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Complete postcards from the Americas : poems of road and sea
English, French (translation)
259 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1976
About the author
Blaise Cendrars
283 books280 followersFrédéric Louis Sauser, better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.
His father, an inventor-businessman, was Swiss, his mother Scottish. He spent his childhood in Alexandria, Naples, Brindisi, Neuchâtel, and numerous other places, while accompanying his father, who endlessly pursued business schemes, none successfully.
At the age of fifteen, Cendrars left home to travel in Russia, Persia, China while working as a jewel merchant; several years later, he wrote about this in his poem, Transiberien. He was in Paris before 1910, where he got in touch with several names of Paris' bélle époque: Guillaume Apollinaire, Modigliani, Marc Chagall and many more. Cendrars then traveled to America, where he wrote his first long poem Pâques à New-York. The next year appeared The Transsibérien.
When he came back to France, I World War was started and he joined the French Foreign Legion. He was sent to the front line in the Somme where from mid-December 1914 until February 1915. During the attacks in Champagne in September 1915 that Cendrars lost his right arm. He described this war experience in the books La Main coupée.
After the war he returned to Paris, becaming an important part of the artistic community in Montparnasse. There, among others, used to meet with other writers such as Henry Miller, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway.
During the 1920's he published two long novels, Moravagine and Les Confessions de Dan Yack. Into the 1930’s published a number of “novelized” biographies or volumes of extravagant reporting, such as L’Or, based on the life of John August Sutter, and Rhum, “reportage romance” dealing with the life and trials of Jean Galmont, a misfired Cecil Rhodes of Guiana.
La Belle Epoque was the great age of discovery in arts and letters. Cendrars, very much of the epoch, was sketched by Caruso, painted by Léon Bakst, by Léger, by Modigliani, by Chagall; and in his turn helped discover Negro art, jazz, and the modern music of Les Six. His home base was always Paris, for several years in the Rue de Savoie, later, for many years, in the Avenue Montaigne, and in the country, his little house at Tremblay-sur Mauldre (Seine-et-Oise), though he continued to travel extensively. He worked for a short while in Hollywood in 1936, at the time of the filming of Sutter’s Gold. From 1924 to 1936, went so constantly to South America. This life globertrottering life was pictured in his book Bourlinguer, published in 1948.
Another remarkable works apparead in the 40s were L’Homme Foudroyé (1945), La Main Coupée (1946), Le Lotissement du Ciel (1949), that constitute his best and most important work. His last major work was published in 1957, entitled Trop, C’est Trop.
==========
Sources:
- http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_...
His father, an inventor-businessman, was Swiss, his mother Scottish. He spent his childhood in Alexandria, Naples, Brindisi, Neuchâtel, and numerous other places, while accompanying his father, who endlessly pursued business schemes, none successfully.
At the age of fifteen, Cendrars left home to travel in Russia, Persia, China while working as a jewel merchant; several years later, he wrote about this in his poem, Transiberien. He was in Paris before 1910, where he got in touch with several names of Paris' bélle époque: Guillaume Apollinaire, Modigliani, Marc Chagall and many more. Cendrars then traveled to America, where he wrote his first long poem Pâques à New-York. The next year appeared The Transsibérien.
When he came back to France, I World War was started and he joined the French Foreign Legion. He was sent to the front line in the Somme where from mid-December 1914 until February 1915. During the attacks in Champagne in September 1915 that Cendrars lost his right arm. He described this war experience in the books La Main coupée.
After the war he returned to Paris, becaming an important part of the artistic community in Montparnasse. There, among others, used to meet with other writers such as Henry Miller, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway.
During the 1920's he published two long novels, Moravagine and Les Confessions de Dan Yack. Into the 1930’s published a number of “novelized” biographies or volumes of extravagant reporting, such as L’Or, based on the life of John August Sutter, and Rhum, “reportage romance” dealing with the life and trials of Jean Galmont, a misfired Cecil Rhodes of Guiana.
La Belle Epoque was the great age of discovery in arts and letters. Cendrars, very much of the epoch, was sketched by Caruso, painted by Léon Bakst, by Léger, by Modigliani, by Chagall; and in his turn helped discover Negro art, jazz, and the modern music of Les Six. His home base was always Paris, for several years in the Rue de Savoie, later, for many years, in the Avenue Montaigne, and in the country, his little house at Tremblay-sur Mauldre (Seine-et-Oise), though he continued to travel extensively. He worked for a short while in Hollywood in 1936, at the time of the filming of Sutter’s Gold. From 1924 to 1936, went so constantly to South America. This life globertrottering life was pictured in his book Bourlinguer, published in 1948.
Another remarkable works apparead in the 40s were L’Homme Foudroyé (1945), La Main Coupée (1946), Le Lotissement du Ciel (1949), that constitute his best and most important work. His last major work was published in 1957, entitled Trop, C’est Trop.
