Léona Delcourt and Suzanne Muzard

What is it about?

The image of the urban stroller in surrealist narratives has emerged as one of the more important symbols of the movement. The male flâneur figure and his prolonged, aimless urban strolls signify rebellion against bourgeois standards like work ethic, the accumulation of wealth, and punctuality. A number of prose pieces, including André Breton’s Nadja (1928), codify what became one of the more important surrealist practices of the interwar period. But Breton fails to present the female perspective, despite the centrality of the eponymous heroine and another unnamed woman, who both inspire surrealism’s most well known description of love in the urban context. This article aims to address the void and examine the work of Léona Delcourt (“Nadja”) and Suzanne Muzard (“X”), whose female portrayal of urban surrealism highlights the benefits and consequences for the women who practiced it.

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Photo by Dasha Yukhymyuk on Unsplash

Photo by Dasha Yukhymyuk on Unsplash