love – RMST 202

Wow… Writing this immediately after finishing the book, all I can feel is overwhelmed and a bit amused. This has been my favourite read so far, which is not too surprising! I knew I would enjoy this novel more than Proust and Breton just because its written from a woman’s perspective… but still, wow! Ana María… what a woman!

What really struck me is how full her life feels, even though we only see it through memory and death. She has lived through so much. Her first love with Ricardo, complicated romantic and sexual desire with Antonio and Fernando, familial bonds with her father and her children, and intense friendship with Sofía… There are so many different forms of love explored, and none of them feel shallow. The painful ones feel especially real.

My favourite sections were the ones describing her experiences with Sofía and María Griselda. The relationship with Sofía really stood out to me because of how intense it was despite being so brief. They only knew each other for six weeks, but their curiosity toward each other was so deep and immediate.. There’s so much intimacy and then the betrayal! And it all feels so devastating even though it’s so quick. Just thinking back on it… Sofía was the wife of Ana María’s first love… her husband cheated on her with Sofía… and their overall intense affection for each other… just messy!!!

María Griselda’s section was also unforgettable. Her beauty is described as almost violent, like it traps her instead of freeing her. The line about her loneliness, “any expression that could have made her recognize herself as a link in a human chain… Oh what loneliness was hers!” (p. 203), honestly hurt to read. She’s admired, desired, envied, and completely isolated. Her beauty turns her into an object rather than a person, trapping her in a kind of emotional prison. The entire scene, inadvertently caused by Marías beauty and ending in Silvia’s death, was so fascinating and vivid.

As I kept reading, I found myself becoming more and more curious about Ana María’s life. I wanted to know more about what she didn’t choose, what she regrets, what she didn’t understood while she was alive. I found it interesting that these were the moments that surfaced at her death. Out of her entire life, these relationships and experiences are what define her final reflections. It made me think about memory and how we don’t remember our lives evenly some moments just carry more emotional weight than others.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. Maybe because I am so nosey and love reading about all of this drama! All of the relationships and experiences felt so real, intimate, and human. I found myself genuinely invested in Ana María’s life, wanting to understand her choices, her regrets, and the emotions she never fully resolved while she was alive. Reading the novel from the perspective of death made everything feel reflective and so brutally honest. I was forced to see Ana María’s life and feel everything she had ever felt. It was so fun.

My discussion question: Why do you think these relationships and moments specifically resurface for Ana María at her death and how did they impact her?

While reading Nadja, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Nadja is such a “manic pixie dream girl.” Maybe she was like the first one… But after making that comparison, the rest whole novel feel even more uncomfortable for me… Breton seems fascinated by her spontaneity, her intuition, her drawings, and the way she experiences the world so differently from everyone else. But at the same time, it feels like he’s constantly watching her and not actually caring for her. I think he observes her like a case study and not a real person..

One thing that really bothered me was the fact that Breton has a wife, but he’s spending all this time wandering around Paris with Nadja, emotionally entangled with her. It made me question his moral position from the start. I think, if he already has a wife, why insert himself into the life of a clearly vulnerable woman? Like, Nadja is low-income, unstable, and struggling with her mental health, and Breton seems fully aware of this. That awareness makes his behaviour feel even more weird. He knows she’s fragile, but he continues to stay around her, wanting her presence while refusing full emotional responsibility.

Also, he is aware of his odd behaviour and admits even: “I suppose I observe her too much, but how can I help it? … It is unforgivable of me to go on seeing her if I do not love her. Don’t I love her?” (p. 90). What stood out to me here is how self-focused this reflection is. He’s worried about his feelings, his confusion, his moral dilemma and not about how Nadja might feel. Like this is some situationship between this artsy, mature, capable man and this “quirky,” mentally ill girl. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Breton is such a man (negatively).

I really dislike this kind of dynamic and especially when Breton is describing it: “I have Nadja, from the first day to the last, for a free genius, something like one of those spirits of the air… As for her, I know that in every sense of the word, she takes me for a god, she thinks of me as the sun” (p. 111) Like, okay he sees her as a genius and she’s so wonderful, OKAY. But then he says the god and sun part… Whatever.

ANYWAYS. I do think Breton shows some awareness when it comes to institutionalization and class… I agree a bit with his critique of psychiatric asylums, especially at that time: “Unless you have been inside a sanitarium you do not know that madmen are made there” (p. 139). He also connects what eventually happened to Nadja to poverty: “Nadja was poor, which in our time is enough to condemn her” (p. 142). These moments show that he understands how social systems destroy people in similar situations but he still did all that crap from before. Like, leave her alone. Whatever.

Something I enjoyed was the inclusion of the images, especially Nadja’s drawings. They felt intimate and raw, like a glimpse into her inner world that Breton’s narration never fully gives us. I felt like I could really see her and it made me think like Wow, she was a girl and she drew these.

In the end, I think I enjoyed the novel… but also I’m not sure. I also think the negativity in my thoughts might stem from my prejudice against this trope of a mature man with a whimsical women and I couldn’t get over it while reading and reflecting. So. My bad André..

My discussion question: Breton is clearly aware of Nadja’s mental health struggles, poverty, and the violence of institutionalization. Do you think this awareness make his treatment of her more forgivable, or more disturbing?

Tag: love

bombal

breton…