Benjamin Fondane
Encyclopedia
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu (benʒaˈmin fundoˈjanu; born Benjamin Wechsler, Wexler or Vecsler, first name also Beniamin or Barbu, usually abridged to B.; November 14, 1898 – October 2, 1944) was a Romania
n and French
poet, critic and existentialist
philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist
poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic
and Expressionist
themes with echoes from Tudor Arghezi
, and dedicated several poetic cycles to the rural life of his native Moldavia
. Fondane, who was of Jewish Romanian
extraction and a nephew of Jewish intellectuals Elias and Moses Schwartzfeld, participated in both minority secular Jewish culture
and mainstream Romanian culture
. During and after World War I
, he was active as a cultural critic
, avant-garde
promoter and, with his brother-in-law Armand Pascal, manager of the theatrical troupe Insula.
Fondane began a second career in 1923, when he moved to Paris
. Affiliated with Surrealism
, but strongly opposed to its communist
leanings, he moved on to become a figure in Jewish existentialism
and a leading disciple of Lev Shestov
. His critique of political dogma, rejection of rationalism
, expectation of historical catastrophe and belief in the soteriological
force of literature were outlined in his celebrated essays on Charles Baudelaire
and Arthur Rimbaud
, as well as in his final works of poetry. His literary and philosophical activities helped him build close relationships with other intellectuals: Shestov, Emil Cioran
, David Gascoyne
, Jacques Maritain
, Victoria Ocampo
, Ilarie Voronca
etc. In parallel, Fondane also had a career in cinema: a film critic and a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures
, he later worked on Rapt with Dimitri Kirsanoff
, and directed the since-lost film Tararira in Argentina
.
A prisoner of war
during the fall of France, Fondane was released and spent the occupation years in clandestinity. He was eventually captured and handed to Nazi German
authorities, who deported him to Auschwitz-Birkenau
. He was sent to the gas chamber
during the last wave of the Holocaust. His work was largely rediscovered later in the 20th century, when it became the subject of scholarly research and public curiosity in both France and Romania. In the latter country, this revival of interest also sparked a controversy over copyright
issues.
, the cultural capital of Moldavia, on November 14, 1898, but, as he noted in a diary he kept at age 16, his birthday was officially recorded as November 15. Fondane was the only son of Isac Wechsler and his wife Adela (née Schwartzfeld), who also bore the sisters Lina (b. 1892) and Rodica (b. 1905), both of whom had careers in acting. Wechsler was a Jewish man from Hertza region
, his ancestors having been born on the Fundoaia estate (which the poet later used as the basis for his signature). Adela was from an intellectual family, of noted influence within the urban Jewish community: her father, poet B. Schwartzfeld, was the owner of a book collection, while her uncles Elias and Moses both had careers in humanities
. Adela herself was well acquainted with the intellectual elite of Iaşi, Jewish as well as ethnic Romanian
, and kept recollections of her encounters with authors linked with the Junimea
society. Through Moses Schwartzfeld, Fondane was also related with socialist
journalist Avram Steuerman-Rodion
, one of the literary men who nurtured the boy's interest in literature.
The young Benjamin was an avid reader, primarily interested in the Moldavian classics of Romanian literature
(Ion Neculce
, Miron Costin
, Dosoftei
, Ion Creangă
), Romanian traditionalists or Neoromantics
(Vasile Alecsandri
, Ion Luca Caragiale
, George Coşbuc
, Mihai Eminescu
) and French Symbolists
. In 1909, after graduating from School No. 1 (an annex of the Trei Ierarhi Monastery
), he was admitted into the Alexandru cel Bun
secondary school, where he did not excel as a student. A restless youth (he recalled having had his first love affair at age 12, with a girl six years his senior), Fondane twice failed to get his remove before the age of 14.
Benjamin divided his time between the city and his father's native region. The latter's rural landscape impressed him greatly, and, enduring in his memory, became the setting in several of his poems. The adolescent Fondane took extended trips throughout northern Moldavia, making his debut in folkloristics
by writing down samples of the narrative and poetic tradition
in various Romanian-inhabited localities. Among his childhood friends was the future Yiddish-language
writer B. Iosif, with whom he spent his time in Iaşi's Podul Vechi neighborhood. In this context, Fondane also met Yiddishist poet Jacob Gropper—an encounter which shaped Fondane's intellectual perspectives on Judaism
and Jewish history
. At the time, Fondane became known to his family and friends as Mieluşon (from miel, Romanian
for "lamb", and probably in reference to his bushy hairdo), a name which he later used as a colloquial pseudonym.
Although Fondane later claimed to have started writing poetry at age eight, his earliest known contributions to the genre date from 1912, including both pieces of his own and translations from such authors as André Chénier
, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff
, Heinrich Heine
and Henri de Régnier
. The same year, some of these were published, under the pseudonym I. G. Ofir, in the local literary review Floare Albastră, whose owner, A. L. Zissu, was later a noted novelist and Zionist
political figure. Later research proposed that these, like some other efforts of the 1910s, were collective poetry
samples, resulting from a collaboration between Fondane and Gropper (the former was probably translating the latter's poetic motifs into Romanian). In 1913, Fondane also tried his hand at editing a student journal, signing his editorial with the pen name Van Doian, but only produced several handwritten copies of a single issue.
. That year, samples of lyric poetry
were also published in the magazines Valuri and Revista Noastră (whose owner, poetess Constanţa Hodoş, even offered Fondane a job on the editorial board, probably unaware that she was corresponding with a high school student). Also in 1914, the Moldavian Symbolist venue Absolutio, edited by Isac Ludo
, featured pieces he signed with the pen name I. Haşir. Among his National High School colleagues was Alexandru Al. Philippide, the future critic, who remained one of Fondane's best friends (and whose poetry Fondane proposed for publishing in Revista Noastră). Late in 1914, Fondane also began his short collaboration with the Iaşi Symbolist tribune Vieaţa Nouă. While several of his poems were published there, the review's founder Ovid Densusianu
issued objections to their content, and, in their subsequent correspondence, each writer outlines his stylistic disagreements with the other.
During the first two years of World War I
and Romania's neutrality, the young poet established new contacts within the literary environments of Iaşi and Bucharest
. According to his brother-in-law and biographer Paul Daniel, "it is amazing how many pages of poetry, translations, prose, articles, chronicles have been written by Fundoianu in this interval." In 1915, four of his patriotic
-themed poems were published on the front page of Dimineaţa daily, which campaigned for Romanian intervention against the Central Powers
(they were the first of several contributions Fondane signed with the pen name Alex. Vilara, later
Al. Vilara). His parallel contribution to the Bârlad
-based review Revista Critică (originally, Cronica Moldovei) was more strenuous: Fondane declared himself indignant that the editorial staff would not send him the galley proof
s, and received instead an irritated reply from manager Al. Ştefănescu; he was eventually featured with poems in three separate issues of Revista Critică. At around that time, he also wrote a memoir
of his childhood, Note dintr-un confesional ("Notes from a Confessional
").
Around 1915, Fondane was discovered by the journalistic tandem of Tudor Arghezi
and Gala Galaction
, both of whom were also modernist
authors, left-wing militants and Symbolist promoters. The pieces Fondane sent to Arghezi and Galaction's Cronica paper were received with enthusiasm, a reaction which surprised and impressed the young author. Although his poems went unpublished, his Iaşi-themed article A doua capitală ("The Second Capital"), signed Al. Vilara, was featured in an April 1916 issue. A follower of Arghezi, he was personally involved in raising awareness about Arghezi's unpublished verse, the Agate negre ("Black Diamonds") cycle.
Remaining close friends with Fondane, Galaction later made persistent efforts of introducing him to critic Garabet Ibrăileanu
, with the purpose of having him published by the Poporanist
Viaţa Românească
review, but Ibrăileanu refused to recognize Fondane as an affiliate. Fondane had more success in contacting Flacăra
review and its publisher Constantin Banu: on July 23, 1916, it hosted his sonnet
Eglogă marină ("Marine Eglogue"). Between 1915 and 1923, Fondane also had a steady contribution to Romanian-language Jewish periodicals (Lumea Evree, Bar-Kochba, Hasmonaea, Hatikvah), where he published translations from international representatives of Yiddish literature
(Hayim Nahman Bialik, Semyon Frug, Abraham Reisen etc.) under the signatures B. Wechsler, B. Fundoianu and F. Benjamin. Fondane also completed work on a translation of the Ahasverus drama, by the Jewish author Herman Heijermans
.
His collaboration with the Bucharest-based Rampa (at the time a daily newspaper) also began in 1915, with his debut as theatrical chronicler, and later with his Carpathian
-themed series in the travel writing
genre, Pe drumuri de munte ("On Mountain Roads"). With almost one signed or unsigned piece per issue over the following years, Fondane was one of the more prolific contributors to that newspaper, and frequently made use of either pseudonyms (Diomed, Dio, Funfurpan, Const. Meletie) or initials (B. F., B. Fd., fd.). These included his January 1916 positive review of Plumb, the first major work by Romania's celebrated Symbolist poet, George Bacovia
.
and was invaded by the Central Powers, Fondane was in Iaşi, where the Romanian authorities had retreated. It was in this context that he met and befriended the doyen of Romanian Symbolism, poet Ion Minulescu
. Minulescu and his wife, author Claudia Millian, had left their home in occupied Bucharest, and, by spring 1917, hosted Fondane at their provisional domicile in Iaşi. Millian later recalled that her husband had been much impressed by the Moldavian teenager, describing him as "a rare bird" and "a poet of talent". The same year, at age 52, Isac Wechsler fell ill with typhus
and died in Iaşi's Sfântul Spiridon Hospital, leaving his family without financial support.
At around that time, Fondane began work on the poetry cycle Privelişti ("Sights" or "Panoramas", finished in 1923). In 1918, he became one of the contributors to the magazine Chemarea, published in Iaşi by the leftist journalist N. D. Cocea
, with help from Symbolist writer Ion Vinea. In the political climate marked by the Peace of Bucharest and Romania's remilitarization, Fondane used Cocea's publication to protest against the arrest of Arghezi, who had been accused of collaborationism
with the Central Powers. In this context, Fondane spoke of Arghezi as being "Romania's greatest contemporary poet" (a verdict which was later to be approved of by mainstream critics). According to one account, Fondane also worked briefly as a fact checker
for Arena, a periodical managed by Vinea and N. Porsenna. His time with Chemarea also resulted in the publication of his Biblical
-themed short story
Tăgăduinţa lui Petru ("Peter's Denial
"). Issued by Chemareas publishing house in 41 bibliophile
copies (20 of which remained in Fondane's possession), it opened with the tract O lămurire despre simbolism ("An Explanation of Symbolism").
In 1919, upon the war's end, Benjamin Fondane settled in Bucharest, where he stayed until 1923. During this interval, he frequently changed domicile: after a stay at his sister Lina's home in Obor
area, he moved on Lahovari Street (near Piaţa Romană
), then in Moşilor
area, before relocating to Văcăreşti
(a majority Jewish residential area, where he lived in two successive locations), and ultimately to a house a short distance away from Foişorul de Foc
. Between these changes of address, he established contacts with the Symbolist and avant-garde
society of Bucharest: a personal friend of graphic artist Iosif Ross, he formed an informal avant-garde circle of his own, attended by writers F. Brunea-Fox, Ion Călugăru
, Henri Gad, Saşa Pană
, Claude Sernet-Cosma and Ilarie Voronca
, as well as by artist-director Armand Pascal (who, in 1920, married Lina Fundoianu). Pană would later note his dominant status within the group, describing him as the "stooping green-eyed youth from Iaşi, the standard-bearer of the iconoclasts and rebels of the new generation".
The group was occasionally joined by other friends, among them Millian and painter Nicolae Tonitza
. In addition, Fondane and Călugăru frequented the artistic and literary club established by the controversial Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
, a cultural promoter and political militant whose influence spread over several Symbolist milieus. In a 1922 piece for Rampa, he remembered Bogdan-Piteşti in ambivalent terms: "he could not stand moral elevation. [...] He was made of the greatest of joys, in the most purulent of bodies. How many generations of ancient boyar
s had come to pass, like unworthy dung, for this singular earth to be generated?"
Pressed on by his family and the prospects of financial security, Fondane contemplated becoming a lawyer. Having passed his baccalaureate examination
in Bucharest, he was, according to his own account, a registered student at the University of Iaşi Law School, obtaining a graduation certificate but prevented from becoming a licentiate
by the opposition of faculty member A. C. Cuza
, the antisemitic political figure. According to a recollection of poet Adrian Maniu, Fondane again worked as a fact checker for some months after his arrival to the capital. His activity as a journalist also allowed him to interview Arnold Davidovich Margolin, statesman of the defunct Ukrainian People's Republic
, with whom he discussed the fate of Ukrainian Jews
before and after the Soviet Russian
takeover.
, Adevărul Literar şi Artistic, Cuvântul Liber
, Mântuirea, etc. The main topics of his interest were literary reviews, essay
s reviewing the contribution of Romanian and French authors, various art chronicles, and opinion pieces on social or cultural issues. A special case was his collaboration with Mântuirea, a Zionist periodical founded by Zissu, where, between August and October 1919, he published his studies collection Iudaism şi elenism ("Judaism and Hellenism
"). These pieces, alternating with similar articles by Galaction, showed how the young man's views in cultural anthropology
had been shaped by his relationship with Gropper (with whom he nevertheless severed all contacts by 1920).
Fondane also renewed his collaboration with Rampa. He and another contributor to the magazine, journalist Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, carried out a debate in the magazine's pages: Fondane's articles defended Romanian Symbolism against criticism from Teodorescu-Branişte, and offered glimpse into his personal interpretation of Symbolist attitudes. One piece he wrote in 1919, titled Noi, simboliştii ("Us Symbolists") stated his proud affiliation to the current (primarily defined by him as an artistic transposition of eternal idealism
), and comprised the slogan: "We are too many not to be strong, and too few not to be intelligent." In May 1920, another of his Rampa contributions spoke out against Octavian Goga
, Culture Minister of the Alexandru Averescu
executive, who contemplated sacking George Bacovia from his office of clerk. The same year, Lumea Evree published his verse drama
fragment Monologul lui Baltazar ("Belshazzar
's Soliloquy").
Around the time of his relocation to Bucharest, Fondane first met the moderate modernist critic Eugen Lovinescu
, and afterward became both an affiliate of Lovinescu's circle and a contributor to his literary review Sburătorul
. Among his first contributions there was a retrospective coverage of the boxing
match between Jack Dempsey
and Georges Carpentier
, which comprised his reflections on the mythical power of sport and the clash of cultures. Although a Sburătorist, he was still in contact with Galaction and the left-wing circles. In June 1921, Galaction paid homage to "the daring Benjamin" in an article for Adevărul Literar şi Artistic, calling attention to Fondane's "overwhelming originality."
A year later, Fondane was employed by Vinea's new venue, the prestigious modernist venue Contimporanul
. Having debuted in its first issue with a comment on Romanian translation projects (Ferestre spre Occident, "Windows on the Occident
"), he was later assigned the theatrical column. Fondane's work was again featured in Flacăra magazine (at the time under Minulescu's direction): the poem Ce simplu ("How Simple") and the essay Istoria Ideii ("The History of the Idea") were both published there in 1922. The same year, with assistance from fellow novelist Felix Aderca
, Fondane grouped his earlier essays on French literature
as Imagini şi cărţi din Franţa ("Images and Books from France"), published by Editura Socec company. The book included what was probably the first Romanian study of Marcel Proust
's contribution as a novelist. The author announced that he was planning a similar volume, grouping essays about Romanian writers, both modernists (Minulescu, Bacovia, Arghezi, Maniu, Galaction) and classics (Alexandru Odobescu
, Ion Creangă
, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
, Anton Pann
), but this work was not published in his lifetime.
Also in 1922, Fondane and Pascal set up the theatrical troupe Insula ("The Island"), which stated its commitment to avant-garde theater
. Probably named after Minulescu's earlier Symbolist magazine, the group was likely a local replica of Jean Copeau's nonconformist productions in France. Hosted by the Maison d'Art galleries in Bucharest, the company was joined by, among others, actresses Lina Fundoianu-Pascal and Victoria Mierlescu, and director Sandu Eliad. Other participants were writers (Cocea, Pană, Zissu, Scarlat Callimachi, Mărgărita Miller Verghy
, Ion Pillat
) and theatrical people (George Ciprian
, Marietta Sadova, Soare Z. Soare, Dida Solomon, Alice Sturdza, Ionel Ţăranu).
Although it stated its goal of revolutionizing the Romanian repertoire (a goal published as an art manifesto
in Contimporanul), Insula produced mostly conventional Symbolist and Neoclassical
plays: its inaugural shows included Legenda funigeilor ("Gossamer Legend") by Ştefan Octavian Iosif
and Dimitrie Anghel
, one of Lord Dunsany's Five Plays
and (in Fondane's own translation) Molière
's Le Médecin volant
. Probably aiming to enrich this program with samples of Yiddish drama
, Fondane began, but never finished, a translation of S. Ansky
's The Dybbuk. The troupe ceased its activity in 1923, partly because of significant financial difficulties, and partly because of a rise in antisemitic activities, which put its Jewish performers at risk. For a while, Insula survived as a conference group, hosting modernist lectures on classical Romanian literature—with the participation of Symbolist and post-Symbolist authors such as Aderca, Arghezi, Millian, Pillat, Vinea, N. Davidescu, Perpessicius
, and Fondane himself. He was at the time working on his own play, Filoctet ("Philoctetes
", later finished as Philoctète).
, an avant-garde movement launched abroad by the Romanian-born author Tristan Tzara
, in collaboration with several others. Not dissuaded by the fact that his sister and brother-in-law (the Pascals) had returned impoverished from an extended stay in Paris
, Fondane crossed Europe by train and partly by foot.
The writer (who adopted his Francized
name shortly after leaving his native country) was eventually joined there by the Pascals. The three of them continued to lead a bohemian
and at times precarious existence, discussed in Fondane's correspondence with Romanian novelist Liviu Rebreanu
, and described by researcher Ana-Maria Tomescu as "humiliating poverty". The poet acquired some sources of income from his contacts in Romania: in exchange for his contribution to the circulation of Romanian literature in France, he received official funds from the Culture Ministry's directorate (at the time headed by Minulescu); in addition, he published unsigned articles in various newspapers, and even relied on handouts from Romanian actress Elvira Popescu
(who visited his home, as did avant-garde painter M. H. Maxy
). He also translated into French Zissu's novel Amintirile unui candelabru ("The Recollections of a Chandelier"). For a while, the poet also joined his colleague Ilarie Voronca
on the legal department of L'Abeille insurance company.
After a period of renting furnished rooms, Fondane accepted an offer from Jean, brother of the deceased literary theorist Remy de Gourmont
, and, employed as a librarian-concierge
, moved into the Gourmonts' museum property on Rue des Saints-Pères, some distance away from to the celebrated literary café Les Deux Magots
. In the six years before Pascal's 1929 death, Fondane left Gourmont's house and, with his sister and brother-in-law, moved into a succession of houses (on Rue Domat, Rue Jacob, Rue Monge), before settling into a historical building once inhabited by author Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (Rue Rollin, 6). Complaining about eye trouble and exhaustion, and several times threatened with insolvency, Fondane often left Paris for the resort of Arcachon
.
Claudia Millian, who was also spending time in Paris, described Fondane's new focus on studying Christian theology
and Catholic thought, from Hildebert
to Gourmont's own Latin mystique (it was also at this stage that the Romanian writer acquired and sent home part of Gourmont's bibliophile collection). He coupled these activities with an interest in grouping together the cultural segments of the Romanian diaspora
: around 1924, he and Millian were founding members of the Society of Romanian Writers in Paris, presided upon by the aristocrat Elena Văcărescu
. Meanwhile, Fondane acquired a profile on the local literary scene, and, in his personal notes, claimed to have had his works praised by novelist André Gide
and philosopher Jules de Gaultier
. They both were his idols: Gide's work had shaped his own contribution in the prose poem genre, while Gaultier did the same for his philosophical outlook. The self-exiled debutant was nevertheless still viewing his career with despair, describing it as languishing, and noting that there was a chance of him failing to earn a solid literary reputation.
, the post-Dada avant-garde current centered in Paris. Fondane also rallied with Belgian
Surrealist composers E. L. T. Mesens and André Souris
(with whom he signed a manifesto on modernist music
), and supported Surrealist poet-director Antonin Artaud
in his efforts to set up a theater named after Alfred Jarry
(which was not, however, an all-Surrealist venue). In this context, he tried to persuade the French Surrealist group to tour his native country and establish contacts with local affiliates.
By 1926, Fondane grew disenchanted with the communist
alignment proposed by the main Surrealist faction and its mentor, André Breton
. Writing at the time, he commented that the ideological drive could prove fatal: "Perhaps never again will [a poet] recover that absolute freedom that he had in the bourgeois republic
." A few years later, the Romanian writer expressed his support for the anti-Breton dissidents of Le Grand Jeu magazine, and was a witness at the 1930 riot which opposed the two factions. His anti-communist
discourse was again aired in 1932: commenting on indictment of Surrealist poet Louis Aragon
for communist texts (read by the authorities as instigation to murder), Fondane stated that he did believe Aragon's case was covered by the freedom of speech
. His ideas also brought him into conflict with Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
, who was moving away from an avant-garde background and into the realm of far right
ideas. By the early 1930s, Fondane was in contact with the mainstream modernist Jacques Rivière
and his Nouvelle Revue Française
circle.
In 1928, his own collaboration with the Surrealists took shape as the book Trois scenarii: ciné-poèmes ("Three Scenarios: Cine-poems"), published by Documents internationaux de l'esprt nouveau collection, with artwork by American
photographer Man Ray
and Romanian painter Alexandru Brătăşanu (one of his other contacts in the French Surrealist photographers' group was Eli Lotar
, the illegitimate son of Arghezi and nephew of Zissu). The "cine-poems" were intentionally conceived as unfilmable screenplays, in what was his personal statement about artistic compromise between experimental film
and the emerging worldwide film industry
. The book notably comprised his verdict about cinema being "the only art that was never classical."
: a regular presence in Cahiers du Sud of Carcassonne
, he had his work featured in the Surrealist press (Discontinuité, Le Phare de Neuilly, Bifur), as well as in Le Courrier des Poètes, Le Journal des Poètes, Romain Rolland
's Europe
, Paul Valéry
's Commerce etc. In addition, Fondane's research was hosted by specialized venues such as Revue Philosophique, Schweizer Annalen and Carlo Suarès
' Cahiers de l'Étoile. After a long period of indecision, the Romanian poet became a dedicated follower of Lev Shestov
, a Russian
-born existentialist
thinker whose ideas about the eternal opposition between faith
and reason
he expanded upon in later texts. According to intellectual historian Samuel Moyn
, Fondane was, with Rachel Bespaloff, one of the "most significant and devoted of Shestov's followers". In 1929, as a frequenter of Shestov's circle, Fondane also met Argentinian
female author Victoria Ocampo
, who became his close friend (after 1931, he became a contributor to her modernist review, Sur). Fondane's essays were more frequently than before philosophical in nature: Europe published his tribute Shestov (January 1929) and his comments of Edmund Husserl
's phenomenology, which included his own critique of rationalism
(June 1930).
Invited (on Ocampo's initiative) by the Amigos del Arte society of Buenos Aires
, Fondane left for Argentina and Uruguay
in summer 1929. The object of his visit was promoting French cinema with a set of lectures in Buenos Aires, Montevideo
and other cities (as he later stated in a Rampa interview with Sarina Cassvan-Pas, he introduced South America
ns to the work of Germaine Dulac
, Luis Buñuel
and Henri Gad). In this context, Fondane met essayist Eduardo Mallea
, who invited him to contribute in La Nación
s literary supplement. His other activities there included conferencing on Shestov at the University of Buenos Aires
and publishing articles on several subjects (from Shestov's philosophy to the poems of Tzara), but the fees received in return were, in his own account, too small to cover the cost of decent living.
In October 1929, Fondane was back in Paris, where he focused on translating and popularizing some of Romanian literature's milestone texts, from Mihai Eminescu
's Sărmanul Dionis to the poetry of Ion Barbu
, Minulescu, Arghezi and Bacovia. In the same context, the expatriate writer helped introduce Romanians to some of the new European tendencies, becoming, in the words of literary historian Paul Cernat, "the first important promoter of French Surrealism in Romanian culture."
joined the external editorial board of Integral magazine, an avant-garde tribune published in Bucharest by Ion Călugăru
, F. Brunea-Fox and Voronca. He was assigned a permanent column, known as Fenêtres sur l'Europe/Ferestre spre Europa (French and Romanian for "Windows on Europe"). With Barbu Florian, Fondane became a leading film reviewer for the magazine, pursuing his agenda in favor of non-commercial and "pure" films (such as René Clair
's Entr'acte
), and praising Charlie Chaplin
for his lyricism, but later making some concessions to talkies
and the regular Hollywood films
. Exploring what he defined as "the great ballet of contemporary French poetry", Fondane also published individual notes on writers Aragon, Jean Cocteau
, Joseph Delteil, Paul Éluard
and Pierre Reverdy
. In 1927, Integral also hosted one of Fondane's replies to the communist Surrealists in France, as Le surréalisme et la révolution ("Surrealism and Revolution").
He also came into contact with unu
, the Surrealist venue of Bucharest, which was edited by several of his avant-garde friends at home. His contributions there included a text on Tzara's post-Dada works, which he analyzed as Valéry-like "pure poetry". In December 1928, unu published some of Fondane's messages home, as Scrisori pierdute ("Lost Letters"). Between 1931 and 1934, Fondane was in regular correspondence with the unu writers, in particular Stephan Roll, F. Brunea-Fox and Saşa Pană
, being informed about their conflict with Voronca (attacked as a betrayer of the avant-garde) and witnessing from afar the eventual implosion of Romanian Surrealism on the model of French groups. In such dialogues, Roll complains about right-wing political censorship
in Romania, and speaks in some detail about his own conversion to Marxism
.
With Fondane's approval and Minulescu's assistance, Privelişti also saw print in Romania during 1930. Published by Editura Cultura Naţională, it sparked significant controversy with its nonconformist style, but also made the author the target of critics' interest. As a consequene, Fondane was also sending material to Isac Ludo
's Adam review, most of it notes (some hostile) clarifying ambiguous biographical detail discussed in Aderca's chronicle to Privelişti. His profile within the local avant-garde was also acknowledged in Italy
and Germany
: the Milan
ese magazine Fiera Letteraria commented on his poetry, reprinting fragments originally featured in Integral; in its issue of August–September 1930, the Expressionist
tribune Der Sturm
published samples of his works, alongside those of nine other Romanian modernists, translated by Leopold Kosch.
As Paul Daniel notes, the polemics surrounding Privelişti only lasted for a year, and Fondane was largely forgotten by the Romanian public after this moment. However, the discovery of Fondane's avant-garde stance by traditionalist circles took the form of bemusement or indignation, which lasted into the next decades. The conservative
critic Const. I. Emilian, whose 1931 study discussed modernism as a psychiatric condition, mentioned Fondane as one of the leading "extremists", and deplored his abandonment of traditionalist subjects. Some nine years later, the antisemitic far right newspaper Sfarmă-Piatră
, through the voice of Ovidiu Papadima
, accused Fondane and "the Jews" of having purposefully maintained "the illusion of a literary movement" under Lovinescu's leadership. Nevertheless, before that date, Lovinescu himself had come to criticize his former pupil (a disagreement which echoed his larger conflict with the unu group). Also in the 1930s, Fondane's work received coverage in the articles of two other maverick modernists: Perpessicius
, who viewed it with noted sympathy, and Lucian Boz, who found his new poems touched by "prolixity".
—Rimbaud le voyou ("Rimbaud the Hoodlum")—and, despite an earlier pledge not to return to poetry, a new series of poems. His eponymously titled study-portrait of German philosopher Martin Heidegger
was published by Cahiers du Sud in 1932. Despite his earlier rejection of commercial films, Fondane eventually became an employee of Paramount Pictures
, probably spurred on by his need to finance a personal project (reputedly, he was accepted there with a second application, his first one having been rejected in 1929). He worked first as an assistant director, before turning to screenwriting. Preserving his interest in Romanian developments, he visited the Paris set of Televiziune, a Romanian cinema production
for which he shared directorial credits. His growing interest in Voronca's own poetry led him to review it for Tudor Arghezi's Bucharest periodical, Bilete de Papagal
, where he stated: "Mr. Ilarie Voronca is at the top of his form. I'm gladly placing my stakes on him."
In 1931, the poet married Geneviève Tissier, a trained jurist and lapsed Catholic
. Their home on Rue Rollin subsequently became a venue for literary sessions, mostly grouping the Cahiers du Sud contributors. The aspiring author Paul Daniel, who became Rodica Wechsler's husband in 1935, attended such meetings with his wife, and recalls having met Gaultier, filmmaker Dimitri Kirsanoff
, music critic Boris de Schlözer, poets Yanette Delétang-Tardif and Thérèse Aubray, as well as Shestov's daughter Natalie Baranoff. Fondane also enjoyed a warm friendship with Constantin Brâncuşi
, the Romanian-born modern sculptor, visiting Brâncuşi's workshop on an almost daily basis and writing about his work in Cahiers de l'Étoile. He witnessed first-hand and described Brâncuşi's primitivist
techniques, likening his work to that of a "savage man".
Rimbaud le voyou was eventually published by Denoël & Steele company in 1933, the same year when Fondane published his poetry volume Ulysse ("Ulysses
") with Les Cahiers du Journal des Poètes. The Rimbaud study, partly written as a reply to Roland de Renéville's monograph
Rimbaud le Voyant ("Rimbaud the Seer"), consolidated Fondane's international reputation as a critic and literary historian. In the months after its publication, the book earned much praise from scholars and writers—from Joë Bousquet
, Jean Cocteau
, Benedetto Croce
and Louis-Ferdinand Céline
, to Jean Cassou
, Guillermo de Torre
and Miguel de Unamuno
. It also found admirers in the English
poet David Gascoyne
, who was afterward in correspondence with Fondane, and the American novelist Henry Miller
. Ulysse itself illustrated Fondane's interest in scholarly issues: he sent one autographed copy to Raïssa Maritain
, wife of Jacques Maritain
(both of whom were Catholic thinkers). Shortly after this period, the author was surprised to read Voronca's own French-language volume Ulysse dans la cité ("Ulysses in the City"): although puzzled by the similarity of titles with his own collection, he described Voronca as a "great poet." Also then, in Romania, B. Iosif completed the Yiddish translation of Fondane's Psalmul leprosului ("The Leper's Psalm"). The text, left in his care by Fondane before his 1923 departure, was first published in Di Woch, a periodical set up in Romania by poet Yankev Shternberg (October 31, 1934).
in Germany brought Fondane into the camp of anti-fascism
. In December 1934, his Apelul studenţimii ("The Call of Students") was circulated among the Romanian diaspora, and featured passionate calls for awareness: "Tomorrow, in concentration camps, it will be to late". The following year, he outlined his critique of all kinds of totalitarianism
, L'Écrivain devant la révolution ("The Writer Facing the Revolution"), supposed to be delivered in front of the Paris-held International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture (organized by left-wing and communist intellectuals with support from the Soviet Union
). According to historian Martin Stanton, Fondane's activity in film, like Jean-Paul Sartre
's parallel beginnings as a novelist, was itself a political statement in support of the Popular Front
: "[they were] hoping to introduce critical dimensions in the fields they felt the fascists
had colonized." Fondane nevertheless ridiculed the communist version of pacifism
as a "parade of big words", noting that it opposed mere slogans to concrete German re-armament
. Writing for the film magazine Les Cahiers Jaunes in 1933, he expressed the ambition of creating "an absurd
film about something absurd, to satisfy [one's] absurd taste for freedom".
Fondane left the Paramount studios the same year, disappointed with company policies and without having had any screen credit of his own (although, he claimed, there were over 100 Paramount scripts to which he had unsigned contributions). During 1935, he and Kirsanoff were in Switzerland, for the filming of Rapt, with a screenplay by Fondane (adapted from Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
's La séparation des races novel). The result was a highly poetic production, and, despite Fondane's still passionate defense of silent film
, the first talkie in Kirsanoff's career. The poet was enthusiastic about this collaboration, claiming that it had enjoyed a good reception from Spain
to Canada
, standing as a manifesto against the success of more "chatty" sound films. In particular, French critics and journalists hailed Rapt as a necessary break with the comédie en vaudeville
tradition. In the end, however, the independent product could not compete with the Hollywood industry, which was at the time monopolizing the French market
. In parallel with these events, Fondane followed Shestov's personal guidance and, by means of Cahiers du Sud, attacked philosopher Jean Wahl
's secular
reinterpretation of Søren Kierkegaard
's Christian existentialism
.
of the Argentine film industry
. This was his second option: initially, he contemplated filming a version of Ricardo Güiraldes
' Don Segundo Sombra
, but met opposition from Güiraldes' widow. While en route to Argentina, he became friends with Georgette Gaucher, a Breton
woman, with whom he was in correspondence for the rest of his life.
Under contract with the Falma-film company, Fondane was received with honors by the Romanian Argentine community, and, with the unusual cut of his preferred suit, is said to have even become a trendsetter in local fashion. For Ocampo and the Sur staff, literary historian Rosalie Sitman notes, his visit also meant an occasion to defy the xenophobic
and antisemitic agenda of Argentine nationalist circles. Centered on the tango
, Fondane's film enlisted contributions from some leading figures in several national film and music industries, having Miguel Machinandiarena as producer and John Alton
as editor
; in starred, among others, Orestes Caviglia
, Miguel Gómez Bao and Iris Marga. The manner in which Tararira approached its subject scandalized the Argentine public, and it was eventually rejected by its distributors (no copies survive, but writer Gloria Alcorta, who was present at a private screening, rated it a "masterpiece"). Fondane, who had earlier complained about the actors' resistance to his ideas, left Argentina before the film was actually finished. It was on his return trip that he met Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, with whom he and Geneviève became good friends.
With the money received in Buenos Aires, the writer contemplated returning on a visit to Romania, but he abandoned all such projects later in 1936, instead making his way to France. He followed up on his publishing activity in 1937, when his selected poems, Titanic, saw print. Encouraged by the reception given to Rimbaud le voyou, he published two more essays with Denoël & Steele: La Conscience malheureuse ("The Unhappy Consciousness", 1937) and Faux traité d'esthétique ("False Treatise of Aesthetics
", 1938). In 1938, he was working on a collected edition of his Ferestre spre Europa, supposed to be published in Bucharest but never actually seeing print. At around that date, Fondane was also a presenter for the Romanian edition of 20th Century Fox
's international newsreel
, Movietone News
.
In 1939, Fondane was naturalized
under the French nationality law
. This followed an independent initiative of the Société des écrivains français professional association, in recognition for his contribution to French letters. Cahiers du Sud collected the required 3,000 francs
fee through a public subscription, enlisting particularly large contributions from music producer Renaud de Jouvenel (brother of Bertrand de Jouvenel
) and philosopher-ethnologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
. Only months after this event, with the outbreak of World War II
, Fondane was drafted into the French Army
. During most of the "Phoney War" interval, considered too old for active service, he was in the military reserve force
, but in February 1940 was called under arms with the 216 Artillery Regiment. According to Lina, "he left [home] with unimaginable courage and faith." Stationed at the Sainte Assise Castle in Seine-Port
, he edited and stencil
ed a humorous gazette, L'Écho de la I C-ie ("The 1st Company Echo"), where he also published his last-ever work of poetry, Le poète en patrouille ("The Poet on Patrolling Duty").
. He managed to escape captivity, but was recaptured in short time. After falling ill with appendicitis
, he was transported back to Paris, kept in custody at the Val-de-Grâce
, and operated on. Fondane was eventually released, the German occupiers having decided that he was no longer fit for soldierly duty.
He was working on two poetry series, Super Flumina Babylonis (a reference to Psalm 137
) and L'Exode ("The Exodus"), as well as on his last essay, focusing on 19th century poet Charles Baudelaire
, and titled Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre ("Baudelaire and the Experience of the Abyss"). In addition to these, his other French texts, incomplete or unpublished by 1944, include: the poetic drama
pieces Philoctète, Les Puits de Maule ("Maule's Well", an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne
's The House of the Seven Gables
) and Le Féstin de Balthazar ("Belshazzar
's Feast"); a study about the life and work of Romanian-born philosopher Stéphane Lupasco
; and the selection from his interviews with Shestov, Sur les rives de l'Illisus ("On the Banks of the Illisus"). His very last text is believed to be a philosophical essay, Le Lundi existentiel ("The Existential Monday"), on which Fondane was working in 1944. Little is known about Provèrbes ("Proverbs"), which, he announced in 1933, was supposed to be an independent collection of poems.
According to various accounts, Fondane made a point of not leaving Paris, despite the growing restrictions and violence. However, others note that, as a precaution against the antisemitic measures in the occupied north
, he eventually made his way into the more permissive zone libre
, and only made returns to Paris in order to collect his books. Throughout this interval, the poet refused to wear the yellow badge
(mandatory for Jews), and, living in permanent risk, isolated himself from his wife, adopting an even more precarious lifestyle. He was still in contact with writers of various ethnic backgrounds, and active on the clandestine literary scene. In this context, Fondane stated his intellectual affiliation to the French Resistance
: his former Surrealist colleague Paul Éluard
published several of his poems in the pro-communist Europe
, under the name of Isaac Laquedem (a nod to the Wandering Jew
myth). Such pieces were later included, but left unsigned, in the anthology
L'Honneur des poètes ("The Honor of Poets"), published by the Resistance activists as an anti-Nazi manifesto. Fondane also preserved his column in Cahiers du Sud for as long as it was possible, and had his contributions published in several other clandestine journals.
After 1941, Fondane became friends with another Romanian existentialist in France, the younger Emil Cioran
. Their closeness signaled an important stage in the latter's career: Cioran was slowly moving away from his fascist sympathies and his antisemitic stance, and, although still connected to the revolutionary fascist Iron Guard
, had reintroduced cosmopolitanism
to his own critique of Romanian society. In 1943, transcending ideological boundaries, Fondane also had dinner with Mircea Eliade
, the Romanian novelist and philosopher, who, like their common friend Cioran, had an ambiguous connection with the far right. In 1942, his own Romanian citizenship rights, granted by the Jewish emancipation
of the early 1920s, where lost with the antisemitic legislation adopted by the Ion Antonescu
regime, which also officially banned his entire work as "Jewish". At around that time, his old friends outside France made unsuccessful efforts to obtain him a safe conduct to neutral countries. Such initiatives were notably taken by Jacques Maritain from his new home in the United States
and by Victoria Ocampo in Argentina.
, he was assigned to the local network of Holocaust perpetrators: after internment in the Drancy transit camp
, he was sent on one of the transports to the extermination camps in occupied Poland, reaching Auschwitz-Birkenau
. In the meantime, his family and friends remained largely unaware of his fate. After news of his arrest, several of his friends reportedly intervened to save him, including Cioran, Lupasco and writer Jean Paulhan
. According to some accounts, such efforts may have also involved another one of Cioran's friends, essayist Eugène Ionesco
(later known for his work in drama).
Accounts differ on what happened to his sister Lina. Paul Daniel believes that she decided to go looking for her brother, also went missing, and, in all probability, became a victim of another deportation. Other sources state that she was arrested at around the same time as, or even together with, her brother, and that they were both on the same transport to Auschwitz. According to other accounts, Fondane was in custody while his sister was not, and sent her a final letter from Drancy; Fondane, who had theoretical legal grounds for being spared deportation (a Christian wife), aware that Lina could not invoke them, sacrificed himself to be by her side. While in Drancy, he sent another letter, addressed to Geneviève, in which he asked for all his French poetry to be published in the future as Le Mal des fantômes ("The Ache of Phantoms"), and optimistically called himself "the traveler who isn't done traveling".
While Lina is believed to have been marked for death upon arrival (and immediately after sent to the gas chamber
), her brother survived the camp conditions for a few more months. He befriended two Jewish doctors, Moscovici and Klein, with whom he spent his free moments engaged in passionate discussions about philosophy and literature. As was later attested by a survivor of the camp, the poet himself was among the 700 inmates selected for extermination on October 2, 1944, when the Birkenau subsection outside Brzezinka
was being evicted by SS guards
. He was aware of impending death, and reportedly saw it as ironic that it came so near to an expected Allied
victory. After a short interval in Block 10, where he is said to have awaited his death with dignity and courage, he was driven to the gas chamber and murdered. His body was cremated, along with those of the other victims.
and Neoromantic
traditionalism. Literary historian Mircea Martin analyzed the very first of his as pastiche
s of several, sometimes contradictory, literary sources. These influences, he notes, come from local traditionalists, Romantics
and Neoromantics—Octavian Goga
(the inspiration for Fondane's earliest pieces), Grigore Alexandrescu
, Vasile Alecsandri
, George Coşbuc
, Ştefan Octavian Iosif
; from French Symbolists—Paul Verlaine
; and from Romanian disciples of Symbolism—Dimitrie Anghel
, George Bacovia
, Alexandru Macedonski
, Ion Minulescu
. The young author had a special appreciation for the 19th century national poet, Mihai Eminescu
. Familiar with Eminescu's entire poetic work, he was one of the young poets who tried to reconcile Eminescu's Neoromantic, ruralizing, traditionalism with the urban phenomenon that was Symbolism. While Fondane continued to credit Minulescu's radical and jocular Symbolism as a main influence on his own poems, this encounter was overall less significant than his enthusiasm for Eminescu; in contrast, Bacovia's desolate and macabre poetry left enduring traces in Fondane's work, shaping his depiction of provincial environments and even transforming his worldview.
Fondane's early affiliation with Ovid Densusianu
's version of Romania's Symbolist current
was, according to literary historian Dumitru Micu, superficial. Micu notes that the young Fondane sent his verse to be published by magazines with incompatible agendas, suggesting that his collaboration with Vieaţa Nouă was therefore incidental, but also that, around 1914, Fondane's own style was a "conventional Symbolism". Writing in 1915, the poet himself explained that his time with the magazine in question ought not be interpreted as anything other than conjectural. During his polemic with Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, he defined himself as an advocate of an "insolent" Symbolism, a category defined by and around Remy de Gourmont
. This perspective was further clarified in O lămurire..., which explained how Tăgăduinţa lui Petru was to be read: "A clear, although Symbolist, book. For it is, unmistakably, Symbolist. [...] Symbolism doesn't necessarily mean neologism, morbid, bizarre, decadent
, confusing and badly written. But rather—if there is talent—original, commonsensical, depth, non-imitation, lack of standard, subconscious, new and sometimes healthy." From a regional point of view, the young Fondane is sometimes included with Bacovia in the Moldavia
n branch of Romanian Symbolism, or, more particularly, in the Jewish Moldavian subsection.
The various stylistic directions of Fondane's early poetry came together in Privelişti. Mircea Martin reads in it the poet's emancipation from both Symbolism and traditionalism, despite it being opened with a dedication to Minulescu, and against Eugen Lovinescu
's belief that such pastoral
s were exclusively traditionalist. According to Martin, Privelişti parts from its Romantic predecessors by abandoning the "descriptive" and "sentimentalist
" in pastoral conventions: "Everything seems designed on purpose to confound and defy the traditional mindset." Similarly, writer-critic Gheorghe Crăciun found the Privelişti texts contiguous with other early forms of Romanian modernism.
Nevertheless, much of the volume still adheres to lyricism and the conventional idyll
format, primarily by identifying itself with the slow rhythms of country life. These traits were subsumed by literary historian George Călinescu
into a special category, that of "traditionalist Symbolism", centered on "that which brings man closer to Creation's interior life". The same commentator suggested that the concept linked modernism and traditionalism through the common influence of Charles Baudelaire
, whom Fondane himself credited as the "mystical power" behind Privelişti. The cycle also recalls Fondane's familiarity with another pastoral poet, Francis Jammes
. Of special note is an ode
, Lui Taliarh ("At Thaliarchus"), described by Călinescu as the masterpiece of Privelişti. Directly inspired by Horace
's Odes I.9, and seen by Martin as Fondane's will to integrate death into life (or "plenary living"), it equates existence with the seasonal cycle:
, rather than a return to Romantic ideals. In this interval, Fondane had also discovered the poetic revolution promoted by Tudor Arghezi
, who united traditionalist discourse with modernist themes, creating new poetic formats. Martin notes that Fondane, more than any other, tried to replicate Arghezi's abrupt prosody
and "tooth and nail" approach to the literary language
, but lacked his mentor's "verbal magic." The same critic suggests that the main effect of Arghezi's influence on Fondane was not in poetic form, but in determining the disciple to "discover himself", to seek his own independent voice. Paul Cernat also sees Fondane as indebted to Arghezi's mix of "cruelty" and "formal discipline". In contrast to such assessments, Călinescu saw Fondane not as an Arghezian pupil, but as a traditionalist "spiritually related" to Ion Pillat
's own post-Symbolist avatar. This verdict was implicitly or explicitly rejected by other commentators: Martin argued that Pillat's omnipresent "calm joy", modulated with "impeccable taste", clashed with Fondane's "tension", "surprises" and "intelligence superior to [his] talent"; Cernat assessed that Privelişti was at "the antipode" of Pillat and Jammes, that its themes pointed to social alienation
and a patriarchal
universe gone "off its rocker".
Statements made by the young Fondane, in which he explains his indifference toward the landscape as it is, and his preference for the landscape as the poet himself creates it, have been a traditional source for critical commentary. As Martin notes, this attitude led the poet and travel writer to express an apathy, or even boredom, in regard to the wild landscape, to promote "withdrawal" rather than "adhesion", "solitude" rather than "communion". However, as a way of cultivating a cosmic level of poetry, Fondane's work veered into synesthesia
and vitalism
, being commended by critics for its tactile, aural or olfactory suggestions. In one such poem, cited by Călinescu as a sample of "exquisite freshness", the author imagines being turned into a ripe watermelon
. These works also part with convention in matters of prosody
(with a modern treatment of alexandrine
s) and vocabulary
(a stated preference for Slavic
versus Romance
terminologies). In addition, Martin, who declared himself puzzled at noting that Fondane would not publish some of his most accomplished poems of youth, made special note of their occasional disregard for Romanian grammar
and other artistic license
s (left uncorrected by Paul Daniel on Fondane's explicit request). Some of the Privelişti poems look upon nature with ostentatious sarcasm, focusing on its grotesque
elements, its rawness and its repetitiveness, as well as attacking the idyllic portrayal of peasants in traditionalist literature. Martin notes in particular one of the untitled pieces about Hertza region
:
Literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu was the first to suggest, in the 1960s, that the underlying traits of such imagery made the post-Symbolist Fondane an Expressionist
poet, who had detected "the fundamental anarchy
of the universe". The verdict was echoed and amended by those of other critics. Martin finds that it applies to many of Fondane's early poems, where "explosive" imagery is central, but opines that, generally toned down by melancholy, their message too blends into a new form of "crepuscular wisdom". Scholar Dan Grigorescu stresses that the Neo-romantic and Symbolist element is dominant throughout the Privelişti volume and, contrary to Crohmălniceanu's thesis, argues that Fondane's projection of the self into the nature is not Expressionist, but rather a convention borrowed from Romanticism (except for "perhaps, [...] the exacerbated dilatation" in scenes in which terrified cattle are driven into town). In Grigorescu's interpretation, the volume has some similarities with the pastoral Expressionism of Romanian writers Lucian Blaga
and Adrian Maniu, as well as with the wilderness paintings of Franz Marc
, but is at "the opposite pole" from the "morbid hallucination" Expressionism of H. Bonciu
and Max Blecher
. He indicates that, overall, Fondane's contributions confuse critics by following "contradictory directions", a mix that "hardly finds any grounds for comparison within [Romanian] poetry." In contrast, Paul Cernat sees both Fondane's poetry and Ion Călugăru
's prose as "Expressionist écorché
s", and connects Fondane's "modern attitude" to his familiarity with the poems of Arthur Rimbaud
.
, the poet stated that Symbolism was dead, and in subsequent articles drew a line between the original and non-original sides of Romanian Symbolism, becoming particularly critical of Macedonski. Defining his programatic approach as leading, through the avant-garde, into a Neoclassical
modernism (or a "new Classicism
"), Benjamin Fondane argued: "To be excessive: that is the only way of being innovative." His perspective, mixing revolt and messages about creating a new tradition, was relatively close to Contimporanuls own artistic program, and as such a variant of Constructivism
. During his own transition from Symbolism, Fondane looked on the avant-garde itself with critical distance. Discussing it as the product of a tradition leading back to Stéphane Mallarmé
, he reproached Cubism
for displaying a limitation of range, and viewed Futurism
as essentially destructive (but also useful for having created a virgin territory to support "constructive man"); likewise, he found Dada
a solid, but limited, method of combating interwar period
's "metaphysical despair".
The affiliation to the avant-garde came with a sharp critique of Romanian culture
, accused by Fondane of promoting imitation and parochialism
. During a period which ended with his 1923 departure, the young poet sparked polemic with a series of statements in which, reviewing the impact of local Francophilia, he equated Romania with a colony
of France. This theory proposed a difference between Westernization
and "parasitism
": "If a foreign intellectual direction is always useful, an alien soul is always a danger." He did not cease to promote foreign culture at home, but stated a complex argument about the need to recognize differences in culture: his global conclusion about civilizations, which he viewed as equal but not identical, built on Gourmont's theory about an "intellectual constancy" throughout human history, as well as on philosopher Henri Bergson
's critique of mechanism
. In parallel, Fondane criticized the cultural setting of Greater Romania
, noting that it was so Bucharest
-focused that Transylvania
n authors only became widely known by attending the capital's Casa Capşa
restaurant. In his retrospective interpretation of Romanian literature, the avant-garde essayist stated that there were precious few authors who could be considered original, primarily citing Ion Creangă
, the peasant writer, as a model of authenticity. While stating this point in his Imagini şi cărţi din Franţa, Fondane cited in his favor a traditionalist culture critic, historian Nicolae Iorga
.
However, during a virtual polemic with Poporanism
(hosted by Sburătorul
in 1922), Fondane also questioned the originality and Thraco-Roman
origin of Romanian folklore
, as well as, through it, historical myths surrounding the Latin ethnogenesis: "Present-day Romania, of obscure origins, Thraco-Roman-Slavic
-Barbarian
, owes its existence and present-day European inclusion to a fecund error [...]: it is the idea of our Latin origin [Fondane's italics]." Likewise, the author put forth the thesis according to which traditionalists such as Mihail Sadoveanu
and George Coşbuc
invoked literary themes present not just in Romania's archaic tradition, but also in Slavic folklore. Fondane went on to draw a comparison between the idea of Jewish chosenness
and that of Romanian Latinity
, concluding that they both resulted in positive national goals (in the case of Romania and its inhabitants, that of "becoming part of Europe"). Paul Cernat found his perspective "more reasonable" than that of his Contimporanul colleagues, who speculated about creating a modernity on folkloric roots.
Scholar Constantin Pricop interprets Fondane's overall perspective as that of a "constructive" critic, citing a fragment of Imagini şi cărţi din Franţa: "Let us hope the time will come when we may bring our personal contribution into Europe. [...] Until such time, let's keep a check on the continuous assimilation of foreign culture [...]; let's therefore return to cultural critic
ism." Commenting at length on the probable motivations of Fondane's discourse, Cernat suggests that, like many of his avant-garde colleagues, Fondane experienced a "peripheral complex", merging Bovarysme
and frustrated ambition. According to Cernat, the poet surpassed this moment after experiencing success in France, and his decision to have Privelişti printed at home was intended as a special tribute to Romania and its language. There is however a pronounced difference between Fondane's French and Romanian work, as discussed by critics and by Fondane himself. The elements of continuity are highlighted in Crăciun's account: "French literature
and culture
signified for Fundoianu a process of clarification and self-definition, but not a change of identity."
or Judaism
, with a focus on his Hasidic
roots. According to Swedish
researcher Tom Sandqvist (who discusses the Jewish background of many Romanian avant-garde authors and artists), the Hasidic and Kabbalah
connection is enhanced by both the pantheistic
vision of Tăgăduinţa lui Petru and the "Ein Sof
-like emptiness" suggested in Privelişti. Paul Cernat too argued that the traditionalist elements in Fondane's work reflected Hasidism as it was experienced in Galicia or Bukovina
, as well as the direct influence of Jacob Gropper. According to George Călinescu's analysis (originally stated in 1941), Fondane's origin within the rural minority of Romanian Jews (and not the urban Jewish mainstream) was of special psychological interest: "The poet is a Jew from Moldavia, where Jews have almost pastoral professions, but are nevertheless prevented by a tradition of market agglomerations from fully enjoying the sincerity of rustic life." The fond memory of Judaic practice is notably intertwined with the Privelişti pastorals:
Fondane expanded on his interest in the Jewish heritage in his early prose and drama. The various pre-1923 articles, including his obituary pieces for Elias Schwartzfeld and Avram Steuerman-Rodion
, speak at length about Jewish ethics
(which Fondane described as unique and idealistic
), assimilation
and Jewish nationalism. They also offer his answer to antisemitism, including his case, relying on proof of Jewish exogamy
, against all theories about a distinct Semitic
race. In other such pieces, he comments at length on Gropper's Yiddishist literature and corrects opinions expressed on the same topic by their common friend Gala Galaction
. As he explains in this context, Gropper quelled his adolescent identity crisis, helping him find a core Judaism, more "vital" to him than the political scope of Zionism. During these dialogues, Fondane recalled, he first discovered his interest in philosophy: he played the "Sophist
", paradoxical and abstract, in front of the "sentimental" Gropper. This antithesis
also inspired the core essay in Iudaism şi elenism, where Fondane writes at length about the hostile dialogue between Jewish philosophy
, in search of fundamental truths, and Greek thought, with its ultimate value of beauty.
Tăgăduinţa lui Petru, believed by Mircea Martin to be a sample of Fondane's debt to André Gide
, is the first of his works to take inspiration from the Bible (in this case, looking beyond the Talmud
). Also Biblical in subject, Monologul lui Baltazar has been interpreted by Crohmălniceanu as a negative comment on nihilism
and the Übermensch
theory, notions embodied by the protagonist Belshazzar
, legendary ruler of Babylon
during the Jewish captivity
. Fondane's progressive focus on Jewish Biblical sources mirrored the Christian interests of his mentor Arghezi. Like Arghezi, Fondane wrote a series of Psalms
—although, according to Martin, his tone was "too cadenced and solemn for one to expect a confrontation or a touching confession". However, Martin notes, the Jewish author either adopted or anticipated (depending on the reliability of his manuscripts' dating) Arghezi's poetry of exhortation and curses, in which ugliness, baseness and destitution speak directly to divinity. These sentiments are found in Fondane's Psalmul leprosului, which the same critic identifies as "the series' masterpiece":
milieus (an affiliation illustrated primarily by his filmmaker and popularizer activities, rather than by his literary creation), Benjamin Fondane remained an existentialist
, primarily following Lev Shestov
's views on the human condition
. This came as a critique of the scientific method
and rationalism
as human explanations of the world, notably outlined in his own Faux traité d'esthétique. Probably developed independently from Shestovist thought, his overall objection toward abstract projects has been likened by essayist Gina Sebastian Alcalay to the later stances of André Glucksmann
or Edgar Morin
. These attitudes shaped his assessments of Surrealism. In one of Integral chronicles, Fondane himself explained that the movement, described as superior to Dada's "joyous suicide", had created a "new continent" with its rediscovery of dreams. Poet and critic Armelle Chitrit notes that, in part, Fondane's later dissidence was also motivated on an existentialist level, since Surrealism "had stopped asking questions"; instead, she notes, Fondane "believed neither in reason nor in any system based on it. It is folly, he wrote, to perpetuate the attempt to make man and history cohabitable. One of [S]hestov's rare disciples, he sets only the powers of life against those of chaos." As Fondane wrote to Claude Sernet, Rimbaud le voyou was in part at attempt at preventing the other Surrealists from confiscating Rimbaud's mythical status. According to Romanian-born writer Lucian Raicu, its "somber" tone and allusive language are also early clues that Fondane had a nightmarish vision of the political and intellectual climate. His Shestovist interpretation, opposing existence to ideas, was contested by intellectual figure Raymond Queneau
: himself a former Surrealist, Queneau suggested that Fondane was relying on blind faith, having a distorted perspective on science, literature and the human intellect. Furthermore, he noted that, under the influence of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
, Fondane described reality exclusively in primitivist
terms, as the realm of savagery and superstition
.
Fondane's objection to the communist
flirtations of the main Surrealist wing had roots in his earlier discourse: before leaving Romania, Fondane had criticized socialism
as a modern myth, symptomatic of a generalized desecration
, suggesting that Leninist
and Labor Zionist
projects were economically unsound. Much admired by Emil Cioran
for his rejection of all modern ideology, the poet argued that a critical distance imposed itself between artists and social structures, and, although he too reacted against "bourgeois" culture, concluded that communism carried a greater risk for the independent mind. In particular, he objected to the Marxist
theory on base and superstructure
: although his planned address for the Writers' Congress spoke of Marxian economics
as being justified by reality, it also argued that economic relationships could not be used to explain all historical developments. His critique of the Soviet Union
as an equally "bourgeois" society also came with the argument that Futurism, not Surrealism, could transform into art the communist version of voluntarism.
Fondane found himself opposed to the general trend of intellectual partisanship, and took pride in defining himself as a politically independent skeptic. Around 1936, he reacted strongly against Julien Benda
's rationalist political essays, with their overall critique of intellectual passions, describing them as revived and "excruciatingly boring" versions of positivism
, but ignoring their primary, anti-totalitarian, agenda. However, La Conscience malheureuse (with essays on Shestov, Edmund Husserl
, Friedrich Nietzsche
and Søren Kierkegaard
) was noted as Fondane's own contribution to the debate surrounding Popular Front
activities and the rise of fascism
: titled after a concept in Hegelian philosophy
, which originally referred to the thinking process generating its own divisions, it referred to the possibility of thinkers to interact with the larger world, beyond subjectivity
.
Rallying himself with the main trends of Jewish existentialism
, the poet remained critical of other existentialist schools, such as those of Martin Heidegger
and Jean-Paul Sartre
, believing them to be overly reliant on dialectics, and therefore on rational thought; likewise, citing Kierkegaard as his reference point, Fondane criticized Jean Wahl
for not discussing existential philosophy as an act of faith. His dislike for secular existentialism was also outlined in a text he authored shortly before his 1944 arrest, where he spoke of the Bible as being, "whether or not it wants to", the original reference for all existential philosophy. Geneviève Tissier-Fondane later recalled that her husband was "profoundly Jewish" to his death, but also that he would not abide by any formal regulation within the Halakha
tradition. This approach also implied a measure of ecumenism
: Jacques Maritain
, who cultivated his relationship with Fondane across the religious and philosophical divides, described his friend as "a disciple of Shestov but one inhabited by the Gospel
"; Fondane himself explained to Maritain that Shestov and himself were aiming for a new Judaic philosophy that would be equally indebted to the Christianity of Kierkegaard, Martin Luther
and Tertullian
. He was critical of Maritain's worldview, but remained a passionate reader of his work; in contrast, Geneviève attested that the Maritains' beliefs shaped her own, leasing her back into the Church.
, Rimbaud had not merely abandoned poetry for the sake of adventure, but rather transformed his lifestyle into a poetry of incertitude and personal ambition. As Fondane explained in his Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre, a poet and thinker could also evidence the abyss he faced, and alleviate his own anxiety
, through the use of irony: "Laugh in the face of tragedy, or disappear!"
According to Cernat, his articles for Integral show Fondane as an ally of the "anti-political" and lyrical side of Surrealism, a poet placing his trust in "the negative-soteriological
, liberating function of poetry". The impact of existentialist philosophy was even traced to the "cine-poems" by Martin Stanton (who called the pieces "amazing"). In contrast to the Surrealists, Fondane did not believe in a need to circulate poems as universal messages, but rather saw them as the basis for a very personal relationship with the reader: "This is not a time for print. Poetry is seeking its friends, not an audience. [...] Poetry will be for the few—or it will not be at all." Chitrit, who parallels Fondane's definitions with the similar views of Romanian poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan
, concludes: "This is probably the closest that we can come to seeing contemporary poetry." Fondane's other literary works also evidence the impact of his philosophical preoccupations. With Le Féstin de Balthazar, the writer modified his earlier Monologul by adopting Shestivist themes (introducing allegorical
characters who discuss Aristotelianism
, capitalism
and revolution) and by introducing some elements from the burlesque
. Originally conceived in 1918 and completed in 1933, Philoctète reworked Sophocles
' play of the same title
, interpreting it through the style of Gide's dramas.
Ulysse was an epic poem
in free verse
, the first such work in Fondane's career, and testing a format later adopted in Titanic and L'Exode. Although quite similar to Voronca's own work, which also used Homer
's Odyssey
as the pretext for a comment on social alienation
, it included an additional allegory of Jewishness (according to critic Petre Răileanu, Voronca had stripped his own text of Jewish symbolism, in the hope of not entering a competition with Fondane). Fondane's 1933 text echoes his earlier intertextual
Homeric references (present in poems he wrote back in 1914), but, to their adventurous escapism
, it opposes the Ithaca metaphor
—an ideal of stability in the assumption of one's destiny. Claude Sernet referred to Ulysse as "painful and sober, a cry of anxiety, of revolt and resignation, a fraternal and noble song to mankind". The poem is also Fondane's comment on the Wandering Jew
story (the mythical figure is rescaled into an urban Ulysses
), and, according to cultural historian Andrei Oişteanu
, reinterprets the Christian prejudice about Jews being eternal "witnesses" of Christ's Passion
. Together, such motifs intimated the writer's own experiences, leading various commentators to conclude that he too was "the Jewish Ulysses". Italian academic Gisèle Vanhese, who connects this lyrical discourse with Fondane's "experience of the abyss" concept, notes that ocean waters are the vehicles of nomadism in Ulysse, while, in Titanic, the same environment serves as a metaphor of dying.
In Cioran's account, Benjamin Fondane lived his final years permanently aware "of a misfortune that was about to happen", and built a "complicity with the unavoidable". The same is noted by German Romanian
poet and Cioran exegete Dieter Schlesak, who suggests: "Fondane was a man who wished to bear the absolute uncertainty of the outside; that which exists is an intermittent, not continuous, reality. But [true misfortune] is the boredom of faint unliving, [...] of things implied, these being the ones [Fondane] hated." Fondane's visions about history and the role of poetry were notably outlined in L'Exode, a portion of which is dedicated to the powerlessness of Jews in front of prejudice. According to Oişteanu, this text, where the narrative voice speaks of sufferings and defects common in all humans, was probably inspired by the famous monologue in William Shakespeare
's The Merchant of Venice
. Another part, called "astonishingly prophetic" and "cynical apocalyptic" by Chitrit, reads:
Similar themes were being explored by the Super Flumina Babylonis cycle, described by Sernet as "a terrible foreshadowing of events into which peoples and continents were about to sink, into which the author himself was to be dragged without the possibility of return." Writing about the entirety of Fondane's French poetry (Le Mal des fantômes), poet and language theorist Henri Meschonnic
argued that the Romanian author was unique in depicting "the revolt and the flavor of life mixed into the sense of death".
, tutoring the children of Antoinette and Alexander Grunelius. A devout Catholic, she eventually retreated from public life, becoming a nun in the Congregation of Notre-Dame de Sion
(dedicated to Catholic missionary work among the Jews). Relocating to the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève
, she died, after a long battle with cancer
, in March 1954. Fondane was also survived by his mother Adela, who died in June 1953 at age 94, and sister Rodica (d. 1967).
The writer was the subject of several visual portrayals by noted artists, some of whom were his personal friends. During his collaboration with Integral and unu, Victor Brauner
and Jules Perahim both drew his vignette portraits (the former as part of a series titled film unu). He is the subject of a 1930 sketch by Constantin Brâncuşi
, a 1931 Surrealist painting by Brauner (who also painted one of Adela Schwartzfeld), and an artistic photograph by Man Ray
. The 1934 edition of Psalmul leprosului featured Fondane's portrait in the hand of graphic artist Sigmund Maur (the original version of which was dated to 1921). A posthumous image of the poet in military attire was drawn by Romanian-born artist Eugen Drăguţescu
. Benjamin Fondane was also commemorated with a mention on the Panthéon
plaque, among the Morts pour la France (reportedly, his name was added upon a request from Cioran). There is a similar landmark in Iaşi's Eternitatea cemetery
, set up by the Writers' Union of Romania
near his family grave.
The poet-philosopher left behind a large manuscript collection, a personal library and a set of works due for publishing. His book collection was split into individual documentary funds, some located in France and others in Romania. In February 1930, Benjamin Fondane explained that he did not consider revisiting his land of birth until such time as his earlier volumes would be printed, indicating that these included (in addition to Privelişti): Ferestre spre Europa, Imagini şi scriitori români ("Images and Romanian Writers"), Caietele unui inactual ("The Notebooks of an Outdated Man"), Probleme vesele ("Merry Problems"), Dialoguri ("Dialogues") and an introduction to the work of art critic Walter Pater
. Among Fondane's other Romanian works, unpublished at the time of his death, were the prose poem Herţa ("Hertza"), Note dintr-un confesional and many other prose fragments and poems, all preserved in Daniel's manuscript collection. According to Paul Daniel, part of the poet's book collection in Romania was left in the care of literary critic Lucian Boz, who sold it upon his departure for Australia
. In France, the copyright
to Fondane's work was passed on in the late 20th century to scholar Michel Carassou, who was personally involved in several publication projects.
edited the first-ever version of Le Lundi existentiel. A Fondane reader (comprising L'Exode) was being planned around 1946, and supposed to be published by Les Éditions de Minuit
, with contributions from poets Jean Lescure
and Paul Éluard
. Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre was eventually published by Éditions Seghers in 1947, under the supervision of Jean Cassou
(second edition 1972; third edition 1973). Sernet was also the author of the poem À Benjamain Fondane, déporté ("To Benjamin Fondane, Upon His Deportation"), reportedly dated June 3, 1944. Recollections of Fondane's activity and his friendship with Victoria Ocampo
are also found in Ocampo's series Testimonios ("Testimonies").
With support from Culture Minister
André Malraux
, Sernet also published a 1965 bound version of L'Exode and Super Flumina..., reconstructed from the fragmentary manuscripts. Also on Sernet's initiative, Le Chant du Monde record label
and comedienne Ève Griliquez released an LP album
of public recitations from his work. Other collections of his written work were published in later years, including his Écrits pour le cinéma ("Writings for the Cinema", 1984), Le Féstin de Balthazar (1985), Le Lundi existentiel (1989), and Le Mal des fantômes (1996). His interviews with Shestov, left by the poet in Ocampo's care, were collected in 1982, as Rencontres avec Léon Chestov ("Meetings with Lev Shestov"). Fondane's notes on Dada
, as well as other documents, saw print in 1996, as Le voyageur n'a pas fini de voyager ("The Traveler Isn't Done Traveling"). The following year, Fondane scholar Monique Jutrin discovered and published his manuscript speech for the 1935 Congress, L'Écrivain devant la révolution. Another previouly unknown text, the screenplay sketch Une journée d'ivresse ("A Day of Drunkenness"), was included by editors Carassou and Petre Răileanu in a critical edition of 1999.
In the Western world
(including the Romanian diaspora
), there were a few authors whose work was influenced directly by Fondane's, among them Voronca and David Gascoyne
. Gascoyne, the author of "I.M. Benjamin Fondane" poem and recollection pieces on their friendship, spoke of the Romanian as a mentor, with a "decisive and lasting influence" on his own writings. France is home to a Benjamin Fondane Studies Society, which organizes an annual workshop in Peyresq
. Since 1994, it publishes the academic review Cahiers Benjamin Fondane, which has recovered and published much of Fondane's correspondence and political texts. In 2006, following a Fondane Society request, a square on Paris' Rue Rollin was renamed in honor of the Romanian-born writer. Three years later, on the 65th commemoration of Fondane's killing, the Mémorial de la Shoah museum hosted a special exhibit dedicated his life and literary work. In Israel
, a fragment from his L'Exode is engraved in English and Hebrew
versions on the entrance of Yad Vashem
memorial.
By the late 1970s, Fondane's Romanian work was attracting researchers and authors of monograph
s from various other countries, in particular the United States
(John Kenneth Hyde, Eric Freedman etc.) and Communist Czechoslovakia (Libuše Valentová). In West Germany
, Fondane's poetic and philosophical contributions were in focus by 1986, when exiled poet Dieter Schlesak published translated samples in Akzente journal. Preceded by Gascoyne's French-to-English translation attempts from Fondane, American film editor Julian Semilian's contribution as a translator from Romanian is credited with having played an important part in introducing the Anglosphere
to the writings of Fondane and various other Romanian modernists. The first-ever volume of Hebrew translations from Fondane's verse saw print in 2003, with support from Tel Aviv University
. Other international echoes include the publication of Odile Serre's Romanian-to-French translations from his early poems.
Recognition of Fondane's overall contribution was however rare, as noted in 1989 by Martin Stanton: "[Fondane is] surely the most underestimated intellectual of the 1930s". Writing some nine years later, Chitrit also argued: "His works [...] are as important as they are unknown." Cioran, who in 1986 dedicated a portion of his Exercises in Admiration collection to his deceased friend, mentioned that Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre, made memorable by its study of boredom as a literary subject, had since found numerous readers. Cioran kept a fond memory of his friend, and recalled not being able to pass on Rue Rollin without experiencing "terrible pain". Awareness of Fondane's philosophy was nevertheless judged unsatisfactory by scholar Moshe Idel. Speaking in 2007, he suggested that Fondane the philosopher remained less familiar to Jewish studies
academics in Israel than his various counterparts in Germanic Europe
.
Argentinian director Edgardo Cozarinsky
, who was inspired in his youth by Fondane's introduction of avant-garde films (preserved in the Argentine Film Archives), staged and narrated a dramatized version of his biography, performed at the Villa Ocampo
. Fondane scholar Olivier Salazar-Ferrer also authored a theatrical adaptation of L'Exode (premiered by France's Théâtre de La Mouvance company in 2008).
s of several authors. One special case is Arghezi, who, despite his disciple's admiration, left a sarcastic and intentionally demoralizing portrayal of Fondane in his 1930 volume Poarta Neagră. A year after the poet's death at Auschwitz, Arghezi returned with a sympathetic obituary, printed in Revista Fundaţiilor Regale. Fondane was also the subject of a Surrealist poem in prose, or "short-circuit", by Stephan Roll, where he was referred to as "a Don Juan
of the brain's lineage from God". A very hostile depiction of Fondane and other Jewish writers, noted for its antisemitic undertones, was present in the 1942 memoirs of writer Victor Eftimiu
. A reflection of the late 1940s communization of Romania, Saşa Pană's recollection piece De la B. Fundoianu la Benjamin Fondane ("From B. Fundoianu to Benjamin Fondane"), published by Orizont review, reinterpreted some of the poet's activities, and avant-garde history in general, from a partisan Marxist vantage point. Later memoirs mentioning the writer include a piece by Adrian Maniu in the Cluj
-based magazine Steaua (December 1963) and a new tribute by Pană in Luceafărul (October 1964). Pană's recollections were later turned into a larger narrative, the 1973 autobiographical novel Născut în 02 ("Born in '02"). Fondane also features prominently in Claudia Millian's Cartea mea de aduceri-aminte ("My Book of Recollections"), published the same year as Pană's volume. Also in 1973, the former Surrealist campaigner Geo Bogza
dedicated Fondane an eponymous prose poem, centered on an existential contradiction: "To be born in Moldavia, in sweet, gentle Moldavia... and to end up in the furnaces at Auschwitz." Among the younger Romanian poets, who debuted during communism, Nichita Stănescu
was influenced by Privelişti in some of his own earliest works, as was Andrei Codrescu
.
Posthumous Romanian editions of Fondane's works included the selection Poezii ("Poems"), edited by the former Surrealist author Virgil Teodorescu (Editura pentru Literatură, 1965), and Daniel's new version of Privelişti (Cartea Românească, 1974), followed in 1978 by the Martin and Daniel selection, and in 1980 by Teodorescu and Martin's Imagini şi cărţi ("Images and Books", grouping Fondane's French literary studies, as translated by Sorin Mărculescu). Translated by Romulus Vulpescu, Le poète en patrouille was featured in Manuscriptum review (1974). During communism, various Romanian scholars who dedicated significant portions of their work to Fondane studies; in addition to Martin, Ovid Crohmălniceanu and Dumitru Micu, they include: Paul Cornea, Nicolae Manolescu
, Dan Mănucă, Marin Mincu, Dan Petrescu, Mihail Petroveanu and Ion Pop. In the 1980s, modern classical composer Doru Popovici
completed the cantata
In memoriam Beniamin Fundoianu (lyrics by Victor Bârlădeanu).
Writing in 1978, Martin noted that the focus of such recoveries was on Fondane's poetry, while Fondane the thinker and "informed commentator", "one of the most evolved critical voices in 1920s Romanian culture
", remained unfamiliar to Romanians. The limits on Fondane's posthumous circulation were partly dictated by the policies of Communist Romania
. In 1975, the censorship apparatus
(who followed national communist
ideas about restricting references to Judaism) removed references to Fondane's ethnic and religious background from a reprint of Arghezi's 1945 text. In 1980, a version of his Mântuirea series, Iudaism şi elenism, was purged from Imagini şi cărţi, on orders from the same institution. Martin's 1984 monograph, Introducere în opera lui B. Fundoianu ("An Introduction to B. Fundoianu's Work"), was saluted as "penetrating" by his colleague Gheorghe Crăciun. The same study is primarily noted by Paul Cernat as a "problem-oriented" text about the "complexes
" of Romanian culture, and therefore an implicit reaction against the national communism promoted under Nicolae Ceauşescu
.
The hidden parts of Benjamin Fondane's contribution became accessible only after the anti-communist uprising of 1989
. In 1999, the Jewish community publishers, Editura Hasefer, issued Iudaism şi elenism (with scholars Leon Volovici and Remus Zăstroiu as editors). The same year, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania published an anthology of his texts, Strigăt întru eternitate ("A Shout unto Eternity"), and Editura Echinox a concordance dictionary
of his poetry (one of several such projects initiated by linguist Marian Papahagi). In 2004, Mircea Martin and Ion Pop also collected Fondane's political essays as Scriitorul în faţa revoluţiei (titled after the Romanian version of L'Écrivain devant la révolution). Writing in 2001, Crăciun assessed that the poet was still "non-integrated" into his native Romanian culture, which mostly perceived him as estranged, and his work in the vernacular as traditionalist. Eight years later, comparatist
Irina Georgescu assessed that interest in the more unknown aspects of Fondane's work had been rekindled by public conferences and new monographs (among which she cites the contributions of scholars Mariana Boca, Nedeea Burcă and Ana-Maria Tomescu). Le Féstin de Balthazar was performed in its Romanian version (Ospăţul lui Baltazar), directed by Alexandru Dabija for the Nottara Theater company. The 65th commemoration of Fondane's death was marked locally with several events, including the premiere of Andreea Tănăsescu's Exil în pământul uitării ("Exile to the Land of Oblivion"), a contemporary ballet
and performance art
show loosely inspired by his poetry. In 2006, the Romanian Cultural Institute
set up the Benjamin Fondane International Award for Francophone literature
in countries outside France.
Fondane's literary posterity was also touched by an extended controversy, notably involving Mircea Martin and philosopher Mihai Şora. The scandal was ignited after October 2007, when Şora and poet Luiza Palanciuc set up the Restitutio Benjamin Fondane translation program, with support from Editura Limes and Observator Cultural
magazine. Martin contested this initiative, arguing that he had earlier publicized his intent of editing a Romanian-language Fondane reader, and claiming legal precedence on copyrights. A parallel conflict ensued between Editura Limes and Observator Cultural, after which the Restitutio program split into separate projects.
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n and French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
poet, critic and existentialist
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic
Neo-romanticism
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...
and Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
themes with echoes from Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...
, and dedicated several poetic cycles to the rural life of his native Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
. Fondane, who was of Jewish Romanian
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
extraction and a nephew of Jewish intellectuals Elias and Moses Schwartzfeld, participated in both minority secular Jewish culture
Secular Jewish culture
Secular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the international culture of secular communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews...
and mainstream Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
. During and after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he was active as a cultural critic
Cultural critic
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...
, avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
promoter and, with his brother-in-law Armand Pascal, manager of the theatrical troupe Insula.
Fondane began a second career in 1923, when he moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Affiliated with Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, but strongly opposed to its communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
leanings, he moved on to become a figure in Jewish existentialism
Jewish existentialism
Jewish existentialism is a category of work by Jewish authors dealing with existentialist themes and concepts , and intended to answer theological questions that are important in Judaism. The existential angst of Job is an example from the Hebrew Bible of the existentialist theme...
and a leading disciple of Lev Shestov
Lev Shestov
Lev Isaakovich Shestov , born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann , was a Ukrainian/Russian existentialist philosopher. Born in Kiev on , he emigrated to France in 1921, fleeing from the aftermath of the October Revolution. He lived in Paris until his death on November 19, 1938.- Life :Shestov was born Lev...
. His critique of political dogma, rejection of rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, expectation of historical catastrophe and belief in the soteriological
Soteriology
The branch of Christian theology that deals with salvation and redemption is called Soteriology. It is derived from the Greek sōtērion + English -logy....
force of literature were outlined in his celebrated essays on Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
and Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
, as well as in his final works of poetry. His literary and philosophical activities helped him build close relationships with other intellectuals: Shestov, Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
, David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...
, Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
, Victoria Ocampo
Victoria Ocampo
Victoria Ocampo Aguirre was an Argentine writer and intellectual, described by Jorge Luis Borges as La mujer más argentina ....
, Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...
etc. In parallel, Fondane also had a career in cinema: a film critic and a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, he later worked on Rapt with Dimitri Kirsanoff
Dimitri Kirsanoff
Dimitri Kirsanoff was an early filmmaker, considered part of the French Impressionist movement in film. He is known for his inexpensively made experimental films.-Early life:...
, and directed the since-lost film Tararira in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
.
A prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
during the fall of France, Fondane was released and spent the occupation years in clandestinity. He was eventually captured and handed to Nazi German
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
authorities, who deported him to Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
. He was sent to the gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
during the last wave of the Holocaust. His work was largely rediscovered later in the 20th century, when it became the subject of scholarly research and public curiosity in both France and Romania. In the latter country, this revival of interest also sparked a controversy over copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
issues.
Early life
The future writer was born in IaşiIasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
, the cultural capital of Moldavia, on November 14, 1898, but, as he noted in a diary he kept at age 16, his birthday was officially recorded as November 15. Fondane was the only son of Isac Wechsler and his wife Adela (née Schwartzfeld), who also bore the sisters Lina (b. 1892) and Rodica (b. 1905), both of whom had careers in acting. Wechsler was a Jewish man from Hertza region
Hertza region
Hertza region is the territory of an administrative district of Hertsa in the southern part of Chernivtsi Oblast in southwestern Ukraine, on the Romanian border...
, his ancestors having been born on the Fundoaia estate (which the poet later used as the basis for his signature). Adela was from an intellectual family, of noted influence within the urban Jewish community: her father, poet B. Schwartzfeld, was the owner of a book collection, while her uncles Elias and Moses both had careers in humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
. Adela herself was well acquainted with the intellectual elite of Iaşi, Jewish as well as ethnic Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
, and kept recollections of her encounters with authors linked with the Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...
society. Through Moses Schwartzfeld, Fondane was also related with socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
journalist Avram Steuerman-Rodion
Avram Steuerman-Rodion
Avram Steuerman-Rodion, born Adolf Steuerman or Steuermann and often referred to as just Rodion , was a Romanian poet, anthologist, physician and socialist journalist...
, one of the literary men who nurtured the boy's interest in literature.
The young Benjamin was an avid reader, primarily interested in the Moldavian classics of Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
(Ion Neculce
Ion Neculce
Ion Neculce was a Moldavian chronicler. His main work, Letopiseţul Ţărâi Moldovei [de la Dabija Vodă până la a doua domnie a lui Constantin Mavrocordat] was meant to extend Ion Neculce's narrative, covering events from 1661 to 1743.-Life:Ion Neculce...
, Miron Costin
Miron Costin
Miron Costin was a Moldavian political figure and chronicler. His main work, Letopiseţul Ţărâi Moldovei [de la Aron Vodă încoace] was meant to extend Grigore Ureche's narrative, covering events from 1594 to 1660...
, Dosoftei
Dosoftei
Dimitrie Barilă, better known under his monastical name Dosoftei , was a Moldavian Metropolitan, scholar, poet and translator....
, Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...
), Romanian traditionalists or Neoromantics
Neo-romanticism
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...
(Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia....
, Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
, George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....
, Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
) and French Symbolists
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
. In 1909, after graduating from School No. 1 (an annex of the Trei Ierarhi Monastery
Trei Ierarhi Monastery
Biserica Trei Ierarhi is a seventeenth-century monastery located in Iaşi, Romania. The monastery is listed in the National Register of Historic Monuments and included on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Site....
), he was admitted into the Alexandru cel Bun
Alexandru cel Bun
Alexander cel Bun was a Voivode of Moldavia, reigning between 1400 and 1432, son of Roman I Mușat. He succeeded Iuga to the throne, and, as a ruler, initiated a series of reforms while consolidating the status of the Moldavian Principality....
secondary school, where he did not excel as a student. A restless youth (he recalled having had his first love affair at age 12, with a girl six years his senior), Fondane twice failed to get his remove before the age of 14.
Benjamin divided his time between the city and his father's native region. The latter's rural landscape impressed him greatly, and, enduring in his memory, became the setting in several of his poems. The adolescent Fondane took extended trips throughout northern Moldavia, making his debut in folkloristics
Folkloristics
Folkloristics is the formal academic study of folklore. The term derives from a nineteenth century German designation of folkloristik to distinguish between folklore as the content and folkloristics as its study, much as language is distinguished from linguistics...
by writing down samples of the narrative and poetic tradition
Folklore of Romania
A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian communities resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Folk creations were the main literary genre...
in various Romanian-inhabited localities. Among his childhood friends was the future Yiddish-language
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
writer B. Iosif, with whom he spent his time in Iaşi's Podul Vechi neighborhood. In this context, Fondane also met Yiddishist poet Jacob Gropper—an encounter which shaped Fondane's intellectual perspectives on Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
and Jewish history
Jewish history
Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...
. At the time, Fondane became known to his family and friends as Mieluşon (from miel, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
for "lamb", and probably in reference to his bushy hairdo), a name which he later used as a colloquial pseudonym.
Although Fondane later claimed to have started writing poetry at age eight, his earliest known contributions to the genre date from 1912, including both pieces of his own and translations from such authors as André Chénier
André Chénier
André Marie Chénier was a French poet, associated with the events of the French Revolution of which he was a victim. His sensual, emotive poetry marks him as one of the precursors of the Romantic movement...
, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff was a German poet and novelist of the later German romantic school.Eichendorff is regarded as one of the most important German Romantics and his works have sustained high popularity in Germany from production to the present day.-Life:Eichendorff was born at Schloß...
, Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
and Henri de Régnier
Henri de Régnier
Henri François Joseph de Régnier was a French symbolist poet, considered one of the most important of France during the early 20th century....
. The same year, some of these were published, under the pseudonym I. G. Ofir, in the local literary review Floare Albastră, whose owner, A. L. Zissu, was later a noted novelist and Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
political figure. Later research proposed that these, like some other efforts of the 1910s, were collective poetry
Collective poetry
Collaborative or collective poetry is an alternative and creative technique for writing poetry by more than one person. The principal aim of collaborative poetry is to create poems with multiple collaborations from various authors...
samples, resulting from a collaboration between Fondane and Gropper (the former was probably translating the latter's poetic motifs into Romanian). In 1913, Fondane also tried his hand at editing a student journal, signing his editorial with the pen name Van Doian, but only produced several handwritten copies of a single issue.
Debut years
Fondane's actual debut dates back to 1914, during the time when he became a student at the National High School Iaşi and formally affiliated with the provincial branch of the nation-wide Symbolist movementSymbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts...
. That year, samples of lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
were also published in the magazines Valuri and Revista Noastră (whose owner, poetess Constanţa Hodoş, even offered Fondane a job on the editorial board, probably unaware that she was corresponding with a high school student). Also in 1914, the Moldavian Symbolist venue Absolutio, edited by Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo was a Romanian writer and political figure.Born into a Jewish-Romanian family, Ludo was active in left-wing literary circles prior to World War II...
, featured pieces he signed with the pen name I. Haşir. Among his National High School colleagues was Alexandru Al. Philippide, the future critic, who remained one of Fondane's best friends (and whose poetry Fondane proposed for publishing in Revista Noastră). Late in 1914, Fondane also began his short collaboration with the Iaşi Symbolist tribune Vieaţa Nouă. While several of his poems were published there, the review's founder Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist and folklorist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.He was a professor at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Academy....
issued objections to their content, and, in their subsequent correspondence, each writer outlines his stylistic disagreements with the other.
During the first two years of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and Romania's neutrality, the young poet established new contacts within the literary environments of Iaşi and Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
. According to his brother-in-law and biographer Paul Daniel, "it is amazing how many pages of poetry, translations, prose, articles, chronicles have been written by Fundoianu in this interval." In 1915, four of his patriotic
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
-themed poems were published on the front page of Dimineaţa daily, which campaigned for Romanian intervention against the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
(they were the first of several contributions Fondane signed with the pen name Alex. Vilara, later
Al. Vilara). His parallel contribution to the Bârlad
Bârlad
Bârlad is a city in Vaslui County, Romania. It lies on the banks of the Bârlad River, which waters the high plains of eastern Moldavia....
-based review Revista Critică (originally, Cronica Moldovei) was more strenuous: Fondane declared himself indignant that the editorial staff would not send him the galley proof
Galley proof
In printing and publishing, proofs are the preliminary versions of publications meant for review by authors, editors, and proofreaders, often with extra wide margins. Galley proofs may be uncut and unbound, or in some cases electronic...
s, and received instead an irritated reply from manager Al. Ştefănescu; he was eventually featured with poems in three separate issues of Revista Critică. At around that time, he also wrote a memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
of his childhood, Note dintr-un confesional ("Notes from a Confessional
Confessional
A confessional is a small, enclosed booth used for the Sacrament of Penance, often called confession, or Reconciliation. It is the usual venue for the sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church, but similar structures are also used in Anglican churches of an Anglo-Catholic orientation, and also in the...
").
Around 1915, Fondane was discovered by the journalistic tandem of Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...
and Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction was a Romanian Orthodox clergyman and theologian, writer, journalist, left-wing activist, as well as a political figure of the People's Republic of Romania...
, both of whom were also modernist
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
authors, left-wing militants and Symbolist promoters. The pieces Fondane sent to Arghezi and Galaction's Cronica paper were received with enthusiasm, a reaction which surprised and impressed the young author. Although his poems went unpublished, his Iaşi-themed article A doua capitală ("The Second Capital"), signed Al. Vilara, was featured in an April 1916 issue. A follower of Arghezi, he was personally involved in raising awareness about Arghezi's unpublished verse, the Agate negre ("Black Diamonds") cycle.
Remaining close friends with Fondane, Galaction later made persistent efforts of introducing him to critic Garabet Ibrăileanu
Garabet Ibraileanu
Garabet Ibrăileanu was a Romanian-Armenian literary critic and theorist, writer, translator, sociologist, Iaşi University professor , and, together with Paul Bujor and Constantin Stere, for long main editor of the Viaţa Românească literary magazine between 1906 and 1930...
, with the purpose of having him published by the Poporanist
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...
Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
review, but Ibrăileanu refused to recognize Fondane as an affiliate. Fondane had more success in contacting Flacăra
Flacăra
Flacăra is a weekly magazine published in Bucharest, Romania, originally as a literary periodical....
review and its publisher Constantin Banu: on July 23, 1916, it hosted his sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
Eglogă marină ("Marine Eglogue"). Between 1915 and 1923, Fondane also had a steady contribution to Romanian-language Jewish periodicals (Lumea Evree, Bar-Kochba, Hasmonaea, Hatikvah), where he published translations from international representatives of Yiddish literature
Yiddish literature
Yiddish literature encompasses all belles lettres written in Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazic Jewry which is related to Middle High German. The history of Yiddish, with its roots in central Europe and locus for centuries in Eastern Europe, is evident in its literature.It is generally described...
(Hayim Nahman Bialik, Semyon Frug, Abraham Reisen etc.) under the signatures B. Wechsler, B. Fundoianu and F. Benjamin. Fondane also completed work on a translation of the Ahasverus drama, by the Jewish author Herman Heijermans
Herman Heijermans
Herman Heijermans , was a Dutch writer.Heijermans grew up in a liberal Jewish family as the fifth of 11 children of Herman Heijermans Sr. and Matilda Moses Spiers...
.
His collaboration with the Bucharest-based Rampa (at the time a daily newspaper) also began in 1915, with his debut as theatrical chronicler, and later with his Carpathian
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
-themed series in the travel writing
Travel writing
Travel writing is a genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious....
genre, Pe drumuri de munte ("On Mountain Roads"). With almost one signed or unsigned piece per issue over the following years, Fondane was one of the more prolific contributors to that newspaper, and frequently made use of either pseudonyms (Diomed, Dio, Funfurpan, Const. Meletie) or initials (B. F., B. Fd., fd.). These included his January 1916 positive review of Plumb, the first major work by Romania's celebrated Symbolist poet, George Bacovia
George Bacovia
George Bacovia was a Romanian symbolist poet. While he initially belonged to the local Symbolist movement, his poetry came to be seen as a precursor of Romanian Modernism and eventually established him in critical esteem alongside Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga and Ion Barbu as one of the most...
.
In besieged Moldavia and relocation to Bucharest
In 1917, after Romania joined the Entente sideAllies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
and was invaded by the Central Powers, Fondane was in Iaşi, where the Romanian authorities had retreated. It was in this context that he met and befriended the doyen of Romanian Symbolism, poet Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...
. Minulescu and his wife, author Claudia Millian, had left their home in occupied Bucharest, and, by spring 1917, hosted Fondane at their provisional domicile in Iaşi. Millian later recalled that her husband had been much impressed by the Moldavian teenager, describing him as "a rare bird" and "a poet of talent". The same year, at age 52, Isac Wechsler fell ill with typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
and died in Iaşi's Sfântul Spiridon Hospital, leaving his family without financial support.
At around that time, Fondane began work on the poetry cycle Privelişti ("Sights" or "Panoramas", finished in 1923). In 1918, he became one of the contributors to the magazine Chemarea, published in Iaşi by the leftist journalist N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea was a Romanian journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political satire...
, with help from Symbolist writer Ion Vinea. In the political climate marked by the Peace of Bucharest and Romania's remilitarization, Fondane used Cocea's publication to protest against the arrest of Arghezi, who had been accused of collaborationism
Collaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
with the Central Powers. In this context, Fondane spoke of Arghezi as being "Romania's greatest contemporary poet" (a verdict which was later to be approved of by mainstream critics). According to one account, Fondane also worked briefly as a fact checker
Fact checker
A fact checker is the person who checks factual assertions in non-fictional text, usually intended for publication in a periodical, to determine their veracity and correctness...
for Arena, a periodical managed by Vinea and N. Porsenna. His time with Chemarea also resulted in the publication of his Biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
-themed short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
Tăgăduinţa lui Petru ("Peter's Denial
Denial of Peter
The Denial of Peter refers to three acts of denial of Jesus by the Apostle Peter as described in the three Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament....
"). Issued by Chemareas publishing house in 41 bibliophile
Bibliophilia
Bibliophilia or bibliophilism is the love of books. Accordingly a bibliophile is an individual who loves books. A bookworm is someone who loves books for their content, or who otherwise loves reading. The -ia-suffixed form "bibliophilia" is sometimes considered to be an incorrect usage; the older...
copies (20 of which remained in Fondane's possession), it opened with the tract O lămurire despre simbolism ("An Explanation of Symbolism").
In 1919, upon the war's end, Benjamin Fondane settled in Bucharest, where he stayed until 1923. During this interval, he frequently changed domicile: after a stay at his sister Lina's home in Obor
Obor
Obor is the name of a square and the surrounding district of Bucharest, the capital of Romania. There is also a Bucharest Metro station named Obor, which lies in this area....
area, he moved on Lahovari Street (near Piaţa Romană
Piata Romana
Piaţa Romană is a major traffic intersection in Sector 1, central Bucharest.Two major boulevards intersect in Piaţa Romană: Lascăr Catargiu Boulevard and Magheru Boulevard . The two roads also coincide geographically with the Bucharest Metro Line M2...
), then in Moşilor
Mosilor
Moşilor is a residential quarter in Bucharest's Sector 2.It houses the Foişorul de Foc and Silvestru Church. Its name derives from the main avenue Calea Moşilor which in turn is named after a well-known fair held in Obor square from the 18th century up to the 1950s...
area, before relocating to Văcăreşti
Vacaresti, Bucharest
Văcăreşti is a neighbourhood in south-eastern Bucharest, located near Dâmboviţa River and the Văcăreşti Lake. Nearby neighbourhoods include Vitan, Olteniţei and Berceni. Originally a village, it was included in Bucharest as it expanded...
(a majority Jewish residential area, where he lived in two successive locations), and ultimately to a house a short distance away from Foişorul de Foc
Foisorul de Foc
Foişorul de Foc is a 42-metre high building in Bucharest, Romania, between Obor, Calea Moşilor and Nerva-Traian. It was used in the past as an observation tower by the firemen....
. Between these changes of address, he established contacts with the Symbolist and avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
society of Bucharest: a personal friend of graphic artist Iosif Ross, he formed an informal avant-garde circle of his own, attended by writers F. Brunea-Fox, Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and critic. As a figure on Romania's modernist scene throughout the early interwar period, he was noted for combining a picturesque perspective on the rural Jewish-Romanian community, to which he belonged, with traditionalist and...
, Henri Gad, Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...
, Claude Sernet-Cosma and Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...
, as well as by artist-director Armand Pascal (who, in 1920, married Lina Fundoianu). Pană would later note his dominant status within the group, describing him as the "stooping green-eyed youth from Iaşi, the standard-bearer of the iconoclasts and rebels of the new generation".
The group was occasionally joined by other friends, among them Millian and painter Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza was a Romanian painter, engraver, lithographer, journalist and art critic. Drawing inspiration from Post-impressionism and Expressionism, he had a major role in introducing modernist guidelines to local art.-Biography:...
. In addition, Fondane and Călugăru frequented the artistic and literary club established by the controversial Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
, a cultural promoter and political militant whose influence spread over several Symbolist milieus. In a 1922 piece for Rampa, he remembered Bogdan-Piteşti in ambivalent terms: "he could not stand moral elevation. [...] He was made of the greatest of joys, in the most purulent of bodies. How many generations of ancient boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....
s had come to pass, like unworthy dung, for this singular earth to be generated?"
Pressed on by his family and the prospects of financial security, Fondane contemplated becoming a lawyer. Having passed his baccalaureate examination
Romanian Baccalaureate
The Bacalaureat is an exam held in Romania when one graduates high school .Unlike the French Baccalaureate, the Romanian one has a single degree...
in Bucharest, he was, according to his own account, a registered student at the University of Iaşi Law School, obtaining a graduation certificate but prevented from becoming a licentiate
Licentiate
Licentiate is the title of a person who holds an academic degree called a licence. The term may derive from the Latin licentia docendi, meaning permission to teach. The term may also derive from the Latin licentia ad practicandum, which signified someone who held a certificate of competence to...
by the opposition of faculty member A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza was a Romanian far right politician and theorist.-Early life:Born in Iaşi, after attending secondary school in his native city and in Dresden, Cuza studied law at the University of Paris, the Universität unter den Linden, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles...
, the antisemitic political figure. According to a recollection of poet Adrian Maniu, Fondane again worked as a fact checker for some months after his arrival to the capital. His activity as a journalist also allowed him to interview Arnold Davidovich Margolin, statesman of the defunct Ukrainian People's Republic
Ukrainian People's Republic
The Ukrainian People's Republic or Ukrainian National Republic was a republic that was declared in part of the territory of modern Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, eventually headed by Symon Petliura.-Revolutionary Wave:...
, with whom he discussed the fate of Ukrainian Jews
History of the Jews in Ukraine
Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus' and developed many of the most distinctive modern Jewish theological and cultural traditions. While at times they flourished, at other times they faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discriminatory...
before and after the Soviet Russian
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
takeover.
Sburătorul, Contimporanul, Insula
Over the following years, he restarted his career in the press, contributing to various nationally circulated newspapers: AdevărulAdevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...
, Adevărul Literar şi Artistic, Cuvântul Liber
Cuvântul Liber (1924)
Cuvântul Liber was a Romanian political and cultural weekly published by Eugen Filotti from 1924 to 1925. Writers such as Ion Barbu, Victor Eftimiu and Tudor Arghezi or musicians, such as George Enescu or film critics such as the publisher's brother Mircea Filotti were among the...
, Mântuirea, etc. The main topics of his interest were literary reviews, essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s reviewing the contribution of Romanian and French authors, various art chronicles, and opinion pieces on social or cultural issues. A special case was his collaboration with Mântuirea, a Zionist periodical founded by Zissu, where, between August and October 1919, he published his studies collection Iudaism şi elenism ("Judaism and Hellenism
Hellenistic period
The Hellenistic period or Hellenistic era describes the time which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great. It was so named by the historian J. G. Droysen. During this time, Greek cultural influence and power was at its zenith in Europe and Asia...
"). These pieces, alternating with similar articles by Galaction, showed how the young man's views in cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
had been shaped by his relationship with Gropper (with whom he nevertheless severed all contacts by 1920).
Fondane also renewed his collaboration with Rampa. He and another contributor to the magazine, journalist Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, carried out a debate in the magazine's pages: Fondane's articles defended Romanian Symbolism against criticism from Teodorescu-Branişte, and offered glimpse into his personal interpretation of Symbolist attitudes. One piece he wrote in 1919, titled Noi, simboliştii ("Us Symbolists") stated his proud affiliation to the current (primarily defined by him as an artistic transposition of eternal idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
), and comprised the slogan: "We are too many not to be strong, and too few not to be intelligent." In May 1920, another of his Rampa contributions spoke out against Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...
, Culture Minister of the Alexandru Averescu
Alexandru Averescu
Alexandru Averescu was a Romanian marshal and populist politician. A Romanian Armed Forces Commander during World War I, he served as Prime Minister of three separate cabinets . He first rose to prominence during the peasant's revolt of 1907, which he helped repress in violence...
executive, who contemplated sacking George Bacovia from his office of clerk. The same year, Lumea Evree published his verse drama
Verse drama and dramatic verse
Verse drama is any drama written as verse to be spoken; another possible general term is poetic drama. For a very long period, verse drama was the dominant form of drama in Europe...
fragment Monologul lui Baltazar ("Belshazzar
Belshazzar
Belshazzar, or Balthazar , was a 6th century BC prince of Babylon, the son of Nabonidus and the last king of Babylon according to the Book of Daniel . Like his father, it is believed by many scholars that he was an Assyrian. In Daniel Belshazzar, or Balthazar , was a 6th century BC prince of...
's Soliloquy").
Around the time of his relocation to Bucharest, Fondane first met the moderate modernist critic Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...
, and afterward became both an affiliate of Lovinescu's circle and a contributor to his literary review Sburătorul
Sburatorul
Sburătorul was a Romanian modernist literary magazine and literary society, established in Bucharest in April 1919. Led by Eugen Lovinescu, the circle was instrumental in developing new trends and styles in Romanian literature, ranging from a new wave of Romanian Symbolism to an urban-themed...
. Among his first contributions there was a retrospective coverage of the boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
match between Jack Dempsey
Jack Dempsey
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey was an American boxer who held the world heavyweight title from 1919 to 1926. Dempsey's aggressive style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first...
and Georges Carpentier
Georges Carpentier
Georges Carpentier was a French boxer. He fought mainly as a light heavyweight and heavyweight in a career lasting from 1908-26. Nicknamed the "Orchid Man", he stood and his fighting weight ranged from...
