Nadja - by André Breton (Paperback)

About the Book

"The most renowned of all surrealist literary works, Andrâe Breton's Nadja has been stirring passions and imaginations since its first publication in 1928. At once a poignant romance, an autobiography, a philosophical inquiry into questions of identity, and a lively illustration of the surrealist belief in life-changing chance, Nadja relates the fortuitous meeting and brief, tumultuous relationship between Breton, surrealism's founder and primary theorist, and the "wandering soul" who called herself Nadja, "because in Russian it's the beginning of the word for hope, and because it's only the beginning." Over the course of a single breathless week, recounted with scrupulous precision and a poet's sense of drama, Breton and Nadja pursue an adventure that stands outside of societal or moral conventions, and that brings both of them to what Breton termed "the extreme limit of the surrealist aspiration." Bookending this beguiling and ultimately tragic story are a series of "petrifying coincidences," episodes that initiate the reader into the surrealism of everyday life, and a penetrating examination of Breton's own share of responsibility in Nadja's ultimate fate, ending with the shattering intrusion into the author's life of a final transformative occurrence. In this, the first new translation of Nadja in more than sixty years, award-winning translator and surrealism scholar Mark Polizzotti brings a fresh perspective to this unique and haunting tale. Making use of the most recent research (including the revelation of Nadja's identity and life story and the discovery of Breton's original manuscript), he sets the narrative in its historical and biographical context and corrects a number of inaccuracies in the previous English version. This vibrant, emotionally resonant translation breathes new energy and urgency into a book that has long been recognized as one of the seminal masterpieces of twentieth-century modernism"--

Book Synopsis

A new translation of one of the defining works of the French surrealist movement, an energetic autobiographical novel that is at once both a tumultuous romance story and an initiation into the surrealism of everyday life.

In Paris, during the fall of 1926, André Breton met a young woman from the provinces who called herself Nadja because, she said, "in Russian it's the beginning of the word for hope, and because it's only the beginning." Their love affair was brief, intense, and intensely self-conscious. They both talked exuberantly of the book that Breton would make out of their days and nights. And indeed a year later (after Nadja was institutionalized and Breton had moved on to other love affairs) he began to write Nadja--a book of memory and analysis taking its cue in part from Freud's case studies, but also a book of ingeniously intercut images, drawing on Surrealist ideas to portray a soul whose very way of being approaches, in Breton's words, "the extreme limit of the Surrealist aspiration."

In this, the first new translation of Nadja in more than sixty years, Mark Polizzotti captures the youthful excitement, the abiding strangeness, and above all the freshness of Breton's prose. He also provides an illuminating introduction about the fate of the real Nadja, whose identity remained jealously guarded until the twenty-first century.

A gripping tale of infatuation and a meditation on the surrealism of everyday life, Nadja is still a thing of convulsive beauty, impossible to pin or put down, a precursor to works of Julien Gracq, Julio Cortázar, and W.G. Sebald.

This edition of Nadja contains 44 images, which Breton "conceived from the outset as an integral element of the narrative," as Mark Polizzotti writes in his introduction.

Review Quotes

"The most remarkable of [Breton's] sorceresses is Nadja. She predicts the future; she conjures up words and images that spring to her friend's mind at the very same instant; and her dreams and sketches are oracular. She is a free spirit." --Simone de Beauvoir

"In Nadja, André Breton does not express himself--which self would that be anyway?--or exploit himself; he surrenders himself... That is why Nadja is necessary, like a natural phenomenon." --René Daumal

"A deft new translation by Mark Polizzotti . . . Nearly a century later, Nadja still matters because it reminds us that true self-discovery derives not from grand visions or spiritual transformation but from these small interactions with the mundane that hint at the enchantment of an otherwise banal world." --Ben Libman, The New York Times

About the Author

André Breton (1896-1966), the son of a Norman policeman and a seamstress, studied medicine in Paris and was drafted to serve in World War I in 1915. While working on a neurological ward, he met Jacques Vaché, a devotee of Alfred Jarry, and Vaché's rebellious spirit and suicide at the age of twenty-three would powerfully shape Breton's sensibility. Thanks to the auspices of Paul Valéry, Breton worked as an assistant to Marcel Proust, and in 1919, along with Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon, he founded the journal Littérature. The Magnetic Fields, the first book of automatic writing (published by NYRB Poets), appeared in 1920, and in 1924, having broken with Tristan Tzara and the Dadaists, Breton issued the Manifesto of Surrealism. Among his other major works are Anthology of Black Humor, Mad Love, and Surrealism and Painting.

Mark Polizzotti has translated more than sixty books from the French, including Arthur Rimbaud's The Drunken Boat: Selected Writings (NYRB Poets) and Jean Echenoz's Command Performance (NYRB Classics), and is the author of thirteen books, including Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto, Why Surrealism Matters, and Jump Cuts: Essays. He lives in New York.