“A Scheme to bring the ashes of French poet Blaise Cendrars to the Sargasso Sea leads a novelist to unveil the tragedy behind the myth of one of France’s greatest poets.“

I had spent the entire day examining a photo of Cendrars and Léger which frames the two men engaged in intense discussion, as I imagined it, over the relative merits of painting vs. poetry, its similarities, the elements of painting that could be emulated in poetry, the question as to whether the poet uses similar tools to capture form, colour, shade. Or possibly Léger would borrow from the poet’s lexicon, such as when he spoke of painting in slang or of using flat areas of colour to create the impression of advancing or receding. The photo had iconic value for me. Two men, indifferent to the advance of time on their own bodies and minds, still following the light from beyond, following their instincts ruthlessly, single-mindedly tracking that which is the prey of the artist, using craft as a sort of lens to capture the elusive glimpse of the infinite which they sense more strongly than the common man.
I wondered again about the intent behind the quatrain. When a man says he wants to disappear anonymously and then publishes the wish in his most famous work, does he really want to disappear anonymously?

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