He is one of the prototypes of traveling writers and art performers.

cendre = ashes

braise = glowing fire

really the pseudonym of a fenix!

Born 1887 as Frédéric Louis Sauser in La Chaix de Fonds/Switzerland, he was travelling during his whole life. Napoli, Moskow, St.Petersburg (where his lover Hélène died in a fire), New York, from 1912 on Paris, are stations of this travelling life..

1914-16 marriage, war, serious wounds – his right arm will be cut off. He heads for Cannes, Nizza, Rome and finally Brasil.

He is the true image of a traveller, but in contrast to Bruce Chatwin his ego is always in the foreground. He seems to live in high speed....The writings of this very contemporary cosmopolitain are all highly autobiographic.

Among his friends are Sonja Delaunay-Terk, which puts illustrations to his transsibirian leporello, Guillaume Apollinaire, Modigliani, Hemingway, Braque, Marc Chagall, Henry Miller and the Montparnasse bohème.

He was listed by German Gestapo as „Jewish writer with French expression“

John Dos Passos translated most of his works into English, they were pubished in New York.

He died in the sixties in Paris, where he had had so many adresses...

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Cendrars