Customer Reviews (1)

An unusual figure that should be brought back to popular attention
Of all the poets who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the 1960 Nobel laureate Saint-John Perse (1887-1975) is one of the least read today. It was only through the composers Elliott Carter and Kaija Saariaho, who have written music inspired by his poetry, that I discovered the man. Yet, he is a fascinating figure, whose poetric voice is completely unlike that of his peers in 20th-century France. Mary Ann Caws has done a great service here by assembling selections from all Perse's works, in authoritative translations by figures like T.S. Eliot and Robert Fitzgerald.

Saint-John Perse was the pen-name of Alexis Leger, who rose to the very top of the French foreign ministry before he was deprived of his French citizenship by the Vichy government in 1940 and sailed to America. A diplomat who had gone to exotic non-Western countries like China, Perse set much of his poetry in some kind of anonymous Oriental civilization that could have been Persia or Ur or Cilicia, with desert sands, agorae, and altars. The poetry after his residency in America, the bulk of his oeuvre, adds a persistent interest in exile as the natural state of man. Perse wrote no real short poems; all of his poems are very long and epic in scale.

Not only are Perse's poetic themes unusual, but the poetic language itself is remarkable indeed. While Perse often stuck to the alexandrine, the standard metre of French poetry, his mature poetry was generally formatted into paragraphs. The major sections of the poems are often delineated by repeated calls, as when in "Amers" (Seamarks) we find:

"Poésie pour accompagner la marche d'une récitation en l'honneur de la Mer. / Poésie pour assister le chant d'une marche au pourtour de la Mer. / Comme l'entreprise du tour d'autel et la gravitation du choeur au circuit de la strophe."

Perse's poetry is by no means flawless. I find the poem "Pluies" (Rains) something of a failure. Even in the very best poetry Perse often resorts to clumsy alliteration, as in "Exil" when one finds "O Manieur d'aigles par leus angles, et Nourrisseur de filles les plus aigres souns la plume de fer." Furthermore, I'm unhappy that Caws left out the one passage from "Amers" (beginning "Et vous, Mers...") that is probably the most talked-about of the poem. Nonetheless, Perse is an exciting poet that is unfairly neglected today. Consider getting Roger Little's guide Saint-John Perse alongside this. ... Read more

Product Description
This internationally famous poem by the 1960 Nobel laureate was introduced to English-language readers in this translation by T. S. Eliot. In this definitive edition, French and English texts appear on facing pages. Preface by T. S. Eliot.
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Customer Reviews (3)

"A poem of vast dimensions, impersonal as the sea journeys of Homer."--Archibald MacLeish
Of all the poetry produced during the twentieth century two poems stand at the pinnacle, and this is one of them. "The Wasteland," by T. S. Eliot, is the other. "Anabasis" was written by St.-John Perse, the pen name of Alexis Leger, in 1924. It was translated from the French by T. S. Eliot with the help of Perse in 1930, a revised translation coming out in 1949. Perse was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature in 1960.

The Greek word "anabasis" means a march up-country from the coast to the interior. Given the poem's setting one may be forgiven for thinking of Xenophon's "Anabasis." The word was also used by Plato in his allegory of the cave to depict the journey from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge.

From Eliot's introduction:
"The poem is a series of images of migration, of conquest of vast spaces in Asiatic wastes, of destruction and foundation of cities and civilizations of any races or epochs of the ancient East."

An excerpt from the poem:
"Milch-camels, gentle beneath the shears, sewn with mauve scars, let the hills march forth under the facts of the harvest sky--let them march in silence over the pale incandescence of the plain; and kneeling at last, in the fantasy of dreams, there where the peoples annihilate themselves in the dead powder of earth."

Whereas Eliot, in his poem, portrays the modern world as a wasteland, the result of a loss of faith, Perse, in his, gives us a picture of the ancient world, beautiful and barbaric.

