Week 3 – Nadja

Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog. The book for this week is Nadja by Andre Breton. The description of this book as a surrealist romance was intriguing to me, as I’ve enjoyed a few surrealist movies in the past, like Holy Motors and Synecdoche New York. At the same time others, like most of David Lynch’s work, have left me utterly bewildered. Unfortunately the latter is how I felt throughout most of this book.

Nadja immediately throws the reader into the deep end with the first part of the book consisting mostly of the narrators seemingly unconnected experiences. The lack of structure in this section made it very hard to follow and I also struggled to see the significance or feel interested in many of the author’s stories. In one such example a lady visits Breton to recommend someone that wants to launch their career in literature. This person is revealed as Benjamin Peret (another member of the surrealist movement) and then Breton moves on to something else without ever touching on this subject again. Benjamin Peret is one of Breton’s many namedrops in this first section and at times felt like the sole purpose of these was to boast their connection to other prominent figures.

Once the author is done telling these stories, he introduces Nadja. He meets her on the streets of Paris and immediately makes it clear that she is not like the others. She carries herself differently and he sees something in her eyes that is deeply captivating. It is implied that Nadja represents sort of the surrealist ideal to the author and it doesn’t really seem like he truly sees her as a person. She is more of a tool to used to enhance the author’s artistic vision. As the Author learns more about Nadja, this idealized view of her is shattered and he stops seeing her.

At certain times during the book it felt like Nadja was just a figment of the narrator’s imagination. I found it especially strange that the narrator would casually mention the affair to his wife. The premise that a married man can drop everything to have a 10 day love affair with a woman while his wife sits idly by is quite absurd. In this way the story certainly feels surreal, although it might just be a display of Breton’s lack of concern towards the women in his life.

Question: Surrealism is said to mix dream and reality. What elements of this book stuck out to you as the most dreamlike?