Charles Nodier

Nodier, Charles (1780–1844), French lexicographer and author of fantastic tales. A child prodigy who had published two Jacobin speeches by the age of 10, he experienced the Terror at first hand: his magistrate father regularly guillotined the condemned. These executions led Nodier to reject the Revolution (he eventually became an ultraroyalist) and explore death in fantastic stories. His non‐fiction interests ranged from compiling dictionaries to writing on entomology, botany, history, geography, and linguistics. Librarian of the Arsenal, he was the first head of the French romantic movement, hosted its first cénacle (salon) from 1824 to 1827, and advanced the careers of Vigny, Musset, and Hugo. He was elected to the French Academy in 1833.

Nodier's early fiction imitated Crébillon and Goethe; Cazotte inspired his collaboration on ‘Le Vampire’ (1820), a supernatural melodrama. He became increasingly fascinated by occult folklore, the Cabbala, Freemasonry, Illuminism, and metempsychosis—as shown by Smarra, ou Les Démons de la nuit, songes romantiques (1821; Smarra or The Demons of the Night, 1893) and Trilby ou le Lutin d'Argail (1822; Trilby, The Fairy of Argyle, 1895). These tales go beyond Cazotte's in blurring the demarcation between reality and illusion, and were among the first French works to address dreams and the unconscious (thus prefiguring Freud and Jung). They also influenced the symbolists and surrealists in free‐associative explorations of inner truths.

In 1830, after the July Monarchy and during the vogue of Hoffmann, a politically disenchanted Nodier published an essay on the fantastic. In addition to addressing German romanticism, he chronicled the marvellous in literature, and likened Ulysses and Othello to Perrault's Petit Poucet and Barbe‐Bleue (Little Tom Thumb and Bluebeard). He also praised fairy tales and the fantastic as salutary genres necessary in political times of transition, when society must escape grim reality and take refuge in the imagination. Nodier elsewhere proclaimed that he would write nothing but fairy tales. His first was La Fée aux miettes (1832; The Crumb Fairy), now considered his masterpiece. It is about an insane asylum inmate and an aging hag: he saves with a magical mandrake and metamorphoses her back into a beautiful fairy. Its interpretations range from alchemical to psychoanalytical, centre on integrating the fragmented self, address the theme of madness and insight, and juxtapose dreams and reality, time and space—ideas that would fascinate Nerval. Nodier also wrote a simpler fairy tale for children, Trésor des fèves et fleur des pois (1837; The Luck of the Bean‐Rows, 1846), about an elderly, childless couple, a tiny boy, and an even tinier princess. It underscores love and constancy, and has, says Nodier, ‘the usual lucky ending of all good fairy tales’.

Bibliography

• Castex, Pierre Georges, Le Conte fantastique en France de Nodier à Maupassant (1951).
• Crichfield, Grant, ‘Charles Nodier’, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 119 (1992).
• Hamenachem, Miriam S., Charles Nodier: Essai sur l'imagination mythique (1972).
• Juin, Hubert, Charles Nodier (1970).
• Vodoz, Jules, ‘La Fée aux miettes’: Essai sur le rôle du subconscient dans l'œuvre de Charles Nodier (1925).

— Mary Louise Ennis

Nodier, Charles (1780-1844). French writer. His father was an active Jacobin; he himself lived through the Revolution at Besançon and was deeply marked by the Terror. After various unsuccessful efforts at earning his living (as secretary, as government official in Illyria, where he encouraged the study of folk literature and tradition), in 1824 he became librarian of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris, where he maintained an important literary salon [see Romanticism, 2]. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1833.

A precursor and patron of the Romantic movement (its ‘pilot’ until Hugo wrested leadership from him), Nodier dabbled in entomology, was an active and learned bibliophile, a philologist, and lexicographer. He stands out in his generation primarily, however, because of his fascination with folklore, the supernatural, the oneiric, madness, and the vox populi; these interests enriched many of his tales. He foreshadows both Sand and Nerval, but usually treats his themes in a somewhat playful manner. Yet his deep concern with violence, with incest and forbidden love, etc., have made him a happy hunting-ground for psychoanalytical criticism.

His major works include: his first novel, Le Peintre de Salzbourg, journal des émotions d'un cœur souffrant (1803), in the Werther mode; Jean Sbogar (1818), about a noble and unconventional Illyrian bandit; Thérèse Aubert (1819), a tragic tale of love with the Vendée revolts as background. But he is best known for his fantastic tales such as Smarra, ou les Démons de la nuit (1821), a nightmarish tale marked by reminiscences of the guillotine, combined with sadistic sexuality, vampirism, and echoes of Apuleius; it is typical of Nodier's frenetic mode. Trilby, ou le Lutin d'Argail (1822) is set in an ancient and fanciful Scotland where the troll Trilby brings fortune to a fisherman and his wife, but falls in love with the latter; the passion is reciprocated, but a local monk exorcizes the troll, and the wife dies. La Fée aux miettes (1832) is a framed first-person narrative of Michel, the carpenter, interned in a Scottish insane asylum, who recounts his love for a midget fairy who turns out to be also the Queen of Sheba. Michel undergoes a number of adversities and trials, some quite nightmarish, the last one being to quest for a singing mandrake root. He exemplifies the virtues of the innocent insane, and the tale's frame-work sharply questions condemnations of insanity and indeed the boundaries between sanity and madness. Inès de las Sierras (1837) is another fantastic tale, set in Spain during the Napoleonic era, where French soldiers spend Christmas Eve in a haunted castle and there encounter the beautiful and supposedly dead Inès. The second half of the tale provides a non-supernatural explanation, recounting in the Gothic-novel mode the tribulations and madness of Inès.

Many other tales reflect Nodier's concerns with the upheavals of history and with the Illuminist tradition. His often witty and whimsical writing exemplifies the French form of Romantic irony.

[Frank Paul Bowman]

Bibliography

• A. R. Oliver, Charles Nodier, Pilot of Romanticism (1964)
• H. Juin, Charles Nodier (1970)

Jean Charles Emmanuel Nodier, a dramatist who introduced the vampire theme to the French stage, was born on April 29, 1780, in Basancon, France . As a young man he began his writing career and became politically involved. In 1818, Nodier settled in Paris where he remained for the rest of his life. That same year, Jean Shogar, his first novel, was published. In Paris he became associated with several authors who were exploring what, in the post-Freudian world, would be known as the subconscious. His literary works began to explore the world of dreams, and included some attention to the nightmare. The larger movement would become known as the romantic movement and was seen as a distinct reaction to the limitations of the rationalism typified by Voltaire and his colleagues of the previous generation.

Nodier had just settled into his life in Paris when, in April 1819, John Polidori's short story The Vampyre appeared in the New Monthly Magazine. The story attracted considerable attention, in part because of its initial attribution to Lord Byron . Nodier was asked to write a review of it. He saw in the tale the expression of a widespread need in his generation to relieve its boredom through the experience of the outrageous and fantastic. The review was the first manifestation of a love-hate relationship with the vampire. Although Nodier seemed fascinated with it, he also saw a need, as an up-and-coming leader in Parisian literary and intellectual circles, to show a certain disdain. He did recognize its importance and termed the legend of the vampire "the most important of all our superstitions." In an 1819 article, he called his readers' attention to the stories of people who confessed to being vampires and doing horrible things during their sleeping hours.

In 1820, his colleague Cyprien Bérard's two-volume sequel to "The Vampire," Lord Ruthven ou Les Vampires, was published anonymously but included an introductory article by Nodier. Many then assumed that Nodier had written both Lord Ruthven tales. After some investigation, Bérard's authorship was discovered. Meanwhile, Nodier was at work on his own vampire production, a stage melodrama called Le Vampire, (Pierre Francios Carmouche and Achille de Jouffroy collaborated on the piece). In Le Vampire, Nodier presented his own interpretation of Lord Ruthven, the lead character in Polidori's tale.

Ruthven was introduced as the hero who had saved the life of Sir Aubrey. Aubrey believed him dead, but when Ruthven arrived on the scene to marry Malvina, Aubrey's sister, he was welcomed. Meanwhile, Ruthven was shot while attending the wedding feast of Lovette and Edgar after Edgar had been angered at Ruthven's attempts to seduce his wife-to-be. Again, Aubrey thought Ruthven was dying and swore not to tell Malvina about his actions. As Aubrey was about to tell Malvina about her fiance's death, Ruthven suddenly appeared and reminded Aubrey of his oath. Aubrey was momentarily lost in the conflict between his duty and his oath, and Ruthven moved on to the church with his prospective bride , Malvina. Ruthven was foiled only in the last moment when Aubrey came to his senses and interrupted the service.

