Léona Delcourt

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Léona Camille Ghislaine Delcourt (born May 23, 1902 in Saint-André-lez-Lille ; died January 15, 1941 in Bailleul ) was a French artist. Under her pseudonym Nadja , she was the model for the main character in André Breton 's book of the same name .

Léona Delcourt: Qui est elle? (1926)
Léona Delcourt: Self-Portrait (1926)

Life

Léona Delcourt was the second daughter of typesetter Eugène and the Belgian auto mechanic Mélanie Delcourt. Léona Delcourt gave birth to the illegitimate daughter Marthe of a British officer on January 20, 1920, but refused to enter into marriage. The child stayed with the grandparents and she left for Paris in 1923 , where she moved into a room near the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church . Her job search as an extra or costume designer at a theater was unsuccessful, however, so she was tolerated by men who paid for the pleasure of their company, also worked as a prostitute and dealt in drugs, which is why she came into conflict with the police. She therefore belonged to the urban lumpen proletariat .

When she met André Breton, the six years older artist and citizen fright, on October 4, 1926, she called herself “ Nadja ” and explained the choice of name to him by saying that he was “Russian”, in this language the beginning of the word “ hope ” and just is a "beginning". Breton was fascinated by her charisma and manner of speaking, and he was physically more attracted to her than he wanted to admit to himself. After the two had met regularly over the next nine days and had a crazy time together, Breton, who had married Simone Kahn, who came from the Jewish upper class in 1921, withdrew at the first signs of disgruntlement. He did not dare to really jump, he was more an admirer of those who did so, despite or because of his verbal radicalism. Breton saw Nadja only sporadically in the following years, two or three times in December, but continued to support her financially and informed his wife that he wanted to sell one of his paintings Derain because of Nadja . Delcourt, although an adult, was Breton's first nanny .

The more Breton withdrew, the more her attachment grew. In four months Delcourt wrote him love letters and enclosed them with his own drawings. She also tried in vain to reach him by phone. At the end of 1926, for lack of money, she had to give up her cheap bed and breakfast in the Hôtel du Théâtre on rue Chéroy and move into a miserable hotel room on rue Becquerel. In January and February 1927 she wrote obsequious begging letters to Breton. In her last letter in mid-February she wrote: "I don't want to waste any time you will need for more sublime things [...] It is wise not to insist on the impossible". Signs of her schizophrenia were not noticed by Breton, who had a psychiatric education.

On March 21, 1927, because she had visual imaginations, olfactory hallucinations and a screaming fit, the police took her from her hotel to the Sainte-Anne hospital. She was diagnosed with depression by the police doctor and on the 24th she was admitted to the Perray-Vaucluse Psychiatric Clinic in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois . At her mother's request, she was transferred to the psychiatric institution in Bailleul in May 1928. The author of the Breton biography in 1995 did not know whether she ever saw the book, the creation of which she had followed.

According to Breton's account in the book Nadja , Nadja fell victim to her poverty, an incomprehensible society and also his own role because he had asked too much of her. The former medical student and psychiatry assistant Breton took her breakdown and her lockdown as an opportunity to castigate the methods of psychiatry in the book. Breton did not take part in Delcourt's disease in the years that followed, while it appears that Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard visited her. As with Nadja, Breton later refused to visit the mentally ill Antonin Artaud in the asylum in 1937 .

After the German occupation of France in 1940, living conditions in French psychiatric hospitals deteriorated again. Delcourt died in 1941 after fourteen years in an institution of " cachexie néoplasique " (severe emaciation).

The book Nadja

Breton had made detailed notes about the rendezvous, in August 1927 he was ready to start writing the book, partial prints were made at the end of the year. In the surrealist narrative, “woman” and “love” are glorified in an epic and mystical way. He wrote the final part of Nadja at the beginning of 1928 under the impression of a seemingly impossible love affair with Suzanne Muzard, during which Nadja had wished that the book he wanted to write would be "about her" and "about us".

The book, which is debated whether it is a novel , was published on May 25, 1928, published several times in the same year and is a major work of literary surrealism . In 1963 Breton published a revised version from which he - besides alleged stylistic defects - made all traces of his physical relationship with Nadja disappear. According to literary criticism, his vanity was the real reason for the revised version. In addition to Breton's text, the book contains over 40 illustrations, including photos of places where he was with Nadja, which Breton had photographed by photographer Jacques-André Boiffard for publication , snippets of text by Nadja and excerpts from her drawings. The first issue also contained a photo of Breton himself, but none of Nadja. In the 1963 edition, Breton then added a photo montage of the area around her eyes.

