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<\/p>\nBy Tim Mitchell.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The following is an extract from Tim Mitchell’s Albert M\u00e9rat: Rimbaud’s Seer<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1866, Les Chim\u00e8res<\/em>, Albert M\u00e9rat\u2019s first solo poetry collection, appeared.<\/p>\n Les Chim\u00e8res<\/em> contains less of the lighter material evident in his previous joint work with L\u00e9on Valade, Avril, mai, juin<\/em>, with instead a deeper exploration of nature and a more sophisticated view of women and of M\u00e9rat\u2019s relationship with them.<\/p>\n It would be very hard to believe that the well-read M\u00e9rat, particularly with his interest in the revival of the sonnet and his love of Heinrich Heine, had not read G\u00e9rard de Nerval\u2019s own \u2018Les Chim\u00e8res\u2019, the group of sonnets he included in his 1854 collection of writings Les Filles du feu<\/em>. He certainly would have read Nerval\u2019s translation of Heine\u2019s Intermezzo<\/em>, which he, in partnership with Valade, would also translate \u2014 and whose model they would follow (but without rendering it into prose, as Nerval had done). M\u00e9rat also knew several of Nerval\u2019s old friends, such as Th\u00e9ophile Gautier, Ars\u00e8ne Houssaye, Victor Hugo, the photographer Nadar and Charles Monselet (who had accompanied Nerval on some of his night-walks). M\u00e9rat\u2019s friend Jos\u00e9-Maria de Heredia had, when young, once met Nerval out walking in the countryside. Nerval was holding a chicken under his cloak, which he solemnly informed Heredia he was going to sacrifice to Aesculapius, the god of medicine.<\/p>\n In the mid-1860s, M\u00e9rat\u2019s fellow poet Armand Silvestre was working at a dull, administrative job, similar to his own, where he toiled alongside a man called Th\u00e9odore Dondey. Silvestre later recalled:<\/p>\n It was my colleague Albert M\u00e9rat, I believe, who said to me one day, \u201cYou know that the old Romantic, Philoth\u00e9e O\u2019Neddy, works with you at the ministry?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2018Philoth\u00e9e O\u2019Neddy\u2019 was Dondey\u2019s anagrammatized pen-name, and Dondey had been a member, along with Nerval and Gautier, of the \u201cPetit C\u00e9nacle\u201d of Hugo\u2019s young followers.<\/p>\n With these connections, and with many links to Nerval\u2019s work in Les Chim\u00e8res<\/em> itself \u2014 not least in the symbolism inherent in it \u2014 it seems almost certain that M\u00e9rat named his collection with Nerval at least partly in mind.<\/p>\n Both poets had a similar regard for traditional poetry and simplicity of expression, and M\u00e9rat would also have appreciated the deeply personal nature of Nerval\u2019s suite of sonnets in Les Filles du feu<\/em>, and the deep mining in his writing of a thread of lost love and lost times that was to be a large element in his own work. This was particularly so in his 1870s collections, L\u2019Adieu<\/em> and Chansons et madrigaux<\/em>.<\/p>\n Both poets, too, struggled for money and each were effectively \u201cdisinherited\u201d by their fathers: M\u00e9rat by Brutus-Horace M\u00e9rat\u2019s financial mismanagement and suicide, and Nerval by his own father\u2019s refusal to support him once he had insisted on a literary career. Despite this lack of financial backing, Nerval, who had never known his mother, felt a strong sense of duty to his father \u2014 and so did M\u00e9rat to his own surviving parent, Jos\u00e9phine. Both Nerval and M\u00e9rat loved walking through the streets of Paris and observing life there, often in their shared territory of Montmartre, parts of which were still semi-rural, but they also took much pleasure in exploring the countryside around the capital, with Meudon a favourite spot of each. Both, too, had the habit of noting down impressions as they walked, on pieces of paper that they kept in their pockets, which would later be used as the basis for poems. Each, as well, used to write in caf\u00e9s. Both were particularly depressed by the darkness and dampness of winter and correspondingly excited and inspired by spring.