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ABSTRACT

THE DYNAMICS OF LOSS: REPRESENTATIONS OF SORORAL, MATERNAL, AND FEMININE LOSS IN THE WORKS OF NERVAL, CHATEAUBRIAND, AND BAUDELAIRE

by Franklin Joseph Dargo

This thesis, written in English, is an analysis of melancholia and its relation to desire in the following nineteenth-century works: “El Desdichado” by Gérard de Nerval, René by ​ ​ François-René de Chateaubriand, and ’s “L’invitation au voyage.” This analysis will take a psychoanalytical approach, and will study how maternal, sororal, and feminine objects of desire relate to the melancholia that is represented on the pages of these works. In order to do so, we must dive into ’s “Mourning and Melancholia,” which explains the inner functions of melancholia and the ego contained in all four works. Another psychoanalytic text that will be used is Julia Kristeva’s Black ​ Sun: Depression and Melancholia. This thesis seeks to prove that “L’invitation au ​ voyage” is a melancholic poem that is driven by incestuous desires for a maternal figure, as well as a sororal figure, and that the melancholia found in René shares similar ​ ​ influences. It will also seek to prove that “El Desdichado” shows evidence of a triumph over melancholia caused by a feminine object of desire. Lastly, all three texts will be analyzed in parallel with Freud’s text to demonstrate its accuracy especially in terms of the ego.

THE DYNAMICS OF LOSS: REPRESENTATIONS OF SORORAL, MATERNAL, AND FEMININE LOSS IN THE WORKS OF NERVAL, CHATEAUBRIAND, AND BAUDELAIRE

Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

by Franklin Joseph Dargo

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2020

Advisor: Dr. Jonathan Strauss

Reader: Dr. Elisabeth Hodges

Reader: Dr. Anna Klosowska

© 2020 Franklin Joseph Dargo

This select thesis titled

THE DYNAMICS OF LOSS AND DESIRE: REPRESENTATIONS OF SORORAL, MATERNAL, AND FEMININE LOSS IN THE WORKS OF NERVAL, CHATEAUBRIAND, AND BAUDELAIRE

by

Franklin Joseph Dargo

has been approved for publication by

The College of Arts and Science

and

Department of French and Italian

______Dr. Jonathan Strauss

______Dr. Elisabeth Hodges

______Dr. Anna Klosowska

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 I. Representations of Maternal and Sororal Objects of Desire in Baudelaire's “L’invitation au voyage”...... 5 II. Representations of Desire and Melancholia in Chateaubriand’s René ………….18 ​ ​ III. Melancholia and the Ego in Nerval’s “El Desdichado”...... 35 IV. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...…..44 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...... 45

iii Acknowledgments

This thesis was completed during the lockdown of 2020, which proved to be quite a difficult task. Without a close circle of friends, family, and mentors, I would never have been able to get to where I am today. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all those mentioned below.

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Jonathan Strauss, for chairing my committee and providing me with the insight and inspiration needed during this tumultuous time. I would also like to thank Dr. Elisabeth Hodges, and Dr. Anna Klosowska, for their wisdom, guidance, and support, during this process. Without all of you, this project would not have been possible. I am also greatly indebted to all other professors, faculty, and staff members of the department of French and Italian, all of which have impacted my studies in a positive way over the years.

I would also like to thank Dr. Jeremie Korta, my colleagues, roommates, and many friends at Miami University that impacted my time at Miami. I am proud to say that I was surrounded by such a brilliant group of people.

I would also like to express my most sincere gratitude to Mr. Robert Stevens and Mr. Philippe Dubrul, two educators who helped form the foundations of my French. You both have played an extremely critical part in my learning of French, and for that, I am forever grateful.

Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my parents, family, and KC for their encouragement, love, and support. You have pushed me to excel and provided me with the resources for success. During this difficult time of confinement, you have been my biggest fans. Thank you!

iv Introduction

In reading through many Romantic works and other forms of of the nineteenth century, one can deduce that melancholia is the one theme that seems to reverberate throughout several works of the entire century of . In describing the Romantic drama in La Préface de , situates ​ ​ melancholia as the mainspring for the movement, stating,

C’est qu’il y a plus d’un rapport entre le commencement et la fin ; le coucher du soleil a quelques traits de son lever ; le vieillard redevient enfant. Mais cette dernière enfance ne ressemble pas à la première ; elle est aussi triste que l’autre était joyeuse. Il en est de même de la poésie lyrique. Éblouissante, rêveuse à l’aurore des peuples, elle reparaît sombre et pensive à leur déclin. La Bible s’ouvre riante avec la Genèse, et se ferme sur la menaçante Apocalypse. L’ode moderne est toujours inspirée, mais n’est plus ignorante. Elle médite plus qu’elle ne contemple ; sa rêverie est mélancolie. On voit, à ses enfantements, que cette 1 muse s’est accouplée au drame.

Melancholia, the depressive longing for an unreachable and forbidden object of desire, seems to simultaneously plague and inspire many nineteenth-century texts, some of which belong to the French era, while others do not. Nonetheless, Hugo famously pairs melancholia with Romantic drama, the genre of these works of two authors analyzed in this thesis, as well as one of the works in question. Hugo describes Romantic drama as taking up melancholia as its muse, which underlines the important fact that melancholia runs in parallel with the movement.

1 See Victor Hugo, Preface de Cromwell (Livres et Ebooks) ​ ​ https://ecrivains-publics.fr/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/preface_de_cromwell_-_hugo.pd f, 15. ​

1 In this thesis, I will, as others have done before me, take a psychoanalytical approach in order to examine the inner workings of melancholia, all while providing a fresh perspective of these works, which may contribute to a different and more thorough understanding of the texts. Two of the works contained in this thesis, René by François-René de Chateaubriand and “El Desdichado,” by Gérard de Nerval, are ​ both Romantic works that epitomize the concept of melancholia in literature. The third text, “L’invitation au voyage,” by Charles Baudelaire, is a Post-Romantic work that seems to be of a more pleasant setting and tone but echoes the melancholia suffered for a forbidden object of desire. The first chapter will be an in-depth analysis of Baudelaire’s “L’invitation au voyage,” which is one of the most celebrated poems of . The first ​ ​ stanza commences by the calling a sororal figure to depart on a voyage to a place of richness and luxury, and invokes a warm-toned and seemingly happy destination. The poet, however, leaves room for interpretation as to the meaning of the poem. I will be ​ ​ exploring the notion that the poem is actually melancholic and revolves around sororal and maternal desires, which both translate to forbidden objects of desire, which are the driving forces for the melancholic mood that is present in the poem. I will also be exploring the concept of the poet’s representation of self that manifests itself on the page in the form of . This will be done by completing an analysis of a few key letters from Baudelaire himself on the subject of his mother, Caroline Aupick, that portray the poet’s sentiments towards his mother. I will be using the analysis of these letters to show that the melancholia represented in “L’invitation au voyage” can be seen as a projection of the poet’s affinity towards his mother. These letters are not meant to be portrayed as a concrete lens through which to read Baudelaire’s poem, but rather reinforcing tools in the psychoanalytical argument. Coupled with an interpretation of the text itself, the brief details from these letters help make a compelling argument in situating the poem as melancholic. The second chapter will explore themes of incest, melancholia, and desire contained in Chateaubriand’s René, along with their relationship to the ego. All three ​ ​

2 themes are what seem to keep the subject in a melancholic state, which can be corroborated by the use of the main psychoanalytical text of this thesis, Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia.” Consistently propelled into a state of self-isolation and ​ ​ exile, the protagonist René exemplifies the very notion of what Freud describes as a damaged ego, which is one of the main components of melancholia. I shall discuss in length the indicators of melancholia that are present in René’s lengthy dialogue with his small circle of Native American confidants, amongst whom he identifies himself. It is here that I argue that the main source of the protagonist’s melancholia stems from his mother, who perished while giving birth to René himself. To add to this argument, I will use a few brief but important autobiographical details contained in Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’Outre-tombe to understand the author’s representation of self that is ​ contained within the text. As with the first chapter on Baudelaire’s “L’invitation au voyage,” these autobiographical details are meant to serve as a means to apply the psychoanalytic approach to the author, as well as the text itself. I will also argue that his desire for maternal affection stems from what seems to be an atypical Oedipus complex that is only partially resolved, as the desire moves from a maternal object of desire to a sororal figure. Amongst all other things, I will also provide an enlightening analysis of René’s nostalgia for his childhood, which works in parallel (and sometimes overlaps) with the character’s melancholia. This nostalgia takes on different forms throughout the book, and will study the concept of each form of nostalgia, and how they relate to the study of melancholia in the text. In the final chapter, I will be taking a completely different approach to studying Gérard de Nerval’s “El Desdichado.” I will not attempt to explore in-depth the melancholia contained in the poem as I previously attempted in the first two chapters. Instead, I will engage with the poem while referencing Freud’s text to argue that Nerval exhibits something that has not been seen in the other works contained in this thesis; a mastering of melancholia that is demonstrated inside of the text. In analyzing certain pronouns and actions laid out by the poet himself, I will argue that the poet shows the ability to overcome the melancholia that plagued him through literary creation. This

3 argument is not meant to suggest that the poet actually overcomes his melancholy, but rather becomes capable of repairing the once broken ego. This case is different from the rest of the melancholic works discussed in this thesis because the other texts only show an excessive and prolonged fixation on objects of desire. By representing his ego as capable, Nerval attempts to break out of the miserable state that he was in, and the use of past tense in the poem demonstrates this concept. In other readings of “El Desdichado,” writers tend to focus on rather than a complete psychoanalytical breakdown. I will demonstrate that even though these writings are extremely crucial in understanding the poem, they are not necessary in understanding the inner workings of the melancholia of the poet. In examining the different aspects of melancholia contained in the respective works mentioned above, I will be able to shed some light upon the inner workings of melancholia, desire, and their relationship to literary creation. By doing so, I will provide a fresh perspective on these three great masterpieces that deserve to be studied and elaborated upon. Other writers seem to neglect three very important aspects of the melancholia contained in these works. In Baudelaire’s “L’Invitation au voyage,” and Chateaubriand’s René, the two critical concepts that must be studied further are maternal ​ ​ and sororal objects of desire, incest, and their relationship to the ego, which I will discuss later in this thesis. The analysis of these works will not only benefit the reader of this thesis by providing a larger explanation of the melancholia contained in these works, but it will also showcase the magnitude of accuracy that surrounds the Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia,” which seems at times to provide a verbatim explanation of what is happening in these three texts. In applying Freud’s text to all three works in this paper, I seek to personally validate the theories contained in the psychoanalytic text.

