Benjamin Fondane – le seuil philosophique et le motif du « juif errant »
Benjamin Fondane – the philosophical threshold and the subject of the Jewish wanderer

Author(s): Ștefana Gabriela Sîrbu
Subject(s): Cultural history, Metaphysics, Recent History (1900 till today), Jewish Thought and Philosophy, History of Judaism, French Literature, Romanian Literature, Cultural Essay, Philology
Published by: Editura Junimea
Keywords: Benjamin Fondane; Lev Shestov; philosophy; Jewishness; identity;
Summary/Abstract: Benjamin Fondane is a Romanian author which at the age of 25 left for France, where he became a renown philosopher and expert in aesthetics. This modification of geographical coordinates had a significant impact on the author: the threshold he has to pass is not only linguistical but also creative. His life there isn’t facile and has to face the French language, which he knew but only by means of reading. Fondane’s meeting with Shestov was an important event in his life in France; it is Shestov who insists that he should read philosophy and also encourages him to write philosophy. It is for this reason that Fondane’s French poetry, his philosophical essays and aesthetic studies bear, to a certain extent, the mark of Shestov. Shestov and Fondane are philosophers of mystery and metaphysical anxiety, of the suffering of the individual and of the dialogue between man and God – if Shestov continues on the path of religious thought, Fondane remains more firmly attached to the Jewish spiritual identity and this fact is quite apparent – all of his philosophical and poetic work confirms it.

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