Thursday, August 2, 2007

each individual must foment a private conspiracy

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But Nadja was poor, which in our time is enough to condemn her, once she decided not to behave entirely according to the imbecile code of good sense and good manners. She was also alone: "At times, it is terrible to be so alone. I have no friends but you," she said to my wife on the telephone, the last time. She was, finally, strong, and extremely weak, as one can be, in that idea she had always had but in which I had only too warmly encouraged her, which I had only too readily aided her in giving supremacy over all the rest: the idea that freedom, acquired here on earth at the price of a thousand--and the most difficult--renunciations, must be enjoyed as unrestrictedly as it is granted, without pragmatic considerations of any sort, and this because human emancipation--conceived finally in its simplest revolutionary form, which is no less than human emancipation in every respect, by which I mean according to the means at every man's disposal--remains the only cause worth serving. Nadja was born to serve it, if only by demonstrating that around himself each individual must foment a private conspiracy, which exists not only in his imagination--of which, it would be best, from the standpoint of knowledge alone, to take account--but also--and much more dangerously--by thrusting one's head, then an arm, out of the jail--thus shattered--of logic, that is, out of the most hateful of prisons.
Andre Breton, Nadja, pp. 142-143