News

Our new complete and enhanced translation of Gérard de Nerval's major prose work, Voyage en Orient (Travels in the Near East) is now available on the website for browsing and download here.

In December 1842, Nerval departed for the Near East, later publishing articles deriving from his travels, and the work translated here, Voyage en Orient, which expanded on his journey. It should be noted that Gérard did not traverse the complete route described in the later chapters of his Introduction to Voyage en Orient. In October 1839, he travelled from Paris to Vienna, passing through Geneva, but then returned to Paris in 1840. It was in December 1842, after the end of his first bout of mental problems, that he travelled from Paris, via Marseilles, to Malta, Syros, Egypt (Cairo), Lebanon (Beirut), and Turkey (Istanbul/Constantinople), then returned via Syros, Malta, Naples, Pompeii, and Herculaneum, before arriving in Marseilles in December 1843, and reaching Paris in January 1844. He failed for example to visit Cythera, and so a degree of creative freedom should be anticipated when reading the whole work. The idea of the Orient was as important to his efforts as the reality.

His own anti-hero, Gérard stumbles, intelligently and endearingly, through a Levant on the brink of change. His Cairo, Beirut, and Istanbul are rooted in the past, but increasingly touched by modernity. His main focus of interest is the various people who inhabit them, as he chases his personal dream which is fated to endlessly vanish, in accord with the lasting theme of his life and work, unrequited love. An heir to, and exponent of, Romanticism he therefore set the scene for the poetic and literary movements to follow, in which reality and disillusionment increasingly outweighed the claims of individual aspiration.

This enhanced translation of Voyage en Orient has been designed to offer maximum compatibility with current search engines. Among other modifications, the proper names of people and places, and the titles given to literary and other works etc, have been fully researched, modernised, and expanded; comments in parentheses have been added, here and there, to provide a reference, or clarify the meaning; while minor typographic or factual errors, for example incorrect attributions, in the original text, have been eliminated from this new translation.