Benjamin Fondane

Benjamin Fondane was born the November 14th 1898 with Iaşi in Romania and is gauze with Auschwitz - Birkenau the October 3rd 1944. He was poet, playwright, criticizes literary (in particular work of Lev Shestov and that of Søren Kierkegaard), realizer of cinema and translator.

Its life

Rumanian Jew born under the name of Benjamin Wechsler or Wexler , it publishes poetry as from 1912 under the name of feather of B. Fundoianu. In 1918, he is the author of the drama Tăgăduinţa him Petru .

After the end of its studies of right to the university of Iaşi, it joined Bucharest and becomes the center of a group of avant-garde which includes Marcel Iancu, Mr. H. Maxy, Iosif Ross, Saşa Pană, Ion Vinea, Ştefan Roll and Ilarie Voronca. It publishes in important periodicals and briefly founds in 1921-22 a theatrical troop, Insula , influenced by the designs of Jacques Copeau.

Benjamin Fondane arrives at Paris in 1923 and written there his first work in French, Exercice of French , in 1925. He meets Tristan Tzara which he interviews and he adheres itself to the surrealist movement, publishing new poems such With Madam Sonia Delaunay , started from a project not completed Ulysses 1927 . He adheres to the sub-group Arthur Adamov.

Of Hebraic culture, Rumanian and from now on French, he becomes Benjamin " Fondane".

In 1924, it meets at Jules de Gaultier the Russian philosopher Leon Chestov. The two men bind of a strong friendship. Fondane launches out then in philosophy. Encouraged and inspired by his friend, he writes in particular in the Books of the South on Heidegger, Husserl, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud… and of course, largely contributes to put forward the thought of Chestov in France.

In 1933, he works with Dimitri Kirsanov with an experimental film Rapt , a free adaptation of the separation of the races , novel of Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. In 1936, he writes and carries out the film Tararira in Argentina. On the boat of the reour, it binds friendship with the neo-thomist catholic Jacques Maritain.

During the Thirties, Fondane is in the middle of the French and even European intellectual life. For this burning polemist, the thought was defined as a fight. For Chestov, its Master and friend, philosophy was not a knowledge as _entre autres_ Husserl claimed it, but a fight baited with died for Freedom. It is in this spirit that Fondane caused a debate in 1936 on the interpretation of Kierkegaard in France. It more particularly aimed Denis de Rougemont, Rachel Bespaloff like Jean Wahl.

In 1938, with died of Chestov, Fondane is known as being its disciple and is recognized like philosopher.

In 1940, Fondane is engaged during the invasion Nazi in France. Captive fact, it escapes, is taken again and it is hospitalized with the Valley-of-Grace for a Appendicectomie. After having regained its residence, he works with his project Ulysses and various tests.

In March 1944, it is stopped by the French police force of Vichy. His/her friends manages to obtain his release but Benjamin Fondane decides not to give up his Line sister. He was sent to the camp of Drancy from where he was off-set with Auschwitz on May 30th by before last convoy.

Its work

Ignored general public, the work of Benjamin Fondane is marked by the multiplicity. That of the languages since he wrote in Hebrew, Rumanian and French, that of the fields of expressions: poetry, philosophy, critical, theater and cinema. It tackled many subjects with an extreme requirement and the will never not to yield to human “finitude” but contrary to affirming the man with heat and hope. Poetry is in the middle of this work since it which it had become philosophical “to defend its poetry”. Its books, Rimbaud the hooligan (1933) and the Unhappy Conscience (1936) were particularly noticed and suscièrent several debates.

At the end of its life, without never being diverted poetry, it was interested in the Indian philosophy which had impassioned Chestov and in contemporary physics thanks to its relation with Stephan Lupasco.

Quotations

One day will come, it is sure, of thirst, alleviated,

we will be beyond the memory, death will have

completed work of hatred,

I would be a bouquet of nettles under your feet,

then, eh well, will know that I had a face

like you. A mouth which requested like you.

It is all the pain of the world

which came to sit down with my table

- and could I say to him: Not?

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