Place Franz-Liszt

rue de La Fayette, 10e

It was here, in 1926, that André Breton met Nadja, the central figure in Breton's book by the same name. “Last October 4, on one of the idle and dreary afternoons I am wont to have, I found myself rue Lafayette: After having stopped a few minutes in front of the window of the l’Humanité bookstore, I continued on my path toward the Opera . . . I was just crossing the intersection whose name I don’t remember or ignore, the one in front of a church. All of a sudden, although she may have been ten feet in front of me, coming from the opposite direction, I see a young woman, very poorly dressed, who, also, sees me or saw me. She walks with her head held high, unlike all the other passersby. So frail her feet barely touch the ground when she walks. An imperceptible smile perhaps crosses her face.”

Nadja has chosen this name for herself because in Russian it is the beginning of the word for “hope.” Breton saw Nadja as a way of accessing the mysterious, the occult.

Poissonnière