October 15, 1994

A French philosopher. Those are first words used to introduce Sarah Kofman (September 14, 1934 to October 15, 1994). She wrote many books, like---

Nerval: Le charme de la répétition (1979).
Nietzsche et la scène philosophique (1979).
L'énigme de la femme: La femme dans les textes de Freud (1980). (The Enigma of Woman: Woman in Freud's Writings (1985).
Le respect des femmes (Kant et Rousseau) (1982).

These are just a few titles of books Sarah Kofman wrote.

Her last, or almost, is Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (1994), one her her few autobiographical volumes. It treats of her life under the German occupation. As Jews in Nazi occupied Paris, she and her mother were in hiding after her father was arrested. The mother and child were sheltered by a kind though anti-semitic widow. This woman not only sheltered Jewish children, she also fed stray cats. So Kofman recalled.

Rue Ordener, Rue Labat is available in an English translation, but not all her books are.






In her book Autobiogriffures (first edition 1976; second edition 1984), she analyses the German author E.T.A. Hoffmann's fictional autobiography of a cat, published in English as The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1819–1821)