Blaise Cendrars Speaks: a poet far, far ahead of his time

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“I am not of your race. I belong to a mongrel horde.” – Blaise Cendrars

A naturalized French citizen, Cendrars had his right arm blown off
while in the Foreign Legion; he roamed the Globe and happened to
invent modern poetry. He also managed, along the way and almost
as an aside to keep bees, prepare medicinal herbs for a living, lecture
in Brazil,  make and lose, three or four fortunes and introduce to the
world, painters Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso.

While  others were churning out tired symbolist and imagist poems
on outdated themes, Cendrars exploded onto the scene in 1913 with
Easter in New York, a long poem that was totally new even if
composed as a medieval liturgy. He followed it with Prose of the
Transiberian, about a train trip through Russia in 1905. “And the
wheels announced ‘Revolution . . .  Revolution . . . Revolution.” It
is exciting, macabre and fifty years ahead of its time. There was
nothing even approaching that train until Allen Ginsberg, who
later admitted his debt to Cendrars, produced Howl in 1956. And
Howl although it employees Transiberian’s relentless, clanging  iron
rhythms is but a pale photocopy in comparison.

Cendrars then executed a complete about face in his poetry,
abandoning the long line for haiku-like snapshot travel poems.
Soon, however, he was to abruptly quit poetry altogether. He wrote
documentary novels, complex autobiographical chronicles, and
seems to have invented what would be known as New Journalism.

He was called a Liar or at best some of his claims were labeled as
exaggerations. Critics said it but showed no proof. He was accused of
talking intimately about people he never met. But Cendrars, ever
perverse, wrote a book called Hollywood, which he visited on
assignment during its ‘Golden Age”, the Thirties. In this curious
work, he deliberately left out all the movie stars and famous
directors he met and instead wrote about script girls, doormen and
bartenders.

That was typical. Cendrars was of the people. He was on assignment
during the first crossing of the liner Normandy and reported on the
activities below decks, in the kitchens and engine rooms while others
such as Colette kept to first class salons.

You either like him or can’t stand him. Some elude his clutches
easily; others get caught in his Octopus embrace. David
Mackinnon, the translator of Cendrars Speaks (published by Ekstasis
 Editions, and me, its editor are of the latter category. Mackinnon has
even published simultaneously, with Guernica, The Eel, a novel about
Cendrars’ wish to have his ashes spread on the Sargasso Sea.

The man was like your favourite uncle, your mother’s brother that
your father disliked because he was unpredictable and didn’t play
golf. Uncle Blaise never, ever, asked if you liked school or had a girl
friend. Cendrars kept an old Maserati out back of the barn and let
you drive it even if you were only twelve. He had houseguests from
the Observatory and the carnival and read books in seven languages.
There was a postcard from Stravinsky pinned to the wall above the
sink. You liked it when hetalked about the old days scuffling in
Peking and New Orleans.

Uncle Blaise introduced you to a gypsy with a guitar and pencil
line moustache who was crashing in the spare room – and you
wondered what kind of name was Django anyway?

Cendrars seemed to know everything because he read insatiably,
had been everywhere, worked in a dozen fields and had vast
curiosity. Yet, he never tried to impress you with his learning.
He just wanted to share what he’d read and been and done.

Cendrars Speaks is about radical women feminists he knew in
1911 and mad sculptors in the Amazon jungle. About the early
days of the Russian revolution. About reporting from the Spanish
countryside during the Civil War and about hidden corners of
Portuguese history. He was decrying Agri-Business, destruction
of forests and criticizing the medical profession in the 1920s, and
talking about genomes. He had no truck with isms. He
prophesized the Atom bomb and totalitarianism by mass media.

And always Cendrars sings the song of freedom.

All of that comes across in these translated interviews, and I’m
proud to have been a part of the project.

There was nobody like this man and reading him is like stepping
into a previously unknown universe, a world of wonders without
any boundaries at all.



Jim Christy

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On 2016-07-12, at 3:29 PM, John Burke wrote:

There was a
postcard from Stravinsky pinned to the wall above the sink.

Gotta love it. Will get Jim's book. When we had an overpriced breakfast at the cafe in the Marm way back we talked about Cendrars. Fascinating figure.

jb