Saint-John Perse
| Alexis Leger | |
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| Born | Alexis Leger 31 May 1887 Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe |
| Died | 20 September 1975 (aged 88) Presq'ile-de-Giens, Provence, France |
| Pen name | Saint-John Perse |
| Notable award(s) | Nobel Prize in Literature 1960 |
Saint-John Perse (first Saint-Leger Leger, pseudonyms of Alexis Leger) (31 May 1887–20 September 1975) was a French poet and diplomat who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry."
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Biography
Alexis Leger was born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. His grand-grandfather, a solicitor, had lived in Guadeloupe since 1815. His grandfather was also a solicitor, his father was a lawyer and member of the City Council. The Leger family was in charge of two family-owned plantations, one of coffee (La Joséphine) and the other of sugar (Bois-Debout).
In 1897, Hégésippe Légitimus, the first native Guadeloupan elected president of the Guadeloupe General Council took office with a vindictive agenda towards colonists. The Leger family returned to metropolitan France in 1899 and settled in Pau. The young Alexis felt like an expatriate and spent much of his time playing sports, such as hiking, fencing, horseback riding and sailing.
In 1904 he met the poet Francis Jammes at Orthez, received the baccalaureate with honors and started an academic course in Law at the University of Bordeaux. He frequented cultural clubs where he met Paul Claudel and Odilon Redon. He wrote poems inspired by the story of Robinson Crusoe (Images à Crusoe) and undertook a translation of Pindar. He interrupted his studies in 1907 because of his family's difficult financial situation at the death of his father. He did, however, receive his degree in 1910. He published his first book, Éloges, in 1911.
He was recruited to serve in the Foreign Office in 1914 and spent his first years in office travelling to Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom. When World War I broke, he held the position of press corps attaché for the government. From 1916 to 1921, he held the post of secretary at the French Embassy in Peking. In 1921 in Washington, while taking part in a conference on disarmament, he was noticed by Aristide Briand, the then-Prime Minister of France, who recruited him as his assistant. In Paris, he met André Gide and Paul Valéry, as well as Igor Stravinsky, Nadia Boulanger and les Six.
In 1924 he published Anabase, using the pseudonym of Saint-John Perse for the first time. After the death of Briand in 1932, he held successive important positions within the Foreign Office. From 1933 to 1940, despite great instability in the government, he remained general secretary of the Foreign Office. He accompanied his Minister at the Conference of Munich in 1938 which decided the cession of Czechoslovakia to Germany. He was brutally discharged from his post in 1940 and left France for the United States.
The Vichy government dismissed him from the Légion d'Honneur order and from French citizenship. He spent some weeks in financial difficulties until Archibald MacLeish, Director of the Library of Congress and himself a poet, offered him a position. Lilita Abreu joined him in Washington DC. He declined a teaching position at Harvard University, preferring to focus on his writing (Exil, Vents, Amers).
He remained in America long after the war ended, traveling extensively. In 1957, he was offered a villa in Provence by American Friends and from that time on, he shared his time between France and the United States. In 1958, he married Dorothy Milburn Russell, a wealthy American.
In 1960, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in his villa in Provence and was buried in Giens. Last works : Chronique, Oiseaux, Chant pour un équinoxe). Last poems : Nocturne and Sécheresse.
A few months before he died, he left his library, manuscripts and private papers to a Fondation Saint-John Perse which remains to day as a Research Center upon his life and works (Cité du Livre, Aix-en-Provence).
