Gérard de NERVAL leaves Vienna penniless and worried about his articles.

Gérard de NERVAL (1808.1855)

Autographed letter signed to Jules Michel.

Two pages in-12° of dense handwriting.

Vienna, February 26 [1840]

"I hope this will rekindle some inspiration in my heart; I'm trembling at the thought of picking up my serial-writing necklace again."

Nerval left Vienna penniless and worried about his articles that were to be published in Paris.

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"My dear Sir, I am very ashamed to write to you from so far away, just to ask you a favor; but here is the situation; it is serious, and you will judge it as such when you consider the effort it took me to explain it to you. I have been in Vienna, as you know, for four months. My time is up; I could still live very well here, but I have received no funds to return, no doubt given the uncertainty of business. Weary of waiting day after day, I have just sent articles to Paris worth about two hundred francs. I have some for L'Artiste and others that I have sent to [Alphonse] Karr and to Théo [Théophile Gautier] to place. I am leaving in four or five days with barely enough money to get to Strasbourg." I would like to find fifty francs there, for sure , and I was going to send the enclosed article to Karr to have the money sent to me, as he does for the others—but now I'm afraid that my first two ^articles haven't both had time to be processed yet, that there's a backlog […] I will so desperately need to find the item there, finding myself in the same predicament as two years ago, that I don't hesitate to contact you. You know that this is hardly my usual practice, and I'm only telling you this to justify the waste of time it will cause you. Here's how the matter will be settled. I ask you to have the article delivered to Karr—I ask him to have the money given to you as soon as he has it, and I'm certain that will be almost immediately. […]

This is the survival I ask of you, if it is possible. The surest way, I believe, would be to send me a postal money order in a letter, or to send it through a banker, but I think the latter is the slowest. Please also be kind enough to affix the stamp and write my name clearly, so that I can collect it with my passport addressed to Mr. Labrunie de Nerval Gérard. Poste restante in Strasbourg. You will immediately understand how grateful I will be to you upon seeing this address.

Don't feel too sorry for me, though; this is just an accident that always happens to me when I travel because of my lack of foresight. I must also say that my stay in Vienna is much more expensive than I expected, mainly because of the social engagements I'm obliged to attend. Once I'm back on my feet in Paris, I'll be thriving again immediately.

So I confidently take up my traveling staff and set off on my three hundred and fifty leagues, knowing that Paris is as far from Vienna as Vienna is from Paris. […] I think I will arrive in time to see your play, and I hope that this will rekindle some of my inspiration; I tremble at the thought of resuming my serial-writing career , or of once again surrendering myself to the uncertain favor of the courts… »

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Vienna was a place of profound emotional experience for Nerval during the winter of 1839-1840 when he received a commission from the Ministry that he believed would finally grant him the stable social and financial position he had always lacked. Thus, under the patronage of Sterne, Casanova, and Hoffmann, he undertook to transform his traveler's enthusiasm, already evident in his correspondence with his father, his observations of diplomatic life, his experiences in Austrian salons, and his sentimental wanderings, into writing. From this emerged the Travel Letters published in "La Presse," the dramatic scenarios for The  Three Workers of Nuremberg  and The  Magnetizer , inspired by Hoffmann and Grétry, portraits of literary figures for Viennese newspapers, and the Viennese Loves sent to Gautier, which, after publication in the "Revue de Paris," were eventually incorporated into Journey to the Orient as a prelude to Constantinople.

But the "catastrophe," as Nerval called it—the seizure of one of his letters by the censors—sparked a need for a metamorphosis of reality, which ultimately found its outlet in Pandora . His fascination with the pianist Marie Pleyel, whom he met again in Brussels in the shadow of Jenny Colon, gave full weight to this muse, who continued, even through the crises of 1841 and 1853-1854, the unattainable quest for the love he had dreamed of before Aurélia .

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Complete Works (Pléiade, ed. Guillaume-Pichois), vol. I, p. 1343.

Gérard de Nerval, Pandora and other Viennese tales. Sylvie Lécuyer.