Les Filles du feu
Title page from 1856 edition of Les Filles du Feu
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| Author | Gérard de Nerval |
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| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre | Short story collection |
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Publication date
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1854 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Les Filles du feu (English: The Daughters of Fire) is a collection of short prose works, poetry, and a play published by the French poet Gérard de Nerval in January 1854, a year before his death. During 1853, Nerval had suffered three nervous breakdowns and spent five months in an asylum. He saw Les Filles du feu as an opportunity to show the public, his friends, and his father that he was sane, though except for the introduction all of the pieces in Les Filles du feu had been published previously: "Angélique" in Les Faux Saulniers (1850), "Sylvie" in La Revue des Deux Mondes (1853), and "Émilie," "Jemmy," "Isis," and "Octavie" in diverse reviews.
The precise meaning of the title, which Nerval chose just before publication, is uncertain. Scholars have identified its source as the ceremonies of Irish vestal virgins described in Michelet's Histoire de France (1833) or a poem in a novel by Alexandre Dumas, La Tulipe noire (1850).
Les Filles du feu is dedicated to Alexandre Dumas, Nerval's friend and collaborator on works for the theater. The previous December, Dumas had published an essay attributing Nerval's mental crises to an excess of creative imagination, an exaggerated emotional identification with the historic figures he wrote about. In his introduction to the volume, Nerval elaborates on Dumas' analysis, describing how their old friend Charles Nodier once claimed he had been guillotined during the French Revolution. He discusses how writers and actors identify with their subjects. He also hints at a future volume describing his crises.
Written in the form of twelve letters addressed to a periodical, "Angélique" recounts the author's travels through France and Germany in search of an antique book and his discovery of the diary of an historic Fille du Feu. The longest story in the collection, it is more in the style of Les Illuminés.
Much admired by Marcel Proust for its poetic vision, Sylvie is a semi-autobiographical tale of a man who is haunted by the memory of three women in his life, all of whom seem to blend together. The story opens with the narrator at the theatre, where he is enamored by an actress named Aurélie. He is suddenly reminded of a memory from childhood, and he experiences a flashback. First, he remembers a festival where he danced with a local girl named Sylvie but was entranced by Adrienne, a young noble (whose resemblance to Aurélie is what brings on the flashback). Adrienne ultimately becomes a nun.
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