Works
• Éloges (1911, transl. Eugène Jolas in 1928, Louise Varèse in 1944, Eleanor Clark and Roger Little in 1965, King Bosley in 1970)
• Anabase (1924, transl. T.S. Eliot in 1930, Roger Little in 1970)
• Exil (1942, transl. Denis Devlin, 1949)
• Pluies (1943, transl. Denis Devlin in 1944)
• Poème à l'étrangère (1943, transl. Denis Devlin in 1946)
• Neiges (1944, transl. Denis Devlin in 1945, Walter J. Strachan in 1947)
• Vents (1946, transl. Hugh Chisholm in 1953)
• Amers (1957, transl. Wallace Fowlie in 1958, extracts by George Huppert in 1956, Samuel E. Morrisson in 1964)
• Chronique (1960, transl. Robert Fitzgerald in 1961)
• Poésie (1961, transl. W. H. Auden in 1961)
• Oiseaux (1963, transl. Wallace Fowlie in 1963, Robert Fitzgerald in 1966, Roger Little in 1967, Derek Mahon in 2002)
• Pour Dante (1965, transl. Robert Fitzgerald in 1966)
• Chanté par celle qui fut là (1969, transl. Richard Howard in 1970)
• Chant pour un équinoxe (1971)
• Nocturne (1973)
• Sécheresse (1974)
• Œuvres complètes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard (1972, conceived by the Poet himself, including a "Biography", notes, a bibliography, etc., increased edition in 1982)
• Collected Poems, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press (N. J.), U.S.A., 1971
Bibliography (in English, Chronological order)
1936
S. A. Rhodes, "Poetry of Saint-John Perse", The Sewanee Review, vol. XLIV, n° 1, Jan.-March 1936
1944
• Paul Rosenfeld, "The Poet Perse", The Nation, New York, vol. CLVIII, n° 20, 15/05/1944
• John Gould Fletcher, "On the Poetry of Alexis Saint-Leger Leger", Quarterly Review of Literature, vol. II, Autumn 1944
• Edouard Roditi, "Éloges and other poems, Saint-John Perse", Contemporary Poetry, Baltimore, vol. IV, n° 3, Autumn 1944
1945
• Conrad Aiken, "Rains, by Saint-John Perse. Whole Meaning or Doodles", New Republic, Washington, n° CXII, 16/04/1945.
1948
• David Gascoigne, "Vents by Saint-John perse", Poetry, London, June-July 1948,
1949
• Valéry Larbaud, préface à Anabasis, translated by Jacques Le Clerq, in Anabasis, New York, Harcourt, Brace and C°, 1949.
• Hugo von Hofmannsthal, préface à Anabasis, translated by James Stern, ibid.
• Giuseppe Ungaretti, préface à Anabasis, translated by Adrienne Foulke, ibid
. • Archibald MacLeish, "The Living Spring", Saturday Review, vol. XXXII, n° 24, 16/07/1949
• Hubert Creekmore, "An Epic Poem of the Primitive Man", New York Times Book Review, 25/12/1949
1950
• Allen Tate, "Hommage to Saint-John Perse", Poetry, Chicago, LXXV, January 1950
• Harold W. Watts, "Anabase : The Endless Film", University of Toronto Quarterly, vol XIX, n° 3, April 1950
• Stephen Spender, "Tribute to Saint-John Perse", Cahiers de la Pléiade, Paris, Summer-Autumn 1950
1952
• Amos Wilder, "Nature and the immaculate world in Saint-John Perse", in Modern Poetry and the Christian tradition, New York, 1952
• Katherine Garrison Chapin, "Saint-John Perse. Notes on Some Poetic Contrasts", The Sewanee Review
1953
• Paul Claudel, "A Poem by St.-John Perse", translation by Hugh Chisholm, in Winds, New York, Pa,theon Bppks, Bollingen Series, n° 34, 1953.
• Gaëtan Picon, "The Most proudly free", translation by Willard R. Trask, ibid, 1rst edition in Les Cahiers de la Pléiade, n° 10, été-automne 1950.
• Albert Béguin, "A Poetry marked by scansion", translation by Willard R. Trask, ibid, 1rst edition in Les Cahiers de la Pléiade, n° 10, été-automne 1950.
• Gabriel Bounoure, "St.-John Perse and poetic ambiguity", translation by Willard R. Trask, ibid, 1rst edition in Les Cahiers de la Pléiade, n° 10, été-automne 1950.
