Gaspard de la Nuit (book)

Gaspard de la Nuit

Le Livre de Poche edition
Author	Aloysius Bertrand
Translator	John T. Wright Donald Sidney-Fryer
Country	France
Language	French
Genre	Prose poetry
Publication date	1842
Published in English	1994 (University Press) 2004 (Black Coat Press)
Media type	Print
Pages	164 (original)

'Bold text'

Gaspard de la Nuit — Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot (English: Gaspard of the Night — Fantasies in the Manner of Rembrandt and Callot) is a compilation of prose poems by Italian-born French poet Aloysius Bertrand. Considered one of the first examples of modern prose poetry, it was published in 1842, one year after Bertrand's death from tuberculosis, from a manuscript dated 1836, by his friend David d'Angers. The text includes a short address to Victor Hugo and another to Charles Nodier, and a Memoir of Bertrand written by Sainte-Beuve was included in the original 1842 edition.

The poems themselves are expressed with a strong romanticist verve, and explore fantasies of medieval Europe.

The author tells an introductory story of how he sat in a garden in Dijon, and fell into conversation with a dishevelled old man who sat near him leafing through a book. The stranger recognizes him to be a poet, and speaks of how he has spent his life searching for the meaning of Art ('L'art est la science du poète'), and for the elements or principles of Art. The first principle, what was sentiment in Art, was revealed to him by the discovery of some little book inscribed Gott - Liebe ('Dieu et Amour', God and Love): to have loved and to have prayed.

Then he became preoccupied by what constituted idea in Art, and, having studied nature and the works of man through thirty years, at the cost of his youth, he wondered if the second principle, that of idea, might be Satan. But after a night of storm and colic in the church of Notre-Dame of Dijon, in which clarity shone through the shadows ('Une clarté piqua les ténèbres'), he concluded that the devil did not exist, that Art existed in the bosom of God, and that we are merely the copyists of the Creator.

Then the old stranger thrusts into the poet's hand the book, his own manuscript, telling all the attempts of his lips to find the instrument which gives the pure and expressive note - every trial upon the canvas before the subtle dawn-glow of the 'clair-obscur' or clarity in shadow appeared there - the novel experiments of harmony and colour, the only products of his nocturnal deliberations. The old man goes off to write his Will, saying he will come back to collect his book tomorrow. The manuscript is, naturally, Gaspard de la Nuit. Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot. The next day the poet returns to restore the book to its owner, who does not come: he asks after M. Gaspard de la Nuit, to which the answer is that he is probably in Hell unless he is out on his travels - for he is, of course, the devil. 'May he roast there!' says the poet. 'I shall publish his book.'