Nadja (1928)

Andre Breton, writing as Andre Breton, spends the first half of the novel meandering through the streets of Paris, posting photos of his favourite haunts, and namedropping par excellence. Of course, if this is read like a blog, then there no harm in the fact that his famous cronies are named, listed and blown up in width="40" height="100". There is also a soupcon of random musings on theatre, art and literature. Engaging, but nothing that will set the world on fire.
Then onto the scene charges Nadja. Here, great speculation arises in the literary world: is she a real person, is she a manifestation of Breton’s persona, perhaps she is not so much a person as a ‘state of mind’.

Can you say ‘Emperors new clothes’? The ruminations above are necessary to justify the mundane story of a married middle aged man embarking in an adulterous affair with a vulnerable younger woman who happens to be enthralled by his intellect and success as an author.
Now, as we are talking the French here, of course there are going to be some lavisious twists: after all is this not the language that gave us ‘menage a trois’? At one point Breton discloses that he has spent a whole afternoon talking to his wife about Nadja and further on, just before Nadja is committed to an insane asylum, she phones Breton’s wife and tells her that she is her only friend in the world. Civilized, eh?

Now, a great portion of Breton’s and Nadja’s encounters are spent talking, painting and walking about (with illustrations to back it all up). When I say talking, however, one mustn’t understand this to be a conversation of equals whereby two towering intellects are rationalised through a rhetoric of spiritual transcendence: oh no. Nadja’s most common contributions are ‘overdetailed accounts of scenes of her past life’ . As these details mount up, Breton appears to become more and more disenchanted with his ‘muse’, as if thought the brushstroke of quotidian events conveys a sense of ordinariness upon Nadja which he cannot tolerate.

What, then, is Nadja’s staying power? Breton states ‘ As for her, I know in every sense of the word, she takes me for a god, She thinks of me as the Sun.’ Nadja also happens to read his Manifesto and other writings in awe. Surrealism or not, at the end of the day its Breton basking in his own glory as reflected in the eyes of his naive young lover, who probably doesn’t know any better than to idolise without understanding (hence the motif of mysterious, inexplicable artistic creation). ( )

It is necessary to rebel against a life of pretense to understand what makes you a unique and valid person. Andre Breton writes that he “haunts” other people because they only know his shadows, the artificial roles he plays as a social man. He seeks to surprise his banal interactions with people by opening himself to experiences that reveal his unconscious mind. Influenced by Freud, Breton rejects psychoanalysis because it seeks to interpret unconscious mental content and therefore neutralize the spontaneous emotional content.

In “Nadja,” a surrealist novel published in Paris in 1928, the narrator walks the Parisian streets at random seeking unexpected cues to positive unconscious processes, not focusing on negative aspects as do psychoanalysts. These processes are idiosyncratic and the only events that distinguish and validate the person. They are repressed and must be sought actively.

The narrator by chance meets an eccentric woman who seems to be connected more than most people to the unconscious, artistic mind. He takes advantage of Nadja, observing and encouraging her mental exploration in order to understand his own mind. The narrator takes advantage of the reader in the same way, exposing hidden mental structures. Breton thanks the reader directly for allowing him to write the insightful novel, since I could not be done without the reader’s complicity.

“Nadja,” Russian for the very fleeting beginning of hope, is considered the seminal novel of the relatively brief surrealist literature period in the first half of the 20th Century. Black and white photographs illustrate the cues Breton describes that open the unconscious minds of Nadja and the reader. Reading Breton’s novel is a very interesting experience. ( )

Surrealism is such as exciting idea, but its execution, much like my nightly dreams, tends to disappoint. Breton, in particular, has an annoying tendency to proselytize, using the wildest imagery that money can buy in order to inform you, without any doubt whatsoever, what life is all about. Nadja is better than most card-carrying surrealist works, as it is, at heart, a love story, and a true one to boot, that continually threatens to escape Breton’s domineering grip. He presents Nadja as an almost supernatural muse, but in fact she was a real women, flesh and blood, who may have invoked flesh and blood feelings that not even the Czar of Surrealism himself could translate neatly into art. ( )