Revista Ñ
Tuesday February 16, 2010
Note
Jorge Fondebrider
A quiet voice by the Nazis at Auschwitz Dead
, philosopher, filmmaker and Romanian poet, Benjamin Fondane just been honored in Paris. He was a pupil of Léon Chestov was associated with the Surrealists and traveled to Buenos Aires invited by Victoria Ocampo.
The first time I heard the name Benjamin Fondane was in Dublin in 1997, where Harry Clifton, one of the very good Irish poets of today, I asked if I knew. "He was in Argentina," he said. He took Victoria Ocampo. He was a poet, essayist, made a film in Buenos Aires. An extraordinary personality. " I forgot about it and spent the years until, in 2006, Edgardo Cozarinsky published an excellent article in The Nation Fondane. At the time I crossed the street and I can not remember on Earth do, I said the movie was a mystery Fondane, who had lost, he would have liked to know more. So when in early January cold past under the special exhibition "Benjamin Fondane"-open to the public Paris between October 14, 2009 and January 31, 2010 - I saw a wall of Mémorial de la Shoah (Musée, Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine ), 17 rue Geoffroy l'Asni, the projection of the few survivors of the legendary frames Tararira, the movie filmed in Buenos Aires Fondane figured it was absolutely essential to know who, until then, and only because of my ignorance, had been just one curious character of many that Victoria Ocampo "imported" to Argentina. Today I can assure you that Benjamin Fondane is much more than that.
A chronology
Wechsler Benjamin Born in Moldova, 14 November 1898, the son of a merchant. His mother, however, came from a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals in Galicia, Poland. Between 1904 and 1913 did his primary and secondary education in Jassy. Later, in 1919, in Bucharest, he started studying law, who left after three years.
His literary vocation had emerged in 1912 when, still in high school, published in the journal Valuri, under the pseudonym B. Fundoianu, to use during his years in Romania. Later he would write articles, reviews, poems and translations in various magazines.
In 1917, the year his father died, he met the symbolist poet Fondane Minulescu Ion, who encouraged and stimulated to write. A year later, he published the drama Tagaduinta lui Petru (Renunciation of Peter). For 1919 and serves as a Zionist newspaper proofreader, publishing articles in various journals and is associated with groups of Romanian literary avant-garde. However, in 1921, with the publication of pictures and books from France, a volume devoted to the literature of that country says in the foreword that considers the Romanian literature completely dependent on everything that is written France assertion that was severely criticized. Two years later, after the failure of a theatrical adventure in the Romanian capital, moved to Paris, as a caregiver and archivist in the Department of the writer and critic Remy de Gourmont. They change their name literary and "born" Benjamin Fondane.
Chestov and Argentina
In 1924, he met Léon Fondane Chestov, existentialist philosopher born in Ukraine Isaákovich Shestov Lev, who, by revealing the extent to which aesthetic issues you care to conceal his own work a philosophical dimension , became his teacher. Gradually
and while visiting Chestov, Fondane is doing standing in the cultural life Paris. In 1925, when Bucharest was founded Integral avant-garde magazine, Fondane takes over and sends the Paris writing frequent articles on René Clair, Jean Cocteau, Jacques Copeau, Tristan Tzara, Max Jacob and Pierre Reverdy, among many others. Somewhat later, he began to write poetry in French. To survive, working at an insurance company.
In April 1928, after having served on the group Discontinuité, along with Arthur Adamov, Trois Scenarri public. Ciné-poems, his first French book, at the time illustrated by Man Ray. Then, a collection of Hasidic tales that translates from Romanian. A year later, in the magazine Europe, published two articles on Chestov and Edmond Léon Husserl. In the first house they happen to know Ortega y Gasset and Victoria Ocampo, who, a few days later, invited him to dinner along with Drieu La Rochelle. But both writers are fighting violently and the evening ends badly. Impressed by the views and character of Fondane, Victoria Ocampo invites you to Buenos Aires to present avant-garde films - Entr'acte, René Clair and Francis Picabia, Étoile de mer, from Man Ray and Chien andalou, Buñuel, among others - and to issue a series of lectures at the University of Buenos Aires. Thus, in July of that 1929 Fondane part to Argentina, where it will remain for three months. During this visit will speak on Philosophy and Literature "Léon Chestov and combating the evidence" will begin to collaborate with South and at the invitation of Eduardo Mallea, with The Nation.
Back in Paris, Rimbaud writes on Paul Valery, on Tristan Tzara. Meet Antonin Artaud, whose theories theatrical fervently defended and, in parallel, enters the Paramount studios, as assistant director and screenwriter.
In 1930 he published "Du muet au parlant: Grandeur et decadence du cinéma" (posthumously included in Ecrits pour le cinéma. Le muet et le parlant, including several texts, among others, the correspondence between Fondane and Victoria Ocampo and several letters to Freddie Guthman, "compiled by Michel Carassou, Olivier Salazar-Ferrer and Ramona Fotiades).
In 1931 he married Geneviève Tissier and in 1933, begins to transcribe their conversations with Leon Chestov (which later give rise to Rencontres avec Léon Chestov). In turn, he published Rimbaud voyou where criticizes and satirizes the poet's alleged conversion to Catholicism as he lay on his deathbed. Such a view, held by Rimbaud's sister and her husband, had been defended by Paul Claudel. Fondane, however, makes an existential and psychoanalytic reading Rimbaud. That same year, participated as a writer of film Rapt, the result of adaptation of La séparation des races, of Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, Swiss writer most famous of his time.
A year later, published Fondane Psychanalyse d'Edgar Poe. In Chestov house, meet Martin Buber, who talks at length about the situation in Germany and the rise of Nazism.
