Nadja

“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

Andre 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 Vache, a devotee of Alfred Jarry, and Vache’s rebellious spirit and suicide at the age of twenty-three would powerfully shape Breton’s sensibility. Thanks to the auspices of Paul Valery, Breton worked as an assistant to Marcel Proust, and in 1919, along with Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon, he founded the journal Litterature. The Magnetic Fields, the first book of automatic writing, 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 and Jean Echenoz’s Command Performance, and is the author of thirteen books, including Revolution of the Mind- The Life of Andre Breton, Sympathy for the Traitor- A Translation Manifesto, Why Surrealism Matters, and Jump Cuts- Essays. He lives in New York.

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