The Fictions of Arthur Cravan: Poetry, Boxing and Revolution

By Dafydd Jones

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1526133237
• ISBN13: 9781526133236
• Release Date: January 2019
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"