Biblical in subject, Monologul lui Baltazar has been interpreted by Crohmălniceanu as a negative comment on nihilism and the Übermensch theory, notions embodied by the protagonist Belshazzar, legendary ruler of Babylon during the Jewish captivity. Fondane's progressive focus on Jewish Biblical sources mirrored the Christian interests of his mentor Arghezi. Like Arghezi, Fondane wrote a series of Psalms—although, according to Martin, his tone was "too cadenced and solemn for one to expect a confrontation or a touching confession". However, Martin notes, the Jewish author either adopted or anticipated (depending on the reliability of his manuscripts' dating) Arghezi's poetry of exhortation and curses, in which ugliness, baseness and destitution speak directly to divinity. These sentiments are found in Fondane's Psalmul leprosului, which the same critic identifies as "the series' masterpiece": Surrealism, anti-communism and Jewish existentialism Throughout and beyond his participation in the Surrealist milieus (an affiliation illustrated primarily by his filmmaker and popularizer activities, rather than by his literary creation), Benjamin Fondane remained an existentialist, primarily following Lev Shestov's views on the human condition. This came as a critique of the scientific method and rationalism as human explanations of the world, notably outlined in his own Faux traité d'esthétique. Probably developed independently from Shestovist thought, his overall objection toward abstract projects has been likened by essayist Gina Sebastian Alcalay to the later stances of André Glucksmann or Edgar Morin. These attitudes shaped his assessments of Surrealism. In one of Integral chronicles, Fondane himself explained that the movement, described as superior to Dada's "joyous suicide", had created a "new continent" with its rediscovery of dreams. Poet and critic Armelle Chitrit notes that, in part, Fondane's later dissidence was also motivated on an existentialist level, since Surrealism "had stopped asking questions"; instead, she notes, Fondane "believed neither in reason nor in any system based on it. It is folly, he wrote, to perpetuate the attempt to make man and history cohabitable. One of [S]hestov's rare disciples, he sets only the powers of life against those of chaos." As Fondane wrote to Claude Sernet, Rimbaud le voyou was in part at attempt at preventing the other Surrealists from confiscating Rimbaud's mythical status. According to Romanian-born writer Lucian Raicu, its "somber" tone and allusive language are also early clues that Fondane had a nightmarish vision of the political and intellectual climate. His Shestovist interpretation, opposing existence to ideas, was contested by intellectual figure Raymond Queneau: