The cut Hand

the cut Hand is an autobiographical work in which Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) evokes his experiment of the war of 14-18. Of Swiss nationality, it then engaged like foreign volunteer in the French Army and it lost its right hand with the combat on September 28th, 1915. In this book designed like a sequence of portraits and memories, it pays homage to all the men who crossed this war with him, transforming the most atrocious thing, the war, in an human adventure and a lesson of friendship.

This book constitutes the second volume of a tetralogy of Memories ( the Man struck down , 1945 - the cut Hand , 1946 - Bourlinguer , 1948 - the Allotment of the sky , 1949).

Since 1918, Cendrars had undertaken a first version of the Hand cut , remained unfinished and extremely different from the account which it will pulbiera in 1946. Written with Aix at the end of the Second world war, this second version appeared nearly thirty years after the end of the Great War, an exceptionally long time. In the projects of Cendrars, it was to be followed by one or several volumes which, like the Woman and the soldier , remained unfinished. As opposed to what lets suppose its title, the cut Hand of which it is question in this account of war is not that of the writer.

Editions

Denoël, 1946.
Gallimard, " Folio" , 1975.
Denoël, coll " All around aujourd' hui" , volume 6,2002. Edition prefaced and annotated by Michele Lathe. Volume also includes/understands two news: a first version of the cut Hand , gone back to 1918 and the Woman and the soldier , an unfinished succession of these memories of war.

Critical studies

Unintermitting Cendrars n° 5. Neuchâtel, In Baconnière, 1990.
Blaise Cendrars and the war (under the direction of Claude Leroy). Paris, Armand Colin, 1995.

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