Concerning Gérard de Nerval it has been said, of late, that the hour of synthesis is at hand. This is particularly true of “El Desdichado,” for most authors of the increasingly voluminous literature devoted to this sonnet have taken an extrinsic approach; that is, they have applied techniques of other fields, such as psychiatry, biography, astrology, and alchemy. At best they have helped to elucidate hitherto obscure symbols; at worst they have made of their thesis a kind of Procrustean bed on which the poem has been either stretched to death or decapitated.