Without Lifting A Finger

According to a footnote in Nerval's "Pandora," the Stock im Eisen "was the trunk of a tree reputed to be part of the forest that originally stood on the site of Vienna." * The Stock im Eisen ( German : staff in iron) is the midsection of a tree-trunk from the Middle Ages , a so-called nail-tree ( Nagelbaum ), into which hundreds of nails have been pounded for good luck over centuries. It is located in Vienna , Austria , in Stock-im-Eisen-Platz, now part of Stephansplatz , at the corner of the Graben and Kärntner Straße and is now behind glass on a corner of the Palais Equitable . History The trunk section is 2.19 m (7 feet 2 inches) tall and is held in place by five iron bands; the iron bears the date 1575 [ 1 ] and the initials HB, presumably for Hans Buettinger, the house owner who had the iron replaced. The tree was a forked spruce which started to grow around 1400 and was felled in approximately 1440, [ 2 ] as was revealed by examination in...

Gérard de Nerval , a photo by Père Ubu on Flickr.

Have started rereading him via Penguin's Kindle version of his Best. Literary madness from a man who became mad. Or did he? Will post some highlights as I maunder through. * Gérard de Nerval ( French pronunciation: ​ [ʒeʁaʁ də nɛʁval] ) (May 22, 1808 – January 26, 1855) was the nom-de-plume of the French poet , essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie , one of the most essentially Romantic French poets . Biography Two years after his birth in Paris , his mother died in Silesia while accompanying her husband, a military doctor, a member of Napoleon 's Grande Armée . He was brought up by his maternal great-uncle, Antoine Boucher, in the countryside of Valois at Mortefontaine . On the return of his father from war in 1814, he was sent back to Paris. He frequently returned to the countryside of Valois during holidays and later returned to it in imagination in his Chansons et légendes du Valois . His talent for translation was made manifest in his translation of Go...