Eros et Thanatos dans Sylvie

Although sexuality is continually suppressed in Gérard de Nerval's Sylvie (1853), erotic desire nonetheless breaks through the network of idealization in the central chapter of the novella. This chapter is composed of two tableaux: a medieval Mystery-play in which Adrienne, the young aristocrat living in a convent, plays a Christ-like figure amid apocalyptic destruction, and an apparently realistic description of the guardian's house adjoining the abbey of Châalis. The first scene emphasizes the romantic orientation towards death and the quest for the Sacred as the basis of the protagonist's love for Adrienne. The second scene consists of an accumulation of realistic details – such as the sculpture of a bizarre dwarf holding a bottle in one hand and a ring in the other – which is called upon by the narrator in his attempt to situate reality and to separate it from the dream-like quality of the first tableau. However, the oniric aspects of the second tableau subvert this attempt (the fixed, heraldic objects here have the quality of thing-ness found in dreams.) Furthermore, a strict parallelism of objects and gesture can be seen to exist in the two tableaux. This specularity is extremely troubling to the Subject because the heraldic objects may be interpreted as phallic symbols, and this superimposition leads the Subject to see his desire for Adrienne differently. The distance separating the personification of the Sacred from her carnal double, the actress, disappears here, and the terrifying perception of this convergence in the structures of desire causes the narration to be abruptly broken off. (In French) (RBG)