ORION

By: Blaise Cendrars
March 3, 2023

A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension, Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn; thematic index here.

It’s my constellation
It’s shaped like a hand
It’s my own hand high in the sky
All through the war through a gap I saw
     Orion
The Zeppelins that came to bomb Paris
     always came from Orion
Today it’s above my head
The long pole pierces the palm of the hand
     that must suffer
As my severed hand makes me suffer
     pierced constantly by a spear

— 1928. Translated by A.S. Kline

Blaise Cendrars 8lost his right arm in World War I. He suffered from phantom limb pain and stump pain for the rest of his life.

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RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.