The CONVULSIVE Beauty and the Convulsions of the Surrealist Novel. Nadja (1928, A. Breton) and Zenobia (1985, G. Naum) Cover Image

La Beauté CONVULSIVE et les convulsions du roman surréaliste. Nadja (1928, A. Breton) et Zenobia (1985, G. Naum)
The CONVULSIVE Beauty and the Convulsions of the Surrealist Novel. Nadja (1928, A. Breton) and Zenobia (1985, G. Naum)

Author(s): Florin Oprescu
Subject(s): Novel, French Literature, Romanian Literature, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: French and Romanian surrealism; Nadja (A. Breton); Zenobia (G. Naum); surrealist novel;

Summary/Abstract: The article examines some of the communicating vessels (« vases communicants ») between André Breton’s theoretical surrealism and Gellu Naum’s neo-surrealism praxis. The focus of the analysis is also on the intersection points among the two novels, Nadja (1928) and Zenobia (1985), defining moments of beginning and of the last surrealism. The aim is to determine the synthetic (theoretical and practical) manifesto of Breton’s novel, Nadja, and the pure poetic act of the last European surrealist novel, Zenobia. Although the correspondences seemed clarified by Romanian literary criticism, the present article offers a new, in-depth and contrastive perspective on the « convulsive beauty », from theory to practice.

  • Issue Year: 2023
  • Issue No: Sp. Iss. 2
  • Page Range: 191-198
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: Romanian