SOURCE: "World of a Visionary," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 2933, May 16, 1958, pp. 261-62.

In the following excerpt from an anonymous review of The Selected Writings of Gérard de Nerval, the critic comments on the wide appeal that Nerval's work has held for readers and critics over time.

Gérard de Nerval's quasi-canonical status, attained in recent years, depends on a bewildering variety of appeals, exercised at different times and in different ways: the erotic pastoral of the tales associated with the scenery of the Île de France; the Bohemian note that attracted Andrew Lang; the blander landscapes of Giraudoux's "Théocrite d'outre-terre"; the dream images that caught the eye of Éluard and Breton; the esoteric hints and gestures, always sure of a small following; the pathetic witness to the power of repentance which Albert Béguin so persuasively (and so influentially) presents—the list is not...