La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France

2009 (facsimile)

Private Collection

New Haven: Yale University Press

In 1913, Blaise Cendrars published his La Prose du Transsibérien, a poem telling of his trip in 1905 on the newly opened Trans-Siberian Express railway. The work is a supreme example of European Modernism, a product of simultaneisme, which promoted the concept of the continuous present. It is a collaborative work, with images (including the Eiffel Tower) by artist Sonia Delaunay. The original edition unfolds to over six feet in length, and, according to legend, if the proposed edition of 150 copies were laid end to end, they would be as tall as the Eiffel Tower. In reality some 60 were produced; only seven are recorded as held in institutions. This copy is reproduced from the Yale University Press facsimile, 2009.