Bernard Lazare
Bernard Lazare (14 June 1865, Nîmes – 1 September 1903, Paris) was a French literary critic, political journalist, polemicist, and anarchist. He was also among the first Dreyfusards.
Life
Lazare's initial contact with symbolists introduced him to anarchism and led to his career in literary criticism. During the Trial of the thirty in 1894, he defended anarchists Jean Grave and Félix Fénéon.[1]
Following his experience with antisemitism during the Dreyfus Affair, Lazare became engaged in the struggle for the emancipation of Jews, and was triumphally received at the First Zionist Congress.[1] He travelled with Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, the two men sharing a great respect for each other, but he fell out with Herzl after a disagreement over the project whose "tendencies, processes and actions" he disapproved. In 1899 he wrote to Herzl – and by extension to the Zionist Action Committee, "You are bourgeois in thoughts, bourgeois in your feelings, bourgeois in your ideas, bourgeois in your conception of society." Lazare's Zionism was not nationalist, nor advocated the creation of a state, but was rather an ideal of emancipation and of collective organization of the Jewish proletarians.[2]
He visited Romania in 1900 and 1902, after which he denounced the terrible fate of Romanian Jews in L'Aurore, written in July and August 1900. He also visited Russia where he reported on the dangers facing Jews, but did not have a chance to publish due to illness; and Turkey where he defended the Armenians against persecution.[1]
Soon Dreyfusardes censored him and he could no longer write for l'Aurore after the Rennes trial. He covered the trial anyway and sent his vitriolic accounts to two American journals, The Chicago Record and The North American Review. At the end of his life, he became close to Charles Péguy, and wrote in the Cahiers de la quinzaine.[1]
Works
Non-fiction
- L'Antisémitisme, son histoire et ses causes (tr. as Anti-semitism, its History and Causes) (1894)
Fiction
- Le Miroir des Légendes (Alphonse Lemarre, 1892) (tr. as The Mirror of Legends, 2017)
- Les Porteurs des Torches (1897)
- Les Portes d'ivoire (1898)
See also
References
- ^ a b c d Ressusciter Lazare Archived May 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Le Monde libertaire, 29 January 2004 (in French)
- ^ Gabriel Piterberg (2008), The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel, London: Verso, p.10
Further reading
- L'antisémitisme son histoire et ses causes (1894 – Léon Chailley Ed.) Text in English; epub: Lazare, Bernard (1903), Antisemitism, its history and causes., New York: The International library publishing co., LCCN 03015369, OCLC 3055229, OL 7137045M
- Le nationalisme juif (1898)
- L'affaire Dreyfus – Une erreur judiciaire – Edition établie par Ph. Oriol, – Ed. Allia (1993) (Job's Dungheap, edition in English with introduction by Hannah Arendt)
- Le fumier de Job – Texte établi par Ph. Oriol – Ed. Honoré Champion (1998)
- Juifs et antisémites – Edition établie par Ph. Oriol – Ed. Allia (1992)
- Bernard Lazare, Anarchiste et nationaliste juif – Textes réunis par Ph. Oriol – Ed. Honoré Champion (1999)
- Bernard Lazare – de l'anarchiste au prophète – J-D Bredin – Ed. fallois (1992)
- Bernard Lazare – Ph. Oriol – Stock (2003)
External links
- Homage to Bernard Lazare by Mitchell Cohen
- Writings of Lazare at Marxist Internet Archive
- Anti-Semitism, Its History and Its Causes by Bernard Lazare Free online book for download in adobe PDF format 991KB.
- Dreyfus Rehabilitated
- 1865 births
- 1903 deaths
- People from Nîmes
- 19th-century French Jews
- Activists against antisemitism
- French anarchists
- Jewish anarchists
- Jewish socialists
- Anarchist writers
- French literary critics
- French journalists
- French essayists
- Jewish French writers
- Jewish activists
- Writers on antisemitism
- Dreyfusards
- French male essayists