The Dance before the Ark

Henri Franck was born in Paris to a well-to-do family; a descendant of R. Arnold Aron of Strasbourg on one side and on the other, to the preeminent French philosopher Henri Bergson, who also became one of his teachers. Franck steeped himself in French literature, the classical Greek and Roman tradition, and modern philosophy with a particular interest in Spinoza and Nietzsche. Connected early on to many rising figures in the Parisian literary and intellectual scene, the young Franck was also deeply affected by the nationalist, xenophobic, and antisemitic fervor around the Dreyfus Affair. He became a part of the intellectual circles of Léon Blum and André Spire where debates about how best to shore up the trembling liberal foundations of the French Republic were intertwined with discussions about the meaning of Jewishness for fully assimilated French Jews. In addition to essays and literary criticism, Franck is best known for Le Danse devant l’arche (The Dance before the Ark, 1912), a long poem that grapples with the relations of Jewish identity, Frenchness, and the philosophical tradition through the figure of King David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. Franck died of tuberculosis at age twenty-four, shortly after the poem’s completion.