Blaise Cendrars was een Zwitserse romanschrijver en dichter wiens levenservaringen hem over de hele wereld hebben voortgestuwd. Zijn werk put uit een rijk tapijt van avonturen, van reizen naar het Verre Oosten tot zijn ervaringen in de Eerste Wereldoorlog en zijn onderdompeling in de Parijse kunstscene. Als een sleutelfiguur in de modernistische beweging, heeft Cendrars' innovatieve benadering van verhalen vertellen talloze schrijvers beïnvloed. Zijn schrijven duikt vaak in thema's als avontuur, identiteit en de zoektocht naar betekenis in een rusteloze wereld.
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.
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.'
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.
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."
Příběh Evropana, švýcarského protestanta, jenž se svou podnikavostí a přičinlivostí domohl v Americe obrovského jmění, ale byl o všechno připraven, když na jeho pozemcích bylo objeveno zlato. Zástupy těch, kdo chtěli rychle zbohatnout, se bezohledně zmocňují jeho pozemků a nabývají jmění těžením zlata, zatímco on končí jako ubožák, který je svou vírou ve spravedlivé rozhodnutí své věci nakonec jen pro smích.
Im Paris des Jahres 1910 lebt ein einsamer junger Mann in einem Hotelzimmer und träumt davon, großartige Projekte zu verwirklichen. Getrieben von seiner Lebenslust beschließt er eines Morgens, die Stadt sofort zu verlassen und kauft mit seinem letzten Geld eine Fahrkarte – egal wohin.
Le succès de l'art nègre a atteint son apogée dans les «années folles» avec l'exposition des Arts décoratifs de 1925 et l'exposition coloniale de 1931. Ces expositions avaient trait principalement à l'expression plastique de la culture primitive noire, animiste et fétichiste. Tout aussi riche est la littérature orale où se découvre une parenté avec les traditions des civilisations primitives blanches.Dans l'Anthologie nègre, Blaise Cendrars a rassemblé les meilleurs de ces récits : légendes concernant la création de la terre, des animaux et des hommes, contes merveilleux, fables et fabliaux humoristiques ou poétiques empruntés au folklore des nombreux empires et tribus du vaste territoire africain
Gespräche mit Michel Manoll
1950, nach einem bewegten Leben und langen Reisen, lässt sich der 63jährige Blaise Cendrars in Paris nieder, wo ihn der Journalist Michel Manoll für den Rundfunk entdeckt. Während drei Monaten strahlt die Radiodiffusion Française dreizehn Gespräche aus, in denen sich Manoll und Cendrars möglichst improvisierend über Leben und Werk des Schriftstellers unterhalten. Die Gespräche geben Auskunft über einen Autor, der sich immer wieder neu erinnert und – von Tatsachen ausgehend – auch neu erfindet.