4 Chapter 1 Representations of Maternal and Sororal Objects of Desire in Baudelaire's “L’invitation au voyage”

What can be said about Baudelaire's representation of self on the pages of Les fleurs de ​ mal, or specifically “L’invitation au voyage”? How does Baudelaire's poem, written in the first ​ person, reflect feeling within the poet? In order to respond to these questions, I will stick close to the poem, as well as briefly explore a few key biographical details of Baudelaire himself in the form of letters, as well as other interpretations of Baudelaire's identity as a . In analyzing the poem in parallel with a few biographical details of Baudelaire’s life, I will be able to better understand the representation of self-projected on the page. I will initiate this part of the thesis with the opening stanza and refrain taken from “L’invitation au voyage,” which sets the tone for ​ ​ the entire poem.

Mon enfant, ma soeur,

Songe à la douceur

D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!

Aimer à loisir,

Aimer et mourir

Au pays qui te ressemble!

Les soleils mouillés

De ces ciels brouillés

Pour mon esprit ont les charmes

Si mystérieux

5 De tes traîtres yeux,

Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,

2 Luxe, calme et volupté.

What I will first attempt to establish in the identity of the addressee of the poem. On the surface, the narrator seems to be writing to the addressee in a way that conveys the contentedness of escaping to a different location which is referred to as, “là-bas… Au pays qui te ressemble,” which is described as being a place of “ordre et beauté,/Luxe, calme et volupté.” Baudelaire commences the poem with the singular first-person possessive adjective "my," which alludes to the fact that the narrator is enticing a sororal figure, or sister, to voyage. It is here that Baudelaire is addressing a sister figure using hypothetical language that illuminates an overt desire to escape from reality with a feminine character. The poet, using the words "Mon enfant, ma soeur," establishes desire and possession for both a feminine and a sororal figure in the first person. In interpreting these words in a literal sense as they are written on the page, I have come to the conclusion that the narrator is Baudelaire himself, who is pining over a certain figure that is his sister (soeur), as well as his child (enfant) at the same time. To infer that the poet's focus is a literal sister would be problematic, and if we read deeper into the poem and the use of metaphor to describe the addressee. Baudelaire establishes a metaphorical relationship between the addressee and the destination by describing the destination as the “pays qui te ressemble.” What can this metaphor between the addressee and the destination provide us with in terms of identifying the woman in the poem? In her book The Critical Difference: in the ​ Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading, Barbara Johnson highlights how the use of metaphor in ​ describing the addressee helps us establish her identity, or lack thereof, stating,

2 See Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs de Mal (: Pocket, 1998), 77. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

6 There is yet another problem in the seemingly transparent referential grounding of the metaphor. For if metaphor consists, as Fontanier puts it, “in presenting one idea under the sign of another idea which is more striking or better known,” what is it here that stands as the better point of comparison, if not, paradoxically, a woman whose charms are mysterious and whose eyes are treacherous- a woman in other words, who is quite, and perhaps unknowable? The “you” serves as a point of reference (“the land that resembles you”) is itself the unknown in the equation, and the land where “all is but order and beauty, luxury, calm, and sensual pleasure” is not in reality a land that is just like the 3 lady, but a description of what the speaker wishes the lady were like.

Johnson’s work is very important in helping us establish the fact that this sororal figure is unknown. We can go a step further and assert that the unknown sister in the poem is unknowable because the idea of this sororal figure is a manifestation of the poet’s desires. In underlining the fact that the “you,” in reference to the sister is the unknown factor in the poem, and that the land including all its descriptions of beauty and luxury is the point of reference, Johnson solidifies the fact that that this sororal figure is an ideal form of a sororal figure that does not exist, and can never be attained because she is something of pure fantasy. To add to this idea, we must first note that the poet did not have a sister, which further supports the hypothetical language of the poem, which calls for a voyage that could only happen if such a sororal figure existed. Because Baudelaire’s lack of a physical sister along with the use of metaphor in the poem, it becomes difficult to apply any concrete identity to this sororal figure in the poem. So if the “who,” of the poem can not be concretely justified, it is safe to conclude that this sororal figure an object of fantasy that the poet desires to be real.

The second but even more important biographical observation is that Baudelaire was enamored of his mother, thus the sister in the poem could stem from desires for incestuous relations between the poet and his mother. These desires can be found in letters sent to Baudelaire's mother. Towards the end of his life, Baudelaire wrote, "There was in my childhood

3 See Barbara Johnson, The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of ​ Reading, (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992), p 27. ​ ​ ​

7 4 a period of passionate love for you ." He also wrote, "believe that I belong to you absolutely, and 5 that I belong only to you." These excerpts from Baudelaire's vast collection of letters, coupled with the poet's lack of an actual sister, suggest that the feminine figure of desire in the poem is not a sororal figure but in fact an incestuous desire to create an ideal sororal figure. Because the end results of relations with a maternal figure would be a sister who is also a child, the child sister thus translates to maternal desire, which resonates in the letters mentioned above. After analysing these brief autobiographical details in parallel with the poem, we can now establish that this sororal figure is an object of fantasy, and that this figure assumes a hidden identity as a product of the desire for illicit incestuous relations with the narrator’s mother.

Now that I have identified the incestuous undertones that are provided in the opening lines of the poem, I will continue with further analysis of the first stanza that will shed light on the melancholic whisperings that are presented on the page. Baudelaire continues the poem with vivid imagery and descriptions of "le pays qui te ressemble." The poet provides us with an initial description of the destination intended to be a place of happiness, or as Baudelaire's refrain reverberates throughout the poem, "Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,/Luxe, calme et volupté." Instead of the land resembling that of the Mediterranean or other sunny exotic vacation destinations, we are initially introduced to a darker and at times dreary location that is described as having, "Les soleils mouillés/De ces ciels brouillés." These images of damp suns and cloudy skies are paired with the description of the addressee’s eyes as “gleaming with tears” and “treacherous,” which are both strong indicators of a deeper sadness that accompanies melancholia in the poem, especially contained in the first stanza. This argument can be reinforced by the fact that the poem provides the reader with the poet’s longing for togetherness with a person that physically did not exist, which adheres with the definition of melancholia that I have demonstrated in this thesis, or the depressive longing for an unattainable object of desire. Baudelaire continues to describe the land as sharing the same charms and effects as the eyes of his muse, "Pour mon esprit ont les charmes/Si mystérieux/De tes traîtres yeux,/Brillant à travers leurs larmes." In juxtaposing these lines with the refrain of this poem, one can make the

4 As cited in , Baudelaire (London: Murray 1994), 16. ​ ​ 5 Ibid, 219.

8 argument that this poem can also be an indication of Baudelaire's spleen, in parallel with the concept of the ideal. In labeling the sororal figure's eyes as teary and treacherous, the poet establishes a connection between this sororal fantasy and sorrow, which could be interpreted as a manifestation of Baudelaire's reflecting the fixation surrounding a familial object, which ultimately returns to his melancholia, or longing for an unattainable object. The poet’s “esprit,” or the non physical and emotional side to the writer’s being, is riddled with the same charmes “/Si mystérieux/De tes traîtres yeux,/Brillant à travers leurs larmes.” The poet’s spirit is thus filled with the same sadness that brings about the tears and treachery in the eyes of the sister. This relationship with the sororal figure can be interpreted as a turbulent relationship with Baudelaire’s own ego. Because the poet is longing for a forbidden incestuous relationship or a product of such a relationship, the ego becomes wounded because of the immoral thoughts that surround such a relationship. Sigmund Freud describes such a relationship to the ego as dissatisfactory, stating,

What we are here becoming acquainted with is the agency commonly called 'conscience'; we shall count it, along with the censorship of consciousness and reality-testing, among the major institutions of the ego, and we shall come upon evidence to show that it can become diseased on its own account. In the clinical picture of melancholia, dissatisfaction 6 with the ego on moral grounds is the most outstanding feature.

The most important concept to be noted from Freud’s above description of the features of melancholia is the concept of conscience in reference to the ego. The ego in the case of Baudelaire is his own sense of self, which is clearly damaged because he identifies his own spirit as containing the same teariness and treacherousness as the eyes of the addressee. The sadness that reflects in Baudelaire’s spirit reflects the poet’s conscience, or the moral dissatisfaction with the ego because of what I have concretely defined as incestuous desire in the opening stanza. Baudelaire’s repetitive longing for such a forbidden object, accompanied by his vivid description of the sororal figure herself, provides us with an important clue as to the poet's own inner

6 See Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund ​ Freud. (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1995), 247.

9 reflections towards his longing for such a hypothetical relationship. It is important to note the opening poem of Les Fleurs du mal, “Au lecteur,” where the poet establishes the relationship to ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ the reader as a fellow hypocrite and participant in all of the terrible sins that are consistently 7 leading mankind to destruction. In “Au lecteur,” Baudelaire is entirely self-reflective and ​ ​ ​ ​ acknowledges that he himself is a part of the collective of mortal sinners. In the case of Les ​ Fleurs du mal, one of the most important recurring themes is Baudelaire's "spleen," which can ​ be supported in the title of the section, Spleen et idéal, that includes “L’invitation au voyage.” ​ ​ ​ ​ The occurrence of this "spleen" in “L’invitation au voyage” can be seen as representative of Baudelaire's problematic relationship to desire, which is explained above, because of his vilification of self, which, according to Freud, shows the poet's moral dissatisfaction with the ego.

Now, I will further examine the poem in terms of the significance of the location, or the concept of the voyage itself, as well as the temporality of the poem. In order to do so, we will now move to the second stanza, followed shortly after by the third.

