Poets of la Guerre; Pour la Patrie: French Poets Jean Cocteau (Inset Right) and Blaise Cendrars (Far Right) Survived World War I

Byline: Charles Legge

QUESTION Did France have any war poets of the calibre of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon?

AT LEAST 43 recognised French poets and authors served in the French army in World War I, one of the most famous being Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), who served at the front in 1914 in the volunteer ambulance corps.

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893- 1945) was a poet, novelist and essayist, decorated for leading a bayonet charge at Charleroi, Belgium, in August 1914. He published his war experiences in a slim volume of poems entitled Interrogation in 1917.

Wilhelm de Kostrowitzky (who used the pseudonym Guillaume Apollinaire) was born in Rome on August 25, 1880, and served as a volunteer in the French army in 1915, first in the artillery and later, as a lieutenant, in the infantry.

He was wounded in the trenches, awarded the croix de guerre and invalided out of the army. Influenza and war wounds led to his death just before the Armistice. His war poetry was published in a volume entitled Calligrammes in 1918.

Frederic Sauser, better known as Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961), was an influential writer in poetry's modernist movement.

He signed …

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Publication information: Article title: Poets of la Guerre; Pour la Patrie: French Poets Jean Cocteau (Inset Right) and Blaise Cendrars (Far Right) Survived World War I. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: Daily Mail (London). Publication date: November 18, 2008. Page number: 60. © 2007 Daily Mail. COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale Group.

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