nerval

And it is the title of French poet and novelist Gérard de Nerval’s self-documentary of transition into madness.

I think at one point Malcolm’s dæmon refers to her as bearing the mark of “Le soleil noir de la mélancolie,” which is a quotation from a poem by Gérard de Nerval which I like very much.

“Our dreams are a second life,” she writes, quoting the French romantic Gérard de Nerval.

“Notre Dame is good and old: Perhaps we’ll even see her bury Paris, whose birth she witnessed,” the poet Gérard de Nerval once said.

After the fire started, a few verses by the 19th-century French poet Gérard de Nerval began circulating on Twitter: “Notre Dame est bien vieille: on la verra peut-être/Enterrer cependant Paris qu’elle a vu naître.”