CENDRARS, BLAISE

born Sept. 1, 1887, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switz. died Jan. 21, 1961, Paris, Fr. pseudonym of Frdric Sauser French-speaking poet and essayist who created a powerful new poetic style to express a life of action and danger. His poems Pques New York (1912; Easter in New York) and La Prose du Transsibrien et de la petite Jehanne de France (1913; The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France) are combination travelogues and laments. Poetry, to Cendrars, was action sealed into words by bold new devices: simultaneous impressions in a jumble of images, feelings, associations, surprise effects, conveyed in a halting, syncopated rhythm. His novel Bourlinguer (1948; Knocking About) glorifies the dangerous life. His abundant, mainly autobiographical writings were a strong influence on his contemporaries. The critics long ignored Cendrars, but the American avant-garde writer Henry Miller saw in him a continent of modern letters. Cendrars received his recognition in 1961 (Grand Prix Littraire de la Ville de Paris), the year of his death.