“Luceafărul” d’Eminescu et la poésie française de Benjamin Fondane

Numerous critics have demonstrated that Benjamin Fondane immersed himself during his adolescence in the images and rhythms of many Romanian poets which later migrated into his poetry. This study proposes to underline the influence of Eminescu, especially of his Luceafărul [The star], on Fondane’s French language poetry. After examining his reflections on that author, we identify intertextual traces of Luceafărul in many poems from the collection Le Mal des fantômes. But it is especially in the poem Prière d’une essence in which traces are found not only of Luceafărul but also of Rugăciunea unui dac [Prayer of a Dacian] and of La steaua [Towards the star]. We argue that the intertextual reprise of these verses by Eminescu in his French poetry – at a time when he has already lived in Paris for numerous years and when he will never return to Romania – bear witness to the faithfulness of Fondane to his Native Meridian well into the 1940s.