SOURCE: Freedman, Eric. “Benjamin Fondane: Philoctetes and the Scream of Exile.” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 6, no. 2 (spring/summer 1994): 51-62.

In this essay, Freedman traces Fondane's history and influences and examines their impact on his dramatic poem Philoctetes, which was not published in his lifetime.

In his preface to Philoctetes, Fondane wrote that “after all, better it should appear now than in the form of a posthumous work, with an introduction and critical notes. At least, dear reader, this edition has neither introduction nor critical notes—that's something anyhow.” However, Philoctetes, a dramatic poem advertised as forthcoming in 1937,¹ did not appear during Fondane's lifetime. …

                                                  And yet a time will come when I shall be only a fable, an absurd kind of mythical secret, an existence which existed, where then? in what century? 

(Le Mal des fantômes, p. 315)²

I. Between Unjust Laws

Justice! (…) I have seen it...