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Arthur Cravan

Arthur Cravan (born May 22, 1887, Lausanne, Switzerland) was last seen at Salina Cruz, Mexico in 1918 and most likely drowned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico in November 1918. He was known as a pugilist, a poet, a larger-than-life character, and an idol of the Dada and Surrealism movements. His real name was Fabian Avenarius Lloyd, the second son of Otho Holland Lloyd and Hélène Clara St. Clair. He had a brother, Otho, born 1885. His father's sister, Constance Mary Lloyd, was married to the Irish poet Oscar Wilde. He changed his name to Cravan in 1912 in honour of his fiancée Renée Bouchet, who was born in the small village of Cravans in the department of Charente-Maritime in western France. Why he chose the name Arthur remains unclear.

Biography

He was born and educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, then at an English military academy from which he was expelled after spanking a teacher. After this he travelled widely throughout Europe and America during World War I using a variety of passports and documents, some of them forged. He declared no single nationality and claimed instead to be "a citizen of 20 countries".

Settling in Paris, Craven became France's heavyweight boxing champion without having to fight a single match. His reputation as a professional boxer in itself provided a sort of street-credibility to his Dadaist reputation, but his rough vibrant poetry, and provocative, anarchistic lectures and public appearances (which often degenerated into drunken brawls) also earned him the admiration of Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, André Breton, and other artists and intellectuals.

His personal style involved a continual re-invention of his public persona and various outrageous statements and boasts. His pride to be the nephew of Oscar Wilde even produced hoaxes - documents and poems - Cravan wrote and then signed "Oscar Wilde". In 1913 he published an article in his self-edited paper Maintenant, claiming that his uncle was still alive and had visited him in Paris. This rumour was taken up even by the New York Times. In fact, the two of them never met.

In 1914 he fled to New York to avoid fighting in the war, and then to South America three years later for the same reason. In Mexico City he met his future wife Mina Loy. After their marriage in 1918 they planned a trip from Mexico to Venezuela. Without enough money for both of them to book passage on a ship, Loy took the trip on a ship and Cravan set out alone on a sailboat to Venezuela. Cravan never arrived, and intermittent and unconfirmed reports of his sighting continued for many years. One report has it he changed his name to B. Traven and assumed the identity of a reclusive author of German-American nationality who wrote The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Another has it that he returned to New York and then Paris, took the name Dorian Hope, a vagrant poet who sold forged Oscar Wilde manuscripts in the early 1920s.

His only daughter, Fabienne Lloyd, was born in England on April 5, 1919 and later went to the United States together with her mother. Her descendants live in Aspen, Colorado.

Speculation

A biographical graphic novel on the life of Arthur Cravan has been published by Dark Horse Comics. Titled Cravan and written by the company publisher, Mike Richardson, illustrated by Rick Geary, this biography puts forth the idea that Arthur Cravan and B. Traven might be one and the same.

References

4 Dada Suicides: Selected Texts of Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma & Jacques Vache (Anti-Classics of Dada) by Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma, Jacques Vache, and Arthur Cravan. Roger Conover (Editor), Terry J. Hale (Editor), Paul Lenti (Editor), Iain White (Editor). (1995) Atlas Press ISBN 0-947757-74-0

Popular Culture

Arthur Cravan features as the focus for the novel Last Stop Salina Cruz (2007) by British novelist David Lalé. The novel tells the story of a young man following in the footpaths of the modernist legend across France, Spain, USA, Mexico and finally Salina Cruz.