ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the last hemistich of sonnet El Desdichado, in which Nerval, after wondering whether he was Lusignan of Biron, evokes the fairy's cries, would alone be enough to assure Melusina's presence in Romantic poetry. It examines the form of a sequence of dreamlike tableaux, whose connection with the myth of Melusina is not immediately apparent. The chapter recognizes the central motif of the myth-tale of the swan-women, which is widely encountered from the island of Ushant to Korea and which presents a series of easily-definable structural inversions in terms of the myth of Melusina. Like Lusignan, however, the narrator sees Melusina vanish at the end of the story, after having witnessed the disappearance of an enigmatic cathedral of black stone, built by Nilrem in the desert. Finally, Andre Breton used Melusina in Arcane 17, 1947 to glorify everything which fell within the province of the female as opposed to the male system of the world.
