SOURCE: "Pandora's Quality of Figure," in Paragraph, Vol. 4, October, 1984, pp. 62-82.

In the following essay, Smith describes the quality of figuration in Pandora that prevents the novella from succumbing to abstraction, disorder, and senselessness. She also delineates the differences between Pandora and "Les Amours de Vienne, " the earlier sketch by Nerval on which the novella is based.

On Similarities Between Sylvie and Nerval's Life:

Sylvie indeed resembles one of those shrines of seaside Venus, slight counterparts of Cnidian Aphrodite's citadel, which grateful travellers (the Anthology records) established here and there along the shores of the Graeco-Roman world, its materials pathetically commemorating the artist's voyage, polished and whitened spars of the wreck he had escaped, brittle flukes of weed he had gathered, struggling inshore over the treacherous rocks, with the goddess herself, who appears to ride the calm, enshrined among shells and flowers and stars of mica. For G...