JACOB, Max (1876-1944)

JACOB, Max (1876-1944)

Original drawing signed « Max Jacob »
N.p.n.d. [St Benoît sur Loire], 1 p. in-4° in black ink
Slight browning on right hand margin

Nice drawing by the poet depicting an archangel on horseback defeating the Devil

The figure of the archangel became a recurring theme for the poet after his conversion to Christianity in the early 1910s, and even more so in his “meditations” composed in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. He soberly dedicates his drawing to his friend Pierre Lagarde in the lower right corner.

A central character of the Montmartre and Montparnassian avant-garde, who converted to Catholicism in 1915 after having had several visions, Max Jacob left Paris in 1936 to settle in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire in the Loiret region. He led a monastic life there. His poetic and mediating works, partly taken up by Pierre Lagarde in his admirable work Max Jacob – Mystique et martyr (La Baudinière, 1944), are close to the quietist current. From then on, he assumed his life as a fisherman as a condition of his redemption. Six months before the liberation of Paris, he was arrested by the Gestapo because of his Jewish origins, a fate he accepted as a martyr. He was interned by the French gendarmerie at the Drancy camp and died there five days later, a few hours before his scheduled deportation to Auschwitz.