JACOB, MAX. - Born in Quimper (France) on 11 July 1876, died in the Drancy concentration camp on 5 March 1944. A poet, novelist, and painter, he had as friends P. Picasso, Matisse, Apollinaire, Mac Orlan, and many other Montparnasse artists. Formed in this milieu, he was an exponent of that vast Parisian avant-garde movement to which all the art of our time owes its new direction.
In 1909 he experienced an apparition of Christ on the wall of his room, and later, in 1915, in a cinema, he suddenly saw the image of Jesus superimposed on the screen. But his conversion was taken seriously neither by his milieu nor by ecclesiastical circles, and only in 1915 did he obtain permission to receive Baptism. Beneath the eccentricity and bohemianism of the Montparnasse artists, he concealed the anguish of his search for truth; his attitude as an avant-garde poet in reality concealed the work of Grace, which was impelling him to seek his divine center.
From 1921 to 1928 he lived in retirement near the monastery of St-Benoît-sur-Loire; he returned there permanently in 1936 and there, in 1944, because he was Jewish by origin, he was arrested by the Germans. His death was serene, in perfect surrender to the will of God.
Among other works, he composed: St Matorel (1911); Le cornet à dés (prose poem, 1917); La défense de Tartufe. Extases, remords, etc. d'un juif converti (1919); Cinématoma (1920); Le laboratoire central (1922); Visions des souffrances et de la mort de Jésus (poetic meditations, 1928); Art poétique (writings on aesthetics, 1925).
The personality of J. is incredible and enigmatic. The elements of his art, disorderly and dispersed, range from the burlesque and irony to the most serene mysticism. In the extraordinarily diverse aspects of his work, unity is provided by the pure poetry that clothes his enchanting, fantastic, and absurd world.