Blaise Cendrars

At once truly appalling and appallingly funny, Blaise Cendrars's Moravagine bears comparison with Naked Lunch--except that it's a lot more entertaining to read. Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire. Released from a hospital for the criminally insane by his starstruck psychiatrist (the narrator of the book), who foresees a companionship in crime that will also be an unprecedented scientific collaboration, Moravagine travels from Moscow to San Antonio to deepest Amazonia, engaged in schemes and scams as, among other things, terrorist, speculator, gold prospector, and pilot. He also enjoys a busy sideline in rape and murder. At last, the two friends return to Europe--just in time for World War I, when "the whole world was doing a Moravagine." This new edition of Cendrars's underground classic is the first in English to include the author's afterword, "How I Wrote Moravagine."

Moravagine

Being the Marvellous History of General John Augustus Sutter

Gold

« En ce temps-là j'étais en mon adolescence J'avais à peine seize ans et je ne me souvenais déjà plus de mon enfance J'étais à 16000 lieues du lieu de ma naissance J'étais à Moscou, dans la ville des mille et trois clochers et des sept gares Et je n'avais pas assez des sept gares et des mille et trois tours Car mon adolescence était alors si ardente et si folle Que mon cœur, tour à tour, brûlait comme le temple d'Éphèse ou comme la Place Rouge de Moscou Quand le soleil se couche.» «Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jeanne de France », «Les Pâques», «Le Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles» : trois poèmes mythiques de l'auteur de L'or, réunis en recueil en 1919 sous le titre Du monde entier.

 et autres poèmes du monde entier

Prose du Transsibérien

In France, Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961), a friend of Chagall, Leger, Picasso, Braque, Picabia, and Modigliani, has emerged as one of the great figures of modernism. Together with Apollinaire, he brought cubism to French poetry. Anais Nin hailed him as "one of France's best writers, " and the Village Voice called him "the Indiana Jones of French literature." Translated into English for the first time, Sky, the last of Cendrar's four autobiographical volumes, weaves together a dazzling collage of prose poetry, travel writing, reportage, detective story, and personal memoir. "His life itself reads like the Arabian Nights Entertainment, " writes Henry Miller. In Sky Cendrars recounts his adventures in Russia during the revolution of 1905, in the trenches of World War I (where he lost his right arm), in Brazil in the 1920s, and behind the lines during World War II. The two wars run throughout as a unifying thread. As the title announces, this is a memoir of the sky - of Cendrars's love of birds, levitation, and aviation. The opening of the book finds Cendrars, the great adventurer and traveler, sailing back from Brazil to Paris with 250 multi-colored birds, hoping to bring at least one of them alive to a child he loves. The second part moves back and forth between the author's recollections of life as a war correspondent in 1940 and an encyclopedic discourse on levitation he wrote in search of a patron saint of aviation (perhaps as compensation for the death of his young son, Remy, who was a pilot during the war). With unmatched exuberance, Cendrars writes on poetry, myths, existentialism, his life in Paris between the wars with the painter Delaunay and the Dadaists, and his exotic adventuresin Brazil. His anecdotes of Russia, where he was a jeweler's assistant, are compelling and funny. His fiercely imaginative stories, such as one about a Brazilian coffee plantation owner who, obsessed with his love for Sarah Bernhardt, retreats into the wilderness, are magical. Des

Memoirs

Sylvie Loignon

Dans ce court récit autobiographique, Cendrars - qui fut amputé du bras droit en 1915 - raconte les souffrances et le chaos engendrés par la guerre et rend hommage à ceux qui, par leur courage et leur générosité, l'ont transformé en aventure humaine.

J'ai saigné (1938)

(La merveilleuse histoire du général Johann August Suter.) - Hollywood, la mecque du cinéma

L'or

Marcia Brown

Free verse evocation of the eerie, shifting images of Shadow which represents the beliefs and ghosts of the past and is brought to life wherever there is light, fire, and a storyteller.

Shadow

Blaise Cendrars' narrative about his life-changing journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway is a poem of memory and movement. Sonia Delaunay's designs create a parallel path as the reader slips down the palette while swimming through a river of words.

La prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France

Existe-t-il vraiment ce passage secret qui mène à la Banque d’Angleterre? Et la T.P.M.T.R., cette ligue de marins garantissant aux morts en mer un enterrement au pays natal? Et ce Saint inconnu, sacristain de la cathédrale de Santiago? Qu’importe... Du Far West à l’Argentine, de Londres à la forêt vierge, Blaise Cendrars nous invite dans ses sept 'histoires vraies' à ouvrir les yeux sur les beautés du monde – et sa part de mystère.

Histoires vraies

La Vie Secrète de Jean Galmot ["Rhum." Roman Vécu].

Planus

Brésil, des hommes sont venus--

Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello

Pequenos contos negros também para crianças brancas

Contos negros para os filhos dos brancos

The African Saga

Alexandre Eulálio

Carlos Augusto Calil

ensaio, cronologia, filme, depoimentos, antologia, desenhos, conferências, correspondência, traduções

A aventura brasileira de Blaise Cendrars

Translated from the French by Nina Rootes

Lice

Petits contes nègres ; Dan Yack ; Les confessions de Dan Yack

Confessions of Dan Yack

Dan Yack commence comme une parabole et s'achève comme un lamento. Le Plan de l'Aiguille et Les Confessions de Dan Yack appartiennent-ils bien au même univers romanesque ? Ce livre de dissonances vire sans cesse du burlesque au tragique, de la violence au rire, du drame à la pantomime. Quant à Dan Yack, ce milliardaire anglais au nom bizarre, il échappe à la saisie. D'abord présenté à la manière de Charlot, il resurgit sous les traits d'un héros en proie au mal du siècle. Dans le tourbillon des aventures qui l'emportent à travers le monde, une question pourtant ne le quitte pas : est-il possible de changer sa vie ? Et à quel prix ?Dan Yack reste le plus secret des grands romans de Cendrars, celui qui touche au plus brûlant, au plus intime.

Blaise Cendrars

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