, which comprised his reflections on the mythical power of sport and the clash of cultures. Although a Sburătorist, he was still in contact with Galaction and the left-wing circles. In June 1921, Galaction paid homage to "the daring Benjamin" in an article for Adevărul Literar şi Artistic, calling attention to Fondane's "overwhelming originality."
A year later, Fondane was employed by Vinea's new venue, the prestigious modernist venue Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
. Having debuted in its first issue with a comment on Romanian translation projects (Ferestre spre Occident, "Windows on the Occident
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
"), he was later assigned the theatrical column. Fondane's work was again featured in Flacăra magazine (at the time under Minulescu's direction): the poem Ce simplu ("How Simple") and the essay Istoria Ideii ("The History of the Idea") were both published there in 1922. The same year, with assistance from fellow novelist Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca or F. Aderca Aderca, also known as Zelicu Froim Adercu or Froim Aderca; March 13, 1891 – December 12, 1962) was a Romanian novelist, playwright, poet, journalist and critic, noted as a representative of rebellious modernism in the context of Romanian literature...
, Fondane grouped his earlier essays on French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
as Imagini şi cărţi din Franţa ("Images and Books from France"), published by Editura Socec company. The book included what was probably the first Romanian study of Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
's contribution as a novelist. The author announced that he was planning a similar volume, grouping essays about Romanian writers, both modernists (Minulescu, Bacovia, Arghezi, Maniu, Galaction) and classics (Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Ioan Odobescu was a Romanian author, archaeologist and politician.-Biography:He was born in Bucharest, the second child of General Ioan Odobescu and his wife Ecaterina. After attending Saint Sava College and, from 1850, a Paris lycée, he took the baccalauréat in 1853 and studied...
, Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...
, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
, Anton Pann
Anton Pann
Anton Pann , was an Ottoman-born Wallachian composer, musicologist, and Romanian-language poet, also noted for his activities as a printer, translator, and schoolteacher...
), but this work was not published in his lifetime.
Also in 1922, Fondane and Pascal set up the theatrical troupe Insula ("The Island"), which stated its commitment to avant-garde theater
Experimental theatre
Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
. Probably named after Minulescu's earlier Symbolist magazine, the group was likely a local replica of Jean Copeau's nonconformist productions in France. Hosted by the Maison d'Art galleries in Bucharest, the company was joined by, among others, actresses Lina Fundoianu-Pascal and Victoria Mierlescu, and director Sandu Eliad. Other participants were writers (Cocea, Pană, Zissu, Scarlat Callimachi, Mărgărita Miller Verghy
Mărgărita Miller Verghy
Mărgărita Miller Verghy was a Romanian socialite and author, also known as a feminist activist, schoolteacher, journalist, critic and translator. A cultural animator, she hosted a literary club of Germanophile tendencies during the early part of World War I, and was later involved with Adela...
, Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
) and theatrical people (George Ciprian
George Ciprian
George Ciprian was a Romanian actor and playwright. His writings make him a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd.-Biography:...
, Marietta Sadova, Soare Z. Soare, Dida Solomon, Alice Sturdza, Ionel Ţăranu).
Although it stated its goal of revolutionizing the Romanian repertoire (a goal published as an art manifesto
Art manifesto
The art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system...
in Contimporanul), Insula produced mostly conventional Symbolist and Neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
plays: its inaugural shows included Legenda funigeilor ("Gossamer Legend") by Ştefan Octavian Iosif
Stefan Octavian Iosif
Ştefan Octavian Iosif was a Romanian poet and translator of Aromanian origin.-Life:Born in Braşov, Transylvania , he studied in his native town and in Sibiu before completing his education in Paris. While in France, he met Dimitrie Anghel, who would became a long-time friend...
and Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
, one of Lord Dunsany's Five Plays
Five Plays
Five Plays is the eighth book by Anglo-Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, considered a major influence on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin and others...
and (in Fondane's own translation) Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's Le Médecin volant
Le Médecin Volant
Le Médecin volant is a French play by Molière, and his first, presented in 1645. It is composed of 16 scenes and has seven characters:* Gorgibus, an old nobleman, the father of Lucile...
. Probably aiming to enrich this program with samples of Yiddish drama
Yiddish theatre
Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and...
, Fondane began, but never finished, a translation of S. Ansky
S. Ansky
Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport , known by his pseudonym S. Ansky , was a Russian Jewish author, playwright, and researcher of Jewish folklore....
's The Dybbuk. The troupe ceased its activity in 1923, partly because of significant financial difficulties, and partly because of a rise in antisemitic activities, which put its Jewish performers at risk. For a while, Insula survived as a conference group, hosting modernist lectures on classical Romanian literature—with the participation of Symbolist and post-Symbolist authors such as Aderca, Arghezi, Millian, Pillat, Vinea, N. Davidescu, Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
, and Fondane himself. He was at the time working on his own play, Filoctet ("Philoctetes
Philoctetes
Philoctetes or Philocthetes according to Greek mythology, the son of King Poeas of Meliboea in Thessaly. He was a Greek hero, famed as an archer, and was a participant in the Trojan War. He was the subject of at least two plays by Sophocles, one of which is named after him, and one each by both...
", later finished as Philoctète).
Move to France
In 1923, Benjamin Fondane eventually left Romania for France, spurred on by the need to prove himself within a different cultural context. He was at the time interested in the success of DadaDada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
, an avant-garde movement launched abroad by the Romanian-born author Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
, in collaboration with several others. Not dissuaded by the fact that his sister and brother-in-law (the Pascals) had returned impoverished from an extended stay in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Fondane crossed Europe by train and partly by foot.
The writer (who adopted his Francized
Francization
Francization or Gallicization is a process of cultural assimilation that gives a French character to a word, an ethnicity or a person.-French Colonial Empire:-Francization in the World:...
name shortly after leaving his native country) was eventually joined there by the Pascals. The three of them continued to lead a bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
and at times precarious existence, discussed in Fondane's correspondence with Romanian novelist Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
, and described by researcher Ana-Maria Tomescu as "humiliating poverty". The poet acquired some sources of income from his contacts in Romania: in exchange for his contribution to the circulation of Romanian literature in France, he received official funds from the Culture Ministry's directorate (at the time headed by Minulescu); in addition, he published unsigned articles in various newspapers, and even relied on handouts from Romanian actress Elvira Popescu
Elvira Popescu
Elvira Popescu was a Romanian-born French stage and movie actress and theatre director.-Life and career:Born in Bucharest, Popescu studied drama at the Conservatorul de Artă Dramatică, under the guidance of Constantin Nottara and Aristizza Romanescu. She made her debut at the National Theatre...
(who visited his home, as did avant-garde painter M. H. Maxy
M. H. Maxy
M. H. Maxy was a Romanian Cubist painter.Maxy was of German-Jewish descent. He studied first in Bucharest under Camil Ressu and Iosif Iser, then in Berlin under Arthur Segal.-External links:*...
). He also translated into French Zissu's novel Amintirile unui candelabru ("The Recollections of a Chandelier"). For a while, the poet also joined his colleague Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...
on the legal department of L'Abeille insurance company.
After a period of renting furnished rooms, Fondane accepted an offer from Jean, brother of the deceased literary theorist Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...
, and, employed as a librarian-concierge
Concierge
A concierge is an employee who either works in shifts within, or lives on the premises of an apartment building or a hotel and serves guests with duties similar to those of a butler. The position can also be maintained by a security officer over the 'graveyard' shift. A similar position, known as...
, moved into the Gourmonts' museum property on Rue des Saints-Pères, some distance away from to the celebrated literary café Les Deux Magots
Les Deux Magots
Les Deux Magots is a famous café in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris, France. It once had a reputation as the rendezvous of the literary and intellectual élite of the city. It is now a popular tourist destination...
. In the six years before Pascal's 1929 death, Fondane left Gourmont's house and, with his sister and brother-in-law, moved into a succession of houses (on Rue Domat, Rue Jacob, Rue Monge), before settling into a historical building once inhabited by author Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (Rue Rollin, 6). Complaining about eye trouble and exhaustion, and several times threatened with insolvency, Fondane often left Paris for the resort of Arcachon
Arcachon
Arcachon is a commune in the Gironde department in southwestern France.It is a popular bathing location on the Atlantic coast southwest of Bordeaux in the Landes forest...
.
Claudia Millian, who was also spending time in Paris, described Fondane's new focus on studying Christian theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...
and Catholic thought, from Hildebert
Hildebert
Hildebert of Lavardin was a French writer and ecclesiastic. His name is also spelled Hydalbert, Gildebert, or Aldebert.-Life:...
to Gourmont's own Latin mystique (it was also at this stage that the Romanian writer acquired and sent home part of Gourmont's bibliophile collection). He coupled these activities with an interest in grouping together the cultural segments of the Romanian diaspora
Romanian diaspora
The Romanian diaspora is the ethnically Romanian population outside Romania and Moldova. The concept does not usually include the ethnic Romanians who live as natives in the states surrounding Romania, chiefly those Romanians who live in Ukraine and Serbia. The diaspora does include the people of...
: around 1924, he and Millian were founding members of the Society of Romanian Writers in Paris, presided upon by the aristocrat Elena Văcărescu
Elena Vacarescu
Elena Văcărescu or Hélène Vacaresco was a Romanian-French aristocrat writer, twice a laureate of the Académie française.-Life:...
. Meanwhile, Fondane acquired a profile on the local literary scene, and, in his personal notes, claimed to have had his works praised by novelist André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
and philosopher Jules de Gaultier
Jules de Gaultier
Jules de Gaultier , born Jules Achille de Gaultier de Laguionie, was a French philosopher and essayist. He was a contributor to Mercure de France and one of the chief advocates of "nietzscheism" in vogue in the literary circles of the day...
. They both were his idols: Gide's work had shaped his own contribution in the prose poem genre, while Gaultier did the same for his philosophical outlook. The self-exiled debutant was nevertheless still viewing his career with despair, describing it as languishing, and noting that there was a chance of him failing to earn a solid literary reputation.
Surrealist episode
The mid 1920s brought Benjamin Fondane's affiliation with SurrealismSurrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, the post-Dada avant-garde current centered in Paris. Fondane also rallied with Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
Surrealist composers E. L. T. Mesens and André Souris
André Souris
André Souris was a Belgian composer, conductor, musicologist, and writer associated with the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
(with whom he signed a manifesto on modernist music
Modernism (music)
Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice.- Defining musical modernism :...
), and supported Surrealist poet-director Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
in his efforts to set up a theater named after Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
(which was not, however, an all-Surrealist venue). In this context, he tried to persuade the French Surrealist group to tour his native country and establish contacts with local affiliates.
By 1926, Fondane grew disenchanted with the communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
alignment proposed by the main Surrealist faction and its mentor, André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
. Writing at the time, he commented that the ideological drive could prove fatal: "Perhaps never again will [a poet] recover that absolute freedom that he had in the bourgeois republic
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
." A few years later, the Romanian writer expressed his support for the anti-Breton dissidents of Le Grand Jeu magazine, and was a witness at the 1930 riot which opposed the two factions. His anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
discourse was again aired in 1932: commenting on indictment of Surrealist poet Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...
for communist texts (read by the authorities as instigation to murder), Fondane stated that he did believe Aragon's case was covered by the freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
. His ideas also brought him into conflict with Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris...
, who was moving away from an avant-garde background and into the realm of far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
ideas. By the early 1930s, Fondane was in contact with the mainstream modernist Jacques Rivière
Jacques Rivière
Jacques Rivière was a French "man of letters". He edited La Nouvelle Revue Française from 1919 until his death...
and his Nouvelle Revue Française
Nouvelle Revue Française
La Nouvelle Revue Française is a literary magazine founded in 1909 by a group of intellectuals, including André Gide, Jacques Copeau, and Jean Schlumberger...
circle.
In 1928, his own collaboration with the Surrealists took shape as the book Trois scenarii: ciné-poèmes ("Three Scenarios: Cine-poems"), published by Documents internationaux de l'esprt nouveau collection, with artwork by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
photographer Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
and Romanian painter Alexandru Brătăşanu (one of his other contacts in the French Surrealist photographers' group was Eli Lotar
Eli lotar
Eli Lotar was a French photographer. Lotar was born the son of a celebrated poet in Romania in 1905. He became a French citizen in 1926 and met the German photographer Germaine Krull. He took part in many exhibitions with Krull and photographer André Kertész...
, the illegitimate son of Arghezi and nephew of Zissu). The "cine-poems" were intentionally conceived as unfilmable screenplays, in what was his personal statement about artistic compromise between experimental film
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
and the emerging worldwide film industry
Film industry
The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew...
. The book notably comprised his verdict about cinema being "the only art that was never classical."
Philosophical debut
With time, Fondane became a contributor to newspapers or literary journals in France, Belgium, and SwitzerlandSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
: a regular presence in Cahiers du Sud of Carcassonne
Carcassonne
Carcassonne is a fortified French town in the Aude department, of which it is the prefecture, in the former province of Languedoc.It is divided into the fortified Cité de Carcassonne and the more expansive lower city, the ville basse. Carcassone was founded by the Visigoths in the fifth century,...
, he had his work featured in the Surrealist press (Discontinuité, Le Phare de Neuilly, Bifur), as well as in Le Courrier des Poètes, Le Journal des Poètes, Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
's Europe
Europe (magazine)
- History :Created by Romain Rolland and a group of French writers, the literary magazine Europe began on 15 February 1923. It is still published by Éditions Rieder....
, Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
's Commerce etc. In addition, Fondane's research was hosted by specialized venues such as Revue Philosophique, Schweizer Annalen and Carlo Suarès
Carlo Suarès
Carlo Giuseppe Suarès was a French writer, painter and Kabbalah author. He was born the 12 May 1892 in Alexandria, Egypt. The ancestors of his Sepharad Jewish family had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and found refuge in Italy before immigrating to Egypt...
' Cahiers de l'Étoile. After a long period of indecision, the Romanian poet became a dedicated follower of Lev Shestov
Lev Shestov
Lev Isaakovich Shestov , born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann , was a Ukrainian/Russian existentialist philosopher. Born in Kiev on , he emigrated to France in 1921, fleeing from the aftermath of the October Revolution. He lived in Paris until his death on November 19, 1938.- Life :Shestov was born Lev...
, a Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
-born existentialist
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
thinker whose ideas about the eternal opposition between faith
Faith
Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or a belief that is not based on proof. In religion, faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition,...
and reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
he expanded upon in later texts. According to intellectual historian Samuel Moyn
Samuel Moyn
Samuel Moyn is a professor of history at Columbia University. His research interests are in modern European intellectual history, with special interests in France and Germany, political and legal thought, mathematical and critical theory, and sometimes Jewish studies.He is the co director of the...
, Fondane was, with Rachel Bespaloff, one of the "most significant and devoted of Shestov's followers". In 1929, as a frequenter of Shestov's circle, Fondane also met Argentinian
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
female author Victoria Ocampo
Victoria Ocampo
Victoria Ocampo Aguirre was an Argentine writer and intellectual, described by Jorge Luis Borges as La mujer más argentina ....
, who became his close friend (after 1931, he became a contributor to her modernist review, Sur). Fondane's essays were more frequently than before philosophical in nature: Europe published his tribute Shestov (January 1929) and his comments of Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
's phenomenology, which included his own critique of rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
(June 1930).
Invited (on Ocampo's initiative) by the Amigos del Arte society of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, Fondane left for Argentina and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
in summer 1929. The object of his visit was promoting French cinema with a set of lectures in Buenos Aires, Montevideo
Montevideo
Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
and other cities (as he later stated in a Rampa interview with Sarina Cassvan-Pas, he introduced South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
ns to the work of Germaine Dulac
Germaine Dulac
Germaine Dulac was a French filmmaker, film theorist, journalist and critic. She was born in Amiens and moved to Paris in early childhood. A few years after her marriage she embarked on a journalistic career in a feminist magazine, and later became interested in film...
, Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
and Henri Gad). In this context, Fondane met essayist Eduardo Mallea
Eduardo Mallea
Eduardo Mallea was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nación.-Work:...
, who invited him to contribute in La Nación
La Nación
La Nación is an Argentine daily newspaper. The country's leading conservative paper, the centrist Clarín is its main competitor. It is the only newspaper in Argentina still published in broadsheet format.-Overview:...
s literary supplement. His other activities there included conferencing on Shestov at the University of Buenos Aires
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...
and publishing articles on several subjects (from Shestov's philosophy to the poems of Tzara), but the fees received in return were, in his own account, too small to cover the cost of decent living.
In October 1929, Fondane was back in Paris, where he focused on translating and popularizing some of Romanian literature's milestone texts, from Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
's Sărmanul Dionis to the poetry of Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu was a distinguished Romanian mathematician and poet.He was born in Câmpulung-Muscel, Argeş County, the son of Constantin Barbilian and Smaranda, born Şoiculescu. He attended Ion Brătianu High School in Piteşti and Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest...
, Minulescu, Arghezi and Bacovia. In the same context, the expatriate writer helped introduce Romanians to some of the new European tendencies, becoming, in the words of literary historian Paul Cernat, "the first important promoter of French Surrealism in Romanian culture."
Integral and unu
In the mid 1920s, Fondane and painter János Mattis-TeutschJános Mattis-Teutsch
János Mattis-Teutsch or Máttis-Teutsch, Mátis-Teutsch was a Hungarian and Romanian painter, sculptor, graphic artist, art critic,...
joined the external editorial board of Integral magazine, an avant-garde tribune published in Bucharest by Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and critic. As a figure on Romania's modernist scene throughout the early interwar period, he was noted for combining a picturesque perspective on the rural Jewish-Romanian community, to which he belonged, with traditionalist and...
, F. Brunea-Fox and Voronca. He was assigned a permanent column, known as Fenêtres sur l'Europe/Ferestre spre Europa (French and Romanian for "Windows on Europe"). With Barbu Florian, Fondane became a leading film reviewer for the magazine, pursuing his agenda in favor of non-commercial and "pure" films (such as René Clair
René Clair
René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
's Entr'acte
Entr'acte (film)
Entr'acte is a 1924 French short film directed by René Clair, which premiered as an entr'acte for the Ballets Suédois production Relâche at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Relâche is based on a book and with settings by Francis Picabia, produced by Rolf de Maré, and with choreography by...
), and praising Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
for his lyricism, but later making some concessions to talkies
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
and the regular Hollywood films
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
. Exploring what he defined as "the great ballet of contemporary French poetry", Fondane also published individual notes on writers Aragon, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Joseph Delteil, Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
and Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne and grew up near the Montagne Noire in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse and Narbonne.Reverdy...
. In 1927, Integral also hosted one of Fondane's replies to the communist Surrealists in France, as Le surréalisme et la révolution ("Surrealism and Revolution").
He also came into contact with unu
Unu
unu was the name of an avant-garde art and literary magazine, published in Romania from April 1928 to September 1935. Edited by writers Saşa Pană and Moldov, it was dedicated to Dada and Surrealism....
, the Surrealist venue of Bucharest, which was edited by several of his avant-garde friends at home. His contributions there included a text on Tzara's post-Dada works, which he analyzed as Valéry-like "pure poetry". In December 1928, unu published some of Fondane's messages home, as Scrisori pierdute ("Lost Letters"). Between 1931 and 1934, Fondane was in regular correspondence with the unu writers, in particular Stephan Roll, F. Brunea-Fox and Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...
, being informed about their conflict with Voronca (attacked as a betrayer of the avant-garde) and witnessing from afar the eventual implosion of Romanian Surrealism on the model of French groups. In such dialogues, Roll complains about right-wing political censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
in Romania, and speaks in some detail about his own conversion to Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
.
With Fondane's approval and Minulescu's assistance, Privelişti also saw print in Romania during 1930. Published by Editura Cultura Naţională, it sparked significant controversy with its nonconformist style, but also made the author the target of critics' interest. As a consequene, Fondane was also sending material to Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo was a Romanian writer and political figure.Born into a Jewish-Romanian family, Ludo was active in left-wing literary circles prior to World War II...
's Adam review, most of it notes (some hostile) clarifying ambiguous biographical detail discussed in Aderca's chronicle to Privelişti. His profile within the local avant-garde was also acknowledged in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
: the Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
ese magazine Fiera Letteraria commented on his poetry, reprinting fragments originally featured in Integral; in its issue of August–September 1930, the Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
tribune Der Sturm
Der Sturm
Der Sturm was a magazine covering the expressionism movement founded in Berlin in 1910 by Herwarth Walden. It ran weekly until monthly in 1914, and became a quarterly in 1924 until it ceased publication in 1932....
published samples of his works, alongside those of nine other Romanian modernists, translated by Leopold Kosch.
As Paul Daniel notes, the polemics surrounding Privelişti only lasted for a year, and Fondane was largely forgotten by the Romanian public after this moment. However, the discovery of Fondane's avant-garde stance by traditionalist circles took the form of bemusement or indignation, which lasted into the next decades. The conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
critic Const. I. Emilian, whose 1931 study discussed modernism as a psychiatric condition, mentioned Fondane as one of the leading "extremists", and deplored his abandonment of traditionalist subjects. Some nine years later, the antisemitic far right newspaper Sfarmă-Piatră
Sfarma-Piatra
Sfarmă-Piatră was an antisemitic daily, monthly and later weekly newspaper, published in Romania during the late 1930s and early 1940s...
, through the voice of Ovidiu Papadima
Ovidiu Papadima
Ovidiu Papadima was a Romanian literary critic, folklorist, and essayist....
, accused Fondane and "the Jews" of having purposefully maintained "the illusion of a literary movement" under Lovinescu's leadership. Nevertheless, before that date, Lovinescu himself had come to criticize his former pupil (a disagreement which echoed his larger conflict with the unu group). Also in the 1930s, Fondane's work received coverage in the articles of two other maverick modernists: Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
, who viewed it with noted sympathy, and Lucian Boz, who found his new poems touched by "prolixity".
Rimbaud le voyou, Ulysse and intellectual prominence
Back in France, where he had become Shestov's assistant, Fondane was beginning work on other books: the essay on 19th century poet Arthur RimbaudArthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
—Rimbaud le voyou ("Rimbaud the Hoodlum")—and, despite an earlier pledge not to return to poetry, a new series of poems. His eponymously titled study-portrait of German philosopher Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
was published by Cahiers du Sud in 1932. Despite his earlier rejection of commercial films, Fondane eventually became an employee of Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, probably spurred on by his need to finance a personal project (reputedly, he was accepted there with a second application, his first one having been rejected in 1929). He worked first as an assistant director, before turning to screenwriting. Preserving his interest in Romanian developments, he visited the Paris set of Televiziune, a Romanian cinema production
Cinema of Romania
The cinema of Romania is the art of motion-picture making within the nation of Romania or by Romanian filmmakers abroad.As upon much of the world's early cinema, the ravages of time have left their mark upon Romanian film prints. Tens of titles have been destroyed or lost for good...
for which he shared directorial credits. His growing interest in Voronca's own poetry led him to review it for Tudor Arghezi's Bucharest periodical, Bilete de Papagal
Bilete de Papagal
Bilete de Papagal was a Romanian left-wing publication edited by Tudor Arghezi, begun as a daily newspaper and soon after issued as a weekly satirical and literary magazine...
, where he stated: "Mr. Ilarie Voronca is at the top of his form. I'm gladly placing my stakes on him."
In 1931, the poet married Geneviève Tissier, a trained jurist and lapsed Catholic
Lapsed Catholic
A lapsed Catholic is a person who has ceased practicing the Catholic faith, in the sense of attending Mass. Such a person may still identify as a Catholic.-"Lapsed Catholic" and "ex-Catholic":...
. Their home on Rue Rollin subsequently became a venue for literary sessions, mostly grouping the Cahiers du Sud contributors. The aspiring author Paul Daniel, who became Rodica Wechsler's husband in 1935, attended such meetings with his wife, and recalls having met Gaultier, filmmaker Dimitri Kirsanoff
Dimitri Kirsanoff
Dimitri Kirsanoff was an early filmmaker, considered part of the French Impressionist movement in film. He is known for his inexpensively made experimental films.-Early life:...
, music critic Boris de Schlözer, poets Yanette Delétang-Tardif and Thérèse Aubray, as well as Shestov's daughter Natalie Baranoff. Fondane also enjoyed a warm friendship with Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, the Romanian-born modern sculptor, visiting Brâncuşi's workshop on an almost daily basis and writing about his work in Cahiers de l'Étoile. He witnessed first-hand and described Brâncuşi's primitivist
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
techniques, likening his work to that of a "savage man".
Rimbaud le voyou was eventually published by Denoël & Steele company in 1933, the same year when Fondane published his poetry volume Ulysse ("Ulysses
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
") with Les Cahiers du Journal des Poètes. The Rimbaud study, partly written as a reply to Roland de Renéville's monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
Rimbaud le Voyant ("Rimbaud the Seer"), consolidated Fondane's international reputation as a critic and literary historian. In the months after its publication, the book earned much praise from scholars and writers—from Joë Bousquet
Joë Bousquet
Joë Bousquet was a French poet.Wounded on May 27, 1918 at Vailly near the Aisne battlelines at the end of the First World War, he was paralysed for the rest of his life, and lived a life largely bedridden, surrounded by his books...
, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
and Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
, to Jean Cassou
Jean Cassou
Jean Cassou was a French writer, art critic, poet and member of the French Resistance during World War II.- Biography :Jean Cassou was born at Deusto, near Bilbao,...
, Guillermo de Torre
Guillermo de Torre
Guillermo de Torre , was a Spanish essayist, poet and literary critic, a Dadaist and member of the Generation of '27. He is also notable as the brother-in-law of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.-Biography:...
and Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.-Biography:...
. It also found admirers in the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
poet David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...
, who was afterward in correspondence with Fondane, and the American novelist Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
. Ulysse itself illustrated Fondane's interest in scholarly issues: he sent one autographed copy to Raïssa Maritain
Raïssa Maritain
Raïssa Oumansoff Maritain was a Russian-Ukrainian poet and philosopher. She emigrated to France and studied at the Sorbonne, where she met the young Jacques Maritain, also a philosopher, whom she married in 1904. She was raised Jewish but, following a period in which she considered herself an...
, wife of Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
(both of whom were Catholic thinkers). Shortly after this period, the author was surprised to read Voronca's own French-language volume Ulysse dans la cité ("Ulysses in the City"): although puzzled by the similarity of titles with his own collection, he described Voronca as a "great poet." Also then, in Romania, B. Iosif completed the Yiddish translation of Fondane's Psalmul leprosului ("The Leper's Psalm"). The text, left in his care by Fondane before his 1923 departure, was first published in Di Woch, a periodical set up in Romania by poet Yankev Shternberg (October 31, 1934).
Anti-fascist causes and filming of Rapt
The 1933 establishment of a Nazi regimeNazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
in Germany brought Fondane into the camp of anti-fascism
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
. In December 1934, his Apelul studenţimii ("The Call of Students") was circulated among the Romanian diaspora, and featured passionate calls for awareness: "Tomorrow, in concentration camps, it will be to late". The following year, he outlined his critique of all kinds of totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
, L'Écrivain devant la révolution ("The Writer Facing the Revolution"), supposed to be delivered in front of the Paris-held International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture (organized by left-wing and communist intellectuals with support from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
). According to historian Martin Stanton, Fondane's activity in film, like Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
's parallel beginnings as a novelist, was itself a political statement in support of the Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
: "[they were] hoping to introduce critical dimensions in the fields they felt the fascists
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
had colonized." Fondane nevertheless ridiculed the communist version of pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
as a "parade of big words", noting that it opposed mere slogans to concrete German re-armament
German re-armament
The German re-armament was a massive effort led by the NSDAP in the early 1930s in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.During its struggle for power the National Socialist party promised to recover Germany's lost national pride...
. Writing for the film magazine Les Cahiers Jaunes in 1933, he expressed the ambition of creating "an absurd
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
film about something absurd, to satisfy [one's] absurd taste for freedom".
Fondane left the Paramount studios the same year, disappointed with company policies and without having had any screen credit of his own (although, he claimed, there were over 100 Paramount scripts to which he had unsigned contributions). During 1935, he and Kirsanoff were in Switzerland, for the filming of Rapt, with a screenplay by Fondane (adapted from Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz was a French-speaking Swiss writer.He was born in Lausanne in the canton of Vaud and educated at the University of Lausanne. He taught briefly in nearby Aubonne, and then in Weimar, Germany. In 1903, he left for Paris and remained there until World War I, with frequent...
's La séparation des races novel). The result was a highly poetic production, and, despite Fondane's still passionate defense of silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
, the first talkie in Kirsanoff's career. The poet was enthusiastic about this collaboration, claiming that it had enjoyed a good reception from Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, standing as a manifesto against the success of more "chatty" sound films. In particular, French critics and journalists hailed Rapt as a necessary break with the comédie en vaudeville
Comédie en vaudeville
The Comédie en vaudeville was a theatrical entertainment which began in Paris towards the end of the 17th century, in which comedy was enlivened though lyrics using the melody of popular vaudeville songs.-Evolution:...
tradition. In the end, however, the independent product could not compete with the Hollywood industry, which was at the time monopolizing the French market
Cinema of France
The Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...
. In parallel with these events, Fondane followed Shestov's personal guidance and, by means of Cahiers du Sud, attacked philosopher Jean Wahl
Jean Wahl
Jean André Wahl was a French philosopher.-Early career:He was professor at the Sorbonne from 1936 to 1967, broken by World War II. He was in the U.S...
's secular
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
reinterpretation of Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
's Christian existentialism
Christian existentialism
Christian existentialism describes a group of writings that take a philosophically existentialist approach to Christian theology. The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian considered the father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard...
.
From Tararira to World War II
Despite selling many copies of his books and having Rapt played at the Panthéon Cinema, Benjamin Fondane was still facing major financial difficulties, accepting a 1936 offer to write and assist in the making of Tararira, an avant-garde musical productMusical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
of the Argentine film industry
Cinema of Argentina
The cinema of Argentina has a tradition dating back to the late nineteenth century, and continues to play a role in the culture of Argentina....
. This was his second option: initially, he contemplated filming a version of Ricardo Güiraldes
Ricardo Güiraldes
Ricardo Güiraldes was an Argentine novelist and poet, one of the most significant Argentine writers of his era, particularly known for his 1926 novel Don Segundo Sombra, set amongst the gauchos.-Life:...
' Don Segundo Sombra
Don Segundo Sombra
Don Segundo Sombra is a 1926 novel by Argentine rancher Ricardo Güiraldes. Like José Hernández's poem Martín Fierro, its protagonist is a gaucho. However, unlike Hernandez's poem, Don Segundo Sombra does not romanticize the figure of the gaucho, but simply examines the character as a shadow cast...
, but met opposition from Güiraldes' widow. While en route to Argentina, he became friends with Georgette Gaucher, a Breton
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
woman, with whom he was in correspondence for the rest of his life.
Under contract with the Falma-film company, Fondane was received with honors by the Romanian Argentine community, and, with the unusual cut of his preferred suit, is said to have even become a trendsetter in local fashion. For Ocampo and the Sur staff, literary historian Rosalie Sitman notes, his visit also meant an occasion to defy the xenophobic
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
and antisemitic agenda of Argentine nationalist circles. Centered on the tango
Tango (ballroom)
Ballroom Tango is a ballroom dance that branched away from its original Argentine roots by allowing European, American, Hollywood, and competitive influences into the style and execution of the dance....
, Fondane's film enlisted contributions from some leading figures in several national film and music industries, having Miguel Machinandiarena as producer and John Alton
John Alton
John Alton A.S.C. , born Johann Altmann, in Sopron/Ödenburg, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary, was an American cinematographer...
as editor
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
; in starred, among others, Orestes Caviglia
Orestes Caviglia
Orestes Caviglia was an Argentine film actor and film director of the classic era of the Cinema of Argentina....
, Miguel Gómez Bao and Iris Marga. The manner in which Tararira approached its subject scandalized the Argentine public, and it was eventually rejected by its distributors (no copies survive, but writer Gloria Alcorta, who was present at a private screening, rated it a "masterpiece"). Fondane, who had earlier complained about the actors' resistance to his ideas, left Argentina before the film was actually finished. It was on his return trip that he met Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, with whom he and Geneviève became good friends.
With the money received in Buenos Aires, the writer contemplated returning on a visit to Romania, but he abandoned all such projects later in 1936, instead making his way to France. He followed up on his publishing activity in 1937, when his selected poems, Titanic, saw print. Encouraged by the reception given to Rimbaud le voyou, he published two more essays with Denoël & Steele: La Conscience malheureuse ("The Unhappy Consciousness", 1937) and Faux traité d'esthétique ("False Treatise of Aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
", 1938). In 1938, he was working on a collected edition of his Ferestre spre Europa, supposed to be published in Bucharest but never actually seeing print. At around that date, Fondane was also a presenter for the Romanian edition of 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
's international newsreel
Newsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
, Movietone News
Movietone News
Movietone News is a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States, and from 1929 to 1979 in the United Kingdom.-History:It is known in the U.S. as Fox Movietone News, produced cinema, sound newsreels from 1928 to 1963 in the U.S., from 1929 to 1979 in the UK , and from 1929 to 1975 in...
.
In 1939, Fondane was naturalized
Naturalization
Naturalization is the acquisition of citizenship and nationality by somebody who was not a citizen of that country at the time of birth....
under the French nationality law
French nationality law
French nationality law is historically based on the principles of jus soli , according to Ernest Renan's definition, in opposition to the German's definition of nationality, Jus sanguinis , formalized by Fichte.The 1993 Méhaignerie Law required children born in France of foreign parents to request...
. This followed an independent initiative of the Société des écrivains français professional association, in recognition for his contribution to French letters. Cahiers du Sud collected the required 3,000 francs
French franc
The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
fee through a public subscription, enlisting particularly large contributions from music producer Renaud de Jouvenel (brother of Bertrand de Jouvenel
Bertrand de Jouvenel
Bertrand de Jouvenel des Ursins, usually known only as Bertrand de Jouvenel was a French philosopher, political economist, and futurist.-Life:...
) and philosopher-ethnologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
Lucien Lévy-Brühl was a French scholar trained in philosophy, who made contributions to the budding fields of sociology and ethnology. His primary field of study involved primitive mentality....
. Only months after this event, with the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Fondane was drafted into the French Army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
. During most of the "Phoney War" interval, considered too old for active service, he was in the military reserve force
Military reserve force
A military reserve force is a military organization composed of citizens of a country who combine a military role or career with a civilian career. They are not normally kept under arms and their main role is to be available to fight when a nation mobilizes for total war or to defend against invasion...
, but in February 1940 was called under arms with the 216 Artillery Regiment. According to Lina, "he left [home] with unimaginable courage and faith." Stationed at the Sainte Assise Castle in Seine-Port
Seine-Port
Seine-Port is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France.-External links:* * * *...
, he edited and stencil
Stencil
A stencil is a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material. The key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to...
ed a humorous gazette, L'Écho de la I C-ie ("The 1st Company Echo"), where he also published his last-ever work of poetry, Le poète en patrouille ("The Poet on Patrolling Duty").
First captivity and clandestine existence
Fondane was captured by the Germans in June 1940 (shortly before the fall of France), and was taken into a German camp as a prisoner of warPrisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
. He managed to escape captivity, but was recaptured in short time. After falling ill with appendicitis
Appendicitis
Appendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the appendix. It is classified as a medical emergency and many cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy. Untreated, mortality is high, mainly because of the risk of rupture leading to...
, he was transported back to Paris, kept in custody at the Val-de-Grâce
Val-de-Grâce
This article describes the hospital and former abbey. For the main article on Mansart and Lemercier's central church, see Church of the Val-de-Grâce....
, and operated on. Fondane was eventually released, the German occupiers having decided that he was no longer fit for soldierly duty.
He was working on two poetry series, Super Flumina Babylonis (a reference to Psalm 137
Psalm 137
Psalm 137 is one of the best known of the Biblical psalms. Its opening lines, "By the rivers of Babylon..." have been set to music on several occasions....
) and L'Exode ("The Exodus"), as well as on his last essay, focusing on 19th century poet Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, and titled Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre ("Baudelaire and the Experience of the Abyss"). In addition to these, his other French texts, incomplete or unpublished by 1944, include: the poetic drama
Verse drama and dramatic verse
Verse drama is any drama written as verse to be spoken; another possible general term is poetic drama. For a very long period, verse drama was the dominant form of drama in Europe...
pieces Philoctète, Les Puits de Maule ("Maule's Well", an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
's The House of the Seven Gables
The House of the Seven Gables
The House of the Seven Gables is a 1668 colonial mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. The house is now a non-profit museum, with an admission fee charged for tours, as well as an active settlement house with programs for children...
) and Le Féstin de Balthazar ("Belshazzar
Belshazzar
Belshazzar, or Balthazar , was a 6th century BC prince of Babylon, the son of Nabonidus and the last king of Babylon according to the Book of Daniel . Like his father, it is believed by many scholars that he was an Assyrian. In Daniel Belshazzar, or Balthazar , was a 6th century BC prince of...
's Feast"); a study about the life and work of Romanian-born philosopher Stéphane Lupasco
Stéphane Lupasco
Stéphane Lupasco Stéphane Lupasco Stéphane Lupasco (born Ştefan Lupaşcu; (1900–1988) was a Romanian philosopher who developed Non-Aristotelian logic.-Early years:Stéphane Lupasco was born in Bucharest on 11 August 1900. His family belonged to the old Moldavian aristocracy...
; and the selection from his interviews with Shestov, Sur les rives de l'Illisus ("On the Banks of the Illisus"). His very last text is believed to be a philosophical essay, Le Lundi existentiel ("The Existential Monday"), on which Fondane was working in 1944. Little is known about Provèrbes ("Proverbs"), which, he announced in 1933, was supposed to be an independent collection of poems.
According to various accounts, Fondane made a point of not leaving Paris, despite the growing restrictions and violence. However, others note that, as a precaution against the antisemitic measures in the occupied north
Zone occupée
The zone occupée was the area of France where German occupying troops were deployed during the Second World War after the signature of the Second Armistice at Compiègne...
, he eventually made his way into the more permissive zone libre
Zone libre
The zone libre was a partition of the French metropolitan territory during the Second World War, established at the Second Armistice at Compiègne on June 22, 1940. It lay to the south of the demarcation line and was administered by the French government of Marshal Philippe Pétain based in Vichy,...
, and only made returns to Paris in order to collect his books. Throughout this interval, the poet refused to wear the yellow badge
Yellow badge
The yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
(mandatory for Jews), and, living in permanent risk, isolated himself from his wife, adopting an even more precarious lifestyle. He was still in contact with writers of various ethnic backgrounds, and active on the clandestine literary scene. In this context, Fondane stated his intellectual affiliation to the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
: his former Surrealist colleague Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
published several of his poems in the pro-communist Europe
Europe (magazine)
- History :Created by Romain Rolland and a group of French writers, the literary magazine Europe began on 15 February 1923. It is still published by Éditions Rieder....
, under the name of Isaac Laquedem (a nod to the Wandering Jew
Wandering Jew
The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming...
myth). Such pieces were later included, but left unsigned, in the anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
L'Honneur des poètes ("The Honor of Poets"), published by the Resistance activists as an anti-Nazi manifesto. Fondane also preserved his column in Cahiers du Sud for as long as it was possible, and had his contributions published in several other clandestine journals.
After 1941, Fondane became friends with another Romanian existentialist in France, the younger Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
. Their closeness signaled an important stage in the latter's career: Cioran was slowly moving away from his fascist sympathies and his antisemitic stance, and, although still connected to the revolutionary fascist Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
, had reintroduced cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
to his own critique of Romanian society. In 1943, transcending ideological boundaries, Fondane also had dinner with Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...
, the Romanian novelist and philosopher, who, like their common friend Cioran, had an ambiguous connection with the far right. In 1942, his own Romanian citizenship rights, granted by the Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
of the early 1920s, where lost with the antisemitic legislation adopted by the Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
regime, which also officially banned his entire work as "Jewish". At around that time, his old friends outside France made unsuccessful efforts to obtain him a safe conduct to neutral countries. Such initiatives were notably taken by Jacques Maritain from his new home in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and by Victoria Ocampo in Argentina.
Arrest, deportation and death
He was eventually arrested by collaborationist forces in spring 1944, after unknown civilians reported his Jewish origin. Held in custody by the GestapoGestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
, he was assigned to the local network of Holocaust perpetrators: after internment in the Drancy transit camp
Drancy internment camp
The Drancy internment camp of Paris, France, was used to hold Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps. 65,000 Jews were deported from Drancy, of whom 63,000 were murdered including 6,000 children...
, he was sent on one of the transports to the extermination camps in occupied Poland, reaching Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
. In the meantime, his family and friends remained largely unaware of his fate. After news of his arrest, several of his friends reportedly intervened to save him, including Cioran, Lupasco and writer Jean Paulhan
Jean Paulhan
Jean Paulhan was a French writer, literary critic and publisher, director of the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française from 1925 to 1940 and from 1946 to 1968. He was a member of the Académie Française...
. According to some accounts, such efforts may have also involved another one of Cioran's friends, essayist Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
(later known for his work in drama).
Accounts differ on what happened to his sister Lina. Paul Daniel believes that she decided to go looking for her brother, also went missing, and, in all probability, became a victim of another deportation. Other sources state that she was arrested at around the same time as, or even together with, her brother, and that they were both on the same transport to Auschwitz. According to other accounts, Fondane was in custody while his sister was not, and sent her a final letter from Drancy; Fondane, who had theoretical legal grounds for being spared deportation (a Christian wife), aware that Lina could not invoke them, sacrificed himself to be by her side. While in Drancy, he sent another letter, addressed to Geneviève, in which he asked for all his French poetry to be published in the future as Le Mal des fantômes ("The Ache of Phantoms"), and optimistically called himself "the traveler who isn't done traveling".
While Lina is believed to have been marked for death upon arrival (and immediately after sent to the gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
), her brother survived the camp conditions for a few more months. He befriended two Jewish doctors, Moscovici and Klein, with whom he spent his free moments engaged in passionate discussions about philosophy and literature. As was later attested by a survivor of the camp, the poet himself was among the 700 inmates selected for extermination on October 2, 1944, when the Birkenau subsection outside Brzezinka
Brzezinka
Brzezinka is a village in southern Poland, located about from Oświęcim , in the district of Gmina Oświęcim, Oświęcim County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship.- General information :...
was being evicted by SS guards
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
. He was aware of impending death, and reportedly saw it as ironic that it came so near to an expected Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
victory. After a short interval in Block 10, where he is said to have awaited his death with dignity and courage, he was driven to the gas chamber and murdered. His body was cremated, along with those of the other victims.
Symbolist and traditionalist beginnings
As a young writer, Benjamin Fondane moved several times between the extremes of SymbolismSymbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
and Neoromantic
Neo-romanticism
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...
traditionalism. Literary historian Mircea Martin analyzed the very first of his as pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
s of several, sometimes contradictory, literary sources. These influences, he notes, come from local traditionalists, Romantics
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and Neoromantics—Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...
(the inspiration for Fondane's earliest pieces), Grigore Alexandrescu
Grigore Alexandrescu
Grigore Alexandrescu in Bucharest was a nineteenth century Romanian poet and translator noted for his fables with political undertones.Of a noble family, he participated in secret revolutionary societies...
, Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia....
, George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....
, Ştefan Octavian Iosif
Stefan Octavian Iosif
Ştefan Octavian Iosif was a Romanian poet and translator of Aromanian origin.-Life:Born in Braşov, Transylvania , he studied in his native town and in Sibiu before completing his education in Paris. While in France, he met Dimitrie Anghel, who would became a long-time friend...
; from French Symbolists—Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
; and from Romanian disciples of Symbolism—Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
, George Bacovia
George Bacovia
George Bacovia was a Romanian symbolist poet. While he initially belonged to the local Symbolist movement, his poetry came to be seen as a precursor of Romanian Modernism and eventually established him in critical esteem alongside Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga and Ion Barbu as one of the most...
, Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...
, Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...
. The young author had a special appreciation for the 19th century national poet, Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
. Familiar with Eminescu's entire poetic work, he was one of the young poets who tried to reconcile Eminescu's Neoromantic, ruralizing, traditionalism with the urban phenomenon that was Symbolism. While Fondane continued to credit Minulescu's radical and jocular Symbolism as a main influence on his own poems, this encounter was overall less significant than his enthusiasm for Eminescu; in contrast, Bacovia's desolate and macabre poetry left enduring traces in Fondane's work, shaping his depiction of provincial environments and even transforming his worldview.
Fondane's early affiliation with Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist and folklorist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.He was a professor at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Academy....
's version of Romania's Symbolist current
Symbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts...
was, according to literary historian Dumitru Micu, superficial. Micu notes that the young Fondane sent his verse to be published by magazines with incompatible agendas, suggesting that his collaboration with Vieaţa Nouă was therefore incidental, but also that, around 1914, Fondane's own style was a "conventional Symbolism". Writing in 1915, the poet himself explained that his time with the magazine in question ought not be interpreted as anything other than conjectural. During his polemic with Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, he defined himself as an advocate of an "insolent" Symbolism, a category defined by and around Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...
. This perspective was further clarified in O lămurire..., which explained how Tăgăduinţa lui Petru was to be read: "A clear, although Symbolist, book. For it is, unmistakably, Symbolist. [...] Symbolism doesn't necessarily mean neologism, morbid, bizarre, decadent
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
, confusing and badly written. But rather—if there is talent—original, commonsensical, depth, non-imitation, lack of standard, subconscious, new and sometimes healthy." From a regional point of view, the young Fondane is sometimes included with Bacovia in the Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
n branch of Romanian Symbolism, or, more particularly, in the Jewish Moldavian subsection.
The various stylistic directions of Fondane's early poetry came together in Privelişti. Mircea Martin reads in it the poet's emancipation from both Symbolism and traditionalism, despite it being opened with a dedication to Minulescu, and against Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...
's belief that such pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
s were exclusively traditionalist. According to Martin, Privelişti parts from its Romantic predecessors by abandoning the "descriptive" and "sentimentalist
Sentimentalism (literature)
Sentimentalism , as a literary and political discourse, has occurred much in the literary traditions of all regions in the world, and is central to the traditions of Indian literature, Chinese literature, and Vietnamese literature...
" in pastoral conventions: "Everything seems designed on purpose to confound and defy the traditional mindset." Similarly, writer-critic Gheorghe Crăciun found the Privelişti texts contiguous with other early forms of Romanian modernism.
Nevertheless, much of the volume still adheres to lyricism and the conventional idyll
Idyll
An idyll or idyl is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the Idylls....
format, primarily by identifying itself with the slow rhythms of country life. These traits were subsumed by literary historian George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
into a special category, that of "traditionalist Symbolism", centered on "that which brings man closer to Creation's interior life". The same commentator suggested that the concept linked modernism and traditionalism through the common influence of Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, whom Fondane himself credited as the "mystical power" behind Privelişti. The cycle also recalls Fondane's familiarity with another pastoral poet, Francis Jammes
Francis Jammes
Francis Jammes was a French poet. Coming from an ancient family, he spent most of his life in his native region of Béarn and the Basque Country and his poems are known for their lyricism and for singing the pleasures of a humble country life...
. Of special note is an ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
, Lui Taliarh ("At Thaliarchus"), described by Călinescu as the masterpiece of Privelişti. Directly inspired by Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
's Odes I.9, and seen by Martin as Fondane's will to integrate death into life (or "plenary living"), it equates existence with the seasonal cycle:
Ca mâne, toamna iară se va mări prin grâne, şi vinul toamnei poate nu-l vom mai bea. Ca mâne, poate s-o duce boii cu ochi de râu în ştiri, să tragă cu urechea la noile-ncolţiri. Şi-atuncea, la braţ, umbre, nu vom mai şti de toate; poate-am să uit nevasta şi vinul acru; poate... Ei, poate la ospeţe nu vei mai fi monarh. E toamnă. Bea cotnarul din cupă, Taliarh. |
Tomorrow maybe, autumn will expand over the fields of grain, and autumn wine us two we may no longer drink. Tomorrow maybe, the river-eyed oxen will head for the amaranth Amaranth Amaranthus, collectively known as amaranth, is a cosmopolitan genus of herbs. Approximately 60 species are recognized, with inflorescences and foliage ranging from purple and red to gold... , so they may eavesdrop on the new germination. And then, shadows arm in arm, we won't remember things; I might forget my wife and bitter wine; I might... Well, maybe you'll no longer be a monarch for the feasts. It's now autumn. Drink your cup of cotnar Grasa de Cotnari Grasă de Cotnari is a Romanian wine variety associated with the Cotnari vineyard, Moldavia, where it has been grown ever since the rule of Prince Stephen the Great . With the general decline in demand for sweet wines after the second world war and bad wine making during the communist era, Grasă... , Taliarchus. |
Arghezian modernism and Expressionist echoes
From its traditionalist core, Privelişti created a modernist structure of uncertainty and violent language. According to Mircea Martin, the two tendencies were so intertwined that one could find both expressed within the same poem. The very preference for vitalism and the energy of wilderness, various critics assess, is a modernist reaction to the drama of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, rather than a return to Romantic ideals. In this interval, Fondane had also discovered the poetic revolution promoted by Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...
, who united traditionalist discourse with modernist themes, creating new poetic formats. Martin notes that Fondane, more than any other, tried to replicate Arghezi's abrupt prosody
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
and "tooth and nail" approach to the literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
, but lacked his mentor's "verbal magic." The same critic suggests that the main effect of Arghezi's influence on Fondane was not in poetic form, but in determining the disciple to "discover himself", to seek his own independent voice. Paul Cernat also sees Fondane as indebted to Arghezi's mix of "cruelty" and "formal discipline". In contrast to such assessments, Călinescu saw Fondane not as an Arghezian pupil, but as a traditionalist "spiritually related" to Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
's own post-Symbolist avatar. This verdict was implicitly or explicitly rejected by other commentators: Martin argued that Pillat's omnipresent "calm joy", modulated with "impeccable taste", clashed with Fondane's "tension", "surprises" and "intelligence superior to [his] talent"; Cernat assessed that Privelişti was at "the antipode" of Pillat and Jammes, that its themes pointed to social alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
and a patriarchal
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
universe gone "off its rocker".
