The Muse in Andre Breton's Nadja
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Transcript of The Muse in Andre Breton's Nadja
Jaime Puente
Dr. Garcia
English 3387
Spring 2010
The Muse in Andre Breton's Nadja
French Modernism began in earnest with Charles Baudelaire in the mid-19th century when
he set the stage for the next great age of literary pioneers by discovering the aesthetic benefits of
everyday life in the city. The sights and sounds of a bustling urban environment, no matter how
apparently depraved or unseemly, were the prime moments of artistic inspiration for the father of
modernity, as Baudelaire has been called. It is no wonder that nearly three quarters of a century
later, André Breton, himself referred to as the father of surrealism, made the city a central aspect
of the search for beauty that occupied much of his work. The surrealist project that Breton
engages in with his novel Nadja (1928) seeks to redefine beauty according the sporadic and
seemingly disparate experiences of life in the city because they provide the most accessible
points of reference in a world that cannot be described in terms of linear continuity. To illustrate
the randomness of the surrealist aesthetic, Breton relies upon Nadja to be his guide through the
whimsical experiences of life because her madness is what provides him access to these
moments without the fetters of conscious thought. Like Baudelaire, Breton understands
experience as having a jarring effect to a person's psyche, and having the ability to induce
alternative perspectives of reality is a key aspect of the surrealist project. Nadja becomes
indispensable to the artist Breton illustrates in his novel because her madness and fanciful
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attachment to the streets of Paris are the keys to author's own subconscious. Without Nadja, the
artist in the surrealist work is unable to fully capture the essence of the city because he is so
tightly bound to reality as dictated by his socially structured mind.
Having a firm grip on experience, as described by Baudelaire and articulated by literary
deconstructionist Walter Benjamin, is helpful to understanding Breton's project in Nadja because
he relies upon much of the same foundational ideas. In Baudelaire's writing and poetry, what
Walter Benjamin's refers to as shocks of experience are provided courtesy of the crowded
Parisian streets. Benjamin establishes the ability to register those shocks for the purpose of
artistic creation as the central characteristic of what is referred to as a dandy. This character, the
flaneur, or dandy as Baudelaire defines it, absorbs the impact of daily life in the city and
recreates it in his (or her) own mannerisms and behavior. City life bombards the persona with
new and varied experiences, and the crowds that fill the streets, according to Benjamin were the
"agitated veil; through [which] Baudelaire saw Paris" (Benjamin 168). The bustling metropolis,
with its "harmony so providentially maintained amid the turmoil of human freedom," became the
object of study (Baudelaire 10). For the modern artist, such as Baudelaire's dandy, beauty
revealed itself in the countless different moments and events that one experienced by living in
the city. Baudelaire's iconic flaneur is easily recreated in Breton's work through Nadja's
embodiment of the muse because her attachment to the streets of Paris is unmatched by the
writer. Rather than the artist having access to the full shocks of experience as Baudelaire
envisions, the beauty of city life for Breton must be discovered through an intermediary figure.
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Scholar Marcella Munson discusses the role of the muse in Breton's, and other surrealist
writer's, work in her article "Eclipsing Desire: Masculine Anxiety and the Surrealist Muse," and
she argues that figures, such as Nadja, make the articulation of artist's subjective experience
possible. Unlike Baudelaire's flaneur, the surrealist artist and writer does not see a crowd in the
city as a homogeneous body that reveals "the stigmata which life in a metropolis inflicts upon
love," (Benjamin 169). This aspect of the modern artist is transferred to Nadja, the muse because
as Munson argues, "Breton hunts Nadja as much as he hunts the signal or sign which will
indicate what direction to go in, what event to attend, what interpretation to give," (26). If
experiences are wounds, stigmatas as Benjamin refers to them, then Nadja is a the trace upon
which those stigmatas are connected because the masculine artist is unable to relinquish his grip
on reality.
Thinking in terms of Benjamin's understanding of Baudelaire's modernism, the scars of a
life lived in the darkened crevices of a city are the ones that are made beautiful by the nonchalant
attitude of the dandy's eye, the muse for Breton, which is separate from the unrelenting
dedication of the artist's pen. Munson affirms that "if it is Nadja who has visionary sight it is
Breton who, tracing the streets of Paris, will write the text and place Nadja in it" (26). Baudelaire
envisions the modernist person as someone who is able to take the shocks of the city and re-
purpose them for artistic expression, while in Breton's definition of the surrealist creator, seeing
and doing are kept apart. The work of artistic creation that is Nadja exhibits many of the core
aspects of surrealism that Breton articulated in his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto.
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The lack of linear space and time progression reflects the importance of dreams that
Breton places on the process of artistic creation. When awake men and women are "above all the
playthings[s] of [their] memory," and escaping from this bondage is central to realizing the
surrealist aesthetic (6). The importance of conscious experience is challenged, and even
Baudelaire's flaneur is brought into question by Breton, because he argues that memories are
mere chronological and spacial connections that anchor a person's identity to specific moments
of time and space. Artistic production of this sort relies on what Breton calls the "phenomen[a]
of interference," because consciousness and its memories are tainted by the repressive elements
of surrounding culture (7). For this reason dreams are given an equal if not more prominent role
in the surrealist's quest for beauty. Breton argues in his manifesto that the key to finding beauty
is in the "depths of our mind," and by its nature the unfettered mind, not bound by linear patterns
of time and space, is where two seemingly opposite experiences can be placed in harmony next
to each other (6). The juxtaposition of experiences becomes, for Breton, the seed of surrealist
expression because as described in Nadja, "the production of dream images always depends on. .
. [the] role which certain powerful impressions are made to play, [and are,] in no way
contaminable by morality, [they are] actually experienced 'beyond good and evil' in the dream"
(Breton 51). Locked away in the recesses of a person's mind, dreams hold the messages
imprinted through the shocks of experience that Baudelaire, and so too Breton, found in the
streets of Paris.
Gaining access to the mind as Breton so desires can be done through the use of dreams, but
one drawback to that is the obvious requirement of being asleep. While dreams are useful to the
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surrealist project, they are, as we noted earlier, lost to memory when awake. Nadja answers this
problem for Breton because as his muse she makes the "reflective apprehension of [his]
masculine subjectivity possible" (Munson 20). In Breton's novel the artist is on a quest to
"descend into what is truly the mind's lower depths, where it is no longer a question of the night's
falling and rising again," yet he is unable to fully do so because he is awake more often than not
(Breton 40). The writer in Nadja is unable to find his masculine subjectivity because of his
mind's reliance on the so-called objective consciousness of experience, and Breton is left to
wander the paths of his mind as best he can. It is not until he meets Nadja that his experiences
begin to lose their fettered nature.
Nadja's appearance in Breton's text is used as an entry to the depths of his mind, and serves
as his jumping off point for a deeper understanding of himself. Nadja's presence as a muse is
especially helpful to his project because she proposes freedom through the "perpetual
unfettering," or more precisely she carries him along a "marvelous series of steps" that are
unfettered (69). It is important to note that Nadja begins to take on a slightly unstable character,
and Breton is sure to include her quip of being directed to a hospital away from town. The
madness that Nadja begins to exhibit is critical to her role as a muse because it provides the
unfettered access to mind that Breton is searching for. Thoughts, images, and desires spring out
of Nadja like jets of water spraying from a fountain, and provide Breton's surrealist creator with
the subjective experiences he craves because as Munson says, "it is nevertheless she who
mediates the poet's access to the outside world through her open eyes" (29). The importance of
Nadja's eyes are not lost on the reader of Breton's work because they are what initially attracts
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him to her, eyes are central themes to her work reproduces in the novel, and most importantly it
is through his muse's eyes that the writer is able to know himself.
The gift of sight is a primary method of experience; however, it is not enough of a
reference to produce a work of surrealist beauty because it relies to heavily on the conscious
interpretation of events. Nadja, however, is "so pure, so free of any earthly tie, and cares so little,
but so marvelously, for life" that she is able to absorb the sights and sounds without the same
mediation that binds Breton (Breton 90). Because of this the artist latches onto the whimsical
eccentricities of his muse in order to access his own marvelous freedom. Nadja is indispensable
to Breton's project because she makes possible what he says is a "pursuit of what [he does] not
know, but pursuit, in order to set working all the artifices of intellectual seduction" (108). Breton
follows Nadja through her ventures among the streets that intrigued Baudelaire because she
provided him the most readily available avenue to explore the limits of his own perception. In
fact the artist recognizes the importance of his muse saying that, "from the first day to the last,"
he has taken her "for a free genius, something like one of those spirits of the air which certain
magical practices momentarily permit us to entertain but which we can never overcome" (111).
Nadja is the catalyst for Breton's surrealist tome because her ability to access the random and
fleeting moments of city life, however inconsequential, are translated by his pen onto his pages.
Her fanciful attitude and way of experiencing life opened doors for the artistic expression of
Breton's own experiences. The shocks of city life that Baudelaire catalogued in The Painter of
Modern Life are the traces of the imagination that Breton seeks to access through his muse.
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Surrealism, for Breton, is the aesthetic dedication to accessing and representing experience
in a way that is free from the inhibitions of consciousness. His work Nadja is an exercise in this
process, but when examined in the context of Baudelaire's modernist perspective the shocks of
the city that provided the father of modernism the most ample forms of inspiration become only
scratches on the surface of possibility. The depths of the mind, and the dreams that are its
messengers, are what provide the most potent forms of artistic innovation, but because human
activity is restricted to the realm of the conscious mind, full access to the imagination is
prohibited. Breton's work, Nadja, is an attempt to accomplish this goal, to express that which is
unfettered by using the fettered tools of consciousness. It becomes clear, as Marcella Munson
argues, that Breton's surrealist activity is reliant upon a muse to provide that unfettered access.
Nadja becomes the premier doorway through which Breton accesses his own innermost thoughts
and experiences because she occupies the space of the subjective other. Nadja, an insane woman,
finds herself more at home in the undesirable spaces of Paris, and Breton's artist seizes upon
these elements of her identity to use in his own work. Unable to fully cast aside the chains of
social repressions, Breton uses his muse as a bridge between his objective self and the darkest
crevices of his mind.
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Works Cited
Baudelaire, Charles. "Crowds." Paris Spleen. New York: 1947. 20.
..- "The Painter of Modern Life." The Painter of Modern Life and other Essays. New York:
2001. 1- 41.
Benjamin, Walter, "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire." Illuminations. New York: 1969. 155-200.
Breton, André. Nadja. New York: Grove Press, 1960. Print.
..- The Surrealist Manifesto. tcf.ua.edu. University of Alabama. Web. Feb 2010.
Munson, Marcella. "Eclipsing Desire: Masculine Anxiety and the Surrealist Muse," French
Forum 29.2 (2004): 19-33. Print.
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