Un apres-texte inconnu de Benjamin Fondane
An unknown after-text by Benjamin Fondane

Summary/Abstract: Our essay brings to light the effect that certain poems by Benjamin Fondane, in particular those contained in the collection Ulysse, have had on the work of Yvan Goll. An attraction for the same themes (errance, exile, the emigrant, the voyage, water, and death) and for the same scriptural matrices (song and elegy) unites the two poets who met in Paris. These affinities reach their highest point in L’Élégie de Lackawanna. Written in French while Goll was in America, more precisely in the years 1943 to 1944, this set of poems echoes Fondane’s voice as we would like to show from examples taken from eight sections of the L’Élégie de Lackawanna by Ivan Goll: Amérique;Le Fleuve; Les Passagers, Les Ports; New York, New York; Les Docks, les Bateaux; Les Ponts; Les Vagues; Les Statues, la Mort. Through this intertextuality, we argue that the texts and the themes travel — in a generalized nomadism — each poet taking them up in order to transform them in a completely personal vision, in a ritual of regeneration.

• Details
• Contents