Novel
Moravagine
Blaise Cendrars · 1926
Synopsis
Raymond, a young doctor at a clinic near Bern, becomes attached to one of his inmates: Moravagine, the last degenerate scion of a noble line of Eastern Europe, locked up for murder. Fascinated, he helps him escape, hoping for a partnership in which crime would serve study. The two men roam the world, from Moscow and the Russian terrorist groups to America and the Amazon; Moravagine is by turns a terrorist, a speculator, a gold prospector and an aviator, and leaves behind him a trail of rapes and murders.
Context
Cendrars worked on the book from about 1914 to 1925, and Grasset published it in 1926. In 1956 he revised it and added a “Pro domo” on how he had written it, as well as an afterword, and held it to be forever unfinished. The narrator is an acquaintance of Cendrars, who himself appears in the story, and the author saw Moravagine as his double. The psychoanalyst Otto Gross and the painter Adolf Wölfli have been proposed as models. The novel appeared in German as early as 1928.
Who it is for
A dark adventure novel, in a restrained style that contrasts with the extravagance of the plot; the violence is raw.
Prizes and reception
Ranked eightieth in 1999 in the Fnac and Le Monde list of the hundred books of the century; translated into English by Alan Brown.