Perverted by Language

Advice for writers from the 1966 Paris Review interview with Blaise Cendrars, available in full here. Bored writers in your early to mid 20s: read Cendrars and follow his lead!

Asked if he has read much in his life, Cendrars says, "Everywhere, in all circumstances, and all sorts of books... reading has been a drug for me..."

Asked about unusual reading he's done, he talks about an old sailor named Captain Lacroix (any ideas?) and "the divinatory quatrains of Nostradamus, written in a magnificent language which is a joy to me, although they remain indecipherable." He adds

as a great French poet, Nostradamus is one of the greatest... All his impromptu turns invented from a conventional language beat by far the looniness of Dada, and the automatic writing of the surrealists, and the decalcomania of Apollinaire's Calligrammes.

Interviewer: What have you discovered since? What do you read at present?

Cendrars: The latest book I've discovered is the great dictionary of the Customs Administration that we owe to an edict of Vincent Auriol, then Minister of Finance. It is entitled Repertoire general du tarif and appeared in 1937. Two volumes quarto. Weight fifty kilos. I take them every place with me because I'm going to need them some day soon when I begin to write La Carissima, the mystical life of Mary Magdalene, the only woman who made Christ weep.

Interviewer: You need the customs tariffs in order to write that book?

Cendrars: My dear sir, it's a matter of language. For several years, each time that I prepare to write a book, I first arrange the vocabulary I am going to employ. Thus, for L'Homme Foudroyé [The Astonished Man, available again from Peter Owen], I had a list of three thousand words arranged in advance, and I used all of them. That saved me a lot of time and gave a certain lightness to my work. It was the first time I used that system. I don't know how I happened onto it.... It's a question of language. Language is a thing that seduced me. Language is a thing that perverted me. Language is a thing that formed me. Language is a thing that deformed me. That's why I am a poet, probably because I am very sensitive to language -- correct or incorrect, I wink at that. I ignore and despise grammar which is at the point of death, but I am a great reader of dictionaries and if my spelling is none too sure it's because I am too attentive to the pronunciation, this idiosyncrasy of the living language. In the beginning was not the word, but the phrase, a modulation. Listen to the songs of birds!

Lee Rourke on Cendrars on youtube.

And just so I can keep running into the words which terrorized my freshman roommate Hashish (real name), I share here the lyrics of "Eat Yerself Fitter," the first song on The Fall's 1983 album Perverted by Language:

I'm in the furniture trade
Got a new job today
But stick the cretin
On the number-three lathe

Went down the town
To a HM club
The sign had a cross
Through a couple well-dressed
They looked at my coat
They looked at my hair
An Easy Rider coot
Grabbed the edge of my coat
Said: 'You're too
smart for here'
I said: 'I'll see
the manager'

He was the manager
Eat y'self fitter
Up the stairs mister
Eat y'self fitter

Analytics have got
My type worked out
Analytics on me
The poison render
I grope about
And when I go out
My mind splits
My eyes doth hurt
The musical chairs
Have been swallowed up
By a cuddly group
Who land and rub off
Hoping that
Whatever it is
Will land and drop off

I met a hero of mine
I shook his hand
Got trapped in the door
Felt a fool, I tell ya

Charmed to meet ya
Eat y'self fitter
Up the stairs mister
Eat y'self fitter

Became a recluse
And bought a computer
Set it up in the home
Elusive big one
On the screen
Saw the Holy Ghost, I swear
On the screen

Where's the cursor?
Where's the eraser?
Where's the cursor?
Where's the eraser?
G-O-H-O-H-O-9-O
G-O-H-O-H-O-9-O
G-O-H-O-H-O-9-O
H-O-9-O-G-O-H-O

What's a computer?
Eat y'self fitter
What's a computer?
Eat y'self fitter

The Kevin Ayers scene
South of France
Plush velvet
Aback! Aback!
Aback! Aback!
Levis Fridays
Greek holidays
Barratt heritance X 3

Mit-Dem! X3
Don't wanna be a mit-dem! X4

Pick the fleas mister
Eat y'self fitter
Eat y'self fitter?
Eat y'self fitter

Who tells you what
To tape on your vid. chip
How do you know the
progs you miss
Are worse than those
you single out?
And what'll you do
when the rental's
up?
And your bottom rack
is full of vids
Of programs you
will nay look at
The way they act is,
oh, sheer delight
Cardboard copyright
Make it right
Panic in Sudan
Panic in Wardour
Panic in Granadaland
Panic all over
By the wretched timesheeters
Of my delight
One starry night
The powers that be
will have to meet
And have no choice but to...

Eat each other
Eat y'self fitter
Eat each other?
Eat y'self fitter

(Eat y'self fitter)

Portly and with good grace
The secret
straight-back ogre
entered
His brain aflame
With all the dreams
It had conjured X4

Mit-dem
Don't wanna be a mid-dem X4

The centimeter square
Eat y'self fitter
Said it purged fear
Eat y'self fitter

(Eat y'self fitter)