Nadja's manuscript exhibited among the surrealists of the BnF

Nadja, the heroine of André Breton's novel, who had sunk into madness shortly after meeting the poet, relives, with other eccentric characters, in the exhibition

, which opens Wednesday, with five months late, at the National Library of France (BnF). Alongside the rare pieces linked to the ephemeral movement abounding in the exhibition - such as the manuscript of the

by André Breton and Philippe Soupault, or the drawings of the poet Robert Desnos under hypnosis - the most precious original that is ready to be exhibited at the BnF is undoubtedly the autograph manuscript

of Breton's

(1928), the most famous surrealist literary work today.

Read also: Nadja: the real story

“It was believed for a long time that this manuscript was lost. It actually remained in a private collection in Switzerland until 1998, before being bought by Pierre Bergé, ”

the manuscript curator Olivier Wagner told AFP. Long kept in the library of Pierre Bergé, the manuscript was acquired in 2017 by the BnF, thanks to patrons, and immediately classified as a national treasure by virtue of the importance of the novel for French literature of the twentieth century.

occupies a special place in the history of letters: with a narrative that aims to be objective, in reaction to the tradition of the psychological novel, while sometimes taking on dreamlike accents, André Breton imperfectly applies the principles of his

also exposed - he who rejected almost all the literature of his time.

Behind Nadja, Léona

“In Breton's writing ethics, one must be perfectly honest with the reader. This results in a manuscript that the author writes very quickly, ”

comments Olivier Wagner. Nadja had predicted:

. At first reluctant towards the idea of ​​the novel, Breton ended up writing down on paper, in two weeks, this text that he was going to cross out. Another unique piece to learn about the genealogy of the work, also on display: a notebook in which Breton notes in a telegraphic way memories of the days spent with Nadja in Paris, from October 4 to 13, 1926. The BnF was able to buy it

in 2019, when its existence had remained unknown until then

We had never collected pieces around Nadja: Nadja as a work of course, and Nadja as a nobody, who really existed.

Olivier Wagner

"We had never gathered pieces around Nadja:

Nadja

, emphasizes Olivier Wagner.

From the young woman appear the few traces that have come down to us: a postcard bought and written after a visit to a museum with Breton, a letter, and an incoherent draft letter which shows her slide towards paranoid psychosis.

The true identity of this Nadja, long kept secret, has been known to us since 2009 and the investigation of the Dutch novelist Hester Albach.

Nadja was actually called Léona Delcourt. Aged 24 at the time of her affair with André Breton, the young woman was interned from 1927, then died in a mental asylum in 1941, a victim of the policy of the Nazi military administration in the North and the Pas-de -Calais, who allowed the

perish

. The BnF exhibition intends to pay homage to her by replacing her alongside the wacky artists of Surrealism who surrounded André Breton during the Roaring Twenties - Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, Tristan Tzara,… -, all marked by the absurdity of Great War and by an unprecedented creative frenzy. By making the rare traces of Léona Delcourt dialogue with Nadja's manuscript, the curators of the exhibition hope, in any case, to draw,

.