Max Blecher

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, Romania.[1] After 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.[2] 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.[3] He contributed to Andr Breton's
literary review Le Surralisme au service de la rvolutionand carried on an intense correspondence
with the foremost writers and philosophers of his day such as Andr Breton, Andr Gide, Martin
Heidegger, Illarie Voronca, Geo Bogza, Mihail Sebastian, and Saa Pan.[4] 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 [5] where he continued to
write until his death in 1938 at the age of 28. During his lifetime he published two other major
works, ntmplri n irealitate imediat (Adventures in Immediate Irreality) and Inimi
cicatrizate (Scarred Hearts), as well as a number of short prose pieces, articles and
translations. Vizuina luminat: Jurnal de sanatoriu (The Lit-Up Burrow: Sanatorium Journal) was
published posthumously in part in 1947 and in full in 1971. [6]