Editing Gérard de Nerval (section)

==Assessments and legacy==
Goethe read Nerval's translation of ''Faust'' and called it "very successful", even claiming that he preferred it to the original.<ref>''[[Gespräche mit Goethe|Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann]]'', Trans. John Oxenford, 1906. [http://www.hxa.name/books/ecog/Eckermann-ConversationsOfGoethe-1830.html Jan 3, 1830 entry] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325004455/http://www.hxa.name/books/ecog/Eckermann-ConversationsOfGoethe-1830.html |date=25 March 2016 }}.</ref>

The composer [[Hector Berlioz]] relied on Nerval's translation of Faust for his work ''[[La damnation de Faust]]'', which premiered in 1846.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kelly|first=Thomas Forrest|author-link=Thomas Forrest Kelly|title=First Nights: Five Musical Premieres|date=2000|publisher=Yale University Press|page=190|isbn=0300091052|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PySuF_weSCIC&pg=PA190|access-date=6 March 2016}}</ref>

In 1867, Nerval's friend [[Théophile Gautier]] (1811–1872) wrote a touching reminiscence of him in "La Vie de Gérard" which was included in his ''Portraits et Souvenirs Littéraires'' (1875).

For [[Marcel Proust]], Nerval was one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Proust especially admired [[Sylvie (novel)|Sylvie]]'s exploration of time lost and regained, which would become one of Proust's deepest interests and the dominant theme of his magnum opus ''[[In Search of Lost Time]]''. Later, [[André Breton]] named Nerval a precursor of [[surrealism|Surrealist]] art, which drew on Nerval's forays into the significance of dreams. For his part, [[Antonin Artaud]] compared Nerval's visionary poetry to the work of [[Hölderlin]], [[Nietzsche]] and [[Van Gogh]].<ref name="Sieburth intro">Richard Sieburth, introduction to ''Selected Writings'', by Gérard de Nerval, trans. Richard Sieburth (New York: Penguin, 2006), Apple Books edition.</ref>

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War and after a long illness, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst [[Carl Jung]] delivered a lecture in Zürich on Nerval's ''Aurélia'' which he regarded as a work of "extraordinary magnitude". Jung described Nerval's memoir as a cautionary tale (the protagonist cannot profit psychologically from his own lucidity and profound insights), and he validates Nerval's visionary experience as a genuine encounter with the [[collective unconscious]] and ''[[anima mundi]]''.<ref>Jung (1945/2015){{full citation needed|date=September 2021}}</ref>

[[Umberto Eco]] in his ''[[Six Walks in the Fictional Woods]]'' calls Nerval's ''[[Sylvie (novel)|Sylvie]]'' a "masterpiece" and analysed it to demonstrate the use of temporal ambiguity.

[[Henry Miller]] called Nerval an "extraordinary French poet" and included him among a group of exemplary translators:"[i]n English we have yet to produce a poet who is able to do for Rimbaud what [[Charles Baudelaire|Baudelaire]] did for [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]]'s verse, or Nerval for ''[[Goethe's Faust|Faust]]'', or [[Auguste Morel|Morel]] and [[Larbaud]] for ''Ulysses''".<ref>Miller, Henry, ''The Time of the Assassins, A Study of Rimbaud'', New York 1962, p. vi and vii.</ref> Literary critic [[Harold Bloom]] called him "a pure instance of [[Faust|Faustian]] man" but judged that "the sorrow of his unmothered and unloved existence destroyed him before" his genius could "fus[e] all the visionary's contraries together."<ref>{{cite book|title=Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds|author-first=Harold|author-last=Bloom|date=2002|pages=468–471}}</ref>

Twentieth century French composer [[Denise Roger]] used Nerval's texts for some of her songs.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cohen |first=Aaron I. |title=International Encyclopedia of Women Composers |date=1987 |publisher=Books & Music (USA) |isbn=978-0-9617485-0-0 |pages=595 |language=en}}</ref>

The English rock band [[Traffic (band)|Traffic]] included the jazz-rock track "Dream Gerrard" in their 1974 album ''[[When the Eagle Flies]]''. Lyrics are known to be mainly written by [[Vivian Stanshall]] after reading Nerval's biography.<ref>Jonathan Calder, [http://liberalengland.blogspot.it/2013/09/traffic-dream-gerrard.html "Traffic: Dream Gerrard"], 22 September 2013</ref>

There are streets named after Nerval in the towns of [[Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis|Saint-Denis]], [[Béthisy-Saint-Pierre]], [[Crépy-en-Valois]], [[Creil]], [[Mortefontaine, Oise|Mortefontaine]], [[Othis]] and [[Senlis]].