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Artworks

Blaise Cendrars Artworks

These artworks are a series of work done to illustrate the poem from Blaise Cendrars
/La Prose du Transsibérien et la petite Jehanne de France/ (The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Jehanne of France, 1913).
We are the cripples of emptiness We roll on our four sores Our wings have been clipped The wings of our seven sins And all the trains are paddleballs of the devil Farmyard The modern world Speed can't do much here but The modern world The faraway places are just too far And at the end of the journey it's terrible to be a man with a woman… From the depth of my heart tears rise If I think, Love, about my mistress; She is but a child, whom I found so Pale, immaculate, in the back rooms of a bordello. She is but a child, blond, blithe and sad, She doesn't smile and never cries; But deep in her eyes, when she lets you drink from them, There trembles a gentle silver lily, the poet's flower. She is meek and silent, and without reproach, With a drawn out shiver at your approach; But when I come to her, from here, from there, from a party, She takes a step, then closes her eyes – and takes a step. For she is my love, and the other women Have nothing but golden dresses on great bodies ablaze, My poor companion is so lonesome, She is completely nude, she has no body – she is too poor. “Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?” No but…get the hell out…leave me alone You have angular hips Your stomach is sour and you have the clap That's all that Paris has put in your bosom There's also a bit of soul… because you are unhappy Feel my pity feel my pity come towards me unto my heart The wheels are windmills from the land of Cocagne The windmills are crutches twirled by a beggar She is but a candid, frail flower, The poet's flower, a slight silver lily, So cold, so alone, and already so wilted That tears well up in me if I think of her heart. And this night is like one hundred thousand others when a train presses on in the night — The comets fall — And a man and a woman, even when young, muse in making love. The sky is like the shredded tent of a poor circus in a small fishing village In Flanders The sun is a smoky oil lamp And at the very top of a trapeze a woman makes a moon. The clarinet the piston a sharp flute and a bad tambourine And here is my cradle My cradle It was always next to the piano when my mother like Madame Bovary played Beethoven sonatas I spent my childhood in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon And skipping school, in the railroad stations in front of departing trains Now, I have made all the trains run behind me Basel-Timbuktu I have also bet on the races at Auteuil and at Longchamp Paris – New York Now, I have made all the trains run the course of my life Madrid – Stockholm And I lost all my bets There is now only Patagonia, Patagonia, that suits my immense sadness, Patagonia, and a journey to the South Seas I'm on the road I've always been on the road I'm on the road with little Jehanne from France The train makes a perilous jump and falls back on all of its wheels The train falls back on its wheels The train always falls back on all of its wheels “Blaise, tell me, are we very far from Montmartre?” Me, the bad poet who didn't want to go anywhere, I could go everywhere And also the merchants still had enough money To go and tempt fate. Their train left every Friday morning. It was said there were a lot of deaths. One merchant carried away one hundred crates of alarm clocks and cuckoos from the Black Forest Another, hatboxes, top hats and an assortment of Sheffield corkscrews Another, coffins from Malmoi filled with canned food and sardines in oil Then there were lots of women Women renting between their legs and who could also serve Coffins They were all patented It was said there were a lot of deaths over there They traveled at reduced prices And had an open account at the bank. “Blaise, tell me, are we very far from Montmartre?” We are far, Jeanne, you've been on the move for seven days You are far from Montmartre, from the Hill that nourished you from Sacre-Cœur that cradled you Paris has disappeared and its enormous flame There is nothing but continuous ash Falling rain Rising peat Whirling Siberia Heavy rebounding sheets of snow And the bell of madness that quivers like the very last wish in the bluish air The train beats at the heart of the heavy horizons And your sorrow sneers… ..But I was a very bad poet. I didn't know how to go to all the way to the end. I was hungry And all the days and all the women in the cafés and all the glasses I would have liked to drink and to break them And all the shop windows and all the streets And all the homes and all the lives And all the wheels of the hackney cabs turning in a whirlwind on the bad cobblestones I would have wanted to thrust them into a furnace of swords And I would have wanted to crush all the bones And to tear out all the tongues And to liquefy all the big bodies strange and naked under the clothing that drives me to madness… I sensed the coming of the great red Christ of the Russian revolution… And the sun was a bad wound That split open like a burnt up inferno.

Misc Artworks

Male portrait oilMale portrait dry pastelMale nude watercolorsFemale portrait watercolorsFemale portraitFemale nude crayonsAcrobat - Ink Raphael - Crayons Narciss - Female Nude Dry Pastel