As one who wrote a weekly column whose purpose was to recommend a book for reading, I can attest that it is harder to write positive reviews. Negative reviews are a cinch. You have to really think and examine you feelings to explain why you have liked something. When you succeed, though, the result can have a life of its own. Here is J.B. Priestley writing of Gerard de Nerval:
"His best poetry, to be found in Les Chimères, has a classical concentration and density and yet is also mysteriously evocative in the manner of the later Symbolists. And his semi-autobiographical stories, in Les Filles du feu, especially Sylvie, have an extraordinary nostalgic charm, the green and gold of long-lost summers."
That last phrase says it all.
"His best poetry, to be found in Les Chimères, has a classical concentration and density and yet is also mysteriously evocative in the manner of the later Symbolists. And his semi-autobiographical stories, in Les Filles du feu, especially Sylvie, have an extraordinary nostalgic charm, the green and gold of long-lost summers."
That last phrase says it all.
Especially since "Sylvie" derives from "sylvan," which suggests forests, which underscores "green and gold summers."
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