Jacob, Max

JACOB, MAX. - Born in Quimper (France) on July 11, 1876, died in the Drancy concentration camp on March 5, 1944. A poet, novelist, and painter, he was friends with P. Picasso, Matisse, Apollinaire, Mac Orlan and many other Montparnasse artists. Formed in this environment, he was a representative of that vast Parisian avant-garde movement to which all the art of our time owes its new direction.

In 1909 he had the 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 not taken seriously by his circle or by ecclesiastical circles, and only in 1915 did he obtain permission to receive Baptism. He hid beneath the eccentricity and the bohemianism of the Montparnasse artists the anguish of his search for truth; his attitude as an avant-garde poet in reality concealed the work of Grace that drove him toward the search for his divine center.

From 1921 to 1928 he lived in retreat near the monastery of St-Benoît-sur-Loire, returned there definitively in 1936, and there, in 1944, because he was a Jew by origin, he was captured by the Germans. His death was serene, in perfect abandonment to the will of God.

He composed among other works: 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).

J.'s personality is incredible and enigmatic. The elements of his art, disorderly and scattered, range from the burlesque and irony to the most serene mysticism. In the very diverse aspects of his work, unity is given by the pure poetry that clothes his enchanting world, fantastic and absurd.