The fictions of Arthur Cravan: Poetry, boxing and revolution

by Dafydd Jones

Overview

The legendary poet and boxer Arthur Cravan, a fleeting figure on the periphery of early twentieth-century European avant-gardism, is frequently invoked as proto-Dada and Surrealist exemplar. Yet he remains an insubstantial phenomenon, not seen since 1918, lost through historical interstices, clouded in drifting untruths. This study processes philosophical positions into a practical recovery - from nineteenth-century Nietzsche to twentieth-century Deleuze - with thoughts on subjectivity, metaphor, representation and multiplicity. From fresh readings and new approaches - of Cravan's first published work as a manifesto of simulation; of contributors to his Paris review Maintenant as impostures for the Delaunays; and of the conjuring of Cravan in Picabia's elegiac film Entr'acte - The fictions of Arthur Cravan concludes with the absent poet-boxer's eventual casting off into a Surrealist legacy, and his becoming what metaphor is: a means to represent the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526133250
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	02/18/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Dafydd Jones is the Editor of the University of Wales Press

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 On the genealogy of Arthur Cravan

2 Enter Colossus

3 To be an American in Paris

4 'All words are lies': Maintenant April 1912-July 1913

5 'Life has no solution': Maintenant November 1913-April 1915

6 Struggling movement: Barcelona 1916

7 The dissipate life: New York 1917

8 Being as being, and nothing more

Conclusion

Endnotes

Index