Benjamin Fondane () or Benjamin Fundoianu (; born Benjamin Wechsler, Wexler or Vecsler, first name also Beniamin or Barbu, usually abridged to B.; November 14, 1898 – October 2, 1944) was a Romanian 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.
Biography
Early life
Fondane was born in Iași, 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 daughters Lina (b. 1892) and Rodica (b. 1905), both of whom had careers in acting. As a child Benjamin spends a lot of time in the north of Moldova in a place known as Fundoaia and hence the name he chooses for himself Fundoianu. From this rural and picturesque area he receives the inspiration for the poems that will later be published in a collection called Priveliști "Landscapes" in Hebrew. As a teenage boy, Fundoianu traveled a lot in the north of Moldova, collected and delved into the local Romanian folklore of the villages, and from that too he was inspired to write songs which, according to his words, he started composing at the age of 8. Wechsler was a Jewish man from Hertsa 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 Iași, 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 Coșbuc, 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 Iași's Podul Vechi neighborhood. In this context, Fondane also met Yiddishist poet Iacob Ashel Groper—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 Mielușon (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 Groper (the former was probably translating the latter's poetic motifs into Romanian).
Debut years
Fondane's actual debut dates back to 1914, during the time when he became a student at the National High School Iași and formally affiliated with the provincial branch of the nationwide Symbolist movement. That year, samples of lyric poetry were also published in the magazines Valuri and Revista Noastră (whose owner, writer Constanța Hodoș, 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. Hașir. 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).
During the first two years of World War I and Romania's neutrality, the young poet established new contacts within the literary environments of Iași 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 Dimineața 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 proofs, and received instead an irritated reply from manager Al. Ștefănescu; 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 Iași-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 Viața 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 Eclogue"). 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.
thumb|360px|Fondane (left) and [[F. Brunea-Fox, flanking Iosif Ross. 1915 photograph]]
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"). These included his January 1916 positive review of Plumb, the first major work by Romania's celebrated Symbolist poet, George Bacovia.
In besieged Moldavia and relocation to Bucharest
In 1917, after Romania joined the Entente side and was invaded by the Central Powers, Fondane was in Iași, 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 Iași. 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 Iași's Sfântul Spiridon Hospital, leaving his family without financial support.
At around that time, Fondane began work on the poetry cycle Priveliști ("Sights" or "Panoramas", finished in 1923). In 1918, he became one of the contributors to the magazine Chemarea, published in Iași 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 Tăgăduința 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 Piața Romană), then in Moșilor area, before relocating to Văcărești (a majority Jewish residential area, where he lived in two successive locations), and ultimately to a house a short distance away from Foișorul 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, Sașa 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 Iași, 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-Pitești, a cultural promoter and political militant whose influence spread over several Symbolist milieus. In a 1922 piece for Rampa, he remembered Bogdan-Pitești 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 boyars 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 Iași 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.
Sburătorul, Contimporanul, Insula
Over the following years, he restarted his career in the press, contributing to various nationally circulated newspapers: Adevărul, Adevărul Literar și Artistic, Cuvântul Liber, Mântuirea, etc. The main topics of his interest were literary reviews, essays 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 și 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 Groper (with whom he nevertheless severed all contacts by 1920). 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. 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 și 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 și cărți din Franța ("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.
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 Ștefan 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. 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).
Move to France
thumb|250px|[[Armand Pascal's self-portrait and last known depiction (1929)]]
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 Dada, 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"). 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.
Surrealist episode
The mid-1920s brought Benjamin Fondane's affiliation with Surrealism, 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. (one of his other contacts in the French Surrealist photographers' group was Eli Lotar, the illegitimate son of Arghezi). 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."
Philosophical debut
With time, Fondane became a contributor to newspapers or literary journals in France, Belgium, and Switzerland: a regular presence in Cahiers du Sud of Marseille, 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. 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). 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 Americans 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 Nacións literary supplement.
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."
Integral and unu
In the mid-1920s, Fondane and painter János Mattis-Teutsch 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 Sașa 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, As a consequence, 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 Priveliști. His profile within the local avant-garde was also acknowledged in Italy and Germany: the Milanese 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 Priveliști 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, 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 Rimbaud—Rimbaud le voyou ("Rimbaud the Hoodlum")—and, despite an earlier pledge not to return to poetry, a new series of poems. 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). a Romanian cinema production for which he shared directorial credits.
In 1931, the poet married Geneviève Tissier, a trained jurist Fondane also enjoyed a warm friendship with Constantin Brâncuși, the Romanian-born modern sculptor, visiting Brâncuși's workshop on an almost daily basis and writing about his work in Cahiers de l'Étoile. He witnessed first-hand and described Brâncuși'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"), to Jean Cassou, Guillermo de Torre and Miguel de Unamuno. 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 Jacob Sternberg (October 31, 1934).
Anti-fascist causes and filming of Rapt
The 1933 establishment of a Nazi regime in Germany brought Fondane into the camp of anti-fascism. In December 1934, his Apelul studențimii ("The Call of Students") was circulated among the Romanian diaspora, and featured passionate calls for awareness: "Tomorrow, in concentration camps, it will be too 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. 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 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.
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 product 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. 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; (no copies survive, but writer Gloria Alcorta, who was present at a private screening, rated it a "masterpiece"). 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.
In 1939, Fondane was naturalized French. This followed an independent initiative of the Société des écrivains français professional association, in recognition for his contribution to French letters. 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 stenciled 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 war. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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, were 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
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 Gestapo, 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.
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. 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. Optimistically, Fondane referred to himself as "the traveler who isn't done traveling". He was aware of impending death, and reportedly saw it as ironic that it came so near to an expected Allied victory. His body was cremated, along with those of the other victims. The young author had a special appreciation for the 19th century national poet, Mihai Eminescu. Familiar with Eminescu's entire poetic work, 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 Vieața Nouă was therefore incidental, but also that, around 1914, Fondane's own style was a "conventional Symbolism".
The various stylistic directions of Fondane's early poetry came together in Priveliști. 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 pastorals were exclusively traditionalist. According to Martin, Priveliști 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 Priveliști texts contiguous with other early forms of Romanian modernism. 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 Priveliști. 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:
Arghezian modernism and Expressionist echoes
From its traditionalist core, Priveliști 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 I, 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";
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 alexandrines) and vocabulary (a stated preference for Slavic versus Romance terminologies). Some of the Priveliști 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 Hertsa region:
thumb|280px|The Bull, 1911 painting by [[Franz Marc]]
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 Priveliști 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 écorchés", and connects Fondane's "modern attitude" to his familiarity with the poems of Arthur Rimbaud.
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 Priveliști period, in his articles for Contimporanul, 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 programmatic 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 Transylvanian authors only became widely known by attending the capital's Casa Capșa 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 și cărți din Franța, 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 Coșbuc 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 și cărți din Franța: "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 criticism." According to Cernat, the poet surpassed this moment after experiencing success in France, and his decision to have Priveliști 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." 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 Iacob Ashel Groper. 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 Priveliști pastorals: