perverted by language

Interview with Blaise Cendrars in 1966 Paris Review:

Interviewer: You need the customs tariffs in order to write that book?

Cendrars: My dear sir, it's a matter of language. For several years, each time that I prepare to write a book, I first arrange the vocabulary I am going to employ. Thus, forL'Homme Foudroyé[The Astonished Man, available again from Peter Owen], I had a list of three thousand words arranged in advance, and I used all of them. That saved me a lot of time and gave a certain lightness to my work. It was the first time I used that system. I don't know how I happened onto it.... It's a question of language. Language is a thing that seduced me. Language is a thing that perverted me.Language is a thing that formed me. Language is a thing that deformed me. That's why I am a poet, probably because I am very sensitive to language -- correct or incorrect, I wink at that. I ignore and despise grammar which is at the point of death, but I am a great reader of dictionaries and if my spelling is none too sure it's because I am too attentive to the pronunciation, this idiosyncrasy of the living language. In the beginning was not the word, but the phrase, a modulation. Listen to the songs of birds!

full interview here

Adolf Hoffmeister, 1959 illustrations forAround the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne