The Nadja case

Abstract

On October 4, 1926, a young woman who seemed lost in the street met one of the most important writers of the century, André Breton, who had just published the First Manifesto of Surrealism two years before. The young woman was named Léona Delcourt, but one used to call her Nadja. She fell in love with Breton, but he remained more interested in her poetic strangeness, which expressed itself in her conversation, drawings, and letters. Their intimate relationship lasted only ten days, but correspondence continued until March 1927, when she developed acute psychosis and was interned in psychiatric wards for the rest of her life. A few months later, Breton published Nadja, one of the most famous novels of the twentieth century. He had intentionally written it as a clinical report (though violently criticizing psychiatry and psychiatrists) lacking emotional features, and it was partly influenced by his own neuropsychiatric experience during the war as a medical student working with Raoul Leroy and Joseph Babinski. Breton's apparent coldness associated with the dramatic fate of Nadja has often been interpreted unfavorably, as he supposedly missed a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia in her. However, a careful look at Nadja's letters to Breton suggests that hallucinations and delirium were absent before the March 1927 decompensation, and her behavior may be one of the best available examples of the fascinating poetic instability which may precede acute psychosis.