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A review by jjupille
Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Very hard for me to evaluate this very odd book.
In my simpleton's view of the world, this slots in to "the shattering of the modern mind" that occurred in the first two decades of the 20th century, involving Freud, Einstein, etc.etc., but most importantly World War I, when any worldview premised on the idea that the world made sense no longer made any sense. Cendrars lost an arm in WWI, and the whole book is really just a way to engage madness without getting too worked up about it.
The title character is famously misogynistic, and the title of course can be read that way. I read it as "death by vagina", the idea that as soon as we are born this crazy world starts killing us with its craziness. I'd need to read around the book a lot more and porobably read it again more knowledgeably to really get into other takeaways, but to me it expresses the kind of nihilism that the avant-garde in every field was expressing.
Some philosophizing on pp. 102-103 of my edition, starting with the theme of the uselessness of all action. This sets the only real task as annihilation. "In the last analysis, scientific knowledge is negative. The latest discoveries of science as well as its most stable and thoroughly proven laws, are just sufficient to allw us to demonstrate the futility of any attempt to explain the universe rationally, and the basic folly of all abstract notions. We can now put our metaphysics away in the musuem of international folklore, we can confound all a priori ideas. How and why have become idle, idiotic questions. All that we can admit or affirm, the only synthesis, is the absurdity of being, of the universe, of life. If one wants to live one is better to incline towards imbecility than intelligence, and live only in the absurd. Intelligence consists of eating stars and turning them into dung. And the universe, at the most optimistic estimate, is nothing but God's digestive system" (p. 103).
And,
"Haven't you gotten it through your head that human thought is a thing of the past ...? You make me laugh with your metaphysical anguish, it's just that you're scared silly, frightened of life, of men of action, of action itself, of lack of order. But everything is disorder, dear boy. Vegetable, mineral, and animal, all disorder, and so is the multitude of human races, the life of man, thought, history, wars, inventions, business and the arts, and all theories, passions and systems. It's always been that way. Why are you trying to make something out of it? And what will you make? What are you looking for? There's no truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust, stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. What can you do about it, my poor friend?" (pp. 181-182).
In my simpleton's view of the world, this slots in to "the shattering of the modern mind" that occurred in the first two decades of the 20th century, involving Freud, Einstein, etc.etc., but most importantly World War I, when any worldview premised on the idea that the world made sense no longer made any sense. Cendrars lost an arm in WWI, and the whole book is really just a way to engage madness without getting too worked up about it.
The title character is famously misogynistic, and the title of course can be read that way. I read it as "death by vagina", the idea that as soon as we are born this crazy world starts killing us with its craziness. I'd need to read around the book a lot more and porobably read it again more knowledgeably to really get into other takeaways, but to me it expresses the kind of nihilism that the avant-garde in every field was expressing.
Some philosophizing on pp. 102-103 of my edition, starting with the theme of the uselessness of all action. This sets the only real task as annihilation. "In the last analysis, scientific knowledge is negative. The latest discoveries of science as well as its most stable and thoroughly proven laws, are just sufficient to allw us to demonstrate the futility of any attempt to explain the universe rationally, and the basic folly of all abstract notions. We can now put our metaphysics away in the musuem of international folklore, we can confound all a priori ideas. How and why have become idle, idiotic questions. All that we can admit or affirm, the only synthesis, is the absurdity of being, of the universe, of life. If one wants to live one is better to incline towards imbecility than intelligence, and live only in the absurd. Intelligence consists of eating stars and turning them into dung. And the universe, at the most optimistic estimate, is nothing but God's digestive system" (p. 103).
And,
"Haven't you gotten it through your head that human thought is a thing of the past ...? You make me laugh with your metaphysical anguish, it's just that you're scared silly, frightened of life, of men of action, of action itself, of lack of order. But everything is disorder, dear boy. Vegetable, mineral, and animal, all disorder, and so is the multitude of human races, the life of man, thought, history, wars, inventions, business and the arts, and all theories, passions and systems. It's always been that way. Why are you trying to make something out of it? And what will you make? What are you looking for? There's no truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust, stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. What can you do about it, my poor friend?" (pp. 181-182).