Blaise Cendrars and Yvan Goll Anthologists: The Avant-Gardes and African Literature in France
In 1921 and 1922, Blaise Cendrars and Yvan Goll each published an anthology, which included stories or songs of African origin transcribed and translated into French: Anthologie nègre and Les Cinq Continents. Anthologie mondiale de poésie contemporaine. Drawing from the corpus of ethnological collections, their project nevertheless has a literary aim. This close chronology invites us to read the two volumes in dialogue and to see in this literary interest on the part of the French-speaking avant-garde for African texts a call for a world literature and an inaugural event for the reception of African literature in France, at the origin of a "negro model" ("un modèle nègre"). This article will first describe the success of the anthological form among the historical avant-gardes, before turning its attention to the anthologies published by Yvan Goll and Blaise Cendrars, in order to unfold their specific stakes.