Abstract
A number of dominant features confer a dynamic unity on Benjamin Fondane's (alias B. Fundoianu) vision of the theater. Influenced by the French intellectual and artistic environment, and following a meeting with Artaud and Shestov (which accentuated the "existential" predisposition of Fondane's thinking), these constants can be traced back to his first press articles and to his plays, which were contaminated by readings of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Shestov, Gide, Bergson, Freud. The intellectual biographies of the masters, especially those of Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, are also placed by Fondane in a dramatic logic. Since his Romanian period, Fondane was already showing interest in the everchanging theatrical mechanisms, from the Greek tragedy to theater realism and symbolism. Such reflections will later find an organic continuation in his observations in Faux traité d’esthétique (False Treatise on Aesthetics), which straddles important directions from the performing arts of the twentieth century and beyond.
Keywords:
Benjamin Fondane; drame; performings arts; twentieth century.