Breton did not reveal the name Delcourt either in the book or anywhere else, and Simone Breton and the close circle of friends who had spoken to Nadja / Delcourt did not reveal anything, so that their identity could only be assumed in 1988, when Breton's estate was opened for exhibitions and research has been. In 2002, at an exhibition in the Center Pompidou about the "Révolution surréaliste", the real name was also to be read on a hotel bill: Léona Delcourt. During her research on Nadja, the Dutch writer Hester Albach was able to locate Delcourt's granddaughter, Ghislaine, and found the then anonymous grave in Bailleul. Albach's results were initially published in French in 2009. A folder from the (one-page) correspondence with other letters and drawings by Delcourt was found in Breton's estate. Since then, essays and monographs by other authors have been published on the subject.

book

  • André Breton: Nadja . Gallimard, Paris 1928; German (translated by Bernd Schwibs, epilogue by Karl Heinz Bohrer), Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-518-24001-4 (among the 48 illustrations also drawings by Nadja).
  • Rita Bishop: Nadja revisited: André Bretons Nadja; Drawings and letters from Léona "Nadja" Delcourt . Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-940048-19-6 .

literature

  • Mark Polizzotti : Revolution of the Mind. The life of André Breton . From the American. by Jörg Trobitius. Hanser, Munich 1996 (first in English 1995)
  • Georges Sebbag : André Breton l'amour-folie . Éditions Jean-Michel Place, Paris, 2004
  • Hester Albach: Léona, héroïne du surréalisme . Translated from the Dutch by Arlette Ounanian. Actes Sud, Arles 2009
  • Herman De Vries: J'ai bien des choses à vous dire: les lettres de Nadja à André Breton . Sl: Labyrinth, 2010
  • Lemma Nadja (Léona Camille Ghislaine Delcourt) , in: Henri Béhar (Ed.): Dictionnaire André Breton . Classiques Garnier, Paris 2012, pp. 719–725.
  • Julien Bogousslavsky: Nadja et Breton: un amour juste avant la folie . Le Bouscat: L'Esprit du temps, 2012

Web links

Commons : Léona Delcourt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Mark Polizzotti: Revolution des Geistes , 1996, pp. 386–395
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Henri Béhar: Dictionnaire André Breton , 2012, pp. 719–725
  3. ^ According to Pierre Naville , Breton later said to him "Avec Nadja, c'est faire l'amour comme avec Jeanne d'Arc"; see Henri Béhar: Dictionnaire André Breton , p. 720
  4. ↑ Mark Polizzotti: Revolution des Geistes , 1996, p. 756
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Mark Polizzotti: Revolution des Geistes , 1996, pp. 408-416
  6. ↑ Quoted from: Mark Polizzotti: Revolution des Geistes , 1996, p. 413
  7. ↑ Théodore Fraenkel , however, assumed that Breton took the disease seriously and was hospitalized. In Mark Polizzotti: Revolution des Geistes , 1996, p. 414, fn.
  8. ↑ Michel Caire: L'Asile de Bailleul (North) , 2008
  9. ↑ Mark Polizzotti: Revolution des Geistes , 1996, p. 641
  10. ^ Arturo Schwarz : Man Ray . Translated from the Italian by Benjamin Schwarz. Rogner and Bernhard, Munich 1980, p. 71
  11. ↑ Mark Polizzotti: Revolution of the Spirit , 1996, p. 423
  12. ↑ Mark Polizzotti: Revolution des Geistes , 1996, p. 885
  13. ^ Franziska Meier: Her name was Léona Delcourt , in: NZZ, July 12, 2014, p. 27
  14. ↑ Christine Marcandier: Léona / Nadja, héroïne du surréalisme ( Memento of the original of July 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Review, at edition bookclub, August 1, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blogs.mediapart.fr
personal data
SURNAME Delcourt, Léona
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Delcourt, Léona Camille Ghislaine; Nadja (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-André-lez-Lille
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1941
Place of death Bailleul