• Wallace Fowlie, "The Poetics of Saint-John Perse", Poetry,, Chicago, vol. LXXXII, n° 6, Sept. 1953
• Hayden Carruth, "Winds by Saint-John Perse... Parnassus stormed", The Partisan Review, vol. XX, n° 5, Sept.-Oct. 1953
• Henri Peyre, "Exile by Saint-John Perse", Shenandoah, Lexington, vol. V, Winter 1953
1956
• "Tribute to Saint-John Perse", The Berkeley Review (Arthur J. Knodel, René Girard, Georges Huppert), vol. I, n° 1, Berkeley, 1956
1957
• Archibald MacLeish, "Saint-John Perse. The Living Spring", in A continuing journey. Essays and Addresses, Boston, 1957
• Wallace Fowlie, "Saint-John Perse", in A Guide to Contemporary french Literature, from Valéry to Sartre, New York, 1957
• Anonymous, "Saint-John Perse, poet of the Fare Shore", Tmes Literary Supplement, London, 2/03/1957
• Paul West, "The Revival of Epic", The Twentieth Century, London, July 1957
1958
• Conrad Aiken, A Reviewer's A.B.C., Collected criticism from 1916, New York, 1958
• Jacques Guicharnaud, "Vowels of the Sea : Amers", Yale French Studies, n° 21, Spreing-Summer 1958
• Martin Turnell, "The Epic of Saint-John Perse", The Commonweal, LXX, 17/07/1958
• W. H. Auden, "A song of life's power to renew", New York Times Book Review, vol. LXIII, n° 30, 27/07/1958
• Melvin Maddocks, "Perse as Cosmologist", Christian Science Monitor, 4/09/1958
• John Marshall, "The greatest Living French Poet", The Yale Review, XLVIII, Sept. 1958
• Katherine Garrison Chapin, "Perse on the sea with Us : Amers", The New Republic, Washington, CXXXIX, 27/10/1958
1959
• H.-J. Kaplan,"Saint-John Perse : The Recreation of the World", The Reporter, XV, 22/01/1959
• Raymond Mortimer, "Mr Eliot and Mr Perse : Two fine Poets in tandem", Sunday Times, London, May 1959
• Philip Toynbee, "A great modern Poet", The Observer, London, 31/05/1959
• Charles Guenther, "Prince among the Prophets", Poetry, Chicago, vol. XCIII, n° 5, 1959
1976
• Joseph Henry Mc Mahon, A Bibliography of works by and about Saint-John Perse, Stanford University, 1959
1960
• Stanley Burnshaw, "Saint-John Perse", in The Poem Itself, New York, 1960
• Joseph MacMahon, "A question of Man", Commonweal, LXXIII, 13/01/1960
• Byron Colt, "Saint-John Perse", Accent, New York, XX,3, Summer 1960
• Joseph Barry, "Science and poetry merge in the crucial stage of creation", New York Post, 12/12/1960
1961
• Bernard Weinberg, The Limits of Symbolism. Studies of Five modern French Poets. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Valéry, Saint-John Perse, Manchester, 1961
• Anthony Hartley, "Saint-John Perse", Encounter, London, n° 2, Feb. 1961
• Octavio Paz, "Saint-John Perse as Historian", The Nation, New York, 17/06/1961
• Donald davis, "Chronique by Saint-John Perse", New Statsman, London, LXII, 26/07/1961
• John Montague, "The Poetry of Saint-John Perse", Irish Times, Dublin, 25/08/1961
• Léon-S. Roudiez, "The Epochal Poetry of Saint-John Perse", Columbia University Forum, New York, vol. IV, 1961
1962
• Anthony Curtis, "Back to the Elements", The Sunday Telegraph, London, 7/01/1962
• Amos Wilder, "St-John Perse and the fiture of Man", Christianity and Crisis, New York, vol. XXI, n° 24, 22/01/1962
• Ronald Gaskell, "The Poetry of Saint-John Perse", The London Magazine, vol. I, n° 12, March 1962
• Peter Russel, "Saint-John perse's Poetical works", Agenda, London, May-June 1962
• Cecil Hemley, "Onward and Upward", Hudson Review, XV, Summer 1962
1963
• Eugenia Maria Arsenault, Color imagery in the Vents of Saint-John Perse, Catholic University of America, Washington, 1963
1964
• Arthur J. Knodel, "Towards an Understanding of Anabase", PMLA, June 1964
• Eugenia Vassylkivsky, The Main Themes of Saint-John Perse, Columbia University, 1964
1966
• Arthur J. Knodel, Saint-John Perse. A Study of his Poetry, Edimburg, 1966
• R. W. Baldner, "Saint-John Perse as Poet Prophet" in Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Conference on Foreign Languages, vol. XVII, n° 22, 1966
1967
• Roger Little, Word Index of the Complete Poetry and Prose of Saint-John Perse, Durham, 1966 and 1967
• M. Owen de Jaham, An Introduction to Saint-John Perse, University of South Western Louisiana, 1967
1968
• Kathleen Raine, "Saint-John perse, Poet of the Marvellous", Encounter, vol. IV, n° 29, October 1967 ; idem in Defending Ancient Springs, Oxford, 1968
1969
• Roger Little, "T. S. Eliot and Saint-John Perse", The Arlington Quarterly Review, University of Texas, vol. II, n° 2, Autumn 1969
1970
• Charles Delamori, "The Love and aggression of Saint-John Perse's Pluies", Yale French Studies, 1970
• Richar O. Abel, The Relationship between thr Poetry of T. S. Eliot and Saint-John Perse, University of Southern California, 1970
1971
• Roger Little, Saint-John Perse. A Bibliography for Students of His Poetry, London, 1971
• Ruth N. Horry, Paul Claudel and Saint-John Perse. Parallels and Contrasts, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1971
• Pierre Emmanuel, Praise and Presence, with a Bibliography, Washington, 1971
• Candace Uter De Russy, Saint-John Perse's Chronique : a study of Kronos and other themes through imagery, Tulane University, 1971
• Marc Goodhart, Poet and Poem in Exile, University of Colorado, 1971
1972
• René Galand, Saint-John Perse, New York, 1972
• Richard Ruland, America as metaphor in modern french Letters. Celine, Julien Green and Saint-John Perse, New York, 1972
1973
• Roger Little, Saint-John Perse, University of London, 1973
• Carolm Nolan Rigolot, The Dialectics of Poetry : Saint-John Perse, University of Michigan, 1973
1974
• Richard-Allen Laden, Saint-John Perse's Vents : From Theme to Poetry, Yale University, 1974
1976
• Elizabeth Jackson, Worlds Apart Structural Parallels in the Poetry of Paul Valéry, Saint-John Perse, Benjamin Perret and René Char, The Hague, 1976
• Arthur J. Knodel, Saint-John Perse : Lettres, Princeton, 1979
• Edith Jonssen-Devillers, Cosmos and the Sacred in the poetics of Octavio Paz and Saint-John Perse, San Diego, University of California, 1976
• John M. Cocking, "The Migrant Muse : Saint-John Perse", Encounter, London, XLVI, March 1976
• Elizabeth Jennings, "Saint-John Perse : the worldly seer", in Seven Men of Vision : an appreciation, London, 1976
• Roger Little, "A letter about Conrad by Saint-John Perse", Conradiana, Lubbock, Texas, VIII, n° 3, Autumn 1976
• Anonymous, "An Exile for Posterity", The Times Literary Supplement, London, n° 3860, 5/03/1976
1977
• Roger Little, "The Eye at the Center of Things", Times Literary Supplement, London, n° 3941, 7/10/1977
• Roger Little, "Saint-John Perse and Joseph Conrad : some notes and an uncollected Letter", Modern language Review, Cambridge, LXII, n° 4, October 1977
• Roger Little, "The World and the Word in Saint-John Perse", in Sensibility and Creation : Essays in XXth Century French Poetry, London and New York, 1977
• John D. Price, "Man, Women and the Problem of Suffering in Saint-John Perse", Modern language Review, Cambridge, LXII, n° 3, July 1977
1978
