Nadja     by André Breton, Translated by Richard Howard Original language: French Published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Pub. Date: 1976 Format: Paperback, 160 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.45 x 8.02 x 5.33 ISBN: 0802150268 List Price: $11.00, £8.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £8.99 Buy online from Amazon.com for $9.60 Published by Evergreen Pub. Date: 1960 Pub. Place: UK Format: 160 pages Not available for ordering

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Nadja, by André Breton, who was one of the leading protagonists of Surrealism, emerged in 1928 as the first Surrealist novel or anti-novel. It’s heroine, Nadja, is a breathless creature who surfs the waves of chance that break on the beaches of the city. In Nadja Breton conjured up a sort of living emanation of the Surrealist spirit. Nadja is a bearer of that light, dancing, enchanting feminine consciousness that can travel at the speed of light between thoughts and whims and attachments.


It’s also fairly evident that the book describes someone in a clinically manic state. She’s mad with money, losing and gaining it on every corner, embarks on fevered and disjointed love-affairs and is no doubt an utter strain to know. Nadja is completely chaotic and charming, combining the fluxity and spontaneity of the feminine with the psychic energy of madness.


In its early phase the Surrealists were daring explorers of the mind, experimenting with psycho-analysis, automatic writing and occult practices as well as the general openness and mental agility that all artists cultivate. Breton’s relationship with Nadja comes over as half infatuation with a beautiful, wayward and emotionally untouchable woman and half a journey into the psychic unknown of simultaneity, spontaneity and serendipity.


In time, location and spirit this is a companion volume to Louis Aragon’s Paris Paysan (reviewed here), an interrogation of strange corners of Paris, while here the guiding spirit of the Paris tour is Nadja’s inspired or perhaps demented wandering.


There is probably at least one ‘Nadja’ in everyone’s life, equally fascinating and frustrating, exhausting and inspiring; Breton’s Nadja, or at least the real person the book was based on ended up in a psychiatric ward, after leaving this magnificent trace in the life of a writer, none of whose later work surpassed this amazing book.

‘Who is the real Nadja — the one who told me she had wandered all night long in the Forest of Fontainbleau with an archeologist who was looking for some stone remains which, certainly, there was plenty of time to find by daylight — but suppose it was this man’s passion! — I mean, is the real Nadja this always inspired and inspiring creature who enjoyed being nowhere but in the streets, the only region of valid experience for her, in the street, accessible to interrogation from any human being launched upon some great chimera...’ p112-113