Czarne słońce i błądzące planety – wokół „El Desdichado” Nervala
Black Sun and Wandering Planets: Gérard De Nerval’s ‘El Desdichado’

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the metaphor of the black sun in Gérard de Nerval’s works, in particular the famous sonnet ‘El Desdichado’ and the autobiographical fiction ‘Aurelia’. The French writer uses this metaphor in a variety of contexts (astronomical, religious, solar) in order to signal a melancholy crisis, which characterizes not only the lyrical subject in the sonnet or the narrator in the story, but also the writer himself. Śniedziewski points out the fact that Nerval’s metaphor, though it carries a distinctively subjective mark, also appears in many other works (by writers such as Jean-Paul, Heine, Gautier, Hugo) and is inscribed into Romantic attempts to define depressive states.

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