==========
Sources:
- http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 27, 2020
Poems from 1924 to 1929 by this sadly underrated writer, translated by Monique Chefdor and published by the University of California in 76. I got an ex-library copy of this on the internet for a song. Cendrars writes, mostly on his cruise ship or in his memories and fantasies, opulent, debauched, privileged, but also contemptuous of 'society'. He gives us a sense of exploring a largely unexplored world by virtue of travelling before it became the norm - comparable to, say, Jack London or Paul Bowles. He has an eye for pure exotica - weird and wonderful animals, vegetation, trinkets, food and women included. He preempts Bukowski's poetry style in that his poems feel totally in the moment and unedited. This rawness, coupled with a gift for using few words to conjure vivid scenes, gives these poems their power and immediacy. He shares Buk's boorishness, some disdain for the audience but also some of the same surprising flashes of wonder and wisdom. The title 'postcards' is apt as Cendrars is one of those rare writers with a gift for seeming to communicate directly with the reader. So, better than a photograph, we hear, feel and see with Cendrars and walk the deck with him, smoking over the ship's rail in the white sun.
August 16, 2016
A poem is a great way to travel.
September 15, 2025
To encounter this rare book is to encounter an altogether rarer world, a world conjured with such vivacity, enthusiasm and such intensity that if you spend enough time with it, you may indeed begin to hallacinate a heartbeat echoing from its core, or perhaps a pulse along its spine. So wonderfully lush, sensory and transporting is the writing, and such is the vitality of its dynamically alive quality, that to encounter this book is to land upon a totally unique reading experince, wholly startling in its freshness and living, vivid immediacy.
Indeed, Cendrars exists as a complete original in these pages, a world roaming and world owning bombastic flâneur extraordinaire. The postcard method that he inaugurated broke new ground when it was published for its pulsatory and kaleidoscopic style, as well as for its seemingly artless approach. For all its surface simplicity, the method rests on a highly refined, subtly crafted technique and personal sensibility. Cendrars was a writer of immense talent who was clearly having fun with language here. His passion for life, in all its multifarious manifestations is completely genuine and intoxicating. Monique Chefdor's translation is superb, as is her scholarly introduction, that places the work in its historical context whilst providing a sound blueprint that examines and deconstructs Cendrars’ unique style. The would-be-poet could learn much from this section alone. This text was championed by Allen Ginsberg during his Photographic Poetics lecture series at Naropa Institute (now University) for its clear-eyed, no bullshit style that was groundbreaking in its time. Hence, the work has gained a steady, underground following in the intervening decades. I’m yet to encounter another work like this. It is stand alone and the poems speak to themselves. Indeed, I have had the cover illustration tattooed on my arm. I’m a bonafide nutter for this book, and for all things Cendrars.
Here is a succinct chunk from the introduction that describes his style better than I can. “The writing in its immediate form occupies the same moment as the visual perception, so that representation is ideally free of afterthought, and the elements of the landscape in their various sizes and apparent importance are presented in identical scale and stress. There are neither differentiations of value nor of time: thus the impression of a chosen lack of forethought, of a chosen naïveté. This, together with the catalogue and collage techniques and Cendrars's close personal association with the cubist poets and their friends Apollinaire, Jacob, and Reverdy ally him to cubism, whereas the direct and unjudging representation of the seen, and the poem considered as a snapshot free of analysis or synthesis, a poetic cinéma vérité, lead to the consideration of a new genre.”
Indeed, Cendrars exists as a complete original in these pages, a world roaming and world owning bombastic flâneur extraordinaire. The postcard method that he inaugurated broke new ground when it was published for its pulsatory and kaleidoscopic style, as well as for its seemingly artless approach. For all its surface simplicity, the method rests on a highly refined, subtly crafted technique and personal sensibility. Cendrars was a writer of immense talent who was clearly having fun with language here. His passion for life, in all its multifarious manifestations is completely genuine and intoxicating. Monique Chefdor's translation is superb, as is her scholarly introduction, that places the work in its historical context whilst providing a sound blueprint that examines and deconstructs Cendrars’ unique style. The would-be-poet could learn much from this section alone. This text was championed by Allen Ginsberg during his Photographic Poetics lecture series at Naropa Institute (now University) for its clear-eyed, no bullshit style that was groundbreaking in its time. Hence, the work has gained a steady, underground following in the intervening decades. I’m yet to encounter another work like this. It is stand alone and the poems speak to themselves. Indeed, I have had the cover illustration tattooed on my arm. I’m a bonafide nutter for this book, and for all things Cendrars.
Here is a succinct chunk from the introduction that describes his style better than I can. “The writing in its immediate form occupies the same moment as the visual perception, so that representation is ideally free of afterthought, and the elements of the landscape in their various sizes and apparent importance are presented in identical scale and stress. There are neither differentiations of value nor of time: thus the impression of a chosen lack of forethought, of a chosen naïveté. This, together with the catalogue and collage techniques and Cendrars's close personal association with the cubist poets and their friends Apollinaire, Jacob, and Reverdy ally him to cubism, whereas the direct and unjudging representation of the seen, and the poem considered as a snapshot free of analysis or synthesis, a poetic cinéma vérité, lead to the consideration of a new genre.”
May 4, 2025
actually uploaded this myself before I got locked out of goodreads, as well as being gorgeous uncensored and freely descriptive genius it is also a feeling testament of when white objectification of people of color was commonplace, but with no scholar to contextualise. Also the packaging with pics by Mondrian is an absolute beaut
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews