Le passager clandestin (Blaise Cendrars)

Conceived as neverlands of radical seclusion and freedom from the clutches of others’ hands, the ships Blaise Cendrars boards soon prove to be laden with various parasites. The most peculiar thing about this is that Cendrars—so eager to get away from it all—finds himself in those undesirables. He finds an intimate part, a secret part of himself in them. A part he should perhaps dispose of at last. The author of this article hypothesises that the sea-voyage stories written with the left hand are cryptic stories about the right hand, which is the lost hand. This phantom hand, this parasitic hand that Cendrars, lying on the ship’s deck, already sees “gone to heaven” but which the tall mast pointing at it like a “sting” relentlessly excruciates.