From the Ashes: The Poetry of Blaise Cendrars
Simultaneity. Contrast. Juxtaposition. Fire. Energy. Speed.
It’s been said that the French poet Blaise Cendrars celebrated life at 120 kilometers (seventy-five miles) an hour.
Consider his name. He was born in Switzerland a Frédéric Sauser. In his own stories, he ran away from home at fifteen, found a Jewish companion, stole some fake jewelry, and headed East for Moscow to sell them. How much of this story is true, we will never know. It was many years later, perhaps in New York City, that the young poet changed his name to Blaise Cendrars. Cendrars is related to the French word for ashes, cendre. He had this idea that writing was like making an enormous fire, consuming old ideas, “mixing memory and desire” (to quote another famous Modernist poet, T.S. Eliot), and to watch them burn and turn to ashes. To write was to burn alive, but like the Phoenix, to rise again out of the ashes, young, fresh, and different.