Max Jacob: Lettres a Nino Frank

Max Jacob: Lettres a Nino Frank, edited by Anne S. Kimball, contains 85 lettres written by the French poet to author-journalist Nino Frank. The correspondence began in 1923 when the young Italo-Swiss from Naples wrote Jacob, praising the poet’s Le Cornet a des. Jacob, always helpful to budding writers, encouraged Frank to pursue a literary career in France. Frank then spent some months at the Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire monastery where Jacob had retreated from Paris after his conversion to Catholicism. Frank never forgot his beginnings in France when Jacob introduced him to major literary and artistic figures; he later described his experiences in Memoire brisee (1967). The two became life-long friends, Jacob visited Frank in Italy, and their correspondence continued until Jacob’s death in 1944. The letters, models of the epistolary genre, are full of wit, examples of poems, and gossip about the French literary and artistic scene. Jacob’s short story, Illisibles, completes the volume. Nino Frank lives in Paris, and continues to be active in French letters.