SOURCE: "Anteros, Son of Cain?" in Writing in Modern Temper: Essays on French Literature and Thought in Honor of Henri Peyre, edited by Mary Ann Caws, Anma Libri, 1984, pp. 91-101.

In the following essay, Kneller explicates the poem "Anteros" as the protagonist's announcement of his revolt against God.

The Chimeras of Gérard de Nerval continue to fascinate us because they are both hermetic and startlingly clear. These sonnets invite us to wonder about their sources, their genesis, and their hidden meanings. They move us by the cogency of their own poetic statement.

Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Hugo, and Baudelaire, Nerval did not write about theories of poetry. Even if he had, he probably would have departed from the generalizations and principles he had developed as he went about the practice of poetry. Here and there throughout his prodigious and varied literary output he scattered traces which have...