Heidegger e Dostoevskij

by Benjamin Fondane

Volitivo, umbratile per eccesso meridiano, Benjamin Fondane, nonostante le sue ritrosie, a volte rabbiose, si erge come il pensatore decisivo. Allievo di Lev Šestov, poeta, attore, attirato dagli estremi, fu amico di Emil Cioran, che ne riconobbe la personalità, la coincidenza inderogabile tra viso e verbo, corpo e “Il volto più solcato, più scavato che si possa immaginare, un volto dalle rughe millenarie, ma in nessun modo irrigidite perché animate dal tormento più contagioso ed esplosivo. Non mi saziavo di contemplarle. Mai avevo veduto prima un tale accordo tra l’apparire e il dire, tra la fisionomia e la parola. Mi è impossibile pensare alla minima frase di Fondane senza percepire immediatamente la presenza imperiosa dei suoi tratti”.Fustigatore dei filosofi, poeta imperiale, studioso lacerante di Rimbaud e di Baudelaire, nel 1932 Fondane scrive il saggio "Martin Heidegger sur les routes de Dostoyevski", pubblicato su “Cahiers du Sud”, il bimestrale diretto da Jean Ballard, e poi su “Sur”, la rivista di Vitoria Ocampo, eccentrica mecenate, amica di Jorge Luis Borges. Finora inedito in Italia, questo testo costituisce una sfida al principio di non contraddizione, alla ragionevolezza che vela le domande indecenti, impossibili. Ad ogni istante, Fondane ci mette a nudo, rimanda alla ferocia del pensiero selvaggio, sa che è dei poeti la verità, il suo crudo bagliore. Curato da Luca Orlandini – che ha tradotto le opere maggiori di Fondane in Italia – il libro assembla anche i saggi su Edmund Husserl e Søren Kierkegaard, consentendo un viaggio vertiginoso e sintetico nei temi fondamentali del pensatore che ha fatto lo scalpo ai filosofi.

167 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 26, 2022

About the author

alt spelling: Benjamin Fundoianu

Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu; born Benjamin Wechsler, Wexler or Vecsler, first name also Beniamin or Barbu, usually abridged to B.; 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.