Max Jacob 1876-1944
biography
One of the key members of the group that formed around Apollinaire, a painter as well as a poet, Jacob lived in extreme poverty, working all manner of jobs throughout his life. Although born Jewish, he converted to Catholicism in 1915, six years after having a vision of Christ. In 1921 he moved from Paris to the small village of Saint Benoit-sur-Loire, close to a Benedictine church, where he remained until his arrest by the Nazis in February1944. He died of bronchial pneumonia the following month in a concentration camp at Drancy, near Paris.
Jacob was a man of many talents, poet, painter, writer and critic. He constantly gave of himself for his friends and those who admired him.
selected works in translation
For Max Jacob translated by Andrei Codrescu (Tree, 1974)
The Dice Cup edited by Michael Brownstein (Sun, 1979)
selected poems in The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry edited by Paul Auster (Vintage, 1982)
Hesitant Fire translated by Moishe Black and Maria Green (University of Nebraska, 1991)
writing
the rue ravignan
"One does not bathe in twice in the same stream," said the philosopher Heraclitus. Yet it is always the same ones who mount the street! Always at the same time of day they pass by, happy or sad. All of you, passers-by of the Rue Ravignan, I have named you after the illustrious dead. There is Agamemnon! There is Madame Hanska! Ulysses is a milkman! Where Patroclus appears at the end of the street a Pharaoh is beside me! Castor and Pollux are the ladies of the fifth floor. But thou, old ragpicker, who comes in the enchanted morning to take away the still living rubbish as I am putting out my good big lamp, thou whom I know not, mysterious and impoverished ragpicker, I have given thee a celebrated and noble name, I have named thee Dostoievsky.
literary manners ii
A Havana businessman sent me a cigar wrapped in goldleaf, only a little chewed at one end. The poets at my table all say that he was playing a joke on me, but the old Chinaman who invited us over reminds them that it's an old Cuban custom and a sign of great esteem. Next I show them two magnificent poems that a friend of mine translated and wrote down for me on a scrap of paper, because I said I liked them when he first read them out loud. The poets tell me that everyone knows those poems and that they really aren't worth much. But the old Chinaman says that the poets couldn't have read them before, since the only copy in the world is a rare manuscript in the Pali language, which none of them understand. Then the poets look at each other and bust out laughing like a bunch of kids, and the old Chinaman stares at us all with such sadness.
the beggar woman of naples
When I lived in Naples there was always a beggar woman at the gate of my palace, to whom I would toss some coins before climbing into my carriage. One day, surprised at never being thanked, I looked at the beggar woman. Now, as I looked at her, I saw that what I had taken for a beggar woman was a wooden case painted green which contained some red earth and a few half-rotten bananas ...
return to the library
return to kicking giants