Who am I?
The novel’s opening line situates the central premise surrealism which revolves around questioning names, identity, tags, meaning, etc. Remember that a surrealist painting is defined by the way it includes familiar objects, but within an entirely different context. So starting a novel with the narrator asking who he is can be seen as the literary equivalent of a question often asked of a surrealist painting: what does it mean? The question is not so much who am I as it is what does “who am I” really mean? How does one answer such a question?
“Nadja, because in Russian it’s the beginning of the word of hope, and because it’s only the beginning.”
Who is Nadja? Another philosophical game of shuffling the cards of surrealism. The reader learns about a third of the way through that the woman after whom the novel is titled is not actually named Nadja. She chose her name. So that make her Nadja? One would assume not if she was given another name at birth. But then, is a name really any sort of answer to the question of “who am I?” or, in this case, “who is she?” Even if a name is identity, can it be trusted? Is Nadja not really her real name or is she playing games with the narrator? Or did she even ever say that; is the narrator playing games with the reader? Taking things to the most literal level is another question that must be considered: is “Nadja” really the beginning of the Russian word for hope? (The book was composed in French.) And who claimed it was: Nadja or the narrator?
“Andre? Andre?...You will write a novel about me. I’m sure you will. Don’t say you won’t.”
He will, of course. Because it is the novel being read. Interestingly, however, the title character won’t actually enter the narrative until about fifty or so pages into the book. But then again, the narrator is telling the story, not Nadja. And, as the opening line indicates, this is to be a narrative that one suspects—at least expects—will answer the question of who is he, not who is Nadja. So then: how does getting to Nadja help to identify who the narrator is?
The convulsive beauty will be erotic-veiled, explosive-fixed, magical-circumstantial, or will not be.
This is the closing line of the novel and is perhaps even more famous than its opening line. Some see this assertion as a summing up of the foundation upon which surrealism is constructed; there are rules, after all, in other words. One might consider the final line of the text to be something akin to a declaration of the aesthetic purpose of surrealism. So influential was this declaration to become to other artists—especially fellow French aesthetes—that it inspired the equally famous French musical composer Pierre Boulez (not to be confused with his contemporary, the author of Planet of the Apes: Pierre Boulle) to write a flute concerto with a title that translates into English as “exploding-fixed.” Worth nothing: sometimes the final line is translated into the much simpler, but far less nuanced:
“Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.”