In 1935 there arose a controversy about Kierkegaard with Jean Wahl, the future founder of the Philosophical School of Paris, after Fondane published in Cahiers du Sud article "Heraclitus will Pauvre. Nécessité of Kierkegaard." Again
Buenos Aires
By 1936 Fondane is a writer known and appreciated in the Parisian literary and philosophical circles, but not popular with the public. Conscience malheurese published that year, which includes essays on Chestov, Husserl, Heidegger, Berson, Gide and Kierkegaard. In April he travels for the second time in Buenos Aires, again at the behest of her friend Victoria Ocampo. In previous years, she had urged him to shoot Don Segundo Sombra, for which Fondane tackles the script writing, Adelina del Carril, widow of Güiraldes, fails. Plans change and then begins the story of Tararira grotesque. According to written Cozarinsky, the object of the new trip is to conduct "a film directed by Fondane, produced and performed by Miguel Machinandiarena four hilarious English actors and musicians, the brothers Aguilar: Paco, Pepe, Ezequiel and Elisa. According to Ricardo Lida Nirenberg, who should this data, María Rosa Oliver in his autobiography describes the scene of Ravel's Bolero that the four Aguilar played with kitchen utensils and became the central element of the film: daring that eventually frighten the hapless producer, who refused to distribute it. To make matters worse, Tararira is lost forever, and there are only testimonies like Gloria Alcorta, who remembers having seen in a private screening, and for which the scene of the Bolero, unforgettable, 'is a masterpiece in the history film '. "
That same year, and for the dates Fondane was in Buenos Aires, the city took place at a congress of the Pen Club especially harsh, since the beginning of the English Civil War. On his return by boat, known Fondane and Raisa Jacques Maritan, and the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti. "The Catholic philosopher writes Cozarinsky, had been invited to Argentina by neo-Thomists groups and leave the country frowned upon by their hosts, including Delfina Bunge de Gálvez: Franco is declared, on the other hand, his wife, though converted, is a Russian Jew. Fondane recognizes that couple in a mirror image of his marriage to a French Catholic. Correspondence Fondane Maritain and soon becomes a dialogue within religions of spirituality, and their friendship would survive the death of the poet's correspondence with Geneviève Fondane philosopher. "Premonitions
During 1937 and published poems numerous articles on philosophy. In 1938-the year of death, is your Faux Chestov Traité d'esthétique. Fondane become naturalized French, which have complex consequences in the near future.
Victoria Ocampo in 1939 last interview Fondane in Paris. Try to convince him to leave the country, but he refuses and gives him a manuscript copy Rencontres avec Léon Chestov. The envelope reads: "Chestov. Unfinished manuscript that contains the letters that I wrote Chestov and my conversations with him. I will leave Victoria Ocampo the manuscript in which I work. If war can be used as it like it. As a result, she is authorized to open this envelope. " Victoria Ocampo then he said he thought he was exaggerating, to which, according to the testimony of the writer, he replied: I think there will be war. I no longer see each other again. "
When France was invaded by the Germans in 1940, it mobilized Fondane the 216 Infantry Regiment. In Sainte-Assise, near Fontainebleau was taken prisoner, but managed to escape. Then recaptured, was released for health reasons. Publications, meanwhile, have multiplied: Fondane writes about Hinduism on Lévy-Bruhl and, between 1941 and 1942, the then unpublished Baudelaire et l'expérience du gouffre, text will be incomplete and which critics judge much higher than for those same years Jean-Paul Sartre devoted to the poet of The Flowers of Evil.
End
Under the occupation, refused to wear the Star of David and his compatriots Stéphane frequent Lupasco, Emil Cioran, Jean Lescure, while taking courses at the Sorbonne Gaston Bachelard. Despite the insistence of Victoria Ocampo and his Argentine friends, who try unsuccessfully to get a passport, Fondane refuses to leave Paris. Keep writing and publishing until March 7, 1944 he was arrested, along with his sister, by the French police. Then came his internment in Drancy, a concentration camp created by the Germans north of Paris, and an offer of release due to the involvement of many cultural personalities. But Fondane refuses to leave her sister and both were deported to Auschwitz on May 30. According to the testimony of a survivor, 2 or Oct. 3 Fondane was taken to the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Rescue of a work
"The news of the death of Fondane-read one of the panels shows devoted to him in Paris, only became known in October 1945. His wife will address the issue of his works mainly from the appearance of Baudelaire ou l'expérience du gouffre in editing Seghers (1947). Also helped by Jean Lescure, Editions de Minuit propose the publication of the complete works of Fondane, a project that, despite initial acceptance was never carried out. Fondane then falls into a kind of oblivion, only interrupted in the eighties, when several French and Romanian publishers to publish it restarted and reveal previously unpublished.
In 1978, the Non-Lieu magazine devotes a number of tribute to Fondane. A year later, Michel Carassou reissued Fondane major works in the editorial Plasma. In 1994, Monique Jutrin creates the Société d'Études Benjamin Fondane, which annually publishes the Cahiers Benjamin Fondane. The first international symposium in his honor was held at the University of Jassy (Romania) on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination.
By 1998, the centenary of the birth of Fondane, the prestigious Europe devotes a book and are a variety of symposia in Royaumont Haifa and Jassy. That same year, several of his works are reprinted by Editions Paris-Méditerranée.
On November 14, 1999, in front of 6 rue Rollin, in the Fifth District of Paris, placed a commemorative plaque.
Seven years later, at the beginning of the street, opened on May 21 a square Fondane Benjamin. In that same 2006 data Le mal des phantoms poetic sort of complete, assembled by Patrice and Michel Beray Carassou, foreword by Henri Meschonnic. As far as I could ascertain, none of his works were translated into Castilian.