Des meubles luisants,

Polis par les ans,

Décoreraient notre chambre;

Les plus rares fleurs

Mêlant leurs odeurs

Aux vagues senteurs de l'ambre,

Les riches plafonds,

Les miroirs profonds,

7 Baudelaire, 27-28.

10 La splendeur orientale,

Tout y parlerait

À l'âme en secret

Sa douce langue natale.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,

8 Luxe, calme et volupté.

In the second stanza, the poet gives plenty of clues as to the temporality of the poem, which is critical in further establishing links to familial desire, or even simply the desire to return to childhood, when the poet was closest to his mother. Baudelaire describes the chamber to be shared by himself and the addressee of the poem, which is ornate with "des meubles luisants,/Polis par les ans… Les riches plafonds,/Les miroirs profonds,/La splendeur orientale." According to the poem, all of these luxuries of life seem to speak to the soul in a “...douce langue natale.” In attaching the word “natal” to the room, the poet establishes a familiarity with the objects that will decorate the room. Here, the sweet whisperings conveyed by the room to the poet’s soul are described in what seems to be a lullaby, which could point to the fact that these objects actually remind the poet of his childhood, in the comforts of his home with his mother. We can further bolster this claim by examining the Latin root of the word natal, or nat, which signifies birth. In using the word “natal,” Baudelaire also links the room to family origins, and in turn, to childhood, which shows that the destination is yet another manifestation of his maternal desires.

To add to the claim stated above on the subject on the return to childhood, we will now briefly touch on another biographical aspect of Baudelaire’s life. It is worth mentioning that when Les Fleurs du Mal was published, Baudelaire was surrounded by a tremendous amount of ​ ​

8 Baudelaire, 77.

11 debt, and his only form of financial support at the time was his mother, Mme Aupick. In her book titled Baudelaire, Joanna Richardson states, ​ ​

Mme Aupick, too, felt impotent, and deeply depressed. She suffered from four years of widowhood, from her provincial isolation, from her poor health and her nervousness, and, above all, from the behavior of her son. She was troubled by his physical and emotional 9 condition, by his unremitting debts and, now, by the new edition of his poems.

Here, Richardson establishes the fact that Baudelaire was in a state of financial hardship when the poem was published. In using the evidence pulled for the poem coupled with this small biographical detail underlined by Richardson, we can conclude that this poem is actually pointing towards nostalgia for childhood, a time in which Baudelaire was happy. The imagery of a noble household containing beautiful ornate furniture produced in this stanza can be seen as a representation of the family’s richness during his childhood, as Baudelaire came from a fairly wealthy family of noble status. The fixation on the metaphorical voyage to a childhood-like destination can be seen as an escape from the anguish of the poet’s melancholia.

Just as the idea of a metaphorical voyage represents an escape from the harsh reality of Baudelaire's mental state, it also represents a key indicator of melancholic expectation of being cast out. Baudelaire's repetitive feminine fixation in “L’invitation au voyage” translates to a representation of the poet's incestuous maternal desire, and because this desire is unattainable, the melancholic poet reveals his desire to be cast out into a land far from home. In La femme ​ dans l'oeuvre de Baudelaire, Tamara Bassim states that, for Baudelaire, "only one woman exists: ​ 10 his mother. She will be all women, and all women will be Her." This citation from Bassim perfectly summarizes Baudelaire’s problematic relationship to maternal desire, which reverberates in the cited letters above. This citation from Bassim allows us to understand that Baudelaire was incapable of moving past the mother as the sole object of desire in reality. In effect, we can argue that this desire for the mother bleeds into the poet’s work. Because of the undeniable evidence of Baudelaire's maternal fixation contained in the numerous letters cited

9 Richardson, 330. 10 See Tamara Bassim, La femme dans l’oeuvre de Baudelaire (Neuchâtel: À la Baconière), 99. ​ ​ ​

12 above, we can realistically apply this phrase to Baudelaire's poetry. This maternal fixation is an exceptional example of Baudelaire's warped relationship to desire, and it is this relationship to desire that causes the poet to write of an escape, where the escape is a form of the poet casting himself out, which is a feature of melancholia.

In a more literal sense, we can see that the concept of voyage provides the melancholic an escape from the reality of French society, which we can interpret as a literal self-exile. It is in the second stanza in which we see the first indicator of a more eastern setting, as Baudelaire describes the destination (the chamber) as having "la splendeur orientale." Coupled with "misty sunlight, cloudy skies, and oriental splendor,” the destination seems to be far from home for the poet himself. In analyzing the third stanza, we can further examine more indicators of location laid out by the poet, which will give us a more accurate sense of location.

Vois sur ces canaux

Dormir ces vaisseaux

Dont l'humeur est vagabonde;

C'est pour assouvir

Ton moindre désir

Qu'ils viennent du bout du monde.

— Les soleils couchants

Revêtent les champs,

Les canaux, la ville entière,

D'hyacinthe et d'or;

Le monde s'endort

13 11 Dans une chaude lumière.

The juxtaposition of "Les soleils mouillés,/De ces ciels brouillés" of the first stanza and "Les soleils couchants… Dans une chaude lumière," of the final stanza, provides us with a more concrete idea pertaining to the source of the poem. One plausible theory is that the inspiration for the destination in the poem is Holland, which is described in Alfred Dumesnil's La foi nouvelle ​ cherchée dans l'art de Rembrandt à Beethoven. Published in 1850, this collection of Dutch ​ artwork profiles provides a strikingly similar description of Dutch Golden Age paintings to that of Baudelaire's language describing the location of the voyage. In a description of Paul Potter's work, Dumesnil describes the Dutch skies by stating, "En Hollande, le soleil, presque toute la journée couvert de nuages, s'en dégage vers quatre heures, et jusqu'à son coucher, il inonde les prairies sans limites de la plus douce, de la plus chaude, de la plus 12 splendide lumière. Baudelaire's juxtaposition mentioned above corresponds directly with this vivid description provided by Dumesnil. The poem introduces a more somber and dreary image of the Dutch skies, which we can conclude as a representation of daytime, followed by the final stanza, which describes the sunset enveloping the entire destination city, "Dans une chaude lumière...D'hyacinthe et d'or." Invoking the images of canals and boats, the poet leads us to the 13 conclusion that the destination is situated in a port city, which we can interpret as Amsterdam.

It is not only the location itself that is of major importance in the psychoanalytic interpretation of this poem, but also the distance between Baudelaire's and the location of the voyage. As a result of the incessant longing for a forbidden object of desire, the poet longs to exile himself far from the reaches of a society that constrains him. This longing to flee and separate oneself is seen in the eyes of Freud as the ultimate deterioration of self-image which leads to exile. He states, “The patient represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally despicable; he reproaches himself, vilifies himself, and expects to be

11 See Baudelaire, 78. 12 See Alfred Dumesnil, La foi nouvelle cherchée dans l'art de Rembrandt à Beethoven (Paris: ​ ​ ​ Imprimeurs-Unis, 1850), 111. 13 See James S. Patty, “LIGHT OF HOLLAND: SOME POSSIBLE SOURCES OF « L'INVITATION AU VOYAGE ».” Études Baudelairiennes, vol. 3, 1973, pp. 147–157. JSTOR, ​ ​ www.jstor.org/stable/45074192. ​

14 14 cast out and punished.” Baudelaire’s exile in this seemingly tranquil destination seems to be in stark contrast with the casting out described by Freud. Even though the destination seems to be luxurious and the complete opposite of a destination that promotes self-loathing, a more in-depth look at a few elements of the poem will provide us with the evidence that this voyage is in fact a voyage to exile, or a casting out. We will first return to the second stanza, which provides the description of the “chambre” to be shared by the poet and the addressee. In the second stanza, Baudelaire describes a room that contains profound and deep mirrors (“Les miroirs profonds”), along with other aspects of the room that “...parlerait/À l'âme en secret/Sa douce langue natale.” We must note here the mentioning of these mirrors by the poet that “speak to the soul in secret.” We can interpret these mirrors as symbols for profound self-reflection upon the arrival at the destination. We should also notice the similarities between Baudelaire’s use of the word “âme,” or soul, in the second stanza, and the use of the word “esprit” and the mystery that surrounds the spirit mentioned in the first stanza. Because the spirit is described as containing the same teary, mysterious, and treacherous qualities as the addressee, it is plausible to say that the soul is also sad and containing these same qualities. In “whispering secretly to the soul in its native language,” it is safe to say that the mirrors are a representation of the self-reflection and self-loathing brought on by the melancholia and tristesse felt by the poet because of the prolonged desire for forbidden relations with the mother. We can conclude that Baudelaire's call 15 to voyage is a manifestation of his expectation "to be cast out," and the destination is a place for self-loathing and reflection.

Two features of melancholia that are lacking in this poem that must be noted are, however, the melancholic expectation of punishment that is defined by Freud, as well as the self-reproaches. Even though the poet has demonstrated a form of self-exile, the description of this exile is far from what would be worthy of being defined as an expectation of punishment. I would argue that even though these traits are not exhibited, Baudelaire still shows a certain face of melancholy in the poem. Dr. Kevin Godbout, a Canadian writer, editor, and researcher, draws from theories on Baudelaire’s writing on “Spleen et Idéal,” originally conceptualized by Pierre

14 Freud, 246. ​ 15 Ibid, 246.

15 Dufour. Godbout argues that the writing contained in “Spleen et Idéal,” takes on two different 16 forms of melancholia, which are recognized as “high melancholia” and “low melancholia.” He states,

This recognition of spleen, in the spaces of where one dreams of idéal, is the melancholic space literature provides. Spleen exposes that fleeting moments of idéal are exactly that: they are fleeting. In being so, they betray the transcendental sphere they were meant to reveal as a falsehood, une vaguerie, a petty lie, a bad joke. In the allegorical playground of Baudelaire’s writing, the two major players are these emblems of these positive and 17 negative melancholies.

It is here that Godbout argues that literature itself provides the author for a ground in which to place both the positive and negative elements of melancholic writing. Furthermore, the “Idéal” is exposed by the “Spleen” in Baudelaire’s poetry as being nothing more than an illusion that briefly hides deeper melancholic meaning. Godbout’s argument perfectly explains the juxtaposition between the more luxurious and tranquil aspects of “L’invitation au voyage,” and the description of the sadness and gloomy imagery contained in the first stanza because he underlines the fact that Baudelaire’s writing contains two major and different forms of melancholia. Because of this key observation, I conclude that just because the destination of Baudelaire’s hypothetical voyage to exile is seemingly brilliant, it still reflects the inner expectation to be cast out. Only the space that literature creates can provide for such a place of tranquility and melancholy to coexist, and that is the profound beauty of this poem.

To conclude this chapter, I will return to the questions that propelled the work that was completed above. Baudelaire opens the poem in a commanding fashion by using the first person possessive adjective “my,” which makes it possible to apply psychoanalytic theory to both the

16 See Kevin Godbout, "Saturnine Constellations: Melancholy in Literary History and in the ​ Works of Baudelaire and Benjamin" (2016). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4291. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4291, 155; High melancholia is referred to as the “Idéal,” whereas ​ ​ low melancholia is referred to as the “Spleen,” which represents the darker and more abysmal side of melancholia. 17 Ibid., 155. ​

16 poem and the author, which has allowed us to explore the inner workings of the poet’s melancholia that is represented on the page. Baudelaire concretely represents the melancholy that is his desire for an unattainable maternal object because of his creation of a sororal figure that is also his child. If Baudelaire were to have a sister that is also his child, this figure would have to be a product of incest, and the representation of this figure on the page is a manifestation of maternal desire on behalf of the poet. This concept is reinforced by the letters sent to Baudelaire’s mother that underline profound maternal infatuation throughout the poet’s life. The melancholia experienced by the poet is expressed through depressive language that describes his spirit, and the voyage itself is a hallmark sign of the melancholic expectation to be cast out. All of these critical observations are valuable because they put readers of Baudelaire in a position to redefine “L’invitation au voyage,” as melancholic because of depressive undertones on behalf of an unattainable object of desire that are also incestuous.

17 Chapter II Representations of Desire and Melancholia in Chateaubriand’s René ​ As with Baudelaire’s “Invitation au voyage,” I will centralize the representation of melancholia by the author, as well as the two themes of maternal desire and sororal desire, which both seem to be displayed in a different and more overt fashion in comparison with the other text. As in the previous section on Baudelaire, I will establish the tone that is present in François-René de Chateaubriand’s René. In the opening paragraph of the novella, it is evident ​ ​ that the tone is in fact melancholic. Chateaubriand writes, En arrivant chez les Natchez, René avait été obligé de prendre une épouse, pour se conformer aux moeurs des Indiens, mais il ne vivait point avec elle. Un penchant mélancolique l'entraînait au fond des bois; il y passait seul des journées entières, et semblait sauvage parmi les sauvages. Hors Chactas, son père adoptif, et le père Souël, 18 missionnaire au fort Rosalie, il avait renoncé au commerce des hommes.

Chateaubriand starts the novella by establishing blatant melancholic sentiment in the opening sentences of the story, where he introduces the main character’s mental constitution as melancholic, or what is described as “un penchant melancolique.” This melancholic likeness that is conveyed in the opening lines of the book can be observed throughout the dialogue that comprises the book, which I will touch upon during the entirety of this chapter. We can also apply the below excerpt from Freud directly to the opening paragraph, which explains,

The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of 19 punishment.

18 See François-René de Chateaubriand, Atala and René (New York: Oxford University Press, ​ 1926), 101. 19 Freud, 244.

18

One of the most “distinguishing features of melancholia” in the words of Freud is the inability to love, which is touched upon with René’s decision to “prendre une épouse,” without actually living with and acknowledging the significant other. René makes no mention of this wife throughout the entirety of the text after these opening lines and does not mention any love outside of the love he harbors for his sister Amélie. In further applying the Freudian theory to this passage, we are also introduced to the main character’s loss of interest in the outside world when the narrator explains that he has “renounced the affairs of mankind” and taken permanent refuge in the wilderness. It is in this refuge that the protagonist has cast himself from society and enters into a state of exile, which aids the character in what I would like to describe as a tool that facilitates and maintains a cycle of grief and melancholia. In order to further bolster this claim, we will return to Freud, who lays out the foundations of this cycle and writes,

Profound mourning, the reaction to the loss of someone who is loved, contains the same painful frame of mind, the same loss interest in the outside world-- in so far as it does not recall him-- the same loss of capacity to adopt any new object of love (which would mean replacing him) and the same turning away from any activity that is not connected with thoughts of him. It is easy to see that this inhibition and circumscription of the ego is the expression of an exclusive devotion to mourning which leaves nothing over for other 20 purposes or other interests.

Freud describes that melancholia and profound mourning, or the state after losing a loved one, both share the same traits. Because of the protagonist’s melancholy, he loses his capacity to love, and exiles himself, which adheres to exactly what Freud lays out this psychoanalytic passage. In exiling himself in the wilderness of North America and detaching himself from the affairs of man, René frees himself from anything that would prevent his lamenting over the lost figures of desire that are the cause of his plight, and propels himself into a perpetual state of melancholy in which he does nothing but speak of and ponder over the “lost objects of love.”

20 Ibid., 244

19 I will continue with a brief analysis of two autobiographical details of Chateaubriand in unison with the text in order to define how the author’s representation of self manifests itself on the page. In terms of René by Chateaubriand, the author’s melancholic representation of self is ​ ​ very evident, as the events of Chateaubriand’s life correspond almost directly with the words that the reader consumes. I will start this section of the thesis with an excerpt from Chateaubriand’s Memoires d’Outre-tombe. This work is a collection of Chateaubriand’s memoirs that are seen as ​ autobiographical, which I have found extremely interesting and useful in my own reading of René. The author describes in detail many sentiments and family members of his childhood, ​ which seem to echo in a similar fashion on the pages of René. The first passage I have included ​ ​ gives us an idea as to the author’s sentiments that surround his parents, as well as his older brother. Chateaubriand writes, Quand je fus rapporté à Saint−Malo, mon père était à Combourg, mon frère au collège de Saint−Brieuc, mes quatre soeurs vivaient auprès de ma mère. Toutes les affections de celle−ci s'étaient concentrées dans son fils aîné ; non qu'elle ne chérit ses autres enfants, mais elle témoignait une préférence aveugle au jeune comte de Combourg. J'avais bien, il est vrai, comme garçon, comme le dernier venu, comme le chevalier (ainsi m'appelait−on), quelques privilèges sur mes soeurs ; mais en définitive, j'étais abandonné aux mains des gens. Ma mère d'ailleurs, pleine d'esprit et de vertu, était préoccupée par 21 les soins de la société et les devoirs de la religion.

It is here in Mémoires d’Outre-tombe that the author reveals the isolation that he experienced as ​ ​ a child, and like in the previous section on Baudelaire’s Invitation au voyage, we will define the ​ ​ representation of melancholia in René as the desire for affection by the maternal figure in his life. ​ ​ Throughout the novella, the main character, René, expresses sentiments for the grief that he caused to his father upon the death. In the opening pages of the novella, René commences his melancholic dialogue with Chactas and the other present characters by explaining the death of his mother that accompanied his entry into the world. René states, “J’ai coûté la vie à ma mère en venant au monde; j’ai été tiré de son sien avec le fer. J’avais un frère que mon père bénit, parce qu’il voyait en lui son fils aîné. Pour moi, livre de bonne heure a des mains étrangères, je fus 22 élevé loin du toit paternel.” This exerpt from René describes the protagonist’s loss of a maternal ​ ​

21 See Chateaubriand, Mémoires D'Outre-Tombe. (Éditions EBooksFrance), ​ ​ ​ www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooksfrance/chateaubriand_memoires_outre-tombe.pdf, 27. ​ 22 Chateaubriand, René, 103. ​ ​

20 object at birth. He also describes the fact that his oldest brother was cherished by his father over him, and that he was raised away from his father’s estate. Although Chateaubriand’s mother did not perish while giving birth, it would not be problematic to equate the representation of maternal loss in the novella as a representation of the prolonged maternal separation that consumed Chateaubriand as a child. This period of isolation and maternal separation can also translate as causes of the author’s melancholia, which is represented by the death, ultimate form of ultimate loss and separation, of the fictional mother in the novella. There are two other very important similarities between the biographical details contained in Memoires d'Outre-tombe and ​ ​ the novella that provide us with more evidence that solidifies the idea that the main character, ​ ​ René, is a representation of Chateaubriand. First, we must note that in both texts, the author makes use of the term “fils aîné,” which in context with the two texts suggests that Chateaubriand was overshadowed and less important than his older male sibling and that the isolation from his family was inherited from birth. Because the author alludes to the abandonment he felt as a child, the desire to have a place in a proper family is also at the root of the author’s melancholia. Because of this, it is safe to conclude that familial separation as a whole would another prominent source of the author’s melancholia, and not simply maternal separation. The second observation that we must make in order to continue on with this analysis is the similarity between the idea of the main character as an unwanted child and the upbringing of the author himself. In Mémoires d'Outre-tombe, he also writes, ​ ​

De ce caractère de mes parents sont nés les premiers sentiments de ma vie. Je m'attachais à la femme qui prit soin de moi, excellente créature appelée la Villeneuve, dont j'écris le nom avec un mouvement de reconnaissance et les larmes aux yeux. La Villeneuve était une espèce de surintendante de la maison, me portant dans ses bras, me donnant, à la dérobée, tout ce qu'elle pouvait trouver, essuyant mes pleurs, m'embrassant, me jetant dans un coin, me reprenant et marmottant toujours : " C'est celui−là, qui ne sera pas fier ! qui a bon coeur ! qui ne rebute point les pauvres gens ! Tiens, petit garçon. " et elle me 23 bourrait de vin et de sucre.

