Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters

Warren, Rosanna

ISBN 10: 039307885X / ISBN 13: 9780393078855

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York and London, 2020

About this Item

xviii, 712 pages, [8] pages of plates, illustrations (some colour); 25 cm. Tight, clean copy. Stated First Edition. Dust jacket, with light edgewear, protected in a mylar cover. *** "The first comprehensive biography of Max Jacob [1876-1944], a brilliant cubist poet who lived at the margins of fame. Though less of a household name than his contemporaries in early-twentieth century Paris, Jewish homosexual poet Max Jacob was Pablo Picasso's initiator into French culture, Guillaume Apollinaire's guide out of the haze of symbolism, and Jean Cocteau's loyal friend. As Picasso reinvented painting, Jacob helped to reinvent poetry with compressed, hard-edged prose poems and synapse-skipping verse lyrics. In February 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Drancy, where he would die later that year. In Max Jacob, the poet's complex relationships with art, faith, and sexuality play out against the lively backdrop of bohemian Paris from the turn of the twentieth century through the divisions of World War II. A nuanced, deeply researched biography more than thirty years in the making, Max Jacob offers a compelling, tragic portrait of Jacob as a man and as an artist alongside a rich study of his groundbreaking poetry, making for a brilliant contribution to modernist scholarship" - Publisher. *** CONTENTS: Preface; Brittany; The gates of the city; Meeting Picasso; Romance; The Bateau Lavoir; Toward cubism; Christ and the druids; Bohemia rising; Art wars; The great war and conversion; The dice cup and the armistice; The struggle for the avant-garde; Saint-Benoit; Jacob the pedagogue; Demonic love; Loves and fevers; The year of crashes; The Hotel Nollet; Saint-Benoit, again; The occupation. Size: 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 124170

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York and London
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039307885X
• ISBN 13: 9780393078855
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Book Type: Collectible
• Seller catalogs:
  • European::8. Modern, 1900-1945
  • Movements::Cubism
  • Genre & Subject::Religious::Judaica
  • European::French
  • Genre & Subject::LGBTQ+
  • New Books
  • XXX::COLLECTIBLES
  • XXL::Extra Extra Large

About this title

Synopsis

A comprehensive and moving biography of Max Jacob, a brilliant cubist poet who lived at the margins of fame.

Though less of a household name than his contemporaries in early twentieth century Paris, Jewish homosexual poet Max Jacob was Pablo Picasso’s initiator into French culture, Guillaume Apollinaire’s guide out of the haze of symbolism, and Jean Cocteau’s loyal friend. As Picasso reinvented painting, Jacob helped to reinvent poetry with compressed, hard-edged prose poems and synapse-skipping verse lyrics, the product of a complex amalgamation of Jewish, Breton, Parisian, and Roman Catholic influences.

In Max Jacob, the poet’s life plays out against the vivid backdrop of bohemian Paris from the turn of the twentieth century through the divisions of World War II. Acclaimed poet Rosanna Warren transports us to Picasso’s ramshackle studio in Montmartre, where Cubism was born; introduces the artists gathered at a seedy bar on the left bank, where Max would often hold court; and offers a front-row seat to the artistic squabbles that shaped the Modernist movement.

Jacob’s complex understanding of faith, art, and sexuality animates this sweeping work. In 1909, he saw a vision of Christ in his shabby room in Montmartre, and in 1915 he converted formally from Judaism to Catholicism―with Picasso as his godfather. In his later years, Jacob split his time between Paris and the monastery of Benoît-sur-Loire. In February 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Drancy, where he would die a few days later.

More than thirty years in the making, this landmark biography offers a compelling, tragic portrait of Jacob as a man and as an artist alongside a rich study of his groundbreaking poetry―in Warren’s own stunning translations. Max Jacob is a nuanced, deeply researched, and essential contribution to Modernist scholarship.

8 pages of color illustrations

About the Author

Rosanna Warren is the author of Hindsight and six previous volumes of poetry and is a professor emerita in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She is a recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among others. She lives in New York City.