Gérard de Nerval is part of the French Romantic movement and wrote travel reports and stories, as well as translations from German. His particular interest lay in esotericism and occultism, which is especially reflected in his story "Aurelia," completed in 1855, his most famous work to this day. The tale of a fatal love is based on a dream of the author and follows the erratic logic of dreams in its narrative structure, which would profoundly influence Baudelaire and later the Surrealists.