The Chimeras

Gerard de Nerval's sonnets Les Chimeres were first published as a group in 1854, a year before his suicide at the age of forty-six. The poems were nearly a dozen years in the making, and their genius was slow to be accepted. Now they are generally regarded as a key work of nineteenth century poetry, linking romanticism and symbolism. This bilingual edition is complemented by two essays; the first on Nerval's symbolic method by Richard Holmes, the second on the problems of translation by Peter Jay.