In that case Châalis comes between the first and second dance. But this would presuppose that in the time between those two events Jerard had gone once more to Loisy. And in that case why is Sylvie sulky with him upon his arrival at the second dance, as though she still felt the humiliation she had suffered in Adrienne’s presence? But this could be another mist-effect. The text does not in fact state that Sylvie is sulking with him because of that ancient betrayal—if anything it is Jerard who thinks this. Both she and her brother reproach him for not having been in touch “for so long.” What is to say that this long time extends from the first dance? Jerard could have returned in the meantime, on any occasion, and enjoyed an evening with her brother. And yet this solution is not convincing because that evening Jerard gives the impression of seeing Sylvie for the first time since the first dance, finding her transformed and more fascinating than before.
So Jerard could have gone to Châalis after the second dance (in Time1). But how could that be if, according to most critics, the second dance happens three years before the evening at the theater, and once more, on arriving, Jerard is rebuked for not having been in touch for so long? Here too, perhaps we are victims of a mist-effect. The text does not in fact say that the second dance (Time-1) happened three years before the evening at the theater. The text (chapter 3, third paragraph) says of Sylvie, “Why have I forgotten her for three years?” It says not that three years have gone by since the second dance, but (paragraph seven) that Jerard had been wasting the inheritance left him by his uncle for three years, and one can imagine that in those three years of high living he had forgotten about Sylvie. Between the second dance and the evening at the theater many more years could have passed.
But whatever hypothesis is chosen, how does one place Châalis with respect to the year of 1832, when Adrienne dies? It certainly would be touching to think that Adrienne dies (is dying, is already dead) when Jerard sees (or dreams he sees) her at Châalis.
It is such calculations, apparently so persnickety, that explain why we readers (like Proust) feel obliged constantly to turn back to earlier pages of the story to understand “where we are.” Of course, in this matter too, it could be Labrunie who is confused. But if his overeager biographers were not so obsessive in providing us with the unfortunate writer’s clinical charts, we would simply say, when we read the text, that we do not know where we are because Nerval did not want us to know. Nerval does the opposite of the author of a detective novel, who plants clues in the text so that when we reread it we tell ourselves that we should have guessed the truth immediately. Nerval puts us off the scent, and wants us to lose “the sequence of events.”
And that is why Jerard tells us (in the first chapter) that he could not keep track of the order of events and (at the beginning of chapter 14) that he tried to pin down his own chimeras “without paying attention to their order.” In the universe of Sylvie, where someone said that time passes in fits and starts, “the clocks do not work.”
Elsewhere, taking as an example the clock described in chapter 3, I said that a “symbolic mode” is inserted into a text when there is a description of something that does not have any relevance for the purposes of the plot.* The case of the clock in the second chapter is a perfect illustration. Why stop to describe that antique when it cannot actually say what even the concierge’s cuckoo clock knows? Because it is a condensed symbol of the whole story, and first of all for the Renaissance world it evokes, which is the world of the Valois, and secondly because it is there to tell us (to tell the reader more than Jerard, perhaps) that we will never recover the sequence of time. Through a symmetry that has already been mentioned, a broken clock returns in chapter 12. If it appeared only there, it would be simply an enjoyable childhood detail: but it is the return of a theme. Nerval is telling us that right from the beginning, for him, time was destined to become confused or, as Shakespeare would have said, the time is out of joint—for Jerard as much as for the reader.
Objects of Desire
Why is it that the order of events cannot be recovered? Because in the course of time Jerard shifts his desire onto three different women, though the sequence is not linear and heading in one direction, but goes in a spiral. Inside this spiral Jerard identifies, in sequence, one or other of the women as the object of his desire, but often he confuses them, and in any case, as each woman reappears in turn (rediscovered or remembered) she no longer possesses the properties she had previously.
Jerard has an object of desire, and he draws its outline for us right from the start of the tale. It is an ideal of femininity as either goddess or queen, so long as she is “inaccessible.” However, in the following chapters he does still try to reach something. But as soon as his object of desire comes close to him, Jerard finds a reason for distancing himself from it. So the mist-effect concerns not just the time sequences, and space, but also desire.
In the first chapter it seems that Jerard desires dreams and finds reality repugnant, and that his ideal is incarnated by the actress:
DREAM ACTRESS REALITY
Uncertainty and indolence What does it matter if it is him or someone else? Heroic gallantry
Vague enthusiasms She satisfied my every desire Chasing after benefices
Religious aspirations The divine Hours of Herculaneum The lost hours of day
Drunk with poetry and love She made people thrill with joy and love Skepticism, bacchanalia
Metaphysical phantoms Pale as the night The real woman
Inaccessible goddess and queen He did not care who she was Vice
Up until this point the stage is certainly more real than the auditorium, and compared with the actress the spectators are nothing but “empty appearances.” But in the second chapter Jerard seems to desire something more tangible, even if only by recalling the one moment when he came close to it. The person who has all the virtues of the actress, who had been seen all alone on the stage, is now Adrienne, glimpsed in the pale circle of the lawn by night.
AURÉLIE (chapter 1) ADRIENNE (chapter 2)
Pale as the night The brightness of the rising moon falls only on her
She lived only for me I was the only boy in that dance
The warble of her voice With a fresh, penetrating voice
Magic mirror A will-o’-the-wisp escaping
An apparition A phantom barely touching the green grass
Beautiful as the day A mirage of glory and beauty
Like the Divine Hours The blood of the Valois ran in her veins
Her smile fills him with bliss They thought they were in paradise
This is why Jerard wonders (in the third chapter, second paragraph) whether he is not in love with a religious woman in the guise of an actress—and this question will haunt him till the end.
However, Adrienne possesses not only, let’s say, ideal qualities but also physical properties, thanks to which, in the second chapter, she wins out over Sylvie, who bears the hallmarks of a rather slight rustic gracefulness. But in chapter 4, when some years later Jerard sees Sylvie again, now that she is no longer a child but a young girl in the bloom of adolescence, it is she who has acquired all the graces of Adrienne, who has now disappeared, and of Aurélie (albeit in a pale reflection of the latter), whose memory now fades.
ADRIENNE SYLVIE SYLVIE
(chapter 2) (chapter 2) (chapter 4)
“Grande” “Petite fille” “Ce n’était plus cette petite fille”
Beautiful Lively and fresh She had become so beautiful
Blonde Tanned complexion White arms
Tall and slim Still a child Her slender figure
Descendant of the Valois From the nearby village Worthy of ancient art
Mirage of glory and beauty Regular profile Athenian features
She remained alone and triumphant (She did not deserve the crown) Irresistible charm
Intangible, vague love Tender frindship Her divine smile
Not only does Jerard entertain suspicions, fears, desires, illusions right to the end, and in the face of considerable evidence that Aurélie and Adrienne are the same person, but at times he thinks that what he desired in the first two women can be given to him by Sylvie. For reasons never stated, after the second dance, when he has even celebrated a kind of symbolic marriage with her, he leaves her. When he comes to her at the third dance, to escape the impossible fascination of Aurélie, he finds her similar to the woman he is fleeing, and understands that either Sylvie is lost for him or he is lost to her. It could be said that at each fade-out, when one female figure dissolves and becomes another, what was unreal becomes real; but precisely because it is now within reach, it changes again into something else altogether.
Jerard’s secret curse is that he always has to reject what he previously desired, and precisely because it becomes just what he wanted it to become. Look how in chapter
