Max Jacob

Poet, born in Quimper, NW France. After a children's book, he published a religious text Saint Matorel (1909), then Oeuvres mystiques et burlesques du Frère Matorel mort au Couvent de Barcelone (1911), and Breton songs La Côte (1913). He mixed novels and poetry in a style which was the precursor of Dadaism. Later works include a collection of prose poems in the Surrealist manner, Le Cornet à dés (1917), Art Poétique (1922), and Les Pénitents en Maillots roses (1925). He converted to Catholicism at the age of 40, retiring to the convent of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, but was nevertheless arrested as a Jew and died in the camp at Drancy, near Paris.

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Jacob, who had Jewish origins, claimed to have had a vision of Christ in 1909, and converted to Catholicism.

Max Jacob is regarded as an important link between the symbolists and the surrealists, as can be seen in his prose poems Le cornet à dés (Dice Box, 1917) and in his paintings, exhibitions of which were held in New York City in 1930 and 1938.

His writings include the novel Saint Matorel (1911), the verses Le laboratoire central (1921), and Le défense de Tartuffe (1919), which expounds his philosophical and religious attitudes.

Eventually he would be forced to move to Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, where he was hiding during the German occupation of World War II.

First interred in Ivry, after the war ended in 1945 his remains were transferred to the cemetery at Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire in the Loiret département.