Le Vampire opened on June 13, 1819, at the Theatre de la Porte-Saint-Martin. Despite mixed reviews, some by his political detractors, Nodier's drama was an immediate success. The text of the play was soon published and also found a popular audience. In the wake of the immense audience reaction, two other vampire plays soon opened at competing theatres-as did several comical and satirical plays lampooning it. Le Vampire had a long and successful run; in 1823, it was revived for a second long run with the same stars, M. Phillipe and Madame Dorval. Alexandre Dumas attended the revival. He included a lengthy account of the performance in his memoirs, and the play would later inspire his own vampire drama in the 1850s.

Nodier returned to the subjects of nightmares and vampires in his opium-inspired 1821 story, Smarra; ou, Les Demons de la Nuit. Opium, he believed, provided a gate to another world-the realm of dreams and nightmares. Smarra told the story of Lorenzo, who experienced an encounter with a vampire. However, the vampire was not Lord Ruthven, the almost human creature who mingled in society and delighted in destroying others, but a more spirit like creature of the dream world.

Among Nodier's Paris acquaintances in the early 1820s was the youthful Victor Hugo, who published his first novel, a gothic horror story titled Hans de'Islande, in 1823. Hans de'Islande (Hans of Iceland) featured a central character who consumed the blood of his victims, but did so by gathering and then drinking the blood in a skull as an act of revenge. Although Nodier tried to validate the horror fantasy realm as a reasonable one for a neophyte writer to explore, Hugo explicitedly denounced Le Vampire in a review of the play's opening. Nodier had the opportunity to review Hans de'Islande and gave it a sympathetic review, calling attention to Hugo's latent talent.

In 1824, in recognition of his work (especially that devoted to the vampire theme), Nodier was appointed curator of the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, one of Paris's outstanding libraries. He later founded a salon where the literary world gathered and he authored a number of works, the best being his many short stories that explored the fantasy world of dreams, both good and bad. A 13-volume collected work was published during the years 1832-1841. In 1833, he was elected to the French Academy. He died January 27, 1844.

Throughout the nineteenth century, many writers were inspired by Nodier's fantastic tales and he eventually found a new audience in the French surrealists. Recently, Le Vampire and other of Nodier's dramatic works were reprinted in the "Textes Littéraires Francais" series.

Nelson, Hilda. Charles Nodier. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972. 188 pp.
Nodier, Charles. Le Vampire. Edition critique par Ginette Picat-Guinoiseau. Geneva: Librairie Droz S. A., 1990. 255 pp.
Oliver, A. Richard. Charles Nodier: Pilot of Romanticism. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1964. 276 pp.
Pavicevic, Mylena. Charles Nodier et le Theme du Vampire. Ottawa, ON: Biblioteque Nationale du Canada, 1988.
Stuart, Roxana. Stage Blood: Vampires of the 19th-century Stage. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1994. 377 pp.

Charles Nodier

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Charles Nodier (April 29, 1780 – January 27, 1844), was a French author who introduced a younger generation of Romanticists to the conte fantastique, gothic literature, vampire tales, and the importance of dreams as part of literary creation, and whose career as a librarian is often underestimated by literary historians.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Activism and wanderings 3 Works 4 Musical adaptations of Nodier's Trilby 5 External links 6 Notes 7 References

Early life

He was born at Besançon. His father, on the outbreak of the French Revolution, was appointed mayor of Besançon and consequently chief police magistrate; he seems to have become an instrument of the tyranny of the Jacobins without sharing their principles; but his son was for a time an ardent citizen, and is said to have been a Jacobin Club member at the age of twelve. In 1793 Charles saved the life of a lady guilty of sending money to an émigré, declaring to his father that if she were condemned he would take his own life. He was sent to Strasbourg, where he lived in the house of Eulogius Schneider, the notorious Jacobin governor of Alsace, but a good Greek scholar.

Activism and wanderings

During the Reign of Terror his father put him under the care of Justin Girod-Chantrans, with whom he studied English and German. His love of books began very early, and he combined with it a strong interest in nature, which Girod-Chantrans was able to foster. He became librarian in his native town, but his exertions in the cause of suspected persons brought him under suspicion. An inspection of his papers by the police, however, revealed nothing more dangerous than a dissertation on the antennae of insects. Entomology continued to be a favourite study with him, but he varied it with philology and pure literature and even political writing. For a skit on Napoleon, in 1803, he was imprisoned for some months.

He then left Paris, where he had gone after losing his position at Besançon, and for some years lived a very unsettled life at Besançon, Dole, where he married, and in other places in the Jura. During these wanderings he wrote Le peintre de Salzbourg, journal des émotions d'un coeur souffrant, suivi des Meditations du cloître^[1](1803). The hero, Charles, who is a variation of the Werther type, desires the restoration of the monasteries, to afford a refuge from the woes of the world.

