Reading Nadja by Andre Breton was quite interesting to me because I have a little bit of background knowledge, I am going to Major in Visual Arts and during my studies have seen Breton’s artworks, I have also read and learned a lot about surrealism, what it is, it’s history, it’s practice, so I feel like because of that knowledge I have some groundwork. To me surrealism knows no bounds, Surrealists are focused on the involuntary, the unconscious, and psychoanalysis, it was an art movement created to get artists out of their heads and away from the perfectionist square box of fine art. At least that is my view of it. I’ve never really been a huge fan of surrealism fully myself and in my practice, but I can appreciate it. Surrealism visually can be a confusing and analytically deep concept to grasp for me, so you can imagine surrealist writing left me staring at the words for many long seconds. I was definitely a little lost sometimes (many times) and many sentences I would read were not creating any sort of logic or thought outcome in my head. I did find it easier to digest sentences further into the story. I did also feel this overall sense of drama, everything was written very dramatically as he talked of deep thoughts of fate and the universe.
Something this style of writing reminded me of was a surrealist practice called automated writing, where you are just supposed to write whatever comes to mind. To me, some sentences seemed to have no rhyme or reason.
I think there is a very fine line in this story about who exactly the woman, Nadja, is. Especially the line about whether she is real or not. She is quite the mystery! The jumbled thoughts and obsession almost make me think that this woman could be made up, a figment of his imagination or desires. Maybe this book reflects Breton’s unconscious desires, which is a very surrealist idea.
Another thing I noticed throughout the story was there was a lot of first person, the story is very much told from the writer’s perspective and is very involved with his thoughts and concerns only. The story being told solely from one perspective doesn’t give much room to think about other perspectives in the story. I definetly think that the ideas and thoughts that the main character rambles on and his deep obsessions with the world and Nadja about almost make me question his sanity (if that is fair to say), therefor I question his authenticity about his experiences with Nadja.
My discussion question: Is there a line between being infatuated with love and obsession? What do you think differentiates the two?
“Maybe this book reflects Breton’s unconscious desires, which is a very surrealist idea.”
Indeed, but I think it’s more than that… I think that for Breton, Nadja is the (“real,” physical) incarnation of those desires (or at least that’s what he thinks), which is attractive, but also somewhat frightening… perhaps this is why he abandons her at the end.
I quite enjoyed reading your post! It never even occurred to me that Nadja could be a figment of his imagination… I like that idea a lot though and it has got me rethinking the entire story. To answer your question, I do think there is a difference between being infatuated by love versus obsession. However, I think finding the line between the two would be very hard to articulate.