Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters
By Rosanna Warren
WW Norton, 2020

There are two main problems when writing a biography of French poet and novelist Max Jacob, as Rosanna Warren acknowledges in her brilliant new book Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters - the first is that despite the delight of his written work, Jacob himself was not a giant. And the second is that because of his endlessly intriguing and supportive nature, he was always surrounded by giants. 

He was close friends with Picasso while he was producing some of his signature appalling artwork, close friends with Apollinaire while he was producing some of his signature appalling pornography, friends with Jean Cocteau in the shadow of some of his signature appalling books and plays - and many more prominent figures in the French art scene in the early 20th century. And one of the main results of these associations is the curiously adjacent feeling that results from reading the small mountain of letters Jacob left behind, or any of the biographical studies that have appeared in France in the last 50 years. 

Rosanna Warren, herself both a formidable poet and a very discerning critic of poetry, has spent decades study the primary and secondary sources for Max Jacob, a massive undertaking that she characterizes in appropriately mythological terms:

To follow the thread of Max Jacob’s life is to be led into the maze of the twentieth century France, its artistic majesty, spiritual torment, and political fractures. I found no Minotaur in this labyrinth, but I did have to figure out how to plot my path around giants, all of them closely bound up with Jacob: Picasso, Apollinaire, Cocteau. The challenge was to let them play their parts without letting them take over the story.

Those giants dominate the book, very often stealing the limelight from the deep intellect, mordant wit, and tortured psyche of Jacob himself. This is a necessary concessions, since friendship was in many ways Jacob’s primary art form, and Warren deals with it in the best possible way: by making all of those giants every bit as fascinating as her main character. “Apollinaire had, in every sense, a tiger’s paw,” she writes. “Physically imposing, protean, and restless, already a published poet and founder of a magazine, Apollinaire dominated while Jacob could only amuse, intrigue, and seduce.” About the famous painter, she writes: “Picasso practiced painting as a dark, if not a black magic. Jacob’s magic was lighter in spirit.” Illuminating asides like these fill the book and comprise a large part of its magic.

At the heart of the story, of course, is Max Jacob himself, repressed, gay, surreally insightful, always yearning for things beyond his reach, particularly a companionable God. His life is an extremely well-documented mystery, and Warren’s narrative everywhere glows with the ease and compassion of having lived with her research for many, many years. Jacob will never be as well-known to French or English-language readers as all of his friends were, but Warren’s account does more than any previous life in English to convey why so many people were his friends in the first place. She has sifted through that enormous trove of letters, and she’s extensively consulted the best French books on the subject (including Helene Seckel’s very entertaining Max Jacob et Picasso from 1994), and the result is a hefty biography that shimmers with the sharpest chatter from the Lapin Agile.

There is a tragic ending, of course. Max Jacob was arrested by the Nazis in early 1944 and only avoided dying in Auschwitz by dying en route, at the Drancy internment camp, where he succumbed to pneumonia in a scene Warren conveys with her usual deft combination of sympathy and dramatic timing:

Max Jacob was dying of pneumonia. There was no medicine. All that could be provided was a cot, relatively clean sheets, and most of all, kindness. The several accounts of his last hours seem contradictory, but one can imagine that all are true, reflecting different phases of his agony. One witness who lived to report the scene was a Jewish doctor who claimed Max Jacob died peacefully. He said, “I’m with God,” and already seemed far away. He expressed only one desire: to die as a Catholic. He made this request tactfully, apologetically, not wanting to offend his fellow Jews: You understand, I’ve given my life to this passion.”

Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters will likely stand as the definitive English-language life of this perennially enigmatic figure. It would be that in any case, but dint of the sheer work Warren has put into it. The Max Jacob twist to it all is how fascinatingly written it all is. 

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.