Abstract: This article looks at the way that the figure of the arabesque as it is found in German Romanticism is expressed in Gérard de Nerval’s autobiographical prose and involves various conceptions of the imagination. It considers the relationship between The Conversation on Poetry by F. Schlegel and the original poetics found in Aurélia ou Le Rêve et la Vie. In this writing about the self, these arabesques create an atmosphere of ambiguous Willkür, where an imagination that is both voluntary and arbitrary holds sway.