In comparing this memoir to the novella, it is clear that there was a clear separation between Chateaubriand and his parents because of the fact that he was raised by a wet nurse. Instead of

23 Chateaubriand, Mémoires D'Outre-Tombe, 28. ​ ​ ​

21 being cared for by his mother and father, Chateaubriand was raised by a non-familial figure, which resonates in the last sentence of the excerpt, which states that René was “élevé loin du toit paternel.” Chateaubriand’s childhood was never filled with affection from his mother. For seven years, he was raised by La Villeneuve, and after, the author was immediately sent to live with his grandmother. Because the author was never really raised by his mother, we can conclude that the maternal separation of Chateaubriand’s childhood resonates in the narrative of René. Even if La ​ ​ Villeneuve functioned as a stand-in maternal figure for Chateaubriand, the author was still ripped away from the said figure, thus the same principle of maternal separation and desire applies. In establishing such concrete connections between the biographical details of Chateaubriand’s life and childhood contained in Memoires d’Outre tombe and the main character of the novella, I will ​ ​ continue with the analysis of the novella as a pseudo-auto-biography, which will facilitate the use and application of psychoanalytic theory in order to better understand the representation of the author’s melancholy and representation of self. I will continue this analysis by analyzing the maternal and sororal relationships, or lack thereof, contained in the pages of the novella, which will both prove to be the two profound causes of melancholia in the case of René. The first root cause of René’s melancholia, the absence of a maternal figure, is more briefly touched upon at the beginning of the novella. Nevertheless, it is an important contributing aspect of René’s melancholic temperament. In first establishing his tristesse surrounding the death of his mother, and his longing for a sense of belonging, René attempts to establish his mother as the cause of his early melancholy. Chateaubriand writes, “Chaque frémissement de l’airain portait à mon âme navire l’innocence des moeurs champêtres, le calme de la solitude, le charme de la religion et la délectable 24 mélancolie des souvenirs de ma première enfance!” It is here that René reveals for the first time the melancholia that stems from his childhood. Because René does not explicitly state what he believes the root cause of this melancholy is at this time in the book, the author leaves room for interpretation as to what that cause might be. While reflecting on his relationship with his sister during his childhood, René states, “Il est vrai qu'Amélie et moi nous jouissions plus que personne de ces idées graves et tendres, car nous avions tous les deux un peu de tristesse au fond

24 Chateaubriand, René, 105. ​ ​ ​

22 25 du coeur: nous tenions cela de ou de notre mère.” Here, the author sheds light on the origins of the main character’s sadness, which could also be a representation of Chateaubriand and his own melancholia that could have been caused by the disconnect between the author and his own mother during his childhood. It would be problematic to equate all tristesse to melancholia, as the two are completely separate concepts. Julia Kristeva, a French-Bulgarian scholar, literary critic, and psychoanalyst, describes sadness in the following excerpt on mood and language.

Sadness is a fundamental mood of depression, and even if manic euphoria alternates with it in the bipolar forms of that ailment, sorrow is the major outward sign that gives away the desperate person. Sadness leads us to the enigmatic realm of affects---anguish, fear, or joy. Irreducible to its verbal or semiological expressions, sadness (like all affect) is the psychic representation of energy displacements caused by external or internal traumas… ​ 26

In this passage, Kristeva explains that sadness is a product of trauma, and that sorrow is an outward projection of that sadness. This trauma could come in the form of loss, and that loss causes a display of sadness. In the cases of René and Amélie, the internal trauma would be, without a doubt, the loss of the maternal figure at childbirth, coupled with the internal trauma created by the continuous isolation during childhood that both characters experience. The representation of the trauma of childhood isolation from a maternal figure makes its way onto the page of Chateaubriand’s René in the form of creation. On the subject of representation through ​ ​ literary creation, Kristeva writes,

Literary creation is that adventure of the body and signs that bears witness to the affect--to sadness as imprint of separation and beginning of the symbol’s sway; to joy as

25 Ibid., 105.

26 See Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (New York: Columbia University ​ ​ ​ Press, 1989), 21.

23 imprint of the triumph that settles me in the universe of artifice and symbol, which I try to harmonize in the best possible way with my experience of reality. But that testimony is produced by literary creation in a material that is totally different from what constitutes mood. It transposes affect into rhythms, signs, forms. The “semiotic” and the “symbolic” become communicable imprints of an affective reality, perceptible to the reader (I like this book because it conveys sadness, anguish, or joy) and yet dominated , set aside, 27 vanquished.

This commentary by Kristeva defines literary creation as an outlet for sadness to manifest itself in the form of literature. She also explains that mood, however it is represented, can be observed by the reader, and that the various representations of mood can be accurately digested by the consumer of the text. This excerpt permits us to even further understand the melancholy of the writer, which transfers onto the page as represented by the main character René. The cause of the sadness in a more biographical context is the familial separation, which we know from previous citations of the novella, translates to melancholia in this specific case. What the reader comprehends is the melancholia that is represented through the creation of a fictional reality. I would argue, however, that this “affective reality” is not only a fictional creation but also a representation of self, of the innermost sorrows over the untouchable figures of desire, which is conveyed through the symbolic domination of the semiotic. The semiotic represents, in this case, the notion of the feeling of melancholy that is not conveyed by words, but in writing on his melancholia, the main character shows that the symbolic dominates the semiotic. As in “L’Invitation au voyage,” we now see an indicator of melancholia for an impossible relationship with a maternal figure. In this case, however, the desire for the maternal object does not appear to be incestuous or sexual. As we read the previous quotation from Chateaubriand’s René, we can also see what could be interpreted as a representation of another ​ ​ very important relationship that is present in Memoires d’Outre-tombe. This fictional ​ ​ representation is that of Chateaubriand’s sister Lucile, with whom he was close with during his childhood. The mentioning of this second character brings us to the second and most important

27 Ibid., 22. ​

24 source of René’s melancholia, which is without a doubt his sister Amélie. This sororal representation is described as the main character’s only friend later in the novella. When Amelie decides to flee and take up religious life, René responds with a dialogue of self-pity stating, “Un mouvement de pitié l'avait rappelée auprès de moi ; mais bientôt, fatiguée d'un pénible devoir, 28 elle se hâte de quitter un malheureux qui n'avait qu'elle sur la terre.” It is here that the sister is illustrated as René’s only friend, which can also be seen as a reflection of Chateaubriand’s 29 childhood, when he spent a considerable amount of time with his sister. René juxtaposes his melancholic childhood with the time he spent with Amélie during the autumn months, which is described as a very pleasant time. For René, this would have been the only time he was permitted 30 to see his family because of his exile at the hands of his father. René explains his annual return to his father’s estate stating,

Chaque automne je revenais au château paternel, situé au milieu des forêts, près d’un lac, dans une province reculée. Timide et contraint devant mon père, je ne trouvais l'aise et le contentement qu'auprès de ma soeur Amélie. Une douce conformité d'humeur et de goûts s'unissent étroitement à cette soeur; elle était un peu plus âgée que moi. Nous aimions à gravir les coteaux ensemble, à voguer sur le lac, à parcourir les bois à la chute des feuilles: promenades dont le souvenir remplit encore mon âme de délices. O illusion de 31 l’enfance et de la patrie, ne perdez vous jamais vos douceurs.

It is at this point that the object of desire is officially established as René’s sister Amélie, the only thing that seems to make him happy. At this moment, René seems completely at ease when speaking about the autumns spent at his father’s estate with his sister, walking the grounds filling his soul with delight. René looks back on the sweetness of childhood in parallel to togetherness with his sister. As he does so, he calls for the preservation of the sweetness of these memories, which I interpret as a desire for sororal companionship. It is here where the author conveys a

28 Chateaubriand, René, 127. ​ ​ ​ 29 Chateaubriand, Mémoires D'Outre-Tombe, 28. ​ ​ ​ 30 Chateaubriand, René, 129. ​ ​

31 Chateaubriand, René, 104. ​ ​

25 stark contrast from other moments in the book where melancholia and sadness seem to loom over the rest of the story. In looking back on these moments at the paternal estate, René's most important observation is when he describes childhood as an illusion. The illusion he is describing is the togetherness with the sororal figure that can never last. Later in life, alone and riddled with desire for this untouchable sororal object of desire treads on the edge of death in the form of suicide. René explains his reasoning for suicide is the “strange trauma” that has been inflicted on his heart.

Je luttai quelque temps contre mon mal, mais avec indifférence et sans avoir la ferme résolution de le vaincre. Enfin, ne pouvant trouver de remède à cette étrange blessure de 32 mon coeur, qui n'était nulle part et qui était partout, je résolus de quitter la vie.”

René writes to his sister of this planned suicide, and her reaction is swift, and as an act of protection, she decides to console her brother by living with him. During this time, we see the melancholia that is present throughout the story appears to disappear for a brief moment. René describes his happiness with his sister stating,

Le moment était venu où j'allais expier toutes mes inconséquences. Dans mon délire, j'avais été jusqu'à désirer d'éprouver un malheur, pour avoir du moins un objet réel de 33 souffrance : épouvantable souhait que Dieu, dans sa colère, a trop exaucé !

In reading this description of his happiness, we must return to the Freudian text which explains the reasons for René’s apparent desire to be punished for his brief happiness. Freud states, “The patient represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally 34 despicable; he reproaches himself, vilifies himself, and expects to be cast out and punished.” When René expresses what is undoubtedly an expectation to be punished, his words are an indicator of the melancholia that still looms over his life, even in this brief happy moment. The

32 Ibid., 120. ​ ​ 33 Chateaubriand, René, 123. ​ ​ ​ 34 Freud, 246.

26 reproaching, vilification, and casting out do not appear until the interruption of this happiness, or until his melancholia returns in full force, or when the figure of affection and desire, Amelie, is taken from his daily life. When his sister leaves him to take up the veil, René is completely devastated. René describes his passions in the following dialogue after his sister had sacrificed her life to become a nun. He cries out,

J'avais voulu quitter la terre avant l'ordre du Tout−Puissant ; c'était un grand crime : Dieu m'avait envoyé Amélie à la fois pour me sauver et pour me punir. Ainsi, toute pensée coupable, toute action criminelle entraîne après elle des désordres et des malheurs. Amélie me priait de vivre, et je lui devais bien de ne pas aggraver ses maux. D'ailleurs (chose étrange ! ) je n'avais plus envie de mourir depuis que j'étais réellement malheureux. Mon chagrin était devenu une occupation qui remplissait tous mes moments : tant mon coeur est naturellement pétri d'ennui et de misère !... Je pris donc subitement une autre résolution ; je me déterminai à quitter 35 l'Europe et à passer en Amérique.

