From 1923, when he emigrated from Bucharest, to his deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944, Benjamin Fondane made a unique and independent-minded contribution to the literary and intellectual life of Paris. One of the most significant pieces in Fondane's body of work is the long poem Ulysses, first published in 1933. Fondane considerably revised his text during the dark years of occupied Paris, and it is this second "edition without an end," left unfinished at the time of his deportation, that is translated here. It is a moving testament to the poetic voice and philosophical engagement of this exceptional figure of the Paris avant-garde.
"Benjamin Fondane closely identified with the figure of Ulysses: a wanderer, an exile. Like James Joyce's Leopold Bloom, Fondane's Ulysses was also Jewish, but unlike Bloom and the classical Ulysses, Fondane's Ulysses has no Ithaca to return to, no Penelope or Molly waiting for him. His poem of irremediable exile and alienation stands as a vital expression of the concerns of modern existence. Nath
Professor of philosophy, Thompson Rivers University
"This meditative and rhapsodic travelogue of a Romanian Jew takes the reader from the poet's childhood home to Paris in its heyday, between the Wars, and on a voyage down the coast of Africa, across to South America, and back, presenting his travels as both a mythic tale and an existential search."
Author of They Lift Their Wings to Cry
"The translator's careful consideration of the complexities of the original is not only a faithful transposition, but also an accessible and enjoyable experience for the anglophone reader…highly commendable."
Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow School of Modern Languages and Cultures