<\/p>\n M\u00e9rat and Nerval also shared a love for the theatre and adored the actresses they saw on stage \u2014 whose reality could never live up to the idealistic impressions of them created in the poets\u2019 imaginations. In 1853, when M\u00e9rat was thirteen, Nerval\u2019s Odelettes<\/em> were published, containing \u2018Une All\u00e9e du Luxembourg\u2019, a poem set in the gardens that would become M\u00e9rat\u2019s favourite part of Paris \u2014 and overlooking which he would later live many of his happiest years. The poem\u2019s theme of an idealised love, happened on by chance amid the beauties of nature, which seems to promise perfection but ends in loss and grief, could almost be a template for M\u00e9rat\u2019s own love poetry.<\/p>\n Another, more personal link between Nerval and M\u00e9rat, though, is the former\u2019s suicide in the rue de la Vieille-Lanterne (a short walk from the H\u00f4tel de Ville where M\u00e9rat worked from 1864), which came eight days before M\u00e9rat\u2019s father drowned himself in the Seine. M\u00e9rat must have been aware of the closeness in time of the two events \u2014 and perhaps, too, of the fact that Nerval had earlier planned to take his life in the same way as Brutus-Horace, in the same river.<\/p>\n M\u00e9rat does not seem to have spoken publicly about Nerval, but this may have been due to fears about parallels being drawn between the poor mental health and suicidal tendencies that they had in common. M\u00e9rat was terrified that he would experience similar bouts of madness to those Nerval had endured, and he dreaded, too, the possibility that his life might end in the same way. M\u00e9rat would never, though, as Nerval (who had been born G\u00e9rard Labrunie) did, create a new literary identity with a new name. Nerval used his new persona to travel deep into dreams and personal mythology, but M\u00e9rat was intent on preserving his essential personality at all costs.<\/p>\n Richard Holmes, in his book Footsteps<\/em>, says of Nerval that,<\/p>\n As his imagination withdrew from distant adventures, he fastened on his own memories and consumed himself until he feared nothing would be left.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It could be said that M\u00e9rat also, towards the end of his life, looked back obsessively and suffered a similar \u201cself-consumption\u201d, which led in part to his own suicide.<\/p>\n Although the renowned Paris photographer \u00c9tienne Carjat was a friend of M\u00e9rat\u2019s, it would be Carjat\u2019s great rival Nadar, a close friend of Nerval\u2019s who had famously taken his picture, whom M\u00e9rat chose when he wanted his own portrait taken in 1874.<\/p>\n Richard Sieburth, in his introduction to the \u2018Chim\u00e8res\u2019 sonnets in Nerval\u2019s Selected Writings, says:<\/p>\n \u2018… these chimeras constitute a single whole or cycle, a composite \u2014 and fire-breathing \u2014 female body.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n M\u00e9rat\u2019s much larger collection ranges wider and cannot be defined so specifically, but the chimera was a significant enough symbol for his collected work for him to choose it as his title. M\u00e9rat\u2019s interest in the chimera also echoes that of Th\u00e9ophile Gautier, who had written his own poem, \u2018La Chim\u00e8re\u2019, in which the narrator vanquishes the mythical monster. The chimera was also a subject that fascinated English contemporaries of M\u00e9rat\u2019s such as John Addington Symonds, whose \u2018Le Jeune homme caressant sa chim\u00e8re (For an Intaglio)\u2019 is the story of a young man visited by one of these fabled creatures while he sleeps and being \u2018… stricken to the very core \/ With sickness of desire exceeding sore.