Nov 7, 2015
“His meticulous correction and revision of his manuscripts, and of the proofs, bear witness to his desire for ‘une édition classique et pure de fautes autant que possible’; but his letters show that the corrections were always designed primarily to improve the clarify of the text…
Even at his most subjective, Nerval is concerned with communication. He saw his most private dreams as gateways to an understanding of the reality that lay beyond the rational world, and felt that it was his duty to convey his glimpses of that reality to other men…Thus the formal elements of his art were the servants of the message he had to convey, and “beauty” for Nerval lay in the meanings of words, not in their forms.”
