Benjamin Fondane

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

Biography

Born as Benjamin Wechsler (or Wexler ) in a family of Jewish origin, he published poetry since 1912 under the pseudonym B. Fundoianu or Barbu Fundoianu, including in the journals Rampa and Hatikvah. In 1918 he wrote the drama Tăgăduinţa lui Petru. The pseudonym Fondane is due to the name of an estate, had spent in the vicinity of the young Benjamin changer part of his youth.

After he was expelled as a Jew and thus forced to abort the study of law at the University of Iaşi, he left his hometown in 1919 and was in Bucharest to the center of an avant-garde group, which among other Marcel Iancu, Max Hermann Maxy, Iosif Ross, Sasa Pană, Ion Vinea, Ştefan roll and Ilarie Voronca belonged. He often wrote for various magazines ( Contimporanul, Adevărul literary şi artistic, Sburătorul ) and founded the theater group insula, which was heavily influenced by the thinking Jacques Copeaus and 1921-1923 was.

1923 Fondane went to Paris and there wrote his first poem in French ( Exercice de français, 1925). In 1927 he met Tristan Tzara and interviewed him for the magazine Integral, where he worked as an editor of a French supplement. He approached the Surrealist movement and published several acclaimed poems (about A Madame Sonia Delaunay, the part of his unfinished project was Ulysses ). His living Fondane earned through work at Paramount Studios, which also established his involvement with the film.

Finally, Fondane joined a group led by Arthur Adamov and came Lev Shestov, Martin Buber, Constantin Brancusi and Victoria Ocampo ( which he visited in Argentina 1929) close.

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

1940 Fondane was drafted after the invasion of France by Nazi Germany, the French military. He was captured, escaped and was caught again. After a stay in the military hospital of Val- de - Grâce was his liability release for health reasons. Fondane began work on several essays and in his great project Ulysses. Until 1944 he lived in the unoccupied zone of France.

Again and again Fondane still secretly to Paris, where he was arrested in March 1944 and brought with his sister in the transit camp Drancy. On May 30, he was deported from there to Auschwitz, where he was killed in October in the gas chamber.

Works

Appeared to 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, Reed. Plasma, 1980 et Complexe, 1989 ( German Rimbaud the Tramp, trans. Michaela Messner, Munich 1991)
• La Conscience malheureuse, Denoël, 1936, Reed. Plasma, 1979. ( Collection of philosophical essays )
• Titanic, Cahiers du Journal des poètes, 1937 ( collection of poems )
• Faux Traité d' esthétique, Denoël, 1938, Reed. Plasma, 1980, rééd.Paris - Méditerranée, 1998.
• (Eng. Wrong treatise on aesthetics, trans. Geble of Peter and Monika Petzenhauser, Berlin 1991)

In Romanian

• Tăgăduinta lui Petru, Jassy, Chemarea, 1918.
• Imagini şi Carti di Franta, Bucarest, Socec, 1922.
• Privelişti, Bucarest, Cultura Nationalã, 1930.

Published posthumously

In French:

• Baudelaire et l' expérience du gouffre, Seghers, 1947 rééd.Complexe, 1994.
• Le Mal of fantômes, plasma, 1980; Reed. Paris - Méditerranée, 1996; réédition Verdier, 2006.
• Rencontres avec Léon Chestov, plasma, 1982.
• Ecrits pour le cinéma, plasma, 1984. Reed. Verdier, 2007.
• Le Festin de Balthazar, Arcane 17, 1985.
• Le Lundi et le dimanche existential de l' histoire, Editions du Rocher, 1989.
• Au thresh de l' Inde, Fata Morgana, 1994.
• Brancusi, Fata Morgana, 1995.
• N'a pas fini Le Voyageur 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 et Michel Carassou ( éd. ) Coédition: Bucarest, Fondation Culturelle Roumaine; Paris, Editions Paris - Méditerranée, 1999.
• Images et Livres de France, Paris - Méditerranée, 2002. Traduit you roumain par Odile Serre. Introduction de Monique Jutrin.

In Romanian:

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

Some excerpts from Fondanes works were published in the journal accents. (Accents, literary magazine, edited by Michael Krüger. Founded by Höllerer and Hans Bender. 33rd year. Issue June 3, 1986, pp. 252ff. Published here seven poems, Wild language, the preface to Privelişti, and then fragments from Rimbaud and the Tramp fragments from falsity treatise on aesthetics) translation and introduction by Dieter Schlesak. There is also a contribution E. M. Cioran on Fondane.

Edited by Michel Carassou also published in 1978 an anthology Fondane Benjamin (Benjamin Fondane. Non Lieu, Au temps du poeme ) with contributions, among others EM Cioran, C. Sernet, Tristan Janco, L. Chestov.

Since 1997, once appear in the published by the Société d' études Benjamin Fondane magazine Cahiers Benjamin Fondane (1994-1995 Bulletin de la Société Benjamin Fonande ) with an international group of contributors. In the Cahiers regularly appear unpublished texts by Benjamin Fondane and out of his environment and a current bibliography.