (1955). Richer, Jean, Gérard de Nerval et les doctrines ésotériques (Paris: Editions du Griffon d'Or, 1947). , Nerval: Expérience et création, 2nd ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1970). Riffaterre, Michael, "La Durée de la valeur stylistique du néologisme", Romanic Review, XLIV(1953), 282-89. , Le Style des Pléiades de Gobineau (New York: Columbia University P r e s s , 1957). , "La Métaphore filée dans la poésie surréaliste", Langue Française, no. 3 (Sept. 1969). , "Le Poème comme représentation", Poétique, no. 4 (1970). , Essais de stylistique structurale (Paris: Flammarion, 1971). , "L'Explication des faits littéraires", in L'Enseignement de la littérature, S. Doubrovsky and T. Todorov, eds. (Paris: Pion, 1971). , "Sémantique du poème", CAIEF, no. 23 (May, 1971). , "Modèles de la phrase littéraire" in Problèmes de l'analyse textuelle, P. Léon et a l . , eds. (Montreal and Paris: Didier, 1972). , "Sade, or Text as Fantasy", Diacritics, no. 2 (1972). , "Système d'un genre d e s c r i p t i f , Poétique, no. 9 (1972). Robertson, Mysie E . I . , L'Epithète dans les oeuvres lyriques de Victor Hugo publiées avant l'exil (Paris: Jouve, 1926). Sayce, R . A . , Style in French Prose (Oxford: Clarendon P r e s s , 1953). Schärer, Kurt, Thématique de Nerval (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1968). Sébillotte, L. - H . , Le Secret de Gerard de Nerval (Paris: Corti, 1948). Senelier, Jean, Gérard de Nerval: Essai de bibliographie (Paris: Nizet, 1959). , Bibliographie nervalienne (1960-1967) et compléments antérieurs (Paris: Nizet, 1968). Starkie, Enid, Arthur Rimbaud (New York: New Directions, 1968). Sullivan, Dennis G., "The Function of the Theater in the Work of Nerval", Modern Language Notes, LXXX (1965).

107 Todorov, Tzvetan, Introduction à la littérature fantastique (Paris: Seuil, 1970). , Poétique de la prose (Paris: Seuil, 1971). Ullmann, Stephen, The Image in the Modern French Novel (Cambridge (England): Cambridge University Press, 1960). , Language and Style (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964). , Style in the French Novel, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Basil .Blackwell, 1964). Villas, James, Gérard de Nerval: A Critical Bibliography, 1900 to 1967 (Columbia (Missouri): University of Missouri Press, 1968). Wellek, René and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, 3rd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956). Wimsatt, W.K., J r . The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963). , The Verbal Icon (New York: Noonday Press, 1966).

INDEX

Accumulation 47, 52-59 Adjective (displacement of) 31-34 Alliance de mots 22-24 Anadiplosis 48-49 Anaphora 47, 59-60, 64 Anima 40 Anticipation 36-39 Antithesis 24-27 Archetype 86-87 Archilecteur (superreader) 8-9 Asyndeton 47, 59-60, 64 Binary groups 63-67 Chiasmus 25, 34-36 Clarity 101 Compression 101-102 Concatenation 60 Convergence 9 Direct discourse 70-73 Discretion 101 Disjunction 31, 39-43 Displacement (inversion) 31-39 Emotivity 101-102 Exclamation 78-81 Foreign borrowings 15-16 F r e e indirect discourse 75-76 Gradation 62-63

Inversion (displacement) 31-39 Macrocontext 8 Metaphor copula-link 96 ground structures 91-96 tenor groups 83-91 vehicle groups 83 Microcontext 8 Mimesis 70, 81, 101-102 Names 13-15 Occult t e r m s 18-22 Oxymoron 23 Personification 87 Religious t e r m s 18-22 Renewal of clichés 23 Repetition 47-52 Rhythmic accumulation 59-67 R i f f a t e r r e , Michael 8-11, 16 Simile 96 Soleil noir 88, 98 Statistics 11 Stylistics 7-9 Suggestion 101-102 Superreader (archilecteur) 8-9 Symbol 86-87

Hyperbole 12-13

Technicisms 16-18 T e r n a r y groups 60-63

Interrogation 74-78

Visual imagery 87-91