Les Filles du feu

Les Filles du feu (French pronunciation: [le fij dy fø], The Daughters of Fire) is a collection of short prose works, poetry and a play published by the French poet Gérard de Nerval in January 1854, a year before his death. During 1853, Nerval had suffered three nervous breakdowns and spent five months in an asylum. He saw Les Filles du feu as an opportunity to show the public, his friends and his father that he was sane, though except for the introduction all of the pieces in Les Filles du feu had been published previously: "Angélique" in Les Faux Saulniers (1850), "Sylvie" in La Revue des Deux Mondes (1853), and "Émilie", "Jemmy", "Isis" and "Octavie" in diverse reviews. The precise meaning of the title, which Nerval chose just before publication, is uncertain. Scholars have identified its source as the ceremonies of Irish vestal virgins described in Michelet's Histoire de France (1833) or a poem in a novel by Alexandre Dumas, La Tulipe noire (1850).