Arthur Cravan

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Portrait d'Arthur Cravan, Jean-Paul-Louis Lespoir

Arthur Cravan (born May 22, 1887 in Lausanne as Fabian Avenarius Lloyd ; last seen in November 1918 in Puerto Ángel , Mexico and probably drowned a little later in the Pacific Ocean ) was a Swiss poet , amateur boxer and artist . He was a nephew of the Irish poet Oscar Wilde .

Life

Origin and family

Fabian Lloyd was born as the second son of Otho Holland Lloyd and Hélène Clara St. Clair in Switzerland and educated there at a private school in St. Gallen , later in Worthing , England . His father's sister, Constance Mary Lloyd , was the wife of the Irish poet Oscar Wilde and mother of his two sons. Fabian only found out about this relationship after Wilde's death, as the family was ashamed of his brother-in-law, who had been sentenced to two years in prison for homosexuality . For Fabian this discovery was a revelation: he rejected his plans to become an engineer and wanted to lead a life as a poet and emulate his famous uncle.

After stays abroad in the USA and Germany , where he caused the first scandals, he lived in Paris from 1909 . The following year he took part in the French amateur boxing championships and became national champion without having to fight a single fight, as all challengers waived.

Choice of pseudonym

In 1912, Lloyd changed its name to Arthur Cravan. Much has been speculated about this choice of name. The first name Arthur may have been chosen with reference to the poet Arthur Rimbaud , whose style the poems of the young Lloyd are based on. But the original meaning of the name “bear” (from Celtic “Artorius”) is also conceivable in view of Lloyd's extraordinary body size and strength. The surname Cravan alludes to the village of Cravans in the Charente-Maritime department in western France , the birthplace of Lloyd's friend Renée Bouchet, whom, contrary to sources, he never married. There are also references to the English noun "craven" ("Feigling", "Memme"). However, since Cravan lived and worked in France and no longer had a perfect command of his mother tongue, this connection should not necessarily have struck him.

Conjectures about Oscar Wilde

After the name change, he published the magazine "Maintenant" in loose succession . It contained poems, insults from established Parisian artists and rumors about the person of Oscar Wilde. The climax was in 1913 an article in which he claimed that his uncle Oscar Wilde was still alive and had visited him in Paris. He also provided a detailed personal description. He also indicated that there were unpublished works of the poet in the coffin in Wilde's grave in Paris instead of a corpse and demanded the exhumation . This rumor was believed by the New York Times , whose Paris correspondent searched unsuccessfully for witnesses who had ever seen the dead savage.

activities

From 1913 onwards, Cravan also appeared as a conférencier in Paris and prepared the ground for the Dada movement with chaotic soirées . Since the outbreak of the First World War , he had been traveling through Europe with forged passports in order to evade British military service . In 1916 he fled to neutral Spain . In Barcelona he fought a boxing match against former heavyweight world champion Jack Johnson on April 23 and was knocked out - as agreed - in the sixth round. With the performance fee he financed the crossing to New York on the steamer "Montserrat" at the end of the year. On this trip he made the acquaintance of Leon Trotsky , who mentioned Cravan in his autobiography.

In 1917 he moved in the artistic avant-garde of New York. At the opening of the first Society of Independent exhibition (the exhibition to which Marcel Duchamp submitted his famous Fountain ) on April 9, 1917, he appeared at the invitation of Francis Picabia and Duchamp, making the audience wait a long time and then getting drunk moved out. Then some visitors left the exhibition indignant. Duchamp later called it a "wonderful lecture".

He met the British poet Mina Loy , whom he married the following year. While on the run from the authorities, he wandered through Canada for a month .

He spent the last year of his life in Mexico with his wife. He opened a boxing school in the capital, Mexico City , and had his last fight against Jim Smith on September 15th . In this one too he lost by knockout. In November, Cravan sent Mina Loy to Buenos Aires on a ship and wanted to follow her on her own. In Salina Cruz on the Pacific coast he chartered a boat and set off with a companion on a test drive. They never returned; In 1920 Cravan was officially declared dead. Rumors of his survival lingered for a long time, but he remains lost forever. His only daughter Fabienne was born in England on April 5, 1919 after Mina Loys returned home. Their descendants live in Aspen, Colorado .

Fonts

  • Oeuvres: Poèmes, articles, lettres. Editions G. Lebovici, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-85184-179-3 .
  • The boxer poet or the soul in the twentieth century. Translated from the French by Pierre Gallissaires and Hanna Mittelstädt. Nautilus, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-89401-188-2 .
  • King of failed existences . Translated from the French by Pierre Gallissaires and Hanna Mittelstädt. Nautilus, Hamburg 2015
  • Maintenant. No. 1, 1912, April - 5, 1915, March / April. Edition Nautilus , Hamburg [1986], ISBN 3-921523-28-1 . German first edition.

Exhibition catalogs

  • Emmanuel Guigon (ed., Curator): Arthur Cravan, 1887–1918: le neveu d'Oscar Wilde. Musée de Strasbourg, Strasbourg 2005, ISBN 2-35125-002-8 . (Exhibition catalog: Strasbourg, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, November 18, 2005 to February 26, 2006).

literature

  • María Lluïsa Borràs: Arthur Cravan. Une stratégie du scandale. J.-M. Place, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-85893-194-1 .
  • Bertrand Lacarelle: Arthur Cravan, précipité. Grasset, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-246-74831-1 .

Movies

  • Cravan vs. Cravan; Documentation, direction and script Isaki Lacuesta, Spain 2002

Trivia

Arthur Cravan is the subject of two novels by Antonia Logue and Philippe Dagen.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Niemeyer: You press the button - photography and conceptual art . Revolver Archive for Current Art, Frankfurt 2004, p. 17.
personal data
SURNAME Cravan, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lloyd, Fabian Avenarius (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British poet
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Lausanne
DATE OF DEATH after November 1918