Nadja; Surrealist Dream or Actual Person?

The second French book of the course, Nadja by André Breton is a short surrealist novel. It was a very fast and interesting read but took me a minute to get into. At first, Breton talks about the theatre and his inability to recognize actors. Upon meeting Nadja however, things become much more interesting.

Nadja is a very interesting person, she is dressed poorly compared to everyone else on the street but carries her head high as if she wants to stand out. She is often stopped by men on the street who compliment her and accompany her. Nadja is armed with more than a few slightly disconcerting stories about her encounters with men, especially concerning her “Dear friend”. It came as no surprise to me when it is revealed she is put into a sanitarium at the end of the novel.

The novel chronicles Nadja’s descent into madness, first with her ramblings and stories, to her then seeing things and drawing concerning and difficult-to-understand drawings. She begins to embody madness and surrealism by becoming nonsensical and seemingly like she does not 

even exist. The character of Nadja is almost like a dream, a temptation that pulls Breton away from his wife. She appears randomly and leaves as quickly as she came after pulling our narrator into a head-first dive into madness. Even if she is real or a dream, she is very much an obsession of Bretons. After leaving each other for the day or night, Breton often details how he misses her. His obsession with her is what pulls him into her insanity but he can pull out and survive while she is not.

It is a short amount of time they spend together, but it has a lasting imprint on Breton. Nadja tells him to write a book about her, “You will write a novel about me. I’m sure you will” (100) and write a book about her he does. She is the titular character and it is her character and their time spent together we explore. She is his muse in a sense, his way to finding who he is and understanding his writing style. While the book is short, reflecting the amount of time they spent together, Breton goes through a whole transformation. After all, “perhaps life needs to be deciphered like a cryptogram” (112).

My question for you today is do you think that Nadja was a real person or was she rather a means for Breton to explore surrealism and himself?

Thank you for reading!

– Len ❤