"Nadja" by Andre Breton (Grove Press, 1969)

This novella (?) includes many photos/drawings. At the start he writes that the book is less about "who am I?" than "Who am I haunting?". He meets a mysterious woman who can predict the future - "Do you see that window up there? It's black, like all the rest. Look hard. In a minute it will light up. It will be red." The minute passes. The window lights up. There are, as a matter of fact, red curtains.. Later, Nadja is still upset. To restore her, I recite a poem by Baudelaire. She thinks children have a mania for taking out their dolls' eyes to see what's there behind them. Then -

• October 12. - I have asked Max Ernst if he would paint Nadja's portrait. But Madame Sacco has predicted he will meet a woman named Nadia or Natasha who he will not like and who will do physical harm to the the woman he loves.
• I was told, several months ago, that Nadja was mad ... she had been committed to the Vaucluse sanitarium.
• My general contempt for psychiatry, its rituals and its works, is reason enough for my not yet having dared investigate what has become of Nadja.

At the end Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all