Statements made by the young Fondane, in which he explains his indifference toward the landscape as it is, and his preference for the landscape as the poet himself creates it, have been a traditional source for critical commentary. As Martin notes, this attitude led the poet and travel writer to express an apathy, or even boredom, in regard to the wild landscape, to promote "withdrawal" rather than "adhesion", "solitude" rather than "communion". However, as a way of cultivating a cosmic level of poetry, Fondane's work veered into synesthesia
Synesthesia
Synesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...
and vitalism
Vitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...
, being commended by critics for its tactile, aural or olfactory suggestions. In one such poem, cited by Călinescu as a sample of "exquisite freshness", the author imagines being turned into a ripe watermelon
Watermelon
Watermelon is a vine-like flowering plant originally from southern Africa. Its fruit, which is also called watermelon, is a special kind referred to by botanists as a pepo, a berry which has a thick rind and fleshy center...
. These works also part with convention in matters of prosody
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
(with a modern treatment of alexandrine
Alexandrine
An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...
s) and vocabulary
Romanian lexis
The lexis of the Romanian language , a Romance language, has changed over the centuries as the language evolved from Vulgar Latin, to Proto-Romanian, to medieval, modern and contemporary Romanian.-Medieval Romanian:...
(a stated preference for Slavic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
versus Romance
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
terminologies). In addition, Martin, who declared himself puzzled at noting that Fondane would not publish some of his most accomplished poems of youth, made special note of their occasional disregard for Romanian grammar
Romanian grammar
Standard Romanian shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, viz...
and other artistic license
Artistic license
Artistic licence is a colloquial term, sometimes euphemism, used to denote the distortion of fact, alteration of the conventions of grammar or language, or rewording of pre-existing text made by an artist to improve a piece of...
s (left uncorrected by Paul Daniel on Fondane's explicit request). Some of the Privelişti poems look upon nature with ostentatious sarcasm, focusing on its grotesque
Grotesque
The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
elements, its rawness and its repetitiveness, as well as attacking the idyllic portrayal of peasants in traditionalist literature. Martin notes in particular one of the untitled pieces about Hertza region
Hertza region
Hertza region is the territory of an administrative district of Hertsa in the southern part of Chernivtsi Oblast in southwestern Ukraine, on the Romanian border...
:
[...] şi trec ţărani cu rapăn, ca nişte boi; trec boi cu pântecele pline de miros de trifoi şi idioţi de toamnă; şi toamna e cuminte peste ţărani, şi peste ovăz, şi peste linte. |
[...] and mangy Mange Mange is the common name for a class of persistent contagious skin diseases caused by parasitic mites. Since mites also infect plants, birds, and reptiles, the term "mange," suggesting poor condition of the hairy coat due to the infection, is sometimes reserved only for pathological... peasants pass, like oxen; oxen pass with bellies full of clover Clover Clover , or trefoil, is a genus of about 300 species of plants in the leguminous pea family Fabaceae. The genus has a cosmopolitan distribution; the highest diversity is found in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, but many species also occur in South America and Africa, including at high altitudes... scent and autumn idiots; and autumn is cozy on the peasants, and on oat Oat The common oat is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name . While oats are suitable for human consumption as oatmeal and rolled oats, one of the most common uses is as livestock feed... s, and on lentil Lentil The lentil is an edible pulse. It is a bushy annual plant of the legume family, grown for its lens-shaped seeds... s. |
Literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu was the first to suggest, in the 1960s, that the underlying traits of such imagery made the post-Symbolist Fondane an Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
poet, who had detected "the fundamental anarchy
Anomie
Anomie is a term meaning "without Law" to describe a lack of social norms; "normlessness". It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French...
of the universe". The verdict was echoed and amended by those of other critics. Martin finds that it applies to many of Fondane's early poems, where "explosive" imagery is central, but opines that, generally toned down by melancholy, their message too blends into a new form of "crepuscular wisdom". Scholar Dan Grigorescu stresses that the Neo-romantic and Symbolist element is dominant throughout the Privelişti volume and, contrary to Crohmălniceanu's thesis, argues that Fondane's projection of the self into the nature is not Expressionist, but rather a convention borrowed from Romanticism (except for "perhaps, [...] the exacerbated dilatation" in scenes in which terrified cattle are driven into town). In Grigorescu's interpretation, the volume has some similarities with the pastoral Expressionism of Romanian writers Lucian Blaga
Lucian Blaga
-Biography:Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer higly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on May 9, 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Romania, his father being an...
and Adrian Maniu, as well as with the wilderness paintings of Franz Marc
Franz Marc
Franz Marc was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of the German Expressionist movement...
, but is at "the opposite pole" from the "morbid hallucination" Expressionism of H. Bonciu
H. Bonciu
H. Bonciu, or Horia Bonciu , was a Romanian novelist, poet, journalist and translator, noted especially as an atypical figure on his country's avant-garde scene...
and Max Blecher
Max Blecher
Max Blecher was a writer from Romania.His father was a well-to-do Jewish merchant and the owner of a porcelain shop. He attended primary and secondary school in Roman, Romania. After receiving his baccalaureat, Blecher left for Paris to study medicine...
. He indicates that, overall, Fondane's contributions confuse critics by following "contradictory directions", a mix that "hardly finds any grounds for comparison within [Romanian] poetry." In contrast, Paul Cernat sees both Fondane's poetry and Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and critic. As a figure on Romania's modernist scene throughout the early interwar period, he was noted for combining a picturesque perspective on the rural Jewish-Romanian community, to which he belonged, with traditionalist and...
's prose as "Expressionist écorché
Écorché
An écorché is a figure drawn, painted, or sculpted showing the muscles of the body without skin. Renaissance architect and theorist, Leon Battista Alberti recommended that when painters intend to depict a nude, they should first arrange the muscles and bones, then depict the overlying...
s", and connects Fondane's "modern attitude" to his familiarity with the poems of Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
.
Avant-garde critique of parochialism
The introduction of rhetorical violence within a traditional poetic setting announced Fondane's transition into the more radical wing of the modernist movement. During his Privelişti period, in his articles for ContimporanulContimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
, the poet stated that Symbolism was dead, and in subsequent articles drew a line between the original and non-original sides of Romanian Symbolism, becoming particularly critical of Macedonski. Defining his programatic approach as leading, through the avant-garde, into a Neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
modernism (or a "new Classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
"), Benjamin Fondane argued: "To be excessive: that is the only way of being innovative." His perspective, mixing revolt and messages about creating a new tradition, was relatively close to Contimporanuls own artistic program, and as such a variant of Constructivism
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
. During his own transition from Symbolism, Fondane looked on the avant-garde itself with critical distance. Discussing it as the product of a tradition leading back to Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
, he reproached Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
for displaying a limitation of range, and viewed Futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
as essentially destructive (but also useful for having created a virgin territory to support "constructive man"); likewise, he found Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
a solid, but limited, method of combating interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
's "metaphysical despair".
The affiliation to the avant-garde came with a sharp critique of Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
, accused by Fondane of promoting imitation and parochialism
Parochialism
Parochialism means being provincial, being narrow in scope, or considering only small sections of an issue. It may, particularly when used pejoratively, be contrasted to universalism....
. During a period which ended with his 1923 departure, the young poet sparked polemic with a series of statements in which, reviewing the impact of local Francophilia, he equated Romania with a colony
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
of France. This theory proposed a difference between Westernization
Westernization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...
and "parasitism
Parasitism
Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. Traditionally parasite referred to organisms with lifestages that needed more than one host . These are now called macroparasites...
": "If a foreign intellectual direction is always useful, an alien soul is always a danger." He did not cease to promote foreign culture at home, but stated a complex argument about the need to recognize differences in culture: his global conclusion about civilizations, which he viewed as equal but not identical, built on Gourmont's theory about an "intellectual constancy" throughout human history, as well as on philosopher Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
's critique of mechanism
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
. In parallel, Fondane criticized the cultural setting of Greater Romania
Greater Romania
The Greater Romania generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War, the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever ; more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of...
, noting that it was so Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
-focused that Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
n authors only became widely known by attending the capital's Casa Capşa
Casa Capsa
Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003....
restaurant. In his retrospective interpretation of Romanian literature, the avant-garde essayist stated that there were precious few authors who could be considered original, primarily citing Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...
, the peasant writer, as a model of authenticity. While stating this point in his Imagini şi cărţi din Franţa, Fondane cited in his favor a traditionalist culture critic, historian Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...
.
However, during a virtual polemic with Poporanism
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...
(hosted by Sburătorul
Sburatorul
Sburătorul was a Romanian modernist literary magazine and literary society, established in Bucharest in April 1919. Led by Eugen Lovinescu, the circle was instrumental in developing new trends and styles in Romanian literature, ranging from a new wave of Romanian Symbolism to an urban-themed...
in 1922), Fondane also questioned the originality and Thraco-Roman
Thraco-Roman
The terms Thraco-Roman and Daco-Roman refer to the culture and language of the Thracian and Dacian peoples who were incorporated into the Roman Empire and ultimately fell under the Roman and Latin sphere of influence.-Meaning and usage:...
origin of Romanian folklore
Folklore of Romania
A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian communities resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Folk creations were the main literary genre...
, as well as, through it, historical myths surrounding the Latin ethnogenesis: "Present-day Romania, of obscure origins, Thraco-Roman-Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
-Barbarian
Migration Period
The Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions , was a period of intensified human migration in Europe that occurred from c. 400 to 800 CE. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages...
, owes its existence and present-day European inclusion to a fecund error [...]: it is the idea of our Latin origin [Fondane's italics]." Likewise, the author put forth the thesis according to which traditionalists such as Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting republican head of state under the communist regime . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as...
and George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....
invoked literary themes present not just in Romania's archaic tradition, but also in Slavic folklore. Fondane went on to draw a comparison between the idea of Jewish chosenness
Jews as a chosen people
In Judaism, "chosenness" is the belief that the Jews are the Chosen People, chosen to be in a covenant with God. This idea is first found in the Torah and is elaborated on in later books of the Hebrew Bible...
and that of Romanian Latinity
Romanization (cultural)
Romanization or latinization indicate different historical processes, such as acculturation, integration and assimilation of newly incorporated and peripheral populations by the Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire...
, concluding that they both resulted in positive national goals (in the case of Romania and its inhabitants, that of "becoming part of Europe"). Paul Cernat found his perspective "more reasonable" than that of his Contimporanul colleagues, who speculated about creating a modernity on folkloric roots.
Scholar Constantin Pricop interprets Fondane's overall perspective as that of a "constructive" critic, citing a fragment of Imagini şi cărţi din Franţa: "Let us hope the time will come when we may bring our personal contribution into Europe. [...] Until such time, let's keep a check on the continuous assimilation of foreign culture [...]; let's therefore return to cultural critic
Cultural critic
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...
ism." Commenting at length on the probable motivations of Fondane's discourse, Cernat suggests that, like many of his avant-garde colleagues, Fondane experienced a "peripheral complex", merging Bovarysme
Bovarysme
Bovarysme is a term derived from Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary . It denotes a tendency toward escapist daydreaming in which the dreamer imagines himself or herself to be a hero or heroine in a romance, whilst ignoring the everyday realities of the situation. The eponymous Madame Bovary is an...
and frustrated ambition. According to Cernat, the poet surpassed this moment after experiencing success in France, and his decision to have Privelişti printed at home was intended as a special tribute to Romania and its language. There is however a pronounced difference between Fondane's French and Romanian work, as discussed by critics and by Fondane himself. The elements of continuity are highlighted in Crăciun's account: "French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
and culture
Culture of France
The culture of France and of the French people has been shaped by geography, by profound historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris, has played an important role as a center of high culture and of decorative arts since the seventeenth...
signified for Fundoianu a process of clarification and self-definition, but not a change of identity."
Jewish tradition and Biblical language
Several of Fondane's exegetes have discussed the links between his apparent traditionalism and the classical themes of either secular Jewish cultureSecular Jewish culture
Secular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the international culture of secular communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews...
or Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, with a focus on his Hasidic
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
roots. According to Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
researcher Tom Sandqvist (who discusses the Jewish background of many Romanian avant-garde authors and artists), the Hasidic and Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
connection is enhanced by both the pantheistic
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
vision of Tăgăduinţa lui Petru and the "Ein Sof
Ein Sof
Ein Sof , in Kabbalah, is understood as God prior to His self-manifestation in the production of any spiritual Realm, probably derived from Ibn Gabirol's term, "the Endless One"...
-like emptiness" suggested in Privelişti. Paul Cernat too argued that the traditionalist elements in Fondane's work reflected Hasidism as it was experienced in Galicia or Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
, as well as the direct influence of Jacob Gropper. According to George Călinescu's analysis (originally stated in 1941), Fondane's origin within the rural minority of Romanian Jews (and not the urban Jewish mainstream) was of special psychological interest: "The poet is a Jew from Moldavia, where Jews have almost pastoral professions, but are nevertheless prevented by a tradition of market agglomerations from fully enjoying the sincerity of rustic life." The fond memory of Judaic practice is notably intertwined with the Privelişti pastorals:
Deodată, după geamuri se aprindeau făclii; o umbră liniştită intra în prăvălii prin uşile-ncuiate şi s-aşeza la masă. Tăcerea de salină încremenea în casă şi-n sloiul nopţii jgheabul ogrăzii adăpa. Bunicul între flăcări de sfeşnic se ruga: "Să-mi cadă dreapta, limba să se usuce-n mine de te-oi lua vreodată-n deşert, Ierusalime!" |
At once, flames lit up behind windows; a quiet shadow crept into the shops through the locked doors and took place at the table. The silence of a salt mine was tightened in the house and an icy night flowed into the outside gutter. Grandfather was praying around candle flames: "May my right arm fall off, my tongue dry up in me if ever I take in vain thy name, Jerusalem!" |
Fondane expanded on his interest in the Jewish heritage in his early prose and drama. The various pre-1923 articles, including his obituary pieces for Elias Schwartzfeld and Avram Steuerman-Rodion
Avram Steuerman-Rodion
Avram Steuerman-Rodion, born Adolf Steuerman or Steuermann and often referred to as just Rodion , was a Romanian poet, anthologist, physician and socialist journalist...
, speak at length about Jewish ethics
Jewish ethics
Jewish ethics stands at the intersection of Judaism and the Western philosophical tradition of ethics. Like other types of religious ethics, the diverse literature of Jewish ethics primarily aims to answer a broad range of moral questions and, hence, may be classified as a normative ethics...
(which Fondane described as unique and idealistic
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
), assimilation
Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation refers to the cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture. Assimilation became legally possible in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.-Background:Judaism forbids the worship of other gods...
and Jewish nationalism. They also offer his answer to antisemitism, including his case, relying on proof of Jewish exogamy
Exogamy
Exogamy is a social arrangement where marriage is allowed only outside of a social group. The social groups define the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. In social studies, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects:...
, against all theories about a distinct Semitic
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
race. In other such pieces, he comments at length on Gropper's Yiddishist literature and corrects opinions expressed on the same topic by their common friend Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction was a Romanian Orthodox clergyman and theologian, writer, journalist, left-wing activist, as well as a political figure of the People's Republic of Romania...
. As he explains in this context, Gropper quelled his adolescent identity crisis, helping him find a core Judaism, more "vital" to him than the political scope of Zionism. During these dialogues, Fondane recalled, he first discovered his interest in philosophy: he played the "Sophist
Sophism
Sophism in the modern definition is a specious argument used for deceiving someone. In ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching aretê — excellence, or virtue — predominantly to young statesmen and...
", paradoxical and abstract, in front of the "sentimental" Gropper. This antithesis
Antithesis
Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition...
also inspired the core essay in Iudaism şi elenism, where Fondane writes at length about the hostile dialogue between Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy , includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or, in relation to the religion of Judaism. Jewish philosophy, until modern Enlightenment and Emancipation, was pre-occupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism; thus organizing...
, in search of fundamental truths, and Greek thought, with its ultimate value of beauty.
Tăgăduinţa lui Petru, believed by Mircea Martin to be a sample of Fondane's debt to André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, is the first of his works to take inspiration from the Bible (in this case, looking beyond the Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
). Also Biblical in subject, Monologul lui Baltazar has been interpreted by Crohmălniceanu as a negative comment on nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
and the Übermensch
Übermensch
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
theory, notions embodied by the protagonist Belshazzar
Belshazzar
Belshazzar, or Balthazar , was a 6th century BC prince of Babylon, the son of Nabonidus and the last king of Babylon according to the Book of Daniel . Like his father, it is believed by many scholars that he was an Assyrian. In Daniel Belshazzar, or Balthazar , was a 6th century BC prince of...
, legendary ruler of Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
during the Jewish captivity
Babylonian captivity
The Babylonian captivity was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon—conventionally 587–538 BCE....
. Fondane's progressive focus on Jewish Biblical sources mirrored the Christian interests of his mentor Arghezi. Like Arghezi, Fondane wrote a series of Psalms
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...
—although, according to Martin, his tone was "too cadenced and solemn for one to expect a confrontation or a touching confession". However, Martin notes, the Jewish author either adopted or anticipated (depending on the reliability of his manuscripts' dating) Arghezi's poetry of exhortation and curses, in which ugliness, baseness and destitution speak directly to divinity. These sentiments are found in Fondane's Psalmul leprosului, which the same critic identifies as "the series' masterpiece":
Căci trupul meu se crapă de buboaie — şi din obraji, vinete coji au curs vânăt puroaie; [...] Şi sufletul meu, broască, de urât orăcăie, o, Doamne, către tine. |
For my body is breaking up in boils— and from my cheeks, indigo scabs have leaked indigo pus; [...] And my soul, a frog, in desperation croaks, o my Lord, unto thee. |
Surrealism, anti-communism and Jewish existentialism
Throughout and beyond his participation in the SurrealistSurrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
milieus (an affiliation illustrated primarily by his filmmaker and popularizer activities, rather than by his literary creation), Benjamin Fondane remained an existentialist
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, primarily following Lev Shestov
Lev Shestov
Lev Isaakovich Shestov , born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann , was a Ukrainian/Russian existentialist philosopher. Born in Kiev on , he emigrated to France in 1921, fleeing from the aftermath of the October Revolution. He lived in Paris until his death on November 19, 1938.- Life :Shestov was born Lev...
's views on the human condition
Human condition
The human condition encompasses the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. It can be described as the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc. — a search for purpose, sense of curiosity, the inevitability of...
. This came as a critique of the scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
and rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
as human explanations of the world, notably outlined in his own Faux traité d'esthétique. Probably developed independently from Shestovist thought, his overall objection toward abstract projects has been likened by essayist Gina Sebastian Alcalay to the later stances of André Glucksmann
André Glucksmann
André Glucksmann is a French philosopher and writer, and member of the French new philosophers.-Early years:André Glucksmann was born in 1937, in Boulogne-Billancourt, the son of Ashkenazi Jewish parents from Romania and Czechoslovakia. He studied in Lyon, and later enrolled at École normale...
or Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin
Edgar Morin is a French philosopher and sociologist born Edgar Nahoum in Paris on July 8, 1921. He is of Judeo-Spanish origin. He is known for the transdisciplinarity of his works.- Biography :...
. These attitudes shaped his assessments of Surrealism. In one of Integral chronicles, Fondane himself explained that the movement, described as superior to Dada's "joyous suicide", had created a "new continent" with its rediscovery of dreams. Poet and critic Armelle Chitrit notes that, in part, Fondane's later dissidence was also motivated on an existentialist level, since Surrealism "had stopped asking questions"; instead, she notes, Fondane "believed neither in reason nor in any system based on it. It is folly, he wrote, to perpetuate the attempt to make man and history cohabitable. One of [S]hestov's rare disciples, he sets only the powers of life against those of chaos." As Fondane wrote to Claude Sernet, Rimbaud le voyou was in part at attempt at preventing the other Surrealists from confiscating Rimbaud's mythical status. According to Romanian-born writer Lucian Raicu, its "somber" tone and allusive language are also early clues that Fondane had a nightmarish vision of the political and intellectual climate. His Shestovist interpretation, opposing existence to ideas, was contested by intellectual figure Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
: himself a former Surrealist, Queneau suggested that Fondane was relying on blind faith, having a distorted perspective on science, literature and the human intellect. Furthermore, he noted that, under the influence of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
Lucien Lévy-Brühl was a French scholar trained in philosophy, who made contributions to the budding fields of sociology and ethnology. His primary field of study involved primitive mentality....
, Fondane described reality exclusively in primitivist
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
terms, as the realm of savagery and superstition
Superstition
Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events....
.
Fondane's objection to the communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
flirtations of the main Surrealist wing had roots in his earlier discourse: before leaving Romania, Fondane had criticized socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
as a modern myth, symptomatic of a generalized desecration
Desecration
Desecration is the act of depriving something of its sacred character, or the disrespectful or contemptuous treatment of that which is held to be sacred or holy by a group or individual.-Detail:...
, suggesting that Leninist
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
and Labor Zionist
Labor Zionism
Labor Zionism can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure...
projects were economically unsound. Much admired by Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
for his rejection of all modern ideology, the poet argued that a critical distance imposed itself between artists and social structures, and, although he too reacted against "bourgeois" culture, concluded that communism carried a greater risk for the independent mind. In particular, he objected to the Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
theory on base and superstructure
Base and superstructure
In Marxist theory, human society consists of two parts: the base and superstructure; the base comprehends the forces and relations of production — employer-employee work conditions, the technical division of labour, and property relations — into which people enter to produce the necessities and...
: although his planned address for the Writers' Congress spoke of Marxian economics
Marxian economics
Marxian economics refers to economic theories on the functioning of capitalism based on the works of Karl Marx. Adherents of Marxian economics, particularly in academia, distinguish it from Marxism as a political ideology and sociological theory, arguing that Marx's approach to understanding the...
as being justified by reality, it also argued that economic relationships could not be used to explain all historical developments. His critique of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
as an equally "bourgeois" society also came with the argument that Futurism, not Surrealism, could transform into art the communist version of voluntarism.
Fondane found himself opposed to the general trend of intellectual partisanship, and took pride in defining himself as a politically independent skeptic. Around 1936, he reacted strongly against Julien Benda
Julien Benda
Julien Benda was a French philosopher and novelist. He remains famous for his essay The Betrayal of the Intellectuals.- Life :...
's rationalist political essays, with their overall critique of intellectual passions, describing them as revived and "excruciatingly boring" versions of positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
, but ignoring their primary, anti-totalitarian, agenda. However, La Conscience malheureuse (with essays on Shestov, Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
and Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
) was noted as Fondane's own contribution to the debate surrounding Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
activities and the rise of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
: titled after a concept in Hegelian philosophy
Hegelianism
Hegelianism is a collective term for schools of thought following or referring to G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real", which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories...
, which originally referred to the thinking process generating its own divisions, it referred to the possibility of thinkers to interact with the larger world, beyond subjectivity
Subjectivity
Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...
.
Rallying himself with the main trends of Jewish existentialism
Jewish existentialism
Jewish existentialism is a category of work by Jewish authors dealing with existentialist themes and concepts , and intended to answer theological questions that are important in Judaism. The existential angst of Job is an example from the Hebrew Bible of the existentialist theme...
, the poet remained critical of other existentialist schools, such as those of Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
and Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, believing them to be overly reliant on dialectics, and therefore on rational thought; likewise, citing Kierkegaard as his reference point, Fondane criticized Jean Wahl
Jean Wahl
Jean André Wahl was a French philosopher.-Early career:He was professor at the Sorbonne from 1936 to 1967, broken by World War II. He was in the U.S...
for not discussing existential philosophy as an act of faith. His dislike for secular existentialism was also outlined in a text he authored shortly before his 1944 arrest, where he spoke of the Bible as being, "whether or not it wants to", the original reference for all existential philosophy. Geneviève Tissier-Fondane later recalled that her husband was "profoundly Jewish" to his death, but also that he would not abide by any formal regulation within the Halakha
Halakha
Halakha — also transliterated Halocho , or Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.Judaism classically draws no distinction in its laws between religious and ostensibly non-religious life; Jewish...
tradition. This approach also implied a measure of ecumenism
Ecumenism
Ecumenism or oecumenism mainly refers to initiatives aimed at greater Christian unity or cooperation. It is used predominantly by and with reference to Christian denominations and Christian Churches separated by doctrine, history, and practice...
: Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
, who cultivated his relationship with Fondane across the religious and philosophical divides, described his friend as "a disciple of Shestov but one inhabited by the Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
"; Fondane himself explained to Maritain that Shestov and himself were aiming for a new Judaic philosophy that would be equally indebted to the Christianity of Kierkegaard, Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
and Tertullian
Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...
. He was critical of Maritain's worldview, but remained a passionate reader of his work; in contrast, Geneviève attested that the Maritains' beliefs shaped her own, leasing her back into the Church.