• Reino Virtanen, "Between Saint-John and Persius : Saint-John Perse and Paul Valéry", Symposium, Summer 1978
• Roger Little, "Saint-John perse and Denis Devlin : a compagnonage", Irish University Review, Dublin, VIII, Autumn 1978
1979
• Roger Little, "Claudel and Saint-John Perse. The Convert and the Unconvertible", Claudel Studies, VI, 1979
1982
• Steven Winspur, "Saint-John Perse's Oiseaux : the Poem, the Painting and beyond", L'Esprit créateur, Columbia University, XXII, n° 4, Winter 1982
1983
• William Calin, "Saint-John Perse", in A Muse for heroes : Nine Centuries of the Epic in France, University of Toronto Press, 1983
• Steven Winspur, "The Poetic Signifiance of the Thing-in-itself", Sub-stance, n° 41, 1983
• Joseph T. Krause, "The Visual Form of Saint-John Perse's Imagery", Aix-en-Provence, 1983
• Peter Fell, "A Critical Study of Saint-John Perse's Chronique" . MA dissertation, University of Manchester, 1983
1984
• Saint-John Perse : Documentary Exhibition and Works on the Poem Amers, Washington, 1984–1985
1985
• Erika Ostrovsky, Under the Sign of Ambiguity : Saint-John Perse/Alexis Leger, New York, 1985
1988
• Steven Winspur, Saint-John Perse and the Imaginary Reader, Geneva, 1988
• Peter Baker, "Perse on Poetry", The Connecticut Rewioew, Willimantic, XI, n° 1, 1988
• Peter Baker, "Saint-John Perse, Alexis Leger, 1960", The Nobel Prize Winners : Literature, April 1988
1990
• Peter Baker, "Exile in Language", Studies in 20th century Literature, Manhattan (Kansas) and Lincoln (Nebraska), XIV, n° 2, Summer 1990
• Judith Kopenhagen-Urian, "The voyage chronotop and other dynamic topoi in Saint-John Perse'sWork", American Comparative Literature Association, Pennsylvania State University, annual meeting Marc 29-31 1990 (unpublished)
• Erika Ostrovsky, "Saint-John Perse", The Twentieth Century, New York, 1990
1991
• Luigi Fiorenzato, Anabasis/Anabase : T. S. Eliot translates Saint-John Perse, Padova, 1991-1992
• Peter Baker, "Metric, Naming and Exile : Perse, Pound, Genet", in The Scope of Words in Honor to Albert S. Cook, New York, 1991
• Peter Baker, Obdurate Brilliance : Exteriority and the Modern Long Poem, University of Florida Press, 1991
1992
• Josef Krause, "The Two Axes of Saint-John Perse's Imagery", Studi Francesi, Torino, XXXVI, n° 106, 1992
• Carol Rigolot, "Ancestors, Mentors and 'Grands Aînés' : Saint-John perse's Chronique", Literary Generations, Lexington, 1992
1994
• Richard L. Sterling, The Prose Wotks of Saint-John Perse. Towards an Understanding of His Poetry, New York, 1994
1996
• Richard A. York, "Saint-John Perse, the diplomat", Claudel Studies, XXIII, 1-2, 1996
1997
• Judith Urian, The Biblical context in Saint-John Perse's work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997
1999
• Mary Gallagher, "Seminal Praise : The Poetry of Saint-John Perse", in An Introduction to caribbean fracophone writing, Oxford, 1999
• Carol Rigolot, "Saint-John Perse's Oiseaux : from Audubon to Braque and beyond", in Resonant Themes : literature, history and the arts in XIXth - and XXth - century Europe, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1999
• Judith Urian, "Delicious abyss : the biblical darkness in the poetry of Saint-John Perse", Comparative literature studies, XXXVI, n° 3, 1999
2000
• Jeffrey Mehlman, Émigré New York. French Intellectuals in Wartime, Manhattan, 1940-1944, Baltimore and London, 2000
• Zeyma Kamalick, In Defensse of Poetry : T. S. Eliot's translation ofAnabase by Saint-John Perse, Princeton, 2000
