Max Jacob
Max Jacob (1876-1944) was a notable French writer and artist who serves as a crucial link between the Symbolist, Surrealist, Dadaist, and Futurist movements. Initially recognized as an art critic, Jacob formed significant relationships with influential figures such as Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, which shaped his creative journey. While he produced Cubist paintings early in his career, he is primarily celebrated for his literary contributions, particularly his prose poetry, a form he is credited with inventing. Jacob's first literary work appeared in 1904, and he would go on to explore a range of genres, including poetry, fiction, and art criticism.
His life was marked by a profound spiritual transformation after a vision of Christ led him to convert from Judaism to Catholicism in 1909. However, Jacob struggled with his identity as a homosexual and his desires, which caused ongoing emotional conflict. After spending seven years in a monastery, he returned to artistic life in 1928. Tragically, his life ended when he was captured by the Nazis during World War II and died in a deportation camp. Despite facing periods of obscurity, Jacob's contributions to French Modernism have since been rediscovered and celebrated for their innovative impact on literature and art.
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Subject Terms
Max Jacob
Poet
- Born: July 12, 1876
- Birthplace: Quimper, Brittany, France
- Died: March 5, 1944
- Place of death: Drancy deportation camp, north of Paris, France
Biography
Born in France in 1876, Max Jacob is an important link between the Symbolists and Surrealists, Dadaists, and Futurists who drew important lessons from his work, often without crediting him for his innovations. Jacob himself was responsible, to a certain extent, for his deferred reputation, as he appeared too chimerical and too uninterested in self-promotion to define his place in French Modernism. Jacob’s penchant for self-transformation and indecision is reflected in his educational journey. At one time or another, he studied art, music and law. He first became known as an art critic, an occupation that led to his important and formative friendships with Pablo Picasso, Apollinaire, Juan Gris and Jean Cocteau. Picasso convinced Jacob that his destiny lay in writing, not painting, and although Jacob’s Cubist paintings were fairly well known and provided him with a meager income on which to live, he is best remembered and acclaimed for his writings, especially his collections of prose poetry, a form he claims to have invented.
Jacob’s first literary publication was a satirical children’s story, published in 1904. At the same time that he was painting and writing fiction and art criticism, he was also writing poetry. Unlike his fiction, which appeared in various collections and as novels, or his paintings, which won the respect of his artistic and literary friends, Jacob showed his poems to only a few trusted friends.
In 1909, Jacob underwent an intense religious conversion. Claiming to have seen a vision of Christ, Jacob converted from Judaism to Catholicism. However, since he remained sexually active as a homosexual and continued to indulge in the pleasures of the world, Jacob found himself in constant emotional and spiritual turmoil for the rest of his life. Eventually, in 1921, Jacob would enter a monastery in an attempt to purge himself of world desire.
In 1917, Jacob published his first collection of poems, Le Cornet a dés (the dice cup), a series of prose poems which demonstrated Jacob’s debt to the Symbolists while pointing toward the future work of the Surrealists and Dadaists. The nexus for these literary and artistic movements is Cubism. Jacob treats his poems as objects that both point to and retreat from representation, much like Cubist paintings. Thus, as things not in nature, they uphold a central tenet of the Symbolists; as vehicles into the subconscious, they point to the experiments of the Surrealists.
After his seven-year internment in a monastery, Jacob returned to the world in 1928 and resumed an active life as an artist and writer. In 1944, he was captured by the Nazis and he died in a deportation camp. Jacob’s literary and artistic reputation remained dormant for some time after the end of the war, due in part to the Surrealists’ denunciation of his work. However, later generations of artists and writers came to appreciate the central role Jacobs had played in facilitating the development of French Modernism.