SOURCE: "Nerval and Money: The Currency of Dreams," in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1, Fall, 1990, pp. 54-64.

In the following essay, Dunn argues that Nerval 's fiction reveals the author's contradictory feelings toward money: his desire to live above economics and money conflicts with his desire to prove his self-worth through economic success.

Nerval begins Sylvie with a portrait of his ideal self, a sensitive, melancholic young man with other-wordly concerns and no concern for money: "un jeune homme correctement vêtu, d'une figure pâle et nerveuse, ayant des manières convenables et des yeux empreints de mélancolie et de douceur. Il jetait de l'or sur une table de whist et le perdait avec indifférence." Among the opening signs of Promenades et Souvenirs is also indifference to money: "Il est véritablement difficile de trouver à se loger dans Paris…. Evincé du premier (domicile) avec vingt...