In this moment of despair, René’s melancholic temperament arrives on the page in a perfectly 36 arranged display that seems to follow verbatim what was laid out by Freud. René describes his desires as criminal and describes himself as a wretch, which can be seen as vilification and reproach, all while resulting in exile to America. We also see what Freud lays out as a “distinguishing mental feature of melancholia” which is described as the “inhibition of all activity” when the protagonist describes his grief as becoming “une occupation qui remplissait 37 tous mes moments.” It is also here in the text that we can concretely establish the connection to René’s melancholia and incestuous desires, in which he describes as an illicit action that brings wretchedness and disorder to those who entertain such desires. It would be problematic at this point in the thesis not to mention that the Oedipus complex plays an important role in René’s establishment of his sister as the most central figure in reference to his romantic desires. The Oedipus complex, which situates the mother as the male child’s object of desire, is coupled with a repressed distaste for the father because the father is in direct competition with the child for the affections of the mother. In a traditional view of the

35 Chateaubriand, René, 135. ​ ​ 36 Freud, 246. 37 Freud, 244; Chateaubriand 135.

27 Oedipus complex, the mother is present for the child’s phallic stage, or the younger stages of development. We must note that René’s mother was not alive for the child’s phallic stage, but this does not mean that there are no Oedipal representations throughout the text. The fact that the mother died before the initiation of the phallic stage, we are faced with two very important questions: Can the Oedipus complex be applied to René if his mother died before his development of affections? If so, what happens when the mother is completely absent during the subject’s childhood? In “The Ego and the ID,” Freud argues,

In its simplified form the case of a male child may be described as follows. At a very early age the little boy develops an object-cathexis for the mother, which originally related to the mother’s breast and is the prototype of an object-choice on the anaclitic 38 model; the boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him.

If we were to strictly study this complex in terms of what Freud lays out in the above citation, the theory would not be applicable. What Freud’s theory does not take into account is the absence of the maternal figure, as well as the presence of the desire of affection from a maternal figure in its absence. I would argue that the very notion of a mother that previously existed is enough for René to develop such a complex. René’s father cast out his son during his childhood because of forever existing affections for his wife, which shows that even in death, the object of desire still exists, and René gives in adhering to the father’s identity makes the mother the object of desire. The only difference from the situation that Freud describes and that of René is that there is no physical mother; she only exists in the mind. The main character still follows the Oedipal model revealed by Freud because of his melancholia for the mother, coupled with the turbulent relationship with the father. In such situations, Freud describes the revolt against the father as an 39 ambivalent relationship. René reflects this ambivalent relationship with his father in his description of his own temperament in front of his father, which he describes as “timid and 40 constrained.” Since there is no physical object to attach to, it is difficult for the complex to resolve. I would argue that since the Oedipus complex is not achieved through the obtaining of

38 Sigmund Freud, The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis (London: Vintage, 2005), 455. ​ ​ ​ 39 Ibid., 455. ​ ​ ​ ​ 40 Chateaubriand, René, 104. ​ ​ ​

28 motherly affection, René searches for the next closest figure that stands in place of the mother, which is that of his older sister. In his work titled “The Ego and the ID,”Freud argues,

Close investigation has shown us, too, that the superego is stunted in its strength and growth if the surmounting of the Oedipus complex is only incompletely successful. In the course of development the super-ego also takes on the influences of those who have 41 stepped into the place of parents- educators, teachers, people chosen as ideal models.

Here, Freud explains that consciousness, or the superego, is underdeveloped when the Oedipus complex is unsuccessfully terminated. He also explains that the superego is influenced by those who the subject looks up to. I would argue that in the case of René, the elder sister takes up the affectionate role of the mother, or even the role of both parents, as the father was never really present in the protagonist’s life. The development of the super-ego, or conscious, stems from the sister, who always ends up separating herself from her brother because of her own incestuous desires. René in turn always finds himself in a state of self-exile, consistently stressing the illegality of incestuous thought and action. At this point in the chapter, I will now initiate an analysis of what I will call melancholic nostalgia, which is an important theme throughout the book. In order to fully comprehend the melancholic tendencies of René in the story, we will have to also understand the underlying nostalgic feeling at the heart of the text. According to Lisa O’Sullivan’s article The Time and ​ Place of Nostalgia: Re-situating a French Disease,

Nostalgia was a disease triggered by displacement, which became medically and politically important after the , when military surgeons encountered epidemics of nostalgia in the armed forces, Understood as a form of pathological homesickness, the category straddled environmental medicine and emerging ideas about insanity. The diagnosis became particularly important to the Ideologue writers as a case study in regulating and redirecting the emotions demonstrating the efficacy of their new

41 Freud, The Essentials of Psychoanalysis, 491. ​ ​ ​

29 “moral” treatments and an ability to generate patriotic attachment to the new nation state. ​ 42

I have included this excerpt on nostalgia written by O’Sullivan because it provides a historical reference to nostalgic disease that is strikingly similar to that of melancholia. O’Sullivan situates nostalgia as a pathological disease caused by separation that was adopted by the medical community as a possible form of insanity. The two are undoubtedly kindred because both nostalgia and melancholia demonstrate an obsessive desire that revolves around desire, whether that desire be for a place or for an object of affection. In my reading of René, I have found that ​ ​ the protagonist is also deeply afflicted with nostalgia, which resonates throughout the book. We must note that René first spoke of his suicidal urges upon his return far from a voyage to other worlds and civilizations. During his voyage in a search for some sort of revelation, René recognized that he had not learned anything of happiness, and was met with a constant feeling of nostalgia for past civilizations, as well as a nostalgia for his native country. In describing this desire to return to his native country, he explains, “C'était donc bien vainement que j’avais espéré retrouver dans mon pays de quoi calmer cette inquiétude, cette ardeur de désir qui me suit partout. L'étude du monde ne m’avait rien appris, et pourtant je n’avais plus la douceur de 43 l’ignorance. What René is describing in this passage is a nostalgic feeling for his home country. Upon his return to France, René realized that the country that he once knew as a child was gone, and that society is ever-changing. Consistently focused on his nostalgia for his childhood, René forced himself into exile, in which he found no comfort. This nostalgia for the lost world of antiquity and for childhood seems to impact René in parallel with the melancholia that surrounds

42 See Lisa O’Sullivan, “The Time and Place of Nostalgia: Re-situating a French Disease,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Volume 67, Issue no. 4 (2012), 626. ​

43 Chateaubriand, René, 114; It is worth noting that throughout French literature, especially in ​ ​ Joachim du Bellay’s sonnet “France, mère des arts, des armes et des lois,” the country of France, the motherland, is referred to as a mother figure. It would not be problematic to go as far as suggest that there is a third maternal object of desire that is the motherland France herself. Even the death of the mother during childhood could represent old France before the ideas of Revolution had transformed France into a different country all together. The death of the mother could be seen as symbolic of the death of the old ideas and systems, or the death the France of Chateaubriand’s which the author would have hardly known.

30 his desires for his lost mother, as well as his sister. In fact, the concept of nostalgia and melancholia working as two complimentary afflictions is plausible, as nostalgia has been 44 identified by scholars as a “variant of melancholia.” In Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and ​ Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times, the term nostalgia was used to indicate ​ 45 “the grief for the lost charm of the Native Land.” He also makes mention of the word’s Greek origins, which is “composed of two sounds, the one of which is Nostos, return to the native land; ​ ​ 46 the other, Algos, signifies suffering or grief;....” If we incorporate these two quotations ​ ​ mentioned above, we can come to two conclusions pertaining to the nostalgia of the main character. We can first establish that René’s nostalgia can be described as a grieving mood for the lost aspects of his childhood France. This nostalgia is not necessarily for the country of France itself, but for the brief times of happiness that occurred at the paternal estate with his sister. This is where we can describe the nostalgia felt by Rene as a nostalgia for a lived experience. This type of nostalgia called “simple nostalgia,” was coined by scholar Fred Davis and is further described by Janelle Wilson as a nostalgia that “refers to the subjective state of 47 believing that things were better in the past than they are now.” For René, this better time would have been the time spent with his sister during his childhood when innocence reigned before the arrival of adulthood. This concept of “simple nostalgia” works in parallel with the melancholia that is brought upon by the memory for his sister and the time spent at the paternal estate, the nostalgia is for the paternal estate of old, and the melancholia stemming from the desire to be the focal point of his sister’s affections, be it at this paternal estate or elsewhere. “Simple nostalgia” describes René’s thoughts that surround his childhood and his desire to return, but there is another branch of nostalgia coined by Svetlana Boym that is called “restorative nostalgia,” that explains René’s excessive desire for exile and isolation. This “restorative nostalgia” is described by Wilson as “a wistful longing for a past marked by greater

44 See Stanley Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times ​ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 373. 45 QTD in Jackson, 373. 46 Ibid., 373. 47 See Janelle Lynne Wilson, “Here and Now, There and Then: Nostalgia as a Time and Space Phenomenon,” Symbolic Interaction Volume 38, Issue no. 4 (2015), 480. ​ ​

31 48 authenticity and a desire to reconstruct that time.” What I will now attempt to do is make the connection between “restorative nostalgia” and the self-exile that René brings upon himself. In a desire to recreate or bring back the memories that are the cause of René’s nostalgia, he returns to the paternal estate in search of closure and solace,

Après avoir hésité un moment sur la partie que j’avais à prendre, je résolus d’aller a B … pour faire un dernier effort auprès de ma soeur. La terre ou j’avais été élevé se trouvait sur la route. Quand j'aperçus les bois où j’avais passé les seuls moments heureux de ma vie, je ne pus retenir mes larmes, et il me fut impossible de résister à la tentation de leur dire un dernier adieu. Mon frère aîné avait vendu l'héritage paternel, et le nouveau propriétaire ne l’habitait pas. J’arrivai au château par la longue avenue de sapins; je traversai à pied les cours désertes; je m'arrêtai à regarder les fenêtres fermées ou demi brisées, le chardon qui croisait au pied des murs, les feuilles qui jonchaient le seuil des portes, et ce perron solitaire ou j’avais vu si souvent mon père et ses fidèles serviteurs. Je sortis précipitamment de ces lieux, je m’en éloignait à grands pas, sans oser tourner la 49 tête.

In returning to the land of his childhood autumns, the protagonist is faced with a completely different image of his childhood retreat that is described as desolate and dilapidated. Because the place he once found beautiful is run down and lacking the presence of his sister, he flees in a depressive panic. René’s “restorative nostalgia” prompted him to attempt to restore the former feelings of happiness, which he describes as “les seuls moments heureux” of his life. He quickly learns, however, that the past happiness associated with this lost place could not be recreated, and they are nothing but a reminder of his desires for the untouchable and forbidden object of love that is his sister. But what happens when place, time, and objects of desire become inaccessible? In the case of René, profound melancholia enters in place of nostalgia. When the sororal object of desire decides to take up the veil, the possibility of an amorous relationship between the protagonist and his sister becomes impossible. René then turns towards a narcissistic ​ ​ act of suicide because of this failed relationship, which is described in the following passage.

Cette froide fermeté qu’on opposait à l’ardeur qu’on opposait à l’ardeur de mon amitié me jeta dans de violents transports. Tantôt j’étais près de retourner sur mes pas; tantôt je voulais rester, uniquement pour troubler le sacrifice. L’enfer me suscitait jusqu'à la

48 Wilson, 480. 49 Chateaubriand, René, 129-130. ​ ​

32 pensée de me poignarder dans l’eglise et de mêler mes derniers soupirs aux voeux qui m'arrachaient ma soeur.

The above passage shows that when the melancholic protagonist is met with complete failure in terms of his incestuous relationship, he is so grief-stricken that he almost pushes himself to suicide, or the ultimate form of self-punishment that can accompany melancholia. René contemplates lashing out at the convent and his sister by committing suicide while his sister completes her vows, which is best explained by the following excerpt from Kristeva.

Nevertheless, the treatment of narcissistic individuals has led modern analysts to understand another form of depression. Far from being a hidden attack on an other who is thought to be hostile because he is frustrating, sadness would point to a primitive self- wounded, incomplete, empty. Persons thus affected do not consider themselves wronged but afflicted with a fundamental flaw, a congenital deficiency. Their sorrow doesn’t conceal the guilt or the sin felt because of having secretly plotted revenge on the ambivalent object. Their sadness would be rather the most archaic expression of an unsymbolizable, unnameable narcissistic wound, so precocious that no outside agent (subject or agent) can be used as referent. For such narcissistic depressed persons, sadness is really the sole object; more precisely it is a substitute object they become attached to, an object they tame and cherish for lack of another. In such a case, suicide is not a disguised act of war but a merging with sadness and, beyond it, with that impossible love, never reached, always elsewhere, such as the promises of nothingness, of death. 50

Kristeva describes the significance of the contemplation of suicide not as a lashing out against the sister for abandoning the prospect of an incestuous union, but a surrender to the sadness caused by the idea of an impossible love. Kristeva argues that in contemplating suicide, the melancholic replaces the object of desire with the sadness that surrounds an impossible relationship. This concept is exemplified on the pages of René during the protagonist’s own ​ ​ suicidal fantasy. The extreme sadness that he feels because he is presented with a final moment

50 See Kristeva, 12. ​

33 of denial briefly replaces the sister as the object. René sees this sadness as too much to bear, and as a culmination of this sadness, he is inclined to thoughts of suicide. René states that the act of stabbing himself in the church will mix with his last breath, and this last breath is linked to the vows that his sister takes when taking up the cloth. In this case, the plotting of revenge on the unattainable object of desire is done so in secret, as the protagonist never carries out such a crude act of self-harm. We can come to the conclusion that the vows are the physical barrier between René and incestuous relations with his sister. Because of these vows, the love will never blossom, and the sadness mixes with the impossibility of this love. René tried to use the paternal estate as a referent in an attempt to find inner happiness, but in this profound state of melancholy, he is denied such a referent. The only referent for happiness is the object of desire, 51 his sister, who begs him to continue on with his life. The sadness continues from this point on as the only object that matters in René’s existence. In concluding this chapter, I will underline that the critical theme in René is the ​ ​ melancholia that is brought on by the obsession over an impossible sororal love object, as well as the desire for affections from a lost maternal figure. It is critical because this theme reverberates in Baudelaire’s “L’invitation au voyage,” and both authors represent a maternal desire that stems from childhood isolation. It is the melancholic mood in general that provides us with a strong continuity between the two works, even though melancholia is represented in two very different ways. Not only is melancholia itself a theme of the two nineteenth-century works, but it is the driving force for the authors to write. In writing these works of literature, the authors use the page as a creative outlet in which they communicate their melancholic feelings to the reader. We have seen that this is also the case for the author, representation, and nostalgia.

51 Chateaubriand 135, “Amélie me priait de vivre.” ​

34

Chapter III

Melancholia and the Ego in Gérard de Nerval’s “El Desdichado.” The opening of Gerard de Nerval’s “El Desdichado” provides us with a perfect and without a doubt intentional establishing line that conveys the poet’s representation of self. As with the other chapters in this thesis, I will be taking a psychoanalytic approach in order to better understand representation itself inside of the poem. In taking this approach, we will be applying the same Freudian text as we have previously included in this thesis, as well as other readings and scholarly works on “El Desdichado.” I will start with an interpretation of the title of the poem, which ushers in the initial representation of mourning and melancholia. In her attempt to accurately translate the title, Kristeva writes,

If it be true that for many French readers the Spanish “el desdichado” translates as “disinherited,” an accurate, literal rendition of the word would be “wretched,” “unfortunate,” “pitiful.” Nerval, however, appears to have been attached to “disinherited”- which was, moreover, ’ choice in his translation of Ivanhoe. It is also the term Nerval used to refer to himself in another context (“Thus, ​ myself, once a brilliant actor, an unknown prince, a mysterious lover, disinherited, 52 excluded from happiness, handsome and saturnine…”).

Here, Kristeva argues two different translations for the title of the poem. She gives the French literal translation, which would be “wretched, unfortunate, pitiful, ”as well as the likely translation of the poem for Alexandre Dumas, which translates to disinherited. Unlike Kristeva and many other readers of Nerval, I believe that it would be extremely problematic to overshadow the literal meaning described in the opening of the above paragraph with other interpretations of the word because of how well it compliments Nerval’s reference to being

52Kristeva, 144. ​

35 “excluded from happiness,” in unison with the tone of the poem in general. If we stick to the fashion of literal translation of poetry as we have already done with “Invitation au voyage,” we can make a good case for the tone of the poem being first established in the title as melancholic, and we can call it such because of the problematic relationship with desire that the word entails. If we search for the literal French translation of the word “ desdichado,” dictionary sources 53 always point to one word, “malheureux.” In further seeking meaning to the title in an English translation, we should note that the official translation of word “malheureux” in the form of a noun (keeping with the noun form of the title) is a wretch, which is defined as “a miserable and 54 unhappy creature.” In interpreting the title as meaning “malheureux,” or “wretch,” in parallel with the other interpretations mentioned in the citation that allude to the term disinherited, or to separation between person and objects, we can establish that the tone of the poem is melancholic through the Freudian text.

The melancholic displays something else besides which is lacking in mourning- an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale. In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is 55 the ego itself.

Through the following interpretation of Freud, we can see that in titling the poem “El Desdichado,” the poet establishes the ego as “impoverished, poor, and empty.” The poet sees himself as “wretched,” “unfortunate,” “pitiful,” which demonstrates the deterioration of the ego, and the interpretation of the title as “disinherited” establishes the alienation between the subject and familial object of desire. It is crucial, however, to note that the title is the first place in the text in which the poet displays the ego as damaged, and because of the multiple meanings behind

53 See Larousse, Éditions. “Traduction : Desdichado - Dictionnaire Espagnol-Français Larousse.” Traduction : Desdichado - Dictionnaire Espagnol-Français Larousse, www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/espagnol-francais/desdichado/180307. ​ 54 See Cambridge English to French Dictionary.“Malheureux: Translate French to English.” ​ ​ ​ Cambridge Dictionary, dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/french-english/malheureux. ​

55 Freud, 246. ​ ​ ​

36 the title word, it is the strongest indicator of melancholic tone besides Nerval’s blatant usage of the word “Mélancolie” in the first stanza. In making this observation, we will now set out to shift ​ ​ the main focus from the melancholia of the narrator to the absence of negative representations of the ego in the poem. In the following pages, we will attempt to establish how Nerval’s representation of self in the form of poetry can be interpreted as an avenue of mastering his melancholia, and how certain parts of the text demonstrate what seems to be an attempt at hiding the damage that has been done to the ego. In order to do so, I will first make the case for the poem being a reflection of the poet himself, which can be done by breaking down Nerval’s use of pronouns and autobiographical whisperings that echo throughout the text. Now, we will start with an in-depth analysis of the sonnet and the use of first-person pronouns contained in the opening stanza, as well as other aspects of language.

“El Desdichado” Je suis le Ténébreux, -le Veuf, -l’Inconsolé, Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie: Ma seule étoile est morte, -et mon luth constellé ​ ​ Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Dans la nuit du Tombeau, Toi qui m’as consolé, Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie, La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé, Et la treille où le Pampre à la Rose s’allie.

Suis-je Amour ou Phébus ?… Lusignan ou Biron ? Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la Reine ; J’ai rêvé dans la Grotte où nage la sirène…

Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron : Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d’Orphée

37 Les soupirs de la Sainte et les cris de la Fée.

The poet’s use of the first-person pronoun “Je suis,” marks the beginning of self-representation in this poem, which allows us to associate the poem with the identity of the writer. In his chapter on “El Desdichado,” Jonathan Strauss advocates for a similar interpretation to the opening lines while bringing forward their complexities, arguing,

The sonnet “El Desdichado,” beginning with the first person pronoun, presents itself as a lyric self-identification and a sort of testament of its author. Nowhere else in the history of French literature have the words “I am…” been more puzzling than here. Nowhere 56 else have these words so thrown self-identity and poetry into question.

The use of the words “I am” is certainly puzzling because of the seemingly unknown and changing self-identity of the poet throughout the poem. the words “I am” establish self-representation in the poem, but it is what follows this line of self-identification that causes problems in its interpretation. The “I am” is followed by profoundly dark descriptions of the poet as “le Ténébreux, -le Veuf, -l’Inconsolé.”. In what is without a doubt meant to amplify the intensity and dreadfulness of the words used to describe the subject, the dashes before each noun interrupt the flow of the poem while placing emphasis on a profound sense of self-reflection (the 57 Shadowy One), mourning (the Widower), and melancholia (The Inconsolable), all three of which are three different yet similar self-identifications. After the first line, the poem quickly spirals down a path of symbolism, which makes comprehension of the poem difficult without context. What we can discern directly from the poem without the use of any external biographical material is that the poet first speaks of an untouchable feminine object of desire in

56 See Jonathan Strauss, Subjects of Terror: Nerval, Hegel, and the Modern Self. (Stanford: ​ ​ ​ Stanford University Press, 1999), 144. 57 Like with René, Nerval makes reference to an inconsolable state. There is a pattern between the ​ two authors and their use of a state of wretchedness that is synonymous is an indicator of melancholia, which promotes the degradation of the ego and eventually leads to punishment.

