Mysterious and entertaining Blaise Cendrars

(photograph: Getty)

Blaise Cendrars seems to have been a mysterious and original man, the adventurer par excellence, making us all jealous of his immaterial, gypsy-like and creative life. An independent and free man, a close friend of the second-class citizens, of the banned, of the unsettled, of the women, a critic of the war, of any arrogance, of the elite, in love with women, friends and South America, also a poet, a film director and an international entrepreneur. And a very enjoyable, realist and surrealist writer. Here is a nice litterary short post on him by Lee Rourke. For the road, also a self-claimed descendant of the great mathematician Leonhard Euler (claim made in L'homme foudroyé).