Benjamin Fondane

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Benjamin Fondane (born November 14, 1898 in Iași ; died October 2 or 3, 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ) was a Romanian-French poet , playwright , literary critic , film director and translator .

biography

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Born as Benjamin Wechsler (or Wexler) into a family of Jewish origin, he has published poetry under the pseudonym B. Fundoianu or Barbu Fundoianu since 1912, including in the magazines Rampa and Hatikvah . In 1918 he wrote the drama Tăgăduința lui Petru . The pseudonym Fondane can be traced back to the name of a country estate near which the young Benjamin Wechsler spent part of his youth.

After he was de-registered as a Jew and thus forced to drop out of law studies at the University of Iași, he left his hometown in 1919 and became the center of an avant-garde group in Bucharest , including Marcel Iancu , Max Hermann Maxy and Iosif Ross , Sașa Pană , Ion Vinea , Ștefan Roll and Ilarie Voronca . He often wrote for various magazines (Contimporanul, Adevărul literar și artistic, Sburătorul) and founded the theater group Insula, which was strongly influenced by the thinking of Jacques Copeau and existed from 1921 to 1923.

In 1923 Fondane went to Paris and wrote his first poem in French there ( Exercice de français , 1925). In 1927 he met Tristan Tzara and interviewed him for the magazine Integral, for which he worked as the editor of a French supplement. He approached the Surrealism movement and published some noted poems (such as A Madame Sonia Delaunay , which was part of his unfinished Ulysses project ). Fondane earned his living by working at Paramount Studios , which also established his interest in film.

Eventually, Fondane joined a group around Arthur Adamov and came close to Lev Shestov , Martin Buber , Constantin Brâncuși and Victoria Ocampo (whom he visited in Argentina in 1929).

In 1933, Fondane worked with Dimitri Kirsanov on the experimental film Rapt , a free adaptation of the novella La séparation des races by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz . In 1936 he wrote the book for the Argentine film Tararira , for which he also directed.

In 1940, Fondane was drafted into the French military after the invasion of France by Nazi Germany. He was captured and detained again after attempting to escape. After a stay in the Val-de-Grâce military hospital , he was released from prison for health reasons. Fondane began working on several essays and on his large project Ulysses . Until 1944 he lived in the unoccupied zone of France.

Nevertheless, Fondane kept coming secretly to Paris , where he was arrested in March 1944 and taken to the Drancy assembly camp with his sister . On May 30th he was deported from there to Auschwitz, where he was murdered in the gas chamber in October .

Works

published during his lifetime:

in French

  • Trois scenarii: ciné-poèmes , Bruxelles, Documents internationaux de l'Esprit Nouveau, 1928.
  • Ulysse , Bruxelles, Cahiers du Journal des Poètes, 1933 (collection of poems)
  • Rimbaud le voyou , Denoël, 1933, rééd. Plasma, 1980 et Complexe, 1989 (German Rimbaud the Tramp , translated by Michaela Meßner, Munich 1991)
  • La Conscience malheureuse , Denoël, 1936, rééd. Plasma, 1979 (collection of philosophical essays)
  • Titanic , Cahiers du Journal des Poètes, 1937 (collection of poems)
  • Faux Traité d'esthétique , Denoël, 1938, rééd. Plasma, 1980, rééd.Paris-Méditerranée, 1998.
  • (German false treatise on aesthetics , translated by Peter Geble and Monika Petzenhauser, Berlin 1991)

in Romanian language

  • Tăgăduinta lui Petru , Jassy, ​​Chemarea, 1918.
  • Imagini și cărti di Franța , Bucarest, Socec, 1922.
  • Privelişti , Bucarest, Cultură natională, 1930.

Published posthumously

in French:

  • Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre , Seghers, 1947, rééd.Complexe, 1994.
  • Le Mal des fantômes , Plasma, 1980; rééd. Paris-Méditerranée, 1996; réédition Verdier, 2006.
  • Rencontres avec Léon Chestov , Plasma, 1982.
  • Ecrits pour le cinema, Plasma, 1984. Rééd. Verdier, 2007.
  • Le Festin de Balthazar , Arcane 17, 1985.
  • Le Lundi existentiel et le dimanche de l'histoire , Editions du Rocher, 1989.
  • Au seuil de l'Inde , Fata Morgana, 1994.
  • Brancusi , Fata Morgana, 1995.
  • Le Voyageur n'a pas fini de voyager , Paris-Méditerranée, 1996.
  • Correspondance Fondane-Maritain , Paris-Méditerranée, 1997.
  • L'Ecrivain devant la révolution , Paris-Méditerranée, 1997.
  • Benjamin Fondane et les Cahiers du Sud, Correspondance . Ed de la Fondation culturelle roumaine, 1998.
  • Essai sur Lupasco , Paris-Méditerranée, 1998.
  • Fundoianu / Fondane et l'Avant-garde , Petre Raileanu and Michel Carassou (éd.), Coédition: Bucarest, Fondation Culturelle Roumaine; Paris, Editions Paris-Méditerranée, 1999.
  • Images et Livres de France , Paris-Méditerranée, 2002. Traduit du roumain by Odile Serre. Introduction de Monique Jutrin.

in Romanian:

  • Poezii , foreword by D. Petrescu, Bucharest, Editura pentru literatură, 1965.
  • Priveliști și inedite , ed. by P. Daniel, Bucharest, Editura Cartea Romaneasca, 1974.
  • Poezii , foreword by Mircea Martin and afterword by Paul Daniel, Bucarest, Minerva, 1978.
  • Imagini și cărți , foreword by Mircea Martin. Bucharest, Minerva.
  • Iudaism și elenism , ed. by Léon Volovici and Remus Zastroiu, Bucharest, Hasefer, 1999.

Some excerpts from Fondane's work were published in the Akzente magazine (vol. 33, issue 3, 1986, p. 252ff.). Seven poems were published here, Wilde Sprache , the preface to Privelişti , and then fragments from Rimbaud the Tramp and fragments from the False Treatise on Aesthetics with translation and introduction by Dieter Schlesak. There is also a contribution by Emil Cioran about Fondane.

In 1978, Michel Carassou published an anthology on Benjamin Fondane ("Benjamin Fondane. Non Lieu, Au temps du poeme") with contributions by Emil Cioran, Claude Sernet, Tristan Janco and Leo Schestow .

The journal Cahiers Benjamin Fondane (1994/95 Bulletin de la Société Benjamin Fonande ) published by the Société d'études Benjamin Fondane has been published once a year since 1997 with an international group of contributors. Unpublished texts by Fondane and his environment as well as an ongoing bibliography appear regularly in the Cahiers .

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Fondane, Benjamin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fundoianu, Barbu
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian-French poet, playwright, director, critic
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Iași
DATE OF DEATH October 3, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz