SAINT-JOHN PERSE: POET-DIPLOMAT
Samway, Patrick
SAINT-JOHN PERSE: POET-DIPLOMAT PATRICK SAMWAY As would be expected in Paris, Le Monde, Le Figaro and other French newspapers announced on thsir front pages the death of Saint-John Perse on...
...Two years later, he adopted his famous nom de plume and published Anabase (Anabasis), a long poem about a restless conqueror who desires to build a new city, but ultimately decided to move on towards further explorations...
...his speech in Stockholm in 1960 reveals how important he felt poetry is for the contemporary world: Fidele a son office, qui est Tap-profondissement mime du mys-tere de Thomme, la poesie mod-erne s'engage dans une entreprise dont ta poursuite interesse la pleine integration de Thomme...
...After publication of this poem, Perse put aside his literary activities in order to devote his time and energies completely to his work on the Quai d'Orsay...
...Perse was born Marie-Rene" Alexis Saint-Le"ger on the tiny island of Saint-Le"ger-les-Feuilles in the French West Indies in May, 1887, and lived in that tropical setting, celebrated at times in his poetry, until the family moved to Pau, France, in 1899...
...Poetry like this defies precise definition which relies on a priori categories of thought...
...the power of his poetry ultimately unfolds a total view" of man-of his reality and his union with the universe...
...led by the sun against this breathing wind, now violent, now treacherous, now meditative, what was it he was searching for on the far side of every barrier, what was it he was seeking from the reservoirs of the Incommensurable...
...FATHER PATRICK SAMWAY, S.J., is currently on leave to teach American literature on a Fulbright Award at the University of Nantes, France...
...It would seem fitting, too, that America should honor this poet who lived a good part of his adult life on the East Coast, married an American citizen, and wrote and first published some of his major poetry while living in the United States...
...Perse met important literary men of that era, including Claudel, Riviere, Ta-gore and Valery, but it was the political life he decided upon...
...It is precisely here that Americans understand Perse's vision, in seeing and knowing the concrete in the universal...
...Poetry, for Perse, is not cristallisa-tion, but movement which is in a state of continual expansion...
...In 1959, Andre Malraux presented Perse with the Grand Prix National des Lettres, and in 1960 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature...
...in 1916 he went to work for the French government and, using the name Alexis Le'ger, he was sent to Peking to assist in the Embassy there...
...he started writing poetry in earnest...
...Perse's poetry helps us discover the tremendous range of human activity, much as an anthropologist does, while never losing sight of man's inner depths reaching out to the cosmos...
...The tenth section of Anabase embodies this poetic trait: . . . celui qui rive dun poivron...
...Among the many tributes, Robert Sabatier of the Academie Goncourt noted that Perse was not only one of the great poets of the 20th century, but that he was often better appreciated outside of France because of the excellent translations of his poetry...
...In 1922, Perse was recalled to Paris eventually to become Secretary General of Foreign Affairs...
...The poetry of Saint-John Perse explores new structures of language, of form, of universal archetypes, where the reader finds himself constantly meditating on the basic elements of our universe-sea, wind, rain, birds, time, history, man...
...Perhaps the most endearing quality of Perse's poetry for Americans is its specificity, a quality that has given character over the centuries to poetry in the Anglo-Saxon tradition...
...After more than four years in China, Perse visited the United States in 1921 and within a short time was assigned to Washington as an expert on the Far East...
...He never resumed his diplomatic career...
...It is a poetry that celebrates the human condition, as epitomized in the last line of Chro nique: Grand dge, nous void...
...In 1940, rejected by France for his anti-Hitler sentiments and pursued by the Gestapo, Perse left Europe and sailed first to England, then to the United States where he became a consultant to the Library of Congress at the invitation, of Archibald MacLeish...
...Perse often juxtaposes precise images, in a lyric crescendo culminating in songs of praise, in order to press and express the richness of his subject...
...Above all, his poetry should not be considered autobiography...
...Thus to approach Perse's poetry, one must do it obliquely, with reverence, questioning, as Paul Claudel did in his review of Vents (Revue de Paris, November 1949...
...In France, Gallimard published much of Perse's mature work, including Exil (Exile) in 1942, Vents (Winds) in 1946, Amers (Seamarks) in 1957, and Chronique (Chronicle) in 1959...
...In all of his major poetry, Perse seemed to be writing an epic of the human soul...
...Prenez mesure du coeur dhomme...
...Perse himself was well aware of this...
...Perse's imagination soars through space, time, and history, in a manner that Americans have tried to express ever since the days of Joel Barlow's Columbiad...
...he who dreams of green pepper, or else he who chews fossil gum, who lifts a conch to his ear, or he who noses the phosphorus scent of genius in the freshly cracked stone...
...On January 26, 19S3, he wrote to Roger Caillois of the Academie francaise and author of the excellent study, Poitique de St-lohn Perse (Gallimard, 1972), that he considered his poetry as evolving in a milieu that is without time or place and one that does not root itself in specific historical events...
...ou bien encore celui qui mdche d'une gomme fossile, qui porte une conque a son oreille, et celui qui ipie le parfum de genie aux cassures fraiches de la pierre...
...As Wallace Fowlie, and other critics of French poetry have observed, Perse's poetry shows a perennial solicitude for the details of existence and the occupations of men...
...Perse studied law at Bordeaux and at 17 published his first poem, Images a Crusoe, followed in 1910 by his first major work, Eloges (Eulogies...
...Perse continued publishing poetry right up to the last...
...Or as T. S. Eliot translated these words in 1930...
...SAINT-JOHN PERSE: POET-DIPLOMAT PATRICK SAMWAY As would be expected in Paris, Le Monde, Le Figaro and other French newspapers announced on thsir front pages the death of Saint-John Perse on September 20 at his home in Giens in southern France...
...This quest for the Infinite can be seen, to some extent, in "The Tragediennes Came" section of Amers: And there was, behind the crowd on the shore, this pure grievance of another dreamer-this greater dream of another art, this great dream of another work, and this rising, always, of the greatest mask at the horizon of men, O living Sea of the greatest text...
...You spoke to us of another wine of men, and over our debased texts there was suddenly that reluctance of the lips which all satiety creates, And we know now what took the life from us, in the middle of our strophe...
Vol. 102 • October 1975 • No. 16
