The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne of France
The triptych's centerpiece — one train against this poem's seven horizons.
Read our take
Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles
Seven uncles scattered to the world's ends, one boy reading their letters — the wander-poem John Dos Passos loved enough to translate.
- 1918
About Blaise Cendrars
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeLe Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles, published in 1918, completes the great early triptych of Cendrars poems: a boy in Europe collects the letters of seven uncles blown across the planet — butcher in Galveston, gold-seeker in Alaska, railway man, each swallowed by a different horizon — while the Panama Canal's crash ruins the family and finances the dreaming. Printed to look like a railway timetable, folded like a brochure for elsewhere. John Dos Passos translated and illustrated it for America in 1931, calling Cendrars poetry's Homer of the modern. (A poem — nothing here to spoil.)
The story, in more detail
The poem runs on the era's great engine — departure. Around the child-narrator, the family's seven uncles vanish one by one into the world's work: America, Alaska, India, the ends of the railway lines — surviving as letters, rumors, and silences, while the Panama scandal (the canal-company crash that gutted French savings) hangs over the family fortunes like weather. Cendrars strings their fates on his clattering long line — the Transsibérien's rhythm gone global — and the boy's inheritance is clear by the end: all seven horizons at once, the itch that made the poet.
The 1918 Sirène edition dressed the poem as a travel brochure-cum-timetable, jokes and all — the avant-garde book as ticket out. Its American afterlife matters here: John Dos Passos — Hemingway's friend, the U.S.A. trilogy's engineer — translated Panama in 1931 with his own watercolors, importing Cendrars' documentary-collage line into American letters just as he was building his own newsreel prose from it. The lineage is direct and acknowledged: the poem of scattered lives fed the novel of scattered America.
What's inside
One poem in seven-plus movements: the uncles' letters and legends, each a compressed adventure novel — Galveston, the Klondike, the Indian railways — braided with the Panama crash's ruin at home, the boy reading timetables like scripture, and the poet's own departures already boarding. The line is long, spoken, and switch-backed like the routes it follows.
Half an hour, best with an atlas open — the poem assumes the whole planet.
Themes and analysis
Letters from elsewhere
The arrival of a letter interrupts the mother's storytelling rather than simply supplying another adventure. Its exotic stamps dazzle the child, but she tells him nothing that day, leaving him beneath the table with his disappointment. Distance enters through an object he cannot yet fully interpret. Later, reading an uncle's letter for himself gives him another kind of access, though its vivid scenes also carry sadness and homesickness. The poem makes becoming a reader inseparable from discovering what travel fails to cure. Elsewhere is both an invitation and an absence.
The machinery the forest kept
Near the poem's end, the speaker asks Bertrand for a photograph of vegetation overtaking abandoned locomotives. The ensuing catalogue gives machinery new, unintended occupants: animals and plants interrupt the functions its builders designed. This reversal is not merely picturesque. In the speaker's account, it follows workers' deaths and Bertrand's enrichment, keeping human cost beside the exuberant imagery. The request for a photograph also marks a desire for evidence, not proof that the speaker has witnessed every detail. Ruins and the bar's signed doors become competing records of what passage through Panama leaves behind.
Why we recommend it
Seven novels, one poem
Each uncle is an adventure epic compressed to a postcard — the century's restlessness, itemized.
The American bridge
Through Dos Passos' translation, this poem is a load-bearing beam between the French avant-garde and American modernism.
The comedy of departure
Alone of the great Cendrars poems, it grins — wanderlust as family inheritance and family joke.
What this book explores
Timeline
1914
Cendrars completes the poem; its illustrated book publication follows four years later.
1918
Le Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles is published in Paris by Éditions de la Sirène, the first edition printed to look like a railway timetable; it completes Cendrars' great early triptych of poems.
1931
John Dos Passos translates and illustrates the poem for America with his own watercolors, carrying its documentary-collage line toward the U.S.A. trilogy's newsreel prose.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Éditions de la Sirène
- 1918
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Harper & Brothers
- 1931
Reader reviews
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Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles: frequently asked questions
Who wrote Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles?
Blaise Cendrars. Le Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles was published in Paris in 1918.
What is the poem about?
A boy in Europe collects the letters of seven uncles blown across the planet — a butcher in Galveston, a gold-seeker in Alaska, a railway man — while the Panama Canal company's crash ruins the family and finances the dreaming.
Where does it sit among Cendrars's poems?
It completes his great early triptych, alongside The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and Easter in New York.
How was the first edition designed?
Printed to look like a railway timetable, folded like a brochure for elsewhere — the avant-garde book as a ticket out.
How did it reach American readers?
John Dos Passos translated and illustrated it in 1931; the U.S.A. trilogy's newsreel-collage line owes this poem openly.
If you like Blaise Cendrars
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Louis-Ferdinand Céline
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Ernest Hemingway
Author of The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast; his pared-down style, developed in 1920s Paris, became the most imitated in American prose.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles
NovelBlaise Cendrars, 1918Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Le Panama ou les Aventures de mes sept oncles — French poem transcription
WebsiteRoch-CompostelleUsed forSelected opening and late Bertrand address in a later French transcription; no whole-poem or independent historical collation.
3Blaise Cendrars — Éditions originales
WebsiteConstellation CendrarsUsed for1918 publication entry only; not independent verification of the poem's family or canal history.
4Rencontres de Chaminadour — Blaise Cendrars chronology (prepared with thanks to Claude Leroy)
WebsiteUsed forUsed to verify Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles's bibliographic context and its place within Blaise Cendrars's published work.
5Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de-Fonds — dossier Blaise Cendrars : « Tout ça, c'est digne d'être vécu »
WebsiteUsed forUsed for independent archival, institutional, or historical context surrounding Blaise Cendrars and Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles.
6Meet Blaise Cendrars: the one-armed poet who worked with Sonia Delaunay, Fernand Léger and Robert Doisneau
PeriodicalThe Art Newspaper, 2022Used forUsed to cross-check chronology, publication history, and the circumstances in which Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles appeared.
7The Paris Review — The Art of Fiction No. 38: Blaise Cendrars
PeriodicalUsed forUsed for an additional scholarly or biographical perspective on Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles and Blaise Cendrars's wider career.
8ILAB — description of the original Panama edition
WebsiteUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles page.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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