In 1811 Nodier moved to Ljubljana, then the capital of the newly established French Illyrian provinces, as editor of a multilingual journal, the Illyrian Telegraph (Télégraph officiel) published in French, German, Italian and Slovene. It was there that Nodier composed, in 1812, the first draft of his novel Jean Sbogar (published in 1818).^[2] After the evacuation of French forces from the Illyrian provinces in 1813 he returned to Paris, and the Restauration found him a royalist, though he retained something of republican sentiment. In 1824 he was appointed librarian of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. He was elected a member of the Académie française in 1833, and made a member of the Legion of Honour.^[3]

The twenty years at the arsenal were by far the most important and fruitful of Nodier's life. He had the advantage of a settled home in which to collect and study rare books; and he was able to supply a centre and rallying place to a knot of young literary men of greater individual talent than himself--the so-called Romanticists of 1830--and to colour their tastes and work very decidedly with his own predilections. Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset and Sainte-Beuve all acknowledged their obligations to him. He was a passionate admirer of Goethe and of Shakespeare, and had himself contributed to the personal literature that was one of the leading traits of the Romantic school.

Works

His best and most characteristic work, some of which is exquisite in its kind, consists partly of short tales of a more or less fantastic character, partly of nondescript articles, half bibliographic, half narrative, the nearest analogue to which in English is to be found in some of the papers of Thomas de Quincey. The best examples of the latter are to be found in the volume entitled Mélanges tirés d'une petite bibliothèque, published in 1829 and afterwards continued. Of his tales the best are Smarra, ou les démons de la nuit (1821); Trilby, ou le lutin d'Argail (1822); Histoire du roi de Bohême et de ses sept châteaux (1830); La Fée aux miettes (1832); Inès de las Sierras (1837); Les quatre talismans et la légende de soeur Béatrix (1838), together with some fairy stories published in the year of his death, and Franciscus Columna, which appeared after it. The Souvenirs de jeunesse (1832) are interesting but untrustworthy, and the Dictionnaire universel de la langue française (1823), which, in the days before Littré, was one of the most useful of its kind, is said to have been not wholly or mainly Nodier's. There is a so-called collection of Œuvres complêtes, in 12 vols. (1832), but at that time much of the author's best work had not appeared, and it included but a part of what was actually published. Nodier found an indulgent biographer in Prosper Merimée on the occasion of the younger man's admission to the academy.

An account of his share in the Romantic movement is to be found in Georg Brandes's Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature. His Description raisonnée d'une jolie collection de livres (1844), which is a catalogue of the books in his library, contains a life by Francis Wey and a complete bibliography of his numerous works. See also Sainte-Beuve, Portraits littéraires, vol. ii.; Prosper Mérimée, Portraits historiques et littéraires (1874); and A Estignard, Correspondance inédite de Charles Nodier, 1796-1844 (1876), containing his letters to Charles Weiss.

Musical adaptations of Nodier's Trilby

Nodier's 1822 novel Trilby, ou le lutin d'Argail provided the inspiration for La Sylphide, 1822, to a scenario devised by Adolphe Nourrit. In 1870 Trilby was adapated into a ballet titled Trilby by the great choreographer Marius Petipa, Balletmaster and choreographer of the Tsar's Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia.

The libretto of John Barnett's 1834 opera, The Mountain Sylph, is also adapted from Trilby, via the ballet La Sylphide.

External links

• Works by Charles Nodier at Project Gutenberg

• Jean Sbogar, complete text (in French)

Notes

1. ^ "The Painter of Salzburg, journal of the emotions of a suffering heart, followed by Meditations on the Cloister".
2. ^ [1]
3. ^ He appears as a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur on the title page of his Mélanges, 1829.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Oliver, A. Richard, (1964). Charles Nodier: Pilot of Romanticism (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press)
• Loving, M. (2003). "Charles Nodier: The Romantic Librarian". Libraries & Culture, 38(2), 166-188.
• Engel, Manfred, (2008). "Literarische Anthropologie à rebours. Zum poetologischen Innovationspotential des Traumes in der Romantik am Beispiel von Charles Nodiers Smarra und Thomas DeQuinceys Dream-Fugue". Komparatistik als Humanwissenschaft, ed. Monika Schmitz-Emans, Claudia Schmitt and Christian Winterhalter (Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann), 107-116.

Preceded by Jean-Louis Laya

Seat 25 Académie française 1833-1844

Succeeded by Prosper Mérimée

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