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Title: Nadja by Andre Breton, Richard Howard ISBN: 0-8021-5026-8 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: artists and words
Comment: That Breton was an innovative designer and artist and poet is well appreciated but this book shows him to have been a fine writer as well. It also shows how a member of a radical group of artists can be driven by the same passions that probably afflict all of us during our lives. This passion of Breton's is extraordinary in its own way but I suspect we all have these seemingly unusual encounters in our lives. It takes a creative artist such as Breton to bring it to life. But in some ways he only brings it half to life. While he does have a fascination with 'Nadja' - the name being the first part of the Russian word for hope - his wife remains firmly in the background and not withheld, and yet her involvement is completely untold, even unspeculated on. What type of relationship Breton and his wife had we can only speculate about. In the end this is quite a sad story, but then I suspect most of the passions we all feel for the 'extras' in our own lives are inevitably tinged with sadness and unfulfilment. So for me, Breton has captured something here that is quite magical.
Rating: 5
Summary: a necessity and a work of pure genius
Comment: as soon as people see breton's name on a book, they immediately feel indignation and privately exclaim, "the dictator of surrealism!" what they don't seem to realize is that, despite being a flawed and somewhat ambivalent man, he probably had more passion in his pinky than they do in their entire body. "nadja" is simply one more delightful proof of breton's genius and his infallible flair for the surreal, the mysterious, the mystical, and everything that is profoundly divergent. in this tale of intrigue and obsession he travels the streets of paris with a ghostly, clearly insane young woman who calls herself nadja, which is the russian word for hope. the most captivating parts of the novel are the bizarre and surreal conversations he has with her. even though he found her incredibly fascinating and almost an ethereal enigma, things start to turn sour between them and breton grows bored with her. at the end of the novel, nadja is put into an asylum after the police are called because of her incessant screaming and apparently incoherent behavior, some of which suggested that she was living in a world of hallucinations and irrational fears. we do know that nadja was a real woman and not by means some fictitious creation of breton's, and we also know that she came to a somewhat unfortunate end. it may be true that breton's behavior and attitude of indifference and deliberate ignorance about her truly wretched fate (she died of cancer, insane and completely alone) is indeed nothing to admire, but those who put too much emphasis on this admittedly accurate fact forget that while he may in a sense have betrayed her, he also made a truly admirable effort to make the world see nadja and those like her as no one has seen them before, and immortalized her in a book that is absolutely unforgettable and breathtakingly beautiful. breton was a profoundly hopeful and truly revolutionary figure who exhorted humanity, even while the second world war raged and reaped it's devastating results universally on all of mankind, to recognize the miraculous and wondrous nature of our very existence, however 'absurd' or meaningless some felt it to be after the horrendous events of the twentieth century. it is true that he occasionally goes over the top with his optimism, but his iron will and determination to fight 'miserabilism', the philosophical justification of human misery, at all costs can only call forth our admiration. his exaltation of the imagination as the highest of human faculties and the sole organ of man that will allow him to attain felicity seems to be verified by direct, concrete experience of life. as we grow older and we come to realize that sensual pleasure is a big part of life but essentially empty and hollow, our inner lives (hopefully) become more vivid and we end up spending more and more time there. breton knows this and wants us to cultivate it to the highest degree possible. don't be fooled by the 'anti breton' rhetoric and take a dismissive attitude toward him, because you'll be missing out on some of the most fascinating books (to my mind) ever written.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the most intriguing novels I've ever read
Comment: Nadja has far more to offer than just a simple love story. Superficially it is an account of Breton's wandering through the streets of 1920s Paris with his eponymous mad heroine. Paris becomes a magical, fluid reality, peopled with sphinxes and shaped by extraordinary events and coincidences. But dig deeper and you will find a rewarding, if sometimes complex, commentary on time, space, memory and the city. Bearing in mind Breton's interest in psychoanalysis and Marxist revolution (in Nadja he even tells us of his purchase of Trotsky's latest work from the Humanite bookstore), the novel may be read as a conscious subversion of bourgeois conventions. Everything in Nadja, from the narrative to the intriguing photographs supplied by various surrealist photographers such as J.A. Boiffard, intervenes to challenge and disrupt conventional reality and the status quo. It seems to me that Nadja is all about the creation of alternative realities, a sur-reality. Some would call this Breton's form of escapism from the harsh realities of post-world-war Paris in the era of high capitalism, but Breton's surreal Paris always carries the promise of revolution and change. Nadja is a work that can be enjoyed on so many levels, and is definitely worth re-reading.
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Title: Manifestoes of Surrealism by Andre Breton, Richard Seaver, Helen R. Lane ISBN: 0472061828 Publisher: UMP Pub. Date: 15 June, 1969 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon, Simon W. Taylor ISBN: 1878972103 Publisher: Exact Change Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Mad Love by Andre Breton, Mary Ann Caws ISBN: 0803260725 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: October, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Dada & Surrealism A&i by Matthew Gale ISBN: 0714832618 Publisher: Phaidon Press Inc. Pub. Date: 19 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Maldoror and the Complete Works by Lautreamont, Alexis Lykiard, Comte De Lautreamont, Lautreamont Chants De Maldoror, Lautreamont Poesies, Conte de Lautreamont, Comte De Lautreamont ISBN: 187897212X Publisher: Exact Change Pub. Date: July, 1994 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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