At the Beaux-Arts in Rouen, André Breton in memory of Nadja
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On October 4, 1926, rue La Fayette, in Paris, André Breton saw a passer-by. “I see a young woman, very poorly dressed, who also sees me or has seen me. She goes with her head held high, unlike all the other passers-by. » They are talking to each other. She is 24 years old, her name is Léona Delcourt but calls herself Nadja, a nickname perhaps inspired by Nadejda, “hope” in Slavic languages. Until October 13, they see each other every day. Then they write to each other, until February 1927.
A few weeks later, on March 21, Nadja was admitted to Sainte-Anne Hospital for “polymorphic mental disorders”. The diagnosis states: “Beg that we kill her all of a sudden. At other times wants to dance and hums. (…) Would have been troubled like this for only a few weeks. » A year later, she was transferred to the Bailleul asylum (Nord), near Lille. She died there in 1941, of cachexia due to cancer and aggravated by the malnutrition imposed on people interned by the Nazi occupiers and the Vichy regime.
Warned of the internment in August 1927, Breton began to write the book entitled Naja, for which he solicits the photographer Jacques-André Boiffard: the writer wishes to associate the text with images of Parisian landscapes. Paul Eluard assists him in the preparation of the volume, which appears at Gallimard on May 25, 1928. Republished in 1963, it will become a classic of literature studied in high schools. It was in 2009 that, thanks to the work of the Dutch writer Hester Albach, the identity of Nadja was revealed. We also learn of his working-class social origins, the birth of his daughter from a relationship with a British officer when she was only 17, and his life of misery, and occasional prostitution, in Paris.
It is around this unique encounter and this book that the exhibition that the Musée des beaux-arts de Rouen is devoting to this connection is built. The works and documents there show on the one hand the personal situation of Breton in this period, therefore that of surrealism at its beginnings; on the other hand, the process of writing and photography which transforms into a legend the short encounter of an already famous writer and a fragile young woman.
Freedom to write and paint
On the first point – Breton in 1926 – chapters are devoted to Simone Kahn, then the poet’s wife, to their common activity as collectors, to the circle of their relatives – Eluard, Aragon, Desnos, Morise and Péret mainly – and the adventures and temptations that drew Breton to young artists and women of the world Lise Deharme, Suzanne Muzard and Valentine Hugo. The Breton couple eventually divorced in 1929.
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