Max Blecher

Max Blecher (8 September 1909 Ã¢ÂÂ 31 May 1938) was a Romanian writer.

Life and work

Max Blecher's father was a successful Jewish merchant and the owner of a porcelain shop. Blecher attended primary and secondary school in Roman. After graduating from the Roman-VodÃÂ High School and receiving his baccalaureat, Blecher left for Paris to study medicine. Shortly thereafter, in 1928, he was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis (Pott's disease) and forced to abandon his studies. He sought treatment at various sanatoriums: Berck-sur-Mer in France, Leysin in Switzerland, and Tekirghiol in Romania. For the remaining ten years of his life, he was confined to his bed and practically immobilized by the disease. Despite his illness, he wrote and published his first piece in 1930, a short story called "Herrant" in Tudor Arghezi's literary magazine Bilete de papagal. He contributed to AndrÃÂ© Breton's literary review Le SurrÃÂ©alisme au service de la rÃÂ©volution and carried on an intense correspondence with the foremost writers and philosophers of his day such as AndrÃÂ© Breton, AndrÃÂ© Gide, Martin Heidegger, Ilarie Voronca, Geo Bogza, Mihail Sebastian, and SaÃÂa PanÃÂ. In 1934 he published Corp transparent, a volume of poetry.

In 1935, Blecher's parents moved him to a house on the outskirts of Roman, NeamÃÂ county where he continued to write until his death in 1938 at the age of 28. During his lifetime he published two other major works, ÃÂntÃÂ¢mplÃÂri ÃÂ®n irealitate imediatÃÂ (Adventures in Immediate Irreality) and Inimi cicatrizate (Scarred Hearts), as well as a number of short prose pieces, articles and translations. Vizuina luminatÃÂ: Jurnal de sanatoriu (The Lit-Up Burrow: Sanatorium Journal) was published posthumously in part in 1947 and in full in 1971.

Major works

Corp transparent (Transparent Body)
ÃÂntÃÂ¢mplÃÂri din irealitatea imediatÃÂ (Adventures in Immediate Unreality)
Inimi cicatrizate (Scarred Hearts)
Vizuina luminatÃÂ: Jurnal de sanatoriu (The Lit-Up Burrow: Sanatorium Journal)

Translations

Max Blecher's books have been translated into English, Esperanto, Estonian, French, German, Spanish, Turkish, Czech, Portuguese, Hungarian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Polish, Catalan and Greek. The German translation of Inimi cicatrizate, Vernarbte Herzen in German, was number one on Die Zeit<nowiki>'</nowiki>s list of Notable Books.

English translations

Adventures in Immediate Unreality, Jeanie Han (trans.) (2007) A free download of the translation is available at maxblecher.wordpress.com or at https://archive.org/details/AdventuresInImmediateUnreality
Occurrence in the Immediate Unreality, Alistair Ian Blyth (trans.), University of Plymouth Press (2009)
Scarred Hearts, Henry Howard (trans.) London: Old Street Publishing (2008)
Adventures in Immediate Irreality, newly translated into English by Michael Henry Heim. New Directions, February, 2015.
Something is still present and isn't, of what's gone. A bilingual anthology of avant-garde and avant-garde inspired Rumanian poetry, Victor Pambuccian (trans.) Rome: Aracne editrice (2018)
The Illuminated Burrow: A Sanatorium Journal, Gabi Reigh (trans.), introduction by Gabriela GlÃÂvan, artwork by the author, Twisted Spoon Press (2022).
The Lighted Burrow - A Sanatorium Journal, Christina Tudor-Sideri (trans.) Sublunary Editions (2022)

Notable translations in other languages