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Blaise Cendrars autobiography
Sky: Memoirs
English (translation)Original French
314 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1949
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205 people want to read
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 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 31, 2013
I don't know of a single author who has contributed to my already quite extensive vocabulary (apart for perhaps the Bard himself) as the flaming ember himself. Prior to reading this exquisite manifestation of words and thoughts I would have considered the very act of levitation a miracle. Now when I realize how trivial and commonplace mere levitation is I take great joy and satisfaction to find out that there are those who have actually mastered the art of " flying backwards".
The very act of B C's exegesis is made even more poignant by the fact of the death of his son in flight during World War One. Their last meeting is heartbreakingly rendered (without a hint of sentimentality) and the embarkment into the very nature of flying and sky is an in the end very fruitful quest to unite father and son in some sort of spiritual plane.
This miracle son of a Swiss clockmaker who one-armed drove his Alpha Romeo sports car through the Amazon jungle, met the discoverer of an hitherto undiscovered constellation of a sidereal Eiffel Tower, which could only be observed from a minuscule patch of land in the deep tropical landscape, this Titan of wordsmiths who taught me the legend of Tangaloa, the obscure pathway of the Nocturno, taught me that love, in the tropics, is a mental illness and that the Sea is the only mirror of the Stars, this man (for he was above all a man, the most human of human beings, his words live for all who live to read.
And yet, hardly anyone does.
The very act of B C's exegesis is made even more poignant by the fact of the death of his son in flight during World War One. Their last meeting is heartbreakingly rendered (without a hint of sentimentality) and the embarkment into the very nature of flying and sky is an in the end very fruitful quest to unite father and son in some sort of spiritual plane.
This miracle son of a Swiss clockmaker who one-armed drove his Alpha Romeo sports car through the Amazon jungle, met the discoverer of an hitherto undiscovered constellation of a sidereal Eiffel Tower, which could only be observed from a minuscule patch of land in the deep tropical landscape, this Titan of wordsmiths who taught me the legend of Tangaloa, the obscure pathway of the Nocturno, taught me that love, in the tropics, is a mental illness and that the Sea is the only mirror of the Stars, this man (for he was above all a man, the most human of human beings, his words live for all who live to read.
And yet, hardly anyone does.
October 16, 2008
this is an exquisite book. too bad i've never met anyone who has ever read or seen it
August 28, 2013
There is no rating Cendrars. Le Lotissement du Ciel is one of his last books and probably his masterpiece. I can only hope that this Swiss writer, unknown to the English readers, will find a new public in our 21st century.
January 11, 2025
Ab und an scheint das Genie des Autors durch aber insgesamt eher zu langweilig und inkohärent.
August 18, 2023
Everything he wrote was amazing!!!
June 16, 2023
This is a beautiful book. I first read it about 20 years ago and just found it again recently. One of my favorites.
May 3, 2025
deeply deranged. cendrars was a raving lunatic, god love him.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews