Blaise Cendrars was a Swiss novelist and poet whose life experiences propelled him across the globe. His work draws from a rich tapestry of adventures, from travels to the Far East to his experiences in World War I and immersion in the Parisian artistic scene. A pivotal figure in the modernist movement, Cendrars' innovative approach to storytelling influenced countless writers. His writing often delves into themes of adventure, identity, and the search for meaning in a restless world.
One of the last works by the great Swiss-French writer Blaise Cendrars, Films Without Images' is composed of three historical radio plays. Although Cendrars has long been championed as a novelist and poet, his reputation as a dramatist has not been well established, despite the fact that these works reached hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of listeners. Never before published in English.'
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."
In January 1848, John Augustus Sutter, "the first American millionaire," was ruined by one blow of a pickaxe. That blow revealed gold in one of the streams in Sutter's Californian estate, triggering the Gold Rush that brought hordes of greedy miners from every corner of the world to Sutter's vast domain. This is the story of this bankrupt Swiss paper maker who abandoned his family and made his way to America to seek his fortune. From New York he pushed westward, eventually acquiring a huge tract of land of which he was virtually an independent ruler and which was on the point of making him "the richest man in the world" when the Gold Rush brought disaster. For the last 30 years of his life, Sutter tried vainly to get compensation from the U.S. government. He died in 1880, a broken old man. This is a work of breathless pace, fantastic humor, and soaring invention: an extraordinary story extraordinarily told.
The story follows Dan Yack, an eccentric English millionaire, who, after being rejected by his lover, embarks on an impulsive Antarctic voyage with a group of artists. As they face harsh weather and pack-ice, tensions rise among the crew: a musician breaks their watches, a poet becomes lost in thought, and a sculptor creates ice statues of Dan. Amidst worries about time and loneliness, their surreal journey takes an unexpected turn with the return of the sun, leading to a bizarre series of events involving a plum pudding, whales, women, and the looming shadow of World War I.
Blaise Cendrars was a pioneer of modernist literature. Cendrars, born Frederick Louis Sauser in 1887, invented his life as well as his art. This is an English translation of complete poetry of this legendary twentieth-century French writer.