André Breton in Nadja: a walker in Paris

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to comment on the importance of space in Andre Breton’s book entitled Nadja. The surrealist narratives are presented as a sequence of segments related to walks and the idyllic place elected by Breton’s poetic narrative is the street. In Nadja, the street is the great erotic place for chance encounters. Following Baudelaire, Apollinaire and Proust, the surrealists give the streets, specially the Parisian ones, a poetic value. Whereas the Romantic writers searched for inspiration in the woods, in mountains and in the ocean coasts, Paris is the place where Surrealism fi nds the impressions and sceneries which form its imaginary universe. Keywords: Surrealism. Nadja. André Breton. Space. Images.