\u2019<\/p>\n In M\u00e9rat\u2019s own \u2018Frontispice\u2019, which opens Les Chim\u00e8res<\/em>, he expresses both Gautier\u2019s triumph and the \u2018Jeune homme\u2019\u2019s rapture; here his own eventual victory is achieved, but only at great cost. Women, he believes, are not only both entrancing and deceptive, but also unknowable, and his chimera, in a common poetic double-symbolism of the time, co-opts \u2018the solemn pose \/ Of the great sphinxes\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018Frontispice\u2019 has several layers: it is itself the actual poetic frontispiece to his collection, but it is also a poem about its own creation and its significance as that frontispiece. It contains, too, a description of a dreamed drawing of a chimera \u2014 a parallel, illustrated frontispiece that will come to life in the mind\u2019s eye of the reader, in a process enabling it to be \u201cseen\u201d in its position at the front of the book. This dreamed, depicted frontispiece takes the form of an engraving of a double-natured chimera\/sphinx, itself standing on a double entrance \u2014 \u2018the doorstep of a portico\u2019 \u2014 to the collection entitled Les Chim\u00e8res<\/em>. Within the poem, too, M\u00e9rat dreams of how the image of the chimera will be engraved \u2014 and then come to life (a reversal of what happens in Symonds\u2019s poem, where the chimera comes to life and is then engraved). The single chimera of the frontispiece is itself symbolic of the other chimeras that M\u00e9rat has battled in his bid to understand women and the world, as will be described in the poems that follow.<\/p>\n Richard Sieburth says that Nerval wrote<\/p>\n …in a \u2018state of supernaturalist reverie\u2019, a state in which (according to Goethe \u2014 whose Faust<\/em> Nerval had translated at the age of twenty \u2014 and Heine among others), the poet\u2019s vision turns away from the imitation of the forms of outward nature to contemplate the eidetic images and symbols that emerge from deep within the memory theatre of the soul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Although it was a rare incursion for M\u00e9rat into the dreamed and symbolic, \u2018Frontispice\u2019 seems to come from a similar place as the one mined by Heine and Nerval, and its significant, introductory position at the front of Les Chim\u00e8res<\/em> shows its importance to him. M\u00e9rat would make little further use of symbols and would later reject Symbolism itself (despite long-lasting friendships with Paul Verlaine, Stephane Mallarm\u00e9, Henri Cazalis and other writers linked to the movement). A sustained move away from subjective realism and precision into fluidity and evocation would have had the potential to unleash demons that he needed to keep chained. This poem, though, read as it certainly was by Mallarm\u00e9, Verlaine, Rimbaud and many other poets linked with Symbolism, is, alongside M\u00e9rat\u2019s 1869 collection L\u2019Idole<\/em>, with its adoring analysis of the constituent parts of a woman\u2019s body, a precursor to it.<\/p>\n ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong> More Tim Mitchell<\/strong> in 3:AM<\/em> here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" M\u00e9rat and Nerval also shared a love for the theatre and adored the actresses they saw on stage \u2014 whose reality could never live up to the idealistic impressions of them created in the poets\u2019 imaginations. In 1853, when M\u00e9rat was thirteen, Nerval\u2019s Odelettes<\/em> were published, containing \u2018Une All\u00e9e du Luxembourg\u2019, a poem set in the gardens that would become M\u00e9rat\u2019s favourite part of Paris \u2014 and overlooking which he would later live many of his happiest years. The poem\u2019s theme of an idealised love, happened on by chance amid the beauties of nature, which seems to promise perfection but ends in loss and grief, could almost be a template for M\u00e9rat\u2019s own love poetry.<\/p>\n Read an extract from Tim Michell<\/strong>‘s Albert M\u00e9rat: Rimbaud’s Seer<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113522,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113525"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113553,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113525\/revisions\/113553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Tim-Mitchell-headshot-730x1024.jpg\")
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\nTim Mitchell<\/strong> has written books on Jonathan Richman, John Cale and the New York band Television. He is also the author of a novel based on the work of Luke Haines, Truth and Lies in Murder Park<\/em>, and short stories published by Unthank Books and Goldfish. As a musician, he has recorded and performed with the poet Jeremy Reed.<\/p>\n