SOURCE: Weingrad, Michael. “The Exodus of Benjamin Fondane.” Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought 48, no. 4 (fall 1994): 470-80.

In the essay below, Weingrad warns against classifying Fondane merely in terms of his Jewish faith or his status as exile, preferring to note the power of his surrealist poetry and its reflections upon the World War II era.

if the cries of human beings fall like chestnuts to the earth, at the mercy of the wind, without altering the peace of Angels, then what is Exodus?(1) 

When I began to translate Fondane's L'Exode: Super Flumina Babylonis, Pedro Lastra, the gracious Chilean homme des lettres, was visiting our campus. I mentioned Fondane to him in one of our discussions about literature. “Ah, yes,” said Lastra, “a tragic figure. Like Desnos.” This comparison indicates the twin poles between which Fondane is generally discussed, if he is discussed: poetry and...