Arthur Cravan Memorial Society

Your blogger is back in sunny Berlin (and as of [cranes neck towards window] right now I can say that without irony) and catching up on things missed while reacquainting himself with the gastronomic fads, ambient good cheer and homicidal fauna of his homeland.

It’s always good to see (and in this case hear) ongoing interest in Arthur Cravan. The Swiss-born “performer, publisher, jewel thief, forger, sailor, bon vivant and lover of beautiful women” is examined in a half-hour BBC Radio documentary, entitled Arthur Cravan Memorial Society, which was broadcast last month (and is still available online). Comedian Arthur Smith talks to devotees of Oscar Wilde’s errant nephew such as Roger Conover (who issued 4 Dada Suicides, featuring Cravan’s work) and David Lalé, author of Last Stop Salina Cruz, one of several books to make fiction of the poet’s self-curated myth and mysterious maritime disappearance.

“Whatever the outcome of his sea voyage,” we learn, “Arthur Cravan never really died, he just passed into a realm from where we may occasionally reclaim him as a kind of prophet, a prophet of glorious artistic confrontation with the cold, hard world.” These words sounded oddly familiar, and then I realised I wrote something very similar a year and a half ago.

Tags: Arthur Cravan, Arthur Smith, David Lalé, Roger Conover