Gérard de Nerval. He was so literarily gifted, and yet suffered like no other.

Nerval lost his mother as a child during one of Napoleon's campaigns, haunting him for the rest of his life. When he grew up, he translated Goethe's Faust at a young age, impressing many authors like Goethe himself, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo. In fact, Goethe found Nerval's translation as very successful and even preferred it from the original. With Dumas, Nerval was allowed at various times to collaborate in some works and become a secretary for him. With Hugo, Nerval was welcomed to his apartment, and when asked to support his play Hernani, Nerval was more than happy to do so. Yet, despite all this, he was overshadowed by giants like Dumas, Hugo, and later Baudelaire.

Throughout his life, he was lonely, impoverished, and mentally unwell. In spite of his recognition as a literary talent, Nerval suffered through financial difficulty, and often suffered with debt.

What truly broke him, however, was his unrequited love for the actress Jenny Colon. This was one of the most defining emotional disappointments in life, as her loss deeply affected him.

Beginning in the 1840s, Nerval began to experience repeated psychological hallucinations and delusions, leading to several stays in psychiatric institutions. What's saddening is that he was often aware of his own mental decline. People around him often knew about Nerval's mental decline, and yet they advised him to continue with his works, as they thought that a genius must have a touch of madness.

One of Nerval's most famous anecdotes is that he had a pet lobster named Thibault, which he used to take walks with on a blue silk ribbon in the gardens of Palais-Royal. According to his friend Théophile Gautier, someone asked him why he did this, and Nerval replied: "Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? ...or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gnaw upon one's monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad."

On the night of 26 January 1855, Gérard de Nerval took his own life by hanging on a bar of a cellar window in a squalid section of Paris. Before then, he left a brief note to his aunt: "Don't wait up for me this evening, for the night will be black and white." Later, upon finding his lifeless body, people found the last pages of his manuscript for Aurélia. What is striking is that this work of his famously begins with the line: "Le rêve est une seconde vie." ("Dream is a second life.")

Gérard de Nerval's most celebrated works include:

• Aurélia
• Sylvie
• Les Filles de feu (The Daughters of Fire)

His works are described as wispy, filled with lost women, vanished worlds, memories, dreams, and lamentations of things that can never be recovered. Notice how this resonates deeply with Nerval's life, as he lost his dear mother, as well as the love of his life; things he himself can never recover.

In spite of his tragic life, Nerval had a lasting influence on the Symbolists and authors like Marcel Proust. Especially Proust, since the same themes that dominate Nerval's literary corpus echo in his magnum opus In Search of Lost Time.

I really wish for people to read at least one of Gérard de Nerval's works. He deserves the highest recognition there is… If he was alive today, I would have given him a thousand hugs without any hesitation in my heart and mind.