2001
• Emmanuelle Hériard Dubreuil, Une certaine idée de la France : Alexis Leger's views during the occupation of France June 1940-August 1944 , London School of Economics, 2001
• Pierre Lastenet, Saint-John Perse and the Sacred, University of London, 2001
• Marie-Noëlle Little, The Poet and the Diplomat [Correspondence Saint-John Perse/Dag Hammarskjöld], Syracuse University Press, 2001
• Marie-Noëlle Little, "It is the same land : Poetry and Diplomacy for Dag Hammarskjöld and Alexis Leger", Uppsala, 7/09/2001, in Dag Hammarskjöld and the XXIst Century (Unpublished work)
• Marie-Noëlle Little, "Letters written, read and translated : The Corresdpondance of Dag Hammarskjöld and Alexis Leger", Uppsala, 8/09/2001, in Dag Hammarskjöld and the XXIst Century (Unpublished work)
• Marie-Noëlle Little, "Travellers in two Worlds : Dag Hammarskjöld and Alexis Leger", in evelopment Dialogue, Uppsala, 2001
2002
• Carol Rigolot, Forged Genealogies : Saint-John Perse's Conversations with Culture, The University of North Carolina Press, 2002
2003
• Mary Gallagher, "Re-membering Caribbean childhoods, Saint-John Perse's Éloges and Patrick Chamoiseau's Antan d'enfance", in The Francophone Caribbean today-literature, language, culture, The University of West Indies Press, 2003
2004
• Colette Camelin, "Hermes and Aphrodite in Saint-John Perse's Winds and Seemarks", in Hermes and Aphrodite Encounters, Birmingham, 2004
• Patrick Chamoiseau, "Excerpts freely adapted from Meditations for Saint-John Perse", Literature and Arts of the Americas, XXXVII, n° 1
2005
• Henriette Levillain, Saint-John Perse, Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Paris, 2005
• Joseph Acquisto, "The Lyric of Narrative : Exile, Poetry and Story in Saint-John Perse and Elisabeth Bishop", Orbis Litterarum, n° 5, 2005
• Xue Die, "Saint-John Perse's Palm Trees", American Letters and Commentary, n° 17, 2005
• Valérie Loichot, "Saint-John Perse's Imagined Shelter : J'habiterai mon nom, in Discursive Geographies, Writing Space and Place in French, Amsterdam, 2005
• Carol Rigolot, "Blood Brothers : Archibald MacLeish and Saint-John Perse", Archibald MacLeish Journal, Summer 2005
• Carol Rigolot, "Saint-John Perse", in Transtlantic relations, France and the Americas, Culture, Politics, History, Oxford and Santa Barbara, 2005
2007
• Valérie Loichot, Orphan Narratives : The Postplantation Literature of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison and Saint-John Perse, University of Virginia Press, 2007
• Harris Feinsod, "Reconsidering the 'Spiritual Economy' : Saint-John Perse, his translators and the limits of internationalism", "Benjamin, Poetry and Criticism," Telos, New York, n° 38, 2007
• Peter Poiana, "The order of Nemesis in Saint-John Perse's Vents", Neophilologus, vol. 91, n° 1, 2007
• Jeffrey Meyers, "The Literary Politics of the Nobel Prize", Antioche Review, vol. 65, n° 2, 2007
2009
• Laurent Fels, Quête ésotérique et création poétique dans Anabase de Saint-John Perse, P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2009
External links
- Fondation Saint-John Perse, Aix-en-Provence, official website of the poet and diplomat (in French)
- Saint-John Perse biography from the official Nobel Prize website
- Nobel acceptance speech
- Saint-John Perse, le poète aux masques, site devoted to the author (in French)
- Liste de diffusion SJPinfo (news) devoted to Saint-John Perse
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