Romanesque Seduction in Nerval's Sylvie

Gérard de Nerval's Sylvie is a study in the romanesque. It is structured on the principle that literature corrupts one's innocent perception of the world by imposing a grid of literature over the eyes of the reader. Thereafter he is no longer able to perceive reality in itself, but always in reference to a supplemental world of literature charging reality with endless, conflicting significance. Gérard is already corrupted for he is the Parisian. Sylvie remains in the innocent state of immediate perception of reality. By introducing her to literature, in particular La Nouvelle Héloïse, Gérard seduces the innocent Sylvie into a foreign and confusing frame of reference. His act justifies Rousseau's warning to young girls in the preface of his novel. Sylvie learns to see herself as Julie and Gérard as Saint Preux, and desires that their circumstances become her own, Gérard appreciates Sylvie almost exclusively for her resemblance to the literature of the eighteenth century and to his past. When she learns to see as he does, the already imperfect communication between them is disastrously shattered by the confrontation of two ideal worlds. They spend the rest of their lives, even after Sylvie is married, reading books in search of each other and themselves, like Paolo and Francesca. (RCC)