Saint-John Perse (Alexis Saint-Leger Leger)

Saint-John Perse (Alexis Saint-Léger Léger) [b. Guadelopue/France]
1887-1975

Born in Saint-Léger-les-Feuilles, Guadelopue, Saint-John Perse spent his adolescence in France and his training at the University of Bordeau, where he received his degree in law in 1910. His earliest poems are from that period.

In 1916, he entered the Foreign Service, and was sent to China, remaining there until 1921. Upon his return to France, he continued to rise in rank in the Service, eventually serving as Secretary General for Foreign Affairs. Throughout this period, he continued to write, without publishing. With the rise of the Nazi-run Vichy government, Saint-John Perse was dismissed from service, and several of his poetic manuscripts were confiscated by the German government. In Washington, D.C., where he took up residence, he continued writing. In 1960 he received the Nobel Prize for literature, and seven years later he returned to France.

His earliest poems, Éloges, were published in 1911 and revised in 1925. These works celebrate his childhood in the Antilles and events in West Indies history. The earliest of these poems, "Images à Crusoé," was written when he was just seventeen years of age. Anabase (1924, Anabasis, 1930) contain some of the few poems written during his diplomatic service period. These works contain the hallmark qualities of Saint-John Perse's writing: radical elippis, an almost biblical quality of language, and compressed use of language underlying a highly rhapsodic narrative.

His other major works include Exil (1942), Poème à l'étrangére (1943), Pluies (1944), Neiges (1945), Vents (1946), and Amers (1957).

BOOKS OF POETRY

Éloges (Paris, 1911; revised, 1925); Anabase (Paris, 1924; revised, 1948); Exil (with "Pluies" and "Neiges") in Quatre poèmes, 1941-1944 (Buenos Aires, 1944); Vents (Paris, 1946); Amers (Paris, 1957); Chronique (Marseilles, 1959; Paris, 1960); Oiseaux (Paris, 1962, 1963): Sécheresse (Paris, 1974); Nocturne (Paris, 1972).

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

Anabasis, trans. by T. S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938); Éloges and Other Poems, trans. by Louise Varèse (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1944); Selected Poems, edited by Mary Ann Caws (New York: New Directions, 1982).