Delphica

The poem is addressed to the naiad Daphne, evokes the ancient cult of Apollo at Delphi and forecasts that the gods of classical mythology will return.

[1] "Delphica" took inspiration from Nerval's travels in Italy and from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem "Mignon [de]" in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795–96).

Reconnais-tu le Temple, au péristyle immense, Et les citrons amers où s'imprimaient tes dents ?

Et la grotte, fatale aux hôtes imprudents, Où du dragon vaincu dort l'antique semence.

Le temps va ramener l'ordre des anciens jours ; La terre a tressailli d'un souffle prophétique…

Cependant la sibylle au visage latin Est endormie encor sous l'arc de Constantin : — Et rien n'a dérangé le sévère portique.

[5] The subject's starting point is Ovid's Metamorphoses 1.488–611, which tells the story of how the god Apollo became infatuated with the naiad Daphne and how she was transformed into a laurel tree.

[11] When "Delphica" first was published, it had the epigraph "Ultima Cumaei venit iam carmanis aetas", which is Latin for "Now comes the last age foretold by the Cumaean sibyl".

The literary scholar Sarah Gubbins connects the image, which is not explained in any of the poems, to the explicit contrast between Christianity and paganism in "Delphica"'s tercets, writing that Nerval may point toward a fusion of elements that appear to be incompatible, like the mythical Chimera.

[15] For a 1973 translation, Curtis Bennett interpreted Nerval's turn to paganism as a protest against repressive doctrines of the Catholic Church.