I thoroughly enjoyed reading Nadja by André Breton. The novel started off a little slow, especially with the surrealism jargon. Thus, the only issue I had with the novel was the beginning and the end, which discussed surrealism. Although, the surreal lens used to write this novel added to its charm. One of the main […]
“I am the soul in Limbo” (71) Considered one of the earliest surrealist romance books, Nadja is chock-full of wonder. Flipping through this short recollection of a haunting memory, every page tells a fragment of this mystery. Who was Nadja? And, was she truly real? Some quick research and Nadja is actually Léona Camille Ghislaine […]
I think for anyone who’s familiar with the manic pixie dream girl trope, André Breton’s Nadja stands out as an obvious example- the girl you can never have, the girl of your dreams, the girl who’s too damaged to be loved, etc. A prime example- when Breton asks Nadja who she is on page 71, […]
Nadja by André Breton contains many detailed and long sentences, heavy dialogue and many surrealist elements. While reading the first part I found it hard to follow as the introduction to the narrator started with the line “Who am I?” (pp.11) and continued with a heavy amount of different situations and artists being mentioned in […]
The first thing that came to mind as I read the summary on the back of the book was “Oh, Nadja is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” and I stand by that. She is only there to forward the male protagonist’s understanding of himself/the world (which is discussed in the lecture), she is a quirky […]
“Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.” André Breton, pg 160 André Breton’s Nadja was published in 1928 and was a part of a collection of books during France’s Surrealist Movement post World War II. Straight off the bat, I absolutely loved this book. Perhaps I’m just a romance junkie, but I […]
I was intrigued by the brief description of Andre Breton’s “Nadja” that was provided on the course website, but found the first section of the book to be a bit scattered with the narrator’s constant thoughts and names of what appeared to be random people. However, I did like how Breton made the text somewhat […]
My first impression of Breton’s Nadja was that it was a novel with a lot of illustrations, to the point where the illustrations took up quite a bit of space. This reminds me of the children’s books I read as a child, which also had many animated images. The significance of the existence of illustrations […]
Resources on Breton and Nadja
