SOURCE: "Woman: The Other as Sister,"in Gérard de Nerval: The Poet as Social Visionary, French Forum Publishers, 1987, pp. 65-103.

In the following excerpt, Lokke discusses Nerval's social, psychological, and mythological portrayal of women in his prose.

One glance at the titles of Nerval's major works shows women to be the heart, the center, of his fictional and poetic universe: Les Filles du feu (Angélique, Sylvie, Jemmy, Octavie, Isis, Corilla, Emilie), Pandora, Aurélia, Les Chimères ("Myrtho," "Delfica," "Artémis"). Even the Voyage en Orient seems less a travelogue than an attempt to come to terms with the feminine beauties of Austria in "Les Amours de Vienne," with Egyptian marriage customs in "Les Femmes du Caire" and with the problematics of love triangles in the tales of Hakem and of Solomon, Sheba and Adoniram.

This poet, who never knew his mother, who never married, who...