The red lily

From 1945 to 1949 Blaise Cendrars published four books in Paris in which he reviewed important stages of his intensive life in novel form. The second volume of this loose cycle, published in 1946, is of central importance: Cendrars, a Frenchman by choice and originally from Switzerland, recalls the First World War, during which he fought against Germany as a volunteer in the Foreign Legion and lost his right arm in 1915. This is why he gave this book the title "La Main coupée", although this decisive experience only occurs in a brief vision (in the chapter "The Red Lily"), which gives this German-language edition its title. In this account of the experience from the front, Cendrars does not lament himself, but describes in a breathtaking way how a small corps of men who came from all over the world to save the cultural nation of France.