JACOB, MAX

JACOB, MAX
JACOB, MAX (1876–1944), French poet and novelist. Born in Quimper, Brittany, Jacob was the son of a tailor and descended from German Jews who immigrated to France in 1816. After an unhappy childhood, he made the first of three suicide attempts at the age of 17. For several years, he worked in a variety of occupations, including carpentry, as a lawyer's clerk, commerce, and even astrology. A gifted linguist and draftsman, Jacob eventually became an art critic in Paris, where he joined the circle of Apollinaire, Picasso, and André Salmon, centered in the Left Bank cabaret Le Lapin agile. At this time he evolved his basic aesthetic principles: the establishment of a "new harmony" to free men from everything which prevented them from seeing the true colors of reality (cf. his children's tales Le Roi Kaboul et le Marmiton Gauvin and Le Géant du soleil, 1904). Taking up arms against convention and prejudice, Jacob made irony his favorite device, thus providing himself with "distance" from the object and with the "patience and submission" indispensable to creativity. In 1909 he had his first vision of Jesus and wrote the mystère entitled Saint Matorel (1911) and La Côte, poems which later appeared in Breton. A melancholy anti-romantic, Jacob became known for his mordant humor and "surrealistic" speech: lake became suburb, valley changed to movie theater, Ibsen became Rimbaud, and Byron, Freud. The poet's yearning for love and his suffering and disillusionment combined with a second vision led to his conversion to Catholicism in 1915. The spiritual comfort which this brought him inspired a series of works characterized by a mingling of sarcasm and lyricism: Les Oeuvres burlesques et mystiques du frère Matorel… (1912); Le Cornet à dés (1917); Le Phanérogame (1918), a novel; La Défense de Tartuffe, subtitled Extase, remords, visions, prières, poèmes et méditations d'un Juif converti (1919); and Le Laboratoire central (1921). After 1921, Jacob retired to the monastery of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, where he wrote Le Cabinet noir (1922), a novel, Le Terrain Bouchaballe (1923), the mystical Visions infernales (1924), and L'Homme de chair et l'homme reflet (1925). During the years 1928–36, he achieved some standing as a painter in Paris, then retired once more to Saint-Beno-ît, where he wrote a book of prose poems, Ballades (1938). After the Nazi occupation in 1940, Jacob was arrested by the Gestapo and died in the Drancy concentration camp. Some books of verse and two volumes of correspondence appeared posthumously after World War II. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Billy, Max Jacob (Fr., 1946); J. Rousselot, Max Jacob au sérieux (1958); M. Raymond, De Baudelaire au Surréalisme (1933), 253–62; J. Mesnil, in: E.J. Finbert (ed.), Aspects du Génie d' Israël (1950), 300–6; C. Lehrmann, L'Elément juif dans la littérature française, 2 (1961), 142–3. (Max Bilen)

Encyclopedia Judaica. 1971.

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  • Jacob, Max — (1876 1944)    poet    Of Jewish ancestry, Max Jacob, who was born in Quimper, Brittany, at first led a bohemian existence in the Montmartre district of Paris in the early years of the 20th century. There, he met Pablo Picasso and other artistic… …   France. A reference guide from Renaissance to the Present

  • Jacob, Max — ▪ French poet born July 12, 1876, Quimper, Fr. died March 5, 1944, Drancy  French poet who played a decisive role in the new directions of modern poetry during the early part of the 20th century. His writing was the product of a complex amalgam… …   Universalium

  • Jacob, Max — ► (1876 1944) Literato y pintor francés neoimpresionista …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Max Jacob — en 1934, photographie de Carl van Vechten (Library of Congress) …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Max Littmann — (3 January 1862 20 September 1931) was a German architect. Opera house in Poznań 1909 1910 Littmann was educated in the Gewerbeakademie Chemnitz and the Technische Hochschule Dresden. In 1885, he moved to Munich where he met Friedrich Thiersch… …   Wikipedia

  • Jacob — o Ya akov, en hebreo יַעֲקֹב sostenido por el talón o en árabe يعقوب Yaʿqūb, conocido despues como Israel hebreo יִשְׂרָאֵל Principe de Dios , árabe اسرائيل Isrāʾīl) es uno de los patriarcas de la Biblia. Su historia es contada en el libro de… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • JACOB — Nom du patriarche qui, dans la tradition biblique définitivement sertie (l’unité religieuse et l’unité politique s’étant de concert façonnées, les douze tribus vénèrent ce personnage comme leur père commun), est présenté comme l’ancêtre éponyme… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Max Jacob — This article is about Max Jacob the French writer. For the German puppeteer, see Max Jacob (puppeteer). Max Jacob Max Jacob, photographed by Carl van Vechten …   Wikipedia

  • Max Jacob (puppeteer) — This article is about Max Jacob the German puppeteer. For the French writer, see Max Jacob. Max Jacob (* 10. August 1888 in Bad Ems; † 8. December 1967 in Hamburg) was a German puppeteer and the developer of the Hohnsteiner Kasper Theatre in the… …   Wikipedia

  • Max Littmann — Opera de Stuttgart Opera de Poznan …   Wikipedia Español

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