Collection: Blaise Cendrars

Frédéric-Louis Sauser, who adopted the name Blaise Cendrars in 1912, was born on September 1, 1887, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. As a young man, he traveled and worked countless jobs, first in Russia and then in New York, where in 1912 he wrote the poem Les Pâques à New York (Easter in New York). Returning to Paris, he befriended avant-garde painters and poets such as Apollinaire, Léger, Chagall, and the Delaunays.

In 1913, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France (Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France) was published, created with Sonia Delaunay: a two-meter-long painted fold-out, the first so-called simultaneous book, where poem and color respond to each other. The work marked a milestone in the history of the modern book. Cendrars was then one of the fresh voices of poetry, free, fast-paced, infused with cities and trains.

The war interrupted this momentum. Volunteering for the Foreign Legion in 1914, he was severely wounded in September 1915 and had his right hand amputated. He learned to write with his left hand and, from this ordeal, produced the account J'ai tué (I Have Killed) in 1918, the first book illustrated by Fernand Léger. The collaboration continued the following year with La Fin du Monde filmée par l'Ange N.-D. (The End of the World Filmed by the Angel N.-D.), a pinnacle of post-war illustrated books.

In the 1920s, Cendrars traveled to Brazil, worked in cinema, and turned to novels. L'Or (Gold), in 1925, was a great success, followed by Moravagine in 1926, a hallucinatory story of a criminal across the world, and Confessions de Dan Yack. After a quieter period, he returned during World War II with a series of autobiographical narratives, L'Homme foudroyé (Man Struck Down), Bourlinguer (Rolling Along), Le Lotissement du ciel (The Allotment of the Sky), where memory and invention freely intermingle.

Cendrars renewed poetry through rhythm and imagery before bringing the same taste for movement, travel, and a risky life to novels and memoirs. His direct and sensory writing influenced the travel and adventure writers who followed him.Original editionsand illustrated booksby Blaise Cendrars are in the catalog of Koegui bookstore in Bayonne. Free valuation on request.

Cendrars shares with André Breton the invention of a radical poetic modernity, and with Arthur Rimbaud the refusal of any conventional literature. Our original 20th-century editionsand our modern illustrated books bring together their most sought-after works.