1887 Birth in La Chaux-de-Fonds, 27, rue de la Paix, of Frédéric-Louis Sauser, the future Blaise Cendrars.
1894-1896 The family stays in Naples where Freddy attends the Scuola Internazionale.
1897 Freddy Sauser attends the Untere Realschule in Basel.
1902 Business school in Neuchâtel.
1904-1907 Stays in St. Petersburg, employed by Mr. Leuba, a Swiss national and watchmaker.
1907-1910 Return to Switzerland. Studies of medicine, then literature at the University of Bern.

Meets Félicie Poznanska, known as Féla, a Polish student.

1910-1911 Stays in Paris, St. Petersburg and New York, where he joins Féla.
1912 In New York: Hic Haec Hoc, first text by Blaise Cendrart [sic]. Back in Paris, he founds with Emil Szittya the magazine Les Hommes nouveaux and publishes his first great poem, Les Pâques, signed with his definitive pseudonym “Blaise Cendrars”. Encounter between Guillaume Apollinaire and the Parisian avant-garde.
1913 Publication of the Prose du Transsibérien and Petite Jehanne de France, “the first simultaneous book”, with gouaches by Sonia Delaunay.
Elaboration of Panama ou les Aventures de mes sept oncles, a poem that would not appear until 1918. Féla returns from New York.
1914-1915 Enlisted as a volunteer in the First World War. Marries Féla before going to the front. She gives him two sons, Odilon in 1914 and Rémy in 1916. Lost his right arm in action in Champagne on 28th September 1915.
1916 Naturalized French. Publication of La guerre au Luxembourg
1917 Settles in Méréville: a summer of intense creation (L’Eubage, Moravagine, La Fin du Monde filmé par l’Ange Notre-Dame). Publication of Profond Aujourd’hui.

Meets the actress Raymone Duchâteau who will henceforth be the companion of his life.

1918 J’ai tué. Founder and co-director of Éditions de la Sirène, with Paul Laffitte
1919 Birth of Miriam Cendrars.
1919 Les dix-neuf poèmes élastiquesL’ABC du cinéma.
1920-1921 Film experiences, with Abel Gance.
1921 Anthologie nègre.
1923 Based on a libretto by Cendrars, the Swedish Ballet produces La Création du monde, music by Darius Milhaud, sets and costumes by Fernand Léger.
1925 L’Or, la merveilleuse histoire du Général Johann August Suter, the first book to achieve international success, is published on return from the second trip to Brazil.
1926 Moravagine. L’Eubage, aux antipodes de l’Unité.
1929 Le Plan de l’Aiguille et Les Confessions de Dan Yack. Une Nuit dans la forêt, the first fragment of an autobiography, appears in the Aquarius publishing house in Lausanne, with engravings by Charles Clément. Cendrars lives in Paris or isolates himself in his “country house” in Tremblay-sur-Mauldre.
1930 Comment les Blancs sont d’anciens Noirs, the last collection of African tales. Rhum, l’aventure de Jean Galmot, is a novel written from Cendrars’ reports during the trial orchestrated after the death of the French Guyana deputy.
1931 Aujourd’hui (collection of prose texts).
1932 Vol à voiles, prochronie.
1935-1938 Various reports. Short novels : Histoires vraies (1938), La Vie dangereuse (1939). In 1936, for Paris-Soir, he makes the inaugural crossing of “Normandy” and his reports are transmitted live to Paris. That same year, he stayed in Hollywood where he met James Cruze who played “Sutter’s Gold”, directly inspired by his novel.
1939-1940 War correspondent for the British Army.
D’Outremer à Indigo (1940).
1940 After the Armistice, settles in Aix-en-Provence.
1943-1949 Years of intense creation. Writes four volumes of “Memoirs that are not Memoirs”: L’Homme foudroyé (1945), La Main coupée (1946), Bourlinguer (1948), Le Lotissement du ciel (1949), which have been named the “Tétralogie”.
On 27 October 1949, married Raymone Duchâteau in Sigriswil (Bernese Oberland).
1950 Returns to Paris.
1956-1958 Last work, a novel-novel: Emmène-moi au bout du monde! …. That same year, an attack leaves him very weakened. In 1958, a second attack renders him aphasic.
1960 Commander of the Legion of Honour, a distinction awarded by André Malraux.
1961 Grand Prix littéraire de la Ville de Paris.
Blaise Cendrars dies on 21 January 1961.

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