In Nadja, André Breton mentions “an old engraving which, seen straight on, represents a tiger, but which, regarded perpendicularly to its surface of tiny vertical bands when you stand several feet to the left, represents a vase, and, from several feet to right, an angel.”[1] He provides no help in the interpretation of this peculiar confluence, which is perhaps irrelevant or simply inconceivable to a surrealist. Assuming the story is not apocryphal, which is reasonable to assume given that Nadja is not a novel but an autobiographical account of a love affair, the engraving was certainly meant by its maker to carry a secret message of great import, or maybe even several related messages depending on the order in which the tiger, the vase, and the angel were encountered. The secret itself is doubtless silly, and Breton’s attitude to it is therefore more than appropriate: the secret itself is the message.

Footnote

1. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1999 (first published in 1928), p. 59.