ABSTRACT
Signs of a rediscovery of Benjamin Fondane's writing have been increasing during the past decade, and the pace has accelerated during the past three years. Fondane's oeuvre is multifarious. He engaged with poetry, philosophy, politics, history, art, and the cinema. The Romanian francophone poet, philosopher, and filmmaker remained, of course, a name, but his remarkable work was rarely positioned on the standard timeline of French poetry emerging from the three nineteenth-century innovators and extending into the twentieth century, via surrealism, to the Second World War and beyond. From a purely stylistic viewpoint, the two visionary poets nevertheless have in common impressive verbal and rhythmic energies. Moreover, both poets often prefer incorporating ever vaster groups of mankind into their social visions rather than distinguishing and excluding. In such ways, Fondane retains his admirable nobility and faith in humanity up to and including his last poems.
