{"id":482,"date":"2011-05-21T17:23:51","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T17:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=482"},"modified":"2014-02-11T22:13:53","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T22:13:53","slug":"sea-bathing-in-nervals-octavie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=482","title":{"rendered":"Sea-bathing in Nerval’s Octavie"},"content":{"rendered":"

In G\u00e9rard de Nerval\u2019s poignant novella Octavie he describes how he met the \u201cdaughter of the waters\u201d Octavie in Marseilles: \u201cEvery morning I went sea-bathing at Ch\u00e2teau-Vert and saw the laughing isles of the gulf far off as I swam. Every day too I met a young English girl in the azure bay whose nimble \/ agile \/ slender body parted the green water near me.\u201d \u201cNimble\u201d, \u201cagile\u201d and \u201cslender\u201d are all translations of Nerval\u2019s word d\u00e9li\u00e9<\/em> when it is used in a literary way. The basic meanings of the verb d\u00e9lier<\/em> are to untie, to free or to loosen. In a sense there\u2019s no difficulty about translating the passage: any or all of these meanings could be relevant because I suppose even the most restrictive bathing costume would allow at least more <\/em>freedom of movement than ordinary clothes of the same period. I\u2019m also sure that Nerval intends us to see the scene as an expansive and liberated one. That\u2019s partly why the story is so poignant: at its end Nerval describes how he met Octavie\u00a0again and found her trapped in a stifling marriage, spending her life caring for her invalid father and\u00a0the totally paralysed, pathologically jealous husband who kept her a prisoner in the home. Her sad situation then is played against that\u00a0earlier glimpse of freedom, agility, space\u00a0and light. Perhaps feeling that contrast\u00a0is all that really matters. But I\u2019m still frustrated by not having the historical knowledge to visualise the scene more clearly in a literal way, even if only to\u00a0see how much Nerval may have abstracted and idealised it. I know that later Victorian bathing suits (in England) were very cumbersome and inhibiting. I know that in the eighteenth century they could be much less so. I have no idea what they would have been like in Provence in the 1830s.<\/p>\n

The very end of the story suggests a much more spiritual idea of freedom. Nerval says that the boat that took him away from Octavie again \u201ccarried off the memory of that dear apparition like a dream, and I told myself that perhaps I had left happiness there. Octavie has kept its secret with her.\u201d If she has the secret of happiness it is in her ability to retain her own sweetness and virginal innocence while living not for herself but for these two others. Nerval seems to be contrasting the way he himself restlessly searches for happiness in external circumstances with the way she finds it, without even looking for it, in ungrudging self-abnegation. This is a lovely idea of what true freedom is, the more touching for being expressed so indirectly or, to put it differently, being expressed with the non-abstract directness of poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In G\u00e9rard de Nerval\u2019s poignant novella Octavie he describes how he met the \u201cdaughter of the waters\u201d Octavie in Marseilles: \u201cEvery morning I went sea-bathing at Ch\u00e2teau-Vert and saw the laughing isles of the gulf far off as I swam. Every day too I met a young English girl in the azure bay whose nimble […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gerard-de-nerval"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1395,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions\/1395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}