Late poetry and drama
The spiritual crisis experienced in France was the probable reason why Fondane refused to write poems between 1923 and 1927. As he stated in various contexts, he mistrusted the innate ability of words to convey the tragedy of existence, describing poetry as the best tool for rendering a universal "wordless scream", an "ultimate reality", or an eternal expression of things ephemeral. In his essays, he suggested that the invention of art, like the invention of theory and rhetoric, had deprived poets of their existential function; beyond letting themselves be guided by their art, he argued, writers needed to confirm that the principles of life, negative as well as positive, exist. He saw poets as waging an unequal battle with both scientific perspectives and moralism, urging them to place their unique faith "in the mysterious virtue of poetry, in the existential virtue that poetry upholds". Rimbaud le voyou was in part a study of how, during his self-exile to HararHarar
Harar is an eastern city in Ethiopia, and the capital of the modern Harari ethno-political division of Ethiopia...
, Rimbaud had not merely abandoned poetry for the sake of adventure, but rather transformed his lifestyle into a poetry of incertitude and personal ambition. As Fondane explained in his Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre, a poet and thinker could also evidence the abyss he faced, and alleviate his own anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
, through the use of irony: "Laugh in the face of tragedy, or disappear!"
According to Cernat, his articles for Integral show Fondane as an ally of the "anti-political" and lyrical side of Surrealism, a poet placing his trust in "the negative-soteriological
Soteriology
The branch of Christian theology that deals with salvation and redemption is called Soteriology. It is derived from the Greek sōtērion + English -logy....
, liberating function of poetry". The impact of existentialist philosophy was even traced to the "cine-poems" by Martin Stanton (who called the pieces "amazing"). In contrast to the Surrealists, Fondane did not believe in a need to circulate poems as universal messages, but rather saw them as the basis for a very personal relationship with the reader: "This is not a time for print. Poetry is seeking its friends, not an audience. [...] Poetry will be for the few—or it will not be at all." Chitrit, who parallels Fondane's definitions with the similar views of Romanian poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
, concludes: "This is probably the closest that we can come to seeing contemporary poetry." Fondane's other literary works also evidence the impact of his philosophical preoccupations. With Le Féstin de Balthazar, the writer modified his earlier Monologul by adopting Shestivist themes (introducing allegorical
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
characters who discuss Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings...
, capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and revolution) and by introducing some elements from the burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
. Originally conceived in 1918 and completed in 1933, Philoctète reworked Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
' play of the same title
Philoctetes (Sophocles)
Philoctetes is a play by Sophocles . The play was written during the Peloponnesian War. It was first performed at the Festival of Dionysus in 409 BC, where it won first prize. The story takes place during the Trojan War...
, interpreting it through the style of Gide's dramas.
Ulysse was an epic poem
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
in free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
, the first such work in Fondane's career, and testing a format later adopted in Titanic and L'Exode. Although quite similar to Voronca's own work, which also used Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
as the pretext for a comment on social alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
, it included an additional allegory of Jewishness (according to critic Petre Răileanu, Voronca had stripped his own text of Jewish symbolism, in the hope of not entering a competition with Fondane). Fondane's 1933 text echoes his earlier intertextual
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
Homeric references (present in poems he wrote back in 1914), but, to their adventurous escapism
Escapism
Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life...
, it opposes the Ithaca metaphor
Homer's Ithaca
The location of Homer's Ithaca, i.e. Ithaca as featured in Homer's Odyssey, is a matter for debate.The central characters of the epic such as Odysseus, Achilles, Agamemnon and Hector are generally believed to be fictional characters. Yet there are many claims that some Homeric hero long ago had...
—an ideal of stability in the assumption of one's destiny. Claude Sernet referred to Ulysse as "painful and sober, a cry of anxiety, of revolt and resignation, a fraternal and noble song to mankind". The poem is also Fondane's comment on the Wandering Jew
Wandering Jew
The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming...
story (the mythical figure is rescaled into an urban Ulysses
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
), and, according to cultural historian Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
, reinterprets the Christian prejudice about Jews being eternal "witnesses" of Christ's Passion
Passion (Christianity)
The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...
. Together, such motifs intimated the writer's own experiences, leading various commentators to conclude that he too was "the Jewish Ulysses". Italian academic Gisèle Vanhese, who connects this lyrical discourse with Fondane's "experience of the abyss" concept, notes that ocean waters are the vehicles of nomadism in Ulysse, while, in Titanic, the same environment serves as a metaphor of dying.
In Cioran's account, Benjamin Fondane lived his final years permanently aware "of a misfortune that was about to happen", and built a "complicity with the unavoidable". The same is noted by German Romanian
Germans of Romania
The Germans of Romania or Rumäniendeutsche were 760,000 strong in 1930. They are not a single group; thus, to understand their language, culture, and history, one must view them as independent groups:...
poet and Cioran exegete Dieter Schlesak, who suggests: "Fondane was a man who wished to bear the absolute uncertainty of the outside; that which exists is an intermittent, not continuous, reality. But [true misfortune] is the boredom of faint unliving, [...] of things implied, these being the ones [Fondane] hated." Fondane's visions about history and the role of poetry were notably outlined in L'Exode, a portion of which is dedicated to the powerlessness of Jews in front of prejudice. According to Oişteanu, this text, where the narrative voice speaks of sufferings and defects common in all humans, was probably inspired by the famous monologue in William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
. Another part, called "astonishingly prophetic" and "cynical apocalyptic" by Chitrit, reads:
Que l'on nous brûle ou que l'on nous cloute et que se soit chance ou déveine, que voulez-vous que ça nous foute? Il n'est de chanson que l'humaine. |
No matter if you burn or nail us whether it be good luck or ill it is to us of little consequence. There is no chant except the human song. |
Similar themes were being explored by the Super Flumina Babylonis cycle, described by Sernet as "a terrible foreshadowing of events into which peoples and continents were about to sink, into which the author himself was to be dragged without the possibility of return." Writing about the entirety of Fondane's French poetry (Le Mal des fantômes), poet and language theorist Henri Meschonnic
Henri Meschonnic
Henry Meschonnic was a French poet, linguist and theoretician of language, and essayist....
argued that the Romanian author was unique in depicting "the revolt and the flavor of life mixed into the sense of death".
Family and estate
After her husband's death (of which she was for long ignorant) and the end of the war, Geneviève Tissier-Fondane, aided by the Maritains, moved into Kolbsheim CastleChâteau de Kolbsheim
The Château de Kolbsheim is located near the town of Kolbsheim, in the French Department of Bas-Rhin, in Alsace. It is 15 kilometers southwest of Strasbourg, overlooking the plain of Alsace....
, tutoring the children of Antoinette and Alexander Grunelius. A devout Catholic, she eventually retreated from public life, becoming a nun in the Congregation of Notre-Dame de Sion
Congregation of Notre-Dame de Sion
The Congregation of Notre-Dame de Sion is a Roman Catholic religious order of women founded in France in 1843 by Theodor Ratisbonne, encouraged by his brother Alphonse Ratisbonne, with the purpose of promoting the conversion of Jews to Christianity. The congregation established several educational...
(dedicated to Catholic missionary work among the Jews). Relocating to the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève
Montagne Sainte-Geneviève
The Montagne Sainte-Geneviève is a hill on the left Bank of the Seine in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.On the top of the Montagne, one can visit the Panthéon or the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, which is often full of students from La Sorbonne and other nearby universities...
, she died, after a long battle with cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
, in March 1954. Fondane was also survived by his mother Adela, who died in June 1953 at age 94, and sister Rodica (d. 1967).
The writer was the subject of several visual portrayals by noted artists, some of whom were his personal friends. During his collaboration with Integral and unu, Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner was a Romanian Jewish painter of surrealistic images.-Early life:He was born in Piatra Neamţ, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school...
and Jules Perahim both drew his vignette portraits (the former as part of a series titled film unu). He is the subject of a 1930 sketch by Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, a 1931 Surrealist painting by Brauner (who also painted one of Adela Schwartzfeld), and an artistic photograph by Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
. The 1934 edition of Psalmul leprosului featured Fondane's portrait in the hand of graphic artist Sigmund Maur (the original version of which was dated to 1921). A posthumous image of the poet in military attire was drawn by Romanian-born artist Eugen Drăguţescu
Eugen Dragutescu
Eugen Drăguţescu was a famed Romanian painter and graphic artist...
. Benjamin Fondane was also commemorated with a mention on the Panthéon
Panthéon, Paris
The Panthéon is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens...
plaque, among the Morts pour la France (reportedly, his name was added upon a request from Cioran). There is a similar landmark in Iaşi's Eternitatea cemetery
Eternitatea cemetery
Eternitatea is the bigest cemetery from Iași, Romania.-Notable interments:* writers: Ion Creangă, Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, Garabet Ibrăileanu, Dimitrie Anghel, Otilia Cazimir, George Topârceanu, Nicolae Beldiceanu...
, set up by the Writers' Union of Romania
Writers' Union of Romania
The Writers' Union of Romania , founded in March 1949, is a professional association of writers in Romania. It also has a subsidiary in Chişinău, Republic of Moldova...
near his family grave.
The poet-philosopher left behind a large manuscript collection, a personal library and a set of works due for publishing. His book collection was split into individual documentary funds, some located in France and others in Romania. In February 1930, Benjamin Fondane explained that he did not consider revisiting his land of birth until such time as his earlier volumes would be printed, indicating that these included (in addition to Privelişti): Ferestre spre Europa, Imagini şi scriitori români ("Images and Romanian Writers"), Caietele unui inactual ("The Notebooks of an Outdated Man"), Probleme vesele ("Merry Problems"), Dialoguri ("Dialogues") and an introduction to the work of art critic Walter Pater
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
. Among Fondane's other Romanian works, unpublished at the time of his death, were the prose poem Herţa ("Hertza"), Note dintr-un confesional and many other prose fragments and poems, all preserved in Daniel's manuscript collection. According to Paul Daniel, part of the poet's book collection in Romania was left in the care of literary critic Lucian Boz, who sold it upon his departure for Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. In France, the copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
to Fondane's work was passed on in the late 20th century to scholar Michel Carassou, who was personally involved in several publication projects.
Western echoes
In France, the caretaker of documentary enterprises regarding Fondane was for long Sernet (Voronca's brother-in-law), who released part of Super Flumina Babylonis and other previously unknown texts (published in various issues of Cahiers du Sud and other journals), while supervising a new edition of L'Honneur des poètes, where Fondane was properly credited. In 1945, philosopher Jean GrenierJean Grenier
Jean Grenier was a French philosopher and writer. He taught for a time in Algiers, where he became a significant influence on the young Albert Camus.-Biography:...
edited the first-ever version of Le Lundi existentiel. A Fondane reader (comprising L'Exode) was being planned around 1946, and supposed to be published by Les Éditions de Minuit
Les Éditions de Minuit
Les Éditions de Minuit is a French publishing house which has its origins in the French Resistance of World War II and still publishes books today.-History:...
, with contributions from poets Jean Lescure
Jean Lescure
- Biography :In 1938 Jean Lescure published his first plaquette of poems, "Le voyage immobile", and launched the review "Messages" ....
and Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
. Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre was eventually published by Éditions Seghers in 1947, under the supervision of Jean Cassou
Jean Cassou
Jean Cassou was a French writer, art critic, poet and member of the French Resistance during World War II.- Biography :Jean Cassou was born at Deusto, near Bilbao,...
(second edition 1972; third edition 1973). Sernet was also the author of the poem À Benjamain Fondane, déporté ("To Benjamin Fondane, Upon His Deportation"), reportedly dated June 3, 1944. Recollections of Fondane's activity and his friendship with Victoria Ocampo
Victoria Ocampo
Victoria Ocampo Aguirre was an Argentine writer and intellectual, described by Jorge Luis Borges as La mujer más argentina ....
are also found in Ocampo's series Testimonios ("Testimonies").
With support from Culture Minister
Minister of Culture (France)
The Minister of Culture is, in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture"...
André Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
, Sernet also published a 1965 bound version of L'Exode and Super Flumina..., reconstructed from the fragmentary manuscripts. Also on Sernet's initiative, Le Chant du Monde record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
and comedienne Ève Griliquez released an LP album
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
of public recitations from his work. Other collections of his written work were published in later years, including his Écrits pour le cinéma ("Writings for the Cinema", 1984), Le Féstin de Balthazar (1985), Le Lundi existentiel (1989), and Le Mal des fantômes (1996). His interviews with Shestov, left by the poet in Ocampo's care, were collected in 1982, as Rencontres avec Léon Chestov ("Meetings with Lev Shestov"). Fondane's notes on Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
, as well as other documents, saw print in 1996, as Le voyageur n'a pas fini de voyager ("The Traveler Isn't Done Traveling"). The following year, Fondane scholar Monique Jutrin discovered and published his manuscript speech for the 1935 Congress, L'Écrivain devant la révolution. Another previouly unknown text, the screenplay sketch Une journée d'ivresse ("A Day of Drunkenness"), was included by editors Carassou and Petre Răileanu in a critical edition of 1999.
In the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
(including the Romanian diaspora
Romanian diaspora
The Romanian diaspora is the ethnically Romanian population outside Romania and Moldova. The concept does not usually include the ethnic Romanians who live as natives in the states surrounding Romania, chiefly those Romanians who live in Ukraine and Serbia. The diaspora does include the people of...
), there were a few authors whose work was influenced directly by Fondane's, among them Voronca and David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...
. Gascoyne, the author of "I.M. Benjamin Fondane" poem and recollection pieces on their friendship, spoke of the Romanian as a mentor, with a "decisive and lasting influence" on his own writings. France is home to a Benjamin Fondane Studies Society, which organizes an annual workshop in Peyresq
Peyresq
Peyresq is a French village in the commune of Thorame-Haute in France, perched on a rocky outcrop of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence at 1,528 metres above sea level.-History:...
. Since 1994, it publishes the academic review Cahiers Benjamin Fondane, which has recovered and published much of Fondane's correspondence and political texts. In 2006, following a Fondane Society request, a square on Paris' Rue Rollin was renamed in honor of the Romanian-born writer. Three years later, on the 65th commemoration of Fondane's killing, the Mémorial de la Shoah museum hosted a special exhibit dedicated his life and literary work. In Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, a fragment from his L'Exode is engraved in English and Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
versions on the entrance of Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
memorial.
By the late 1970s, Fondane's Romanian work was attracting researchers and authors of monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
s from various other countries, in particular the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
(John Kenneth Hyde, Eric Freedman etc.) and Communist Czechoslovakia (Libuše Valentová). In West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, Fondane's poetic and philosophical contributions were in focus by 1986, when exiled poet Dieter Schlesak published translated samples in Akzente journal. Preceded by Gascoyne's French-to-English translation attempts from Fondane, American film editor Julian Semilian's contribution as a translator from Romanian is credited with having played an important part in introducing the Anglosphere
Anglosphere
Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies...
to the writings of Fondane and various other Romanian modernists. The first-ever volume of Hebrew translations from Fondane's verse saw print in 2003, with support from Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
. Other international echoes include the publication of Odile Serre's Romanian-to-French translations from his early poems.
Recognition of Fondane's overall contribution was however rare, as noted in 1989 by Martin Stanton: "[Fondane is] surely the most underestimated intellectual of the 1930s". Writing some nine years later, Chitrit also argued: "His works [...] are as important as they are unknown." Cioran, who in 1986 dedicated a portion of his Exercises in Admiration collection to his deceased friend, mentioned that Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre, made memorable by its study of boredom as a literary subject, had since found numerous readers. Cioran kept a fond memory of his friend, and recalled not being able to pass on Rue Rollin without experiencing "terrible pain". Awareness of Fondane's philosophy was nevertheless judged unsatisfactory by scholar Moshe Idel. Speaking in 2007, he suggested that Fondane the philosopher remained less familiar to Jewish studies
Jewish studies
Jewish studies is an academic discipline centered on the study of Jews and Judaism. Jewish studies is interdisciplinary and combines aspects of history , religious studies, archeology, sociology, languages , political science, area studies, women's studies, and ethnic studies...
academics in Israel than his various counterparts in Germanic Europe
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
.
Argentinian director Edgardo Cozarinsky
Edgardo Cozarinsky
Edgardo Cozarinsky is a writer and filmmaker. He is best known for writing Vudú urbano.- Life :His family name goes back to his great grandparents, Jewish immigrants from Kiev and Odessa at the end of the 19th century, his first name tells of his mother's infatuation with Edgar Allan Poe.After an...
, who was inspired in his youth by Fondane's introduction of avant-garde films (preserved in the Argentine Film Archives), staged and narrated a dramatized version of his biography, performed at the Villa Ocampo
Villa Ocampo
Villa Ocampo is the former house of Victoria Ocampo , one of Latin America's greatest cultural figures, founder and director of Sur magazine...
. Fondane scholar Olivier Salazar-Ferrer also authored a theatrical adaptation of L'Exode (premiered by France's Théâtre de La Mouvance company in 2008).
Romanian echoes
In his native country, Benjamin Fondane was present in the memoirMemoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
s of several authors. One special case is Arghezi, who, despite his disciple's admiration, left a sarcastic and intentionally demoralizing portrayal of Fondane in his 1930 volume Poarta Neagră. A year after the poet's death at Auschwitz, Arghezi returned with a sympathetic obituary, printed in Revista Fundaţiilor Regale. Fondane was also the subject of a Surrealist poem in prose, or "short-circuit", by Stephan Roll, where he was referred to as "a Don Juan
Don Juan
Don Juan is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630...
of the brain's lineage from God". A very hostile depiction of Fondane and other Jewish writers, noted for its antisemitic undertones, was present in the 1942 memoirs of writer Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu was an Albanian-Romanian poet, playwright, and a contributor to Sburătorul, a Romanian literary magazine. His works have been performed in the State Jewish Theater of Romania....
. A reflection of the late 1940s communization of Romania, Saşa Pană's recollection piece De la B. Fundoianu la Benjamin Fondane ("From B. Fundoianu to Benjamin Fondane"), published by Orizont review, reinterpreted some of the poet's activities, and avant-garde history in general, from a partisan Marxist vantage point. Later memoirs mentioning the writer include a piece by Adrian Maniu in the Cluj
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
-based magazine Steaua (December 1963) and a new tribute by Pană in Luceafărul (October 1964). Pană's recollections were later turned into a larger narrative, the 1973 autobiographical novel Născut în 02 ("Born in '02"). Fondane also features prominently in Claudia Millian's Cartea mea de aduceri-aminte ("My Book of Recollections"), published the same year as Pană's volume. Also in 1973, the former Surrealist campaigner Geo Bogza
Geo Bogza
Geo Bogza was a Romanian avant-garde theorist, poet, and journalist, known for his left-wing and communist political convictions. As a young man in the interwar period, he was known as a rebel and was one of the most influential Romanian Surrealists...
dedicated Fondane an eponymous prose poem, centered on an existential contradiction: "To be born in Moldavia, in sweet, gentle Moldavia... and to end up in the furnaces at Auschwitz." Among the younger Romanian poets, who debuted during communism, Nichita Stănescu
Nichita Stanescu
Nichita Stănescu was a Romanian poet and essayist. He is the most acclaimed contemporary Romanian language poet, loved by the public and generally held in esteem by literary critics.-Biography:...
was influenced by Privelişti in some of his own earliest works, as was Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009....
.
Posthumous Romanian editions of Fondane's works included the selection Poezii ("Poems"), edited by the former Surrealist author Virgil Teodorescu (Editura pentru Literatură, 1965), and Daniel's new version of Privelişti (Cartea Românească, 1974), followed in 1978 by the Martin and Daniel selection, and in 1980 by Teodorescu and Martin's Imagini şi cărţi ("Images and Books", grouping Fondane's French literary studies, as translated by Sorin Mărculescu). Translated by Romulus Vulpescu, Le poète en patrouille was featured in Manuscriptum review (1974). During communism, various Romanian scholars who dedicated significant portions of their work to Fondane studies; in addition to Martin, Ovid Crohmălniceanu and Dumitru Micu, they include: Paul Cornea, Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years...
, Dan Mănucă, Marin Mincu, Dan Petrescu, Mihail Petroveanu and Ion Pop. In the 1980s, modern classical composer Doru Popovici
Doru Popovici
Doru Popovici is a Romanian composer, musicologist, writer and musical concerts manager.-Biography:Doru Popovici was born in Reşiţa, Romania, a city close to the border of what was formerly Yugoslavia, now Serbia...
completed the cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
In memoriam Beniamin Fundoianu (lyrics by Victor Bârlădeanu).
Writing in 1978, Martin noted that the focus of such recoveries was on Fondane's poetry, while Fondane the thinker and "informed commentator", "one of the most evolved critical voices in 1920s Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
", remained unfamiliar to Romanians. The limits on Fondane's posthumous circulation were partly dictated by the policies of Communist Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
. In 1975, the censorship apparatus
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
(who followed national communist
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
ideas about restricting references to Judaism) removed references to Fondane's ethnic and religious background from a reprint of Arghezi's 1945 text. In 1980, a version of his Mântuirea series, Iudaism şi elenism, was purged from Imagini şi cărţi, on orders from the same institution. Martin's 1984 monograph, Introducere în opera lui B. Fundoianu ("An Introduction to B. Fundoianu's Work"), was saluted as "penetrating" by his colleague Gheorghe Crăciun. The same study is primarily noted by Paul Cernat as a "problem-oriented" text about the "complexes
Complex (psychology)
A complex is a core pattern of emotions, memories, perceptions, and wishes in the personal unconscious organized around a common theme, such as power or status...
" of Romanian culture, and therefore an implicit reaction against the national communism promoted under Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
.
The hidden parts of Benjamin Fondane's contribution became accessible only after the anti-communist uprising of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
. In 1999, the Jewish community publishers, Editura Hasefer, issued Iudaism şi elenism (with scholars Leon Volovici and Remus Zăstroiu as editors). The same year, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania published an anthology of his texts, Strigăt întru eternitate ("A Shout unto Eternity"), and Editura Echinox a concordance dictionary
Concordance (publishing)
A concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts. Because of the time and difficulty and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Vedas, Bible, Qur'an...
of his poetry (one of several such projects initiated by linguist Marian Papahagi). In 2004, Mircea Martin and Ion Pop also collected Fondane's political essays as Scriitorul în faţa revoluţiei (titled after the Romanian version of L'Écrivain devant la révolution). Writing in 2001, Crăciun assessed that the poet was still "non-integrated" into his native Romanian culture, which mostly perceived him as estranged, and his work in the vernacular as traditionalist. Eight years later, comparatist
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
Irina Georgescu assessed that interest in the more unknown aspects of Fondane's work had been rekindled by public conferences and new monographs (among which she cites the contributions of scholars Mariana Boca, Nedeea Burcă and Ana-Maria Tomescu). Le Féstin de Balthazar was performed in its Romanian version (Ospăţul lui Baltazar), directed by Alexandru Dabija for the Nottara Theater company. The 65th commemoration of Fondane's death was marked locally with several events, including the premiere of Andreea Tănăsescu's Exil în pământul uitării ("Exile to the Land of Oblivion"), a contemporary ballet
Contemporary ballet
Contemporary ballet is a form of dance which incorporates elements of both classical ballet and modern dance. It takes its technique and use of pointework from classical ballet, although it permits a greater range of movement that may not adhere to the strict body lines set forth by schools of...
and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
show loosely inspired by his poetry. In 2006, the Romanian Cultural Institute
Romanian Cultural Institute
The Romanian Cultural Institute is a state-funded institution that promotes Romanian culture and civilization in Romania and abroad. The ICR was formerly set up through reorganization of the Romanian Cultural Foundation and Romanian Cultural Publishing Foundation...
set up the Benjamin Fondane International Award for Francophone literature
Francophone literature
Francophone literature is literature written in the French language. Most often the term is misused to refer only to literature from francophone countries outside France, but this category includes French Literature, or Literature of France, that is literature written by French authors...
in countries outside France.
Fondane's literary posterity was also touched by an extended controversy, notably involving Mircea Martin and philosopher Mihai Şora. The scandal was ignited after October 2007, when Şora and poet Luiza Palanciuc set up the Restitutio Benjamin Fondane translation program, with support from Editura Limes and Observator Cultural
Observator Cultural
Observator Cultural is a literary magazine based in Bucharest, Romania. It covers Romania's cultural and arts scene.-External links:*...
magazine. Martin contested this initiative, arguing that he had earlier publicized his intent of editing a Romanian-language Fondane reader, and claiming legal precedence on copyrights. A parallel conflict ensued between Editura Limes and Observator Cultural, after which the Restitutio program split into separate projects.
External links
- "Hot Black Ink - Modernist Idiosyncrasies", English translations from and critical appraisals of Fondane and other Romanian modernists, in the Romanian Cultural InstituteRomanian Cultural InstituteThe Romanian Cultural Institute is a state-funded institution that promotes Romanian culture and civilization in Romania and abroad. The ICR was formerly set up through reorganization of the Romanian Cultural Foundation and Romanian Cultural Publishing Foundation...
's Plural Magazine, Nr. 19/2003 - Guide to the Benjamin Fondane Papers, at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript LibraryBeinecke Rare Book and Manuscript LibraryYale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a 1963 gift of the Beinecke family. The building was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books...
Benjamin Fondane Studies Society site Mémorial de la Shoah exhibition Biography at Éditions Verdier Restitutio Benjamin Fondane (posthumous texts in the Observator CulturalObservator CulturalObservator Cultural is a literary magazine based in Bucharest, Romania. It covers Romania's cultural and arts scene.-External links:*...
archive)