October Nights
Gérard de Nerval
1808–1855
a p enguin since 1999
Gérard de Nerval
October Nights
Translated by Richard Sieburth
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First published in French 1852
This translation published in Selected Writings, Penguin Classics 1999
This extract published in Penguin Classics 2025 001
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October Nights
Paris–Pantin–Meaux
With time, travel loses its attraction, that is, unless one has spent so much time abroad as to become a stranger to one’s own land. The circle grows ever tighter as it draws closer and closer to home. Since I couldn’t venture very far this autumn, I decided on a simple excursion to Meaux.
I should mention that I’ve already seen Pontoise.
I rather like these little towns, modest planets orbiting twenty-five miles or so from the radiant centre of Paris. Twenty-five miles – just far enough not to be tempted to come back the same evening, far enough to be sure you won’t be woken up by the same doorbell the following day, far enough to allow you to wedge in a morning of peace between two busy days.
I pity those poor souls who, having sought silence and solitude, wake up only to find themselves in Asnières.
When this idea came to me it was already past noon. I was unaware they had changed the timetable of the Strasbourg Line on the first of the month. I would have to wait until three-thirty to leave.
I amble down the rue Hauteville. I run into a flâneur whom I never would have recognized had I not been killing time and who, after a few remarks about the weather, launches into a debate involving some philosophical issue. In the heat of the argument, I miss the three o’clock bus. All this took place on the boulevard Montmartre. The simplest solution was to go and have a glass of absinthe at the Café Vachette and then adjourn to a quiet dinner at Désiré and Baurain’s.
I quickly scanned the newspapers for political developments and then casually proceeded to leaf through the Revue Britannique. My eye was caught by several pages translated from the work of Charles Dickens, so I read the entire piece, entitled The Key of the Street. How lucky the British are: they manage to write and read entire chapters of first-hand observation unencumbered by the slightest contrivance of fiction! In Paris, by contrast, they want their things sprinkled with anecdotes and love stories – preferably ending in death or marriage. Our neighbours have a talent for realism that delights in absolute truth. Indeed, novels will never be able to render life in all its bizarre complexities! You invent man – but are
October Nights
incapable of observing him. What novels can vie with the comic – or tragic – stories contained in a police gazette?
Cicero criticized a verbose orator who, in order to explain that his client had left the country, would phrase the matter as follows: ‘He gets up, – he gets dressed, – he opens the door, – he sets foot outside, – he heads straight down the Via Flaminia, – he proceeds towards the thermal baths,’ etc., etc.
One might well wonder whether this traveller will ever make it to port – but he has already seized your interest and, far from considering this orator too prolix, I would have liked to have been provided with a portrait of his client, a description of his house, a detailed view of the streets; I would have even liked some information on the precise time of day and prevailing weather conditions. But Cicero was merely an orator who observed conventions, whereas the other fellow was an orator who did not sufficiently observe the truth.
II My Friend
‘So what does this prove?’ – as Denis Diderot used to say.
This proves that the friend I ran into is one of
those die- hard badauds that Dickens would call cockneys – fairly common products of our civilization and our capitals. You’ve bumped into him twenty times, you’re a friend of his – and he does not recognize you. He ambles along, lost in his dreams, like the gods of the Iliad lost in their clouds – except that things are here reversed: you see him, he does not see you.
He dawdled for an hour in front of a birdshop, trying to understand the language of the songsters as described in Dupont de Nemours’s phonetic dictionary – which lists fifteen hundred words alone for nightingales!
If a crowd has gathered around a singer or shoepolish-vendor, if there’s a dogfight or an altercation going on, he’s sure to stop and take things in with his absent-minded gaze. If a magician needs to borrow someone’s handkerchief, he usually has one to hand; though if the trick involves a coin, he’s less certain to oblige.
Should you go up and greet him, he will be delighted to have found an audience for his patter, his pet theories, his rambling disquisitions, his tall tales of adventures in other worlds. He will hold forth for four hours de omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis , his voice getting ever louder as he hits his
October Nights
stride – and he won’t stop until he realizes that a crowd of curious passers- by has clustered around him or that the waiters are closing up the cafés for the night. He’ll linger on until they’ve turned off the lights. At which point he finally makes his exit – let him glory in his triumph, for he is a master of dialectics who will never allow you to get in the last word. Come midnight, everybody dreads having to run the gauntlet of their porter. As for him, he’s given up all hope of returning home, so he’s off for a walk of several miles – or perhaps merely off to Montmartre.
Indeed, how delightful it is to stroll around the heights of Montmartre at midnight, beneath the stars whose twinkling light may be properly observed from the Louis XIII meridian right near the Moulin de Beurre! Our man need not fear thieves. They all know him – not that he is always broke; indeed, at times he has money to burn; but they are aware that if push comes to shove, he knows how to handle a knife or twirl a stick like a regular windmill. When it comes to kick-boxing, he’s a student of Lozès. He’s never learned how to fence because he is leery of rapier wit, and he was never attracted to pistols because he believes that every bullet has a name on it.