La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France Quotes

“My poor life
This shawl
Frayed on strongboxes full of gold
I roll along with
Dream
And smoke
And the only flame in the universe”
― Blaise Cendrars, Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of the Little Jeanne de France

“Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?'

Worries

Forget your worries

All the stations full of cracks tilted along the way

The telegraph wires they hang from

The grimacing poles that gesticulate and strangle them

The world stretches lengthens and folds in like an accordion tormented by a sadistic hand

In the cracks of the sky the locomotives in anger

Flee

And in the holes,

The whirling wheels the mouths the voices

And the dogs of misfortune that bark at our heels

The demons are unleashed

Iron rails

Everything is off-key

The broun-roun-roun of the wheels

Shocks

Bounces

We are a storm under a deaf man's skull...

'Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?'

Hell yes, you're getting on my nerves you know very well we're far away

Overheated madness bellows in the locomotive

Plague, cholera rise up like burning embers on our way

We disappear in the war sucked into a tunnel

Hunger, the whore, clings to the stampeding clouds

And drops battle dung in piles of stinking corpses

Do like her, do your job

'Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?”
― Blaise Cendrars, Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of the Little Jeanne de France