Andre Breton a well renowned French writer and a poet were born in a modest family in Normandy. In his research, he mainly majored in psychiatry and medicine. During the World War II, he participated as a doctor in a neurological ward in Nantas where his research on the artistic tradition started. The main influences for his study were the anti-social behavior that was exhibited by some of his patients. For instance, Jacques Vache, a young patient at the age of 24 years committed suicide and wrote several letters that were published in an introductory essay called Letters de querre in 1919. The novelist married Simone Kahn, his wife in 1921 and settled in Fortain #42 where he made more than 5300 collection of literature works including books, photographs, manuscripts and sculptures (Breton, 1988).
“Nadja” brilliantly written and originally published in French language in the year 1928, it is the first and perhaps one of the best Surrealist books which define his romantic attitude towards everyday life. The principle romantic book many explores the authors relationship with a lady called Nadja in the city of Paris. The obsession love story is strongly supplemented various surreal of photographs and pictures of people and objects. Nadja offers more than just a simple haunting a love story. Superficially the author uses most of the book chapter to account for the streets of Paris in 1920s. He describes Paris as a fluid reality and magical den shaped by coincidences and extraordinary events. This technique of writing culminates the book as conscious subversion of extraordinary conventions of different events (Brteon, 1988).
In this slender, elliptical and poetic book Nadja, a factious story persuasively attempts to be real in words and structure but rather a substitute. The book uses synonymous with resembles of an imaginary situation we anticipate. Breton the protagonist narrates the story on how he ran into a female character called Nadja in streets. The two developed an intimate relationship that is not quite erotic but forged from a repeated encounters that occurred during the period of spiritual rich and mysterious world of Dec 1926. The strange and interesting relationship ends abruptly when Nadja becomes mad and finds herself in the psychiatry asylum believed to be the narrators’ exasperation. Although the romantic story ends in a tragic situation, its well development stages may be perceived as foreshadow of the coming events (Breton, 1988)
In the next quarter part of an interesting story, Breton distances himself from his being and culminates into lonely rumination. He wonders much if her absence provides a greater inspiration compared to her presence. Andre obsession on this lady goes beyond the board and he starts crying. This action portrays the extraordinary experience of closeness that once felt by the narrator and his acquitted. There is something bewildering, unique and extraordinary about the narrator and Nadja impenetrability. Her eventual and unconscious dismiss is the main concern of this book. To the majority of the reviewers, they consider it as absent that approves Nadja to consciously or unconsciously linger into readers mind. Thus, the book is depicted as a practice of surrealism theory through which the narrator fixes the ghost residues into a reality (Breton, 1988).
As observed, whether consciously or unconsciously, Breton archives to outlay his biography. He skillfully uses his romantic situation to push his narcissism and self adoration nature to express him as the central character of the story. This method of writing a book, exhibit the Nadja story as a distorting mirror expressing Breton’s personality in a camouflaged form. There are many issues that Nadja conveys to over himself through the use of metaphor. This method shows how he extraordinary used the invisible reality to present surrealism and to change the poetic life (Breton, 1988).
What makes Nadja extraordinary is the Breton’s poetic approach in recording the most of the episodes in the book. He uses the highest poetic flights of the soul to portray the surrealistic muse per excellence. His language is cool while recording most of the mental delirium episodes. The results of individual psychiatric monograph and a hybrid of conscious automatism reveal the entire nature of the book. Representing Nadja as a ghost, Breton skillfully manages to record his enduring haunting memories. The narrator presents Nadja as Surrealistic muse who appears in the first chapters and hallucinogenic disappears in the last sections. The book remarks an open mind to beauty, life, art and love (Breton, 1988).
References
Breton, A. (1988). Nadja. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. Pp 1-160 Retrieved from http://www.worldcat.org/title/nadja/oclc/23109462
