1.
Truffled green turtle liver
Lobster Mexican
Florida pheasant
Iguana with Carribean sauce
Gumbo and palmetto
3.
Winnipeg salmon
Scottish leg of lamb
Royal Canadian apples
Old French wines
8.
River crab and pimento stew
Suckling pig ringed with fried bananas
Hedgehog ravensara
Fruit
~
I find this translation quite good but I cannot cite the translator, this having been found on the web. Living near Puerto Nuevo, the "so-called" lobster capital of Baja California, I must say that their lobster does not cut it one bit. Nothing beats the cold-water lobster from my mother's New Brunswick. Anyway that is not the point as reading Cendrars menu IN FRENCH makes your mouth water ....(!)......before your mind realizes the content of the poem. F'r'instance, there aint no salmons in Winnipeg. I know. I was born there, 2200 miles from the nearest ocean. Isn't that one more proof of the power of poetry!
So, after all this, I must reveal that apparently Cendrars stole the scenes in "Kodak" by revising passages from an adventure novel called "The Mysterious Doctor Cornelius, by Gustave Le Rouge, a voluminous author of pulp fiction. Ah, orientalism at its best.
Another interesting note is that Cendrars was forced to change the name of the book because the Kodak Co. threatened to sue for using their name without permission. So he changed the title to "Documentaries." Cendrars tried to argue that he was giving the company free publicity, but Kodak Co. thought that it was actually detrimental because it "distracted customers from the precise uses" of their products.
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