38 58 the third line as his “seule étoile ” that is dead, and a once shining constellation that bears ``le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie,” which signifies that without this feminine object of desire, the world of the poet has been plunged into utter darkness. Despite the darkness and despair that surrounds this description of the poet’s world, the ego, or the poet’s internal perception of himself, is not the main focus of the text. Apart from the poet’s woeful self-characterization in the first stanza, the ego is not consistently depicted in a negative fashion 59 and remains intact throughout the body of the poem. I will not, as others have done on multiple occasions, aim to conquer the entirety of the complex meanings and symbols behind every line. I will, however, show that the language contained in the rest of the poem points to what we can interpret as an attempt to overcome the destruction of the ego in a revolt against the melancholia within. The idea of overcoming the degradation of the ego through writing is a concept that is brought to the surface in the work of Kristeva. In her chapter on “El Desdichado,” she argues in favor of such a concept stating,

If the melancholy person ceaselessly exerts an ascendency, as loving as it is hateful, over that Thing, the poet finds an enigmatic way of being both subordinate to it and… elsewhere. Disinherited, deprived of that lost paradise, he is wretched; writing, however, is the strange way that allows him to overcome such wretchedness by setting up an “I” that controls both aspects of deprivation- the darkness of disconsolation and the “kiss of the queen.”

58 In Kristeva’s reading of the text, as well as many others, there seems to have been a consensus ​ that the word “étoile,” is a reference for the poet’s muse, actress Jenny Colon. The noun makes reference to her status as a star in the entertainment sense. 59 This is not to say that Nerval is by any means happy. His heart is described as “désolé,” which ​ is an indicator of the emptiness that comes in the form of melancholia. In René, for example, the protagonist consistently vilifies and attacks the ego. Here, Nerval seems to leave his ego alone after the first stanza, and actually shows that the ego is capable of healing, which I will further discuss in greater detail.

39 The “I” then asserts itself on the field of artifice: there is a place for the “I” only in play, in theater, behind the masks of possible identities, which are as extravagant, prestigious, mythical, epic, historical, and esoteric as they are incredible. Triumphant, but also 60 uncertain.

To suggest that the poet is using writing as a means of successfully overcoming melancholia would be problematic, as the poet never did recover from his mental anguish. What we can suggest is that the poet is establishing some sort of self-control over his perception of self. In the text above, Kristeva argues that this attempt at self-control displays itself with the forceful use of the first person pronoun “I”, and even though the poet is controlling what seem to be abysmal representations of self, just the concept of this control shows a sort of mastery over melancholy 61 that none of the other works in this thesis contain. This control, although associated with negative vocabulary, seems to deter the poet from further destruction of the ego. As mentioned before, the title of the poem establishes the poet as a wretch, but as we move further into the 62 depths poem, there are no more indications of a damaged ego. By displaying the ego capable of returning from the darkness, the poet suggests that ego was once damaged, but it has been brought back. Because these accomplished feats of returning from darkness are in the past tense, there is something to be said about the poet’s present-tense state of mind, or his present perception of the ego. Because he uses past tense, he does suggest that the melancholia has finally triumphed in the fight against the darkness. These observations bring us to a critical question: if the ego is no longer displayed as damaged throughout the poem, how then is it portrayed? It is important to note that the Freudian text describes the melancholic as displaying himself as being “incapable of any achievement,”

60 Kristeva, 145. 61 The fundamental difference between this poem and the previous works in this thesis is that ​ Nerval actually establishes this control via the words written on the page. The other author’s establish their own control by just simply representing their melancholia on the page. Nerval does just that, but also writes of a period in which the ego itself was repaired and brought back (various mentionings of returning from the darkest place). 62 The ego is no longer the main focus of the poem, but rather the world that has become ​ abysmal, which I will elaborate in the following paragraph.

40 63 who “expects to be cast out and punished.” The reader can observe quite the opposite of this expectation in Nerval’s own words in the second, third, and final stanzas. In the second stanza, 64 Nerval displays that he has risen from the depths of the abyss, from “the night of the Tomb.” In the third stanza, the poet reflects in the past tense that he has “dreamt in the grotto where the 65 siren swims, ” and in the final stanza, Nerval speaks of his triumphant return from the other side of the Acheron, the river symbolic of the underworld in Greek mythology. These three lines maintain a striking continuity in that all three describe a return from being cast out, which in this sense can be seen as a reversal of the melancholic’s banishment to a domain of punishment. The poet does so in describing the last return from hell as a triumphant achievement. These actions all convey representation of a past victory over the poet’s melancholy. Instead of further providing evidence of the poet’s melancholic temperament through negative descriptions of the ego, we can see a reversal from melancholia to mourning; it is no longer the ego that is cold and 66 empty as it was in the title of the poem as it should be for melancholics, but it is the world itself 67 that takes on such a description. This brings us to one final question: should this transformation from melancholia back to mourning be seen as a victory over melancholia? In his description of what happens when the melancholic disease resolves, Freud states that the end result is mania, which further reinforces the idea that the poet is, or has in the past, triumphed over melancholia. Freud explains,

63 Freud, 246. ​ 64 Strauss, 169; In reference to the tomb as Hell, Strauss states, “Third, it is an unfinished , fragmentary, and nonnarrative subjectivity that the poet ascribes to himself here, a subjectivity that evokes the unmastered and disjunctive self-representations of his “descent into Hell,” produced in a poetic “now” cut free from its ties to the past and future, yet still incomplete, open to alteration and consolation.” 65 Ibid., 182; “The grotte thus represents a place where the siren has fallen silent, where she is ​ ​ reincorporated into the anonymous unintelligibility of the ocean, into the place of nameless death, the tomb that does not preserve but simply abolishes.” 66 Freud, 246. 67 The first stanza describes the author’s perception of self (ego) using the word “Je.” Since the ​ poet moves from the description of self to a call for the return of happiness (“Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie, //La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé, // Et la treille où le Pampre à la Rose s’allie.”), the poet shows a lack of happiness in the world. The poet's desolate heart has been healed in the past by the rose, but the heart is only referred to in the past tense. He also describes a black sun, which seems to be the ultimate form of darkness, and his guiding light (the “étoile”) is dead, therefore absent from the world, and the world is dark.

41

The impression which several psycho-analytic investigators have already put into words is that the content of mania is no different from that of melancholia, that both disorders are wrestling with the same ‘complex’, but that probably in melancholia the ego has 68 succumbed to the complex, whereas in mania it has mastered it or pushed it aside.”

Because the poet situates the feat of emerging from the melancholic state in the past tense, the ego had previously been restored from its lowest points, which shows a level of mastery in reference to the poet’s control over his melancholic self-representation. This mastery, accompanied by the mania of a triumphant return from the darkness, is accomplished through the use of the word “I,” but we must note that the guiding light, the “étoile” that once lifted the poet from the depths of sorrow, is gone from his life in this new empty world. I would argue that the poet, without a point of reference to happiness, has slipped out of melancholia, into a manic state, and when faced with melancholy once more, dives into a state even deeper and more profoundly complex and depressing than the original melancholic state. The world that arrives after the disappearance of this object of desire is void of the star of salvation, void of light, void of happiness. Unlike the other previous works analyzed in this thesis, there is no blatantly obvious incestuously driven melancholia that is represented on the page. What is crucial for us to understand, however, is that Nerval’s presentation of a damaged ego is the main indicator of the melancholia that is present in the text. In describing himself as a wretched widower, shadowy, and inconsolable, the poet indicates that the melancholia has triumphed over happiness in the present. Because of the three symbolic indicators of a return from a melancholic state, Nerval also asserts an literal in-text dominance over melancholia that gives an actual narrative of the poet’s victory over the melancholic state, which is something that is not demonstrated in the other texts. The ego is illustrated as having survived in the past tense during three triumphant exclamations of victory over darkness, which follow exactly what Freud lays out in terms of the abolition of individual melancholia. These triumphs can be seen as the manic state that comes

68 Freud, 254.

42 after the melancholic state. The level of accuracy of Freud’s theory on melancholia when applied to the three literary texts is quite astounding. Even in the completely different demonstration of Melancholia in “El Desdichado,” Freud still perfectly describes exactly what is happening, which is very important in verifying the validity of his psychoanalytic text.

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Conclusion In conclusion, the first two works included in the first two chapters, “L’invitation au voyage,” by Charles Baudelaire, and René by Chateaubriand, can both be classified as ​ ​ melancholic works because of the depressive state that is caused by the desire for two forbidden objects of desire, one maternal, and one sororal. In taking the psychoanalytical approach, we can see that the repeated desire for these two objects leads the subject into a state of melancholia, which ultimately leads to a final punishment, which in both cases can be seen as self-exile. In both cases, we can conclude that the initial object of desire is the mother. We know this in “L’invitation au voyage,” because of important auto-biographical details, including the poet’s letters showing deep affection for the mother, as well as the fact that Baudelaire never had a sister. The sister in this case translates to the desire to form an ideal sister figure through the mother. In the case of René, the text provides us with sufficient evidence that shows that the ​ ​ protagonist was initially stricken with melancholy in his childhood because of his mother’s death. In studying the text in parallel with Freud’s writing on the Oedipus complex, we can conclude that Freud replaced his mother with his sister in terms of an object of desire, thus preserving the melancholia and complex at the same time. René’s melancholia is also accompanied by various forms of nostalgia, which also work in unison with the melancholia experienced by the protagonist. In the case of Nerval, I showed a different state of melancholia that exists in the text. In the final chapter, we see what is without a doubt the attempted resolution of the poet’s melancholia through writing. This resolution is followed by a triumphant manic state that is epitomized by the sonnet itself. This thesis opens up many opportunities for other scholars to study the concept of incestuous desire and its relationship to melancholia in other nineteenth-century texts, as well as other French Romantic texts. It has also made me wonder why incest is such a repetitive theme in French literary texts of the nineteenth century. At this point, it is evident that there is a connection between melancholia and incestuous desire, which I have proven in this paper. I have also shown that there is a concreteness to the theories contained in Freud’s psychoanalytic text “Mourning and Melancholia,” which further adds to the validity of his work.

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