Stalin's favourite novelist
Miranda Seymour
DAN YACK by Blaise Cendrars, translated by Nina Rootes
Peter Owen, £10.95
Lurid, controversial, savagely funny, Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) was one of the most remarkable writers of his time. Although he is best remembered for his poems, he was also the author of some 20 novels, of which the finest are Moravagine, a witty and terrible blend of fantasy with episodes from Cendrars' own extraordin- ary life; and Sutter's Gold, which has the dubious recommendation of having been Stalin's favourite book.Celine is remem- bered, studied, written about. Cendrars, whose influence on him is so apparent, is shamefully forgotten. You may find him mentioned as a Bohemian adventurer in books about Paris in the Twenties. You may even be told that he was, with Appollinaire and Max Jacob, one of the founders of the modern movement in literature. But surely more could be said of the man who was held by his contempor- aries to be one of the most exciting writers of their generation? Cocteau and Dos Passos raved about him. Henry Miller was a later appreciator of the exuberant style and imagery which dourer critics conde- mned as prolix and verbose. So what happened? Why is it that there is no place for Cendrars in the anthologies of French poetry, no suggestion of his magnificent autobiographical novels being reprinted, no mention at all made of him in such supposedly comprehensive works as the Oxford and Cambridge companions to literature? And why on earth, when so little of his best work is accessible in this country, should we be fobbed off with Dan Yack (Le Plan de l'Aiguille) which, despite its many virtues, is a long drop from Cendrars at his best?
The potted biography on Dan Yack's jacket provides more fuel for irritation. After accurately recording that he was born Frederic Sauser in Switzerland and that he was of mixed Swiss-Scots descent, it returns to myth. Cendrars did not escape imprisonment in his parents' fifth-floor flat by sliding down a drainpipe and running
away at the age of 15. At 17, he was still living quietly at home and being apprent- iced to a watchmaker. We are told here that he subsequently lived in Moscow, Paris, New York and Peking; myth again. He was never in China. 'He lost an arm while serving with the Foreign Legion in the first world war.' Did shortage of space prevent us from being told that it was his writer's arm which was blown off by a German shell?
Enough grumbling. We are taught to be grateful for small mercies. Nina Rootes has given us a very serviceable, if not an inspired translation of Le Plan de l'Aiguille and Dan Yack is not a bad introduction to Cendrars's anarchic wit and to the pyrotechnics of his prose. The hero, an eccentric Russian Croesus of the shipping world, has just been abandoned by his beloved, the beautiful Hedwiga, who can no longer cope with his wild ways. Yack decides to pursue adventure instead of passion and, fashionable before his time, to seek safety in celibacy. Accompanied by three gregarious young artists and a pre- cociously intelligent dog, he sets off on a year's voyage round the world. The trip grinds to a chilly halt in the Antarctic where food supplies run low and the tempers of the artists rise to boiling point. But neither ill-humour nor hunger can defeat the zany optimism of Dan Yack, although the loss of his monocle casts a temporary blight on his spirits. And optim- ism is rewarded when the voyage recom- mences and takes them to the whalers' paradise island of music, merriment and delectable women whose ululations of sex- ual pleasure are almost as pleasing to Yack's ears as his favourite record of a sea-lion's song. Fortunately, a language barrier deprives him of the chance to say so.
Yack is a true Cendrars hero, charming, nonsensical and courageous, an internat- ional vagabond who is as readily at home eating plum pudding on an iceberg as he is sipping tea in a St Petersburg drawing- room. Cendrars's admirers will find much to enjoy in Yack's picaresque adventures; anyone new to this author's work would be better advised to track down a copy of Moravagine or Sutter's Gold.
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