“Octavie”, or the refused ceremony Nervalian variations on Poliphilo’s Strife of Love in a Dream by Francesco Colonna

This article focuses on the influence on Nerval of Poliphilo’s Strife of Love in a Dream, a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance literature (1499). The short story "Octavie", from Les Filles du feu, is construed as a variation around a central episode in Colonna’s work, the ceremony in honour of Venus. By submitting the narrator to trials similar to those that Poliphilo goes through in a dream, Nerval does not however allow him to reach the same sentimental and mystical initiation.