Benjamin Fondane
Preface in prose

– then, well, know that I had a face like you.
A mouth that prayed, like you….
Certainly, like you, I was cruel,
I craved tenderness, power, gold, pleasure and pain.
Like you, I was wicked and anguished, solid in peace,
drunk in victory, and staggering, haggard, at the hour of failure!
Yes, I was a man like other men, fed on bread, dreams and despair.
Yes, I’ve loved, I’ve cried, I’ve hated, I’ve suffered, I’ve bought flowers
and I haven’t always paid my dues.
…
And yet, no!
I was not a man like you.
You weren’t born on the streets, nobody threw your little ones down the drain like cats without eyes,
you didn’t wander from housing estate to housing estate hunted by the police, you didn’t know the disasters at dawn,
cattle cars and the bitter sob of humiliation,
accused of a crime you didn’t commit…
just remember that I was innocent
and that, like you mortals of that day,
I too had a face marked by anger, pity and joy,
simply a man’s face.