Note: I have on the shelf three versions of Anabasis. The first two are the ones done by Eliot with Perse's help: the initial translation of 1930, published by Faber & Faber Limited of London and the 1949 revision, published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York. The third rendition is the author's 1959 emendation of the 1949 translation, done without Eliot's participation, published by Faber & Faber, London. The one to have is Eliot's revision of 1949. This is the version currently available in paperback from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

A Colt Was Born Beneath the Bronze Leaves
St.-John Perse was perhaps the most ambitious and the greatest poet of the 20th century. His astonishing long-lined poems comprehend childhood, nature, the sciences, ancient civilisations, Asia.

"Anabase" is his best-known and most perfect work . The outline is clear: voyage of exploration and founding of a city in some exotic semi-barbarous civilisation. But the details can be hard to unravel. Perse arrived at his dazzling but difficult style by leaving things out, - the reader must supply many missing links, - and this accounts for its magical swiftness and surprise. (You can acclimatise yourself by reading the early "Éloges," where this style is still half-formed: you'll find them in the "Penguin Book of 20th Century Verse.") He also has the widest vocabulary of any French poet and a taste for the most confounding similes: the rain pursues travelling nomads "like a poll-tax."

Eliot's famous translation has a slightly prissy, affected quality which is alien to the original: but then, Perse's unabashed high-flown patrician eloquence has no English equivalent. So don't be put off by the obscurity: enjoy the gorgeous language and allow it to gradually make sense by itself. As a sample, try Section Ten with its kaleidoscopic lists outdoing Walt Whitman.I have been re-reading this poem for 30 years and it still amazes and delights me.

A modern treasure!
The English edition of this book offers not only what is one of the most worthwhile pieces of poetry the 20th century has to offer to 21st century readers, but also a work that may serve as a standard to anyone looking to locate an example of a classic that survives the often deadly process of translation, for whom here we may thank T.S. Eliot, -- the edition prints the French language on the facing page, so that readers may trace what little poetic liberties the latter has taken in order to deliver across mountains and rivers, --resembling the nomadic journey of St.-John Perse's epique, -- of language-scapes crossed . . . Mr. Eliot deserves our esteem for this feat if nothing else, to have retained that essence of "a great principle of violence", or rather that "essence" of the journey described in thisbook which is really not so much one of plot, character, or any emotional developement in the specific sense, but one of a progression of language . . . certainly the distinction is difficult to articulate, I mean that one existing between the emotional evolution and the progression of language, FEELING, essence, -- but that is what is so worthwhile about this book, in fact fascinating, to me, because it describes exactly this very experience, -- in that it reads as a kind of separate history, it describes the essence of man in history apart from any historical reference, apart from any identification that makes what the book describes HUMAN at all . . . we see a man here that is not a man at all except anatomically, as we would in focusing on the ancient cultures of South and Central America (Chavin, Olmecs, etc.), Egypt, China, and so on, they are only men as we are men today by an anatomical relationship. Thus this book reveals to us a sense of being, as men, that is largely lost in our modern day, and in the form of purely pleasurable poetry . . . so many lines in this books seem to sum up the entire statement of the entire vision, as if they could easily exist alone in fragments, say when our own culture has long passed to the dust of a long time's ravaging, and say all that the book builds from those lines together. I highly recommend this book, not so much for my own reasons, which are certainly a crock of my own reflection, but for your own. This is a book that speaks, there are few that do so, it is a book one can hear without reading. Mr. Eliot called it "as important as the later works of James Joyce", -- I would never give it so unworthy a comparison as that, -- I mean that this book is simply CAPABLE of more, Joyce is one thing, but this book, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, can be so much more.In terms of history, this is a book worth digging up. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Useful for the general facts of Perse's life, but unnecessarily florid
Erika Ostovsky's UNDER THE SIGN OF AMBIGUITY is one of the few English-language biographies of the great 20th century figure known in diplomatic circles by his birth name Alexis Leger and in poetry under the pseudonym Saint-John Perse. The biography does assume that one can read French, as all quotations from French sources are left untranslated. The body of the book is just over 200 pages, occasionally illustrated with photos. Ostrovsky does a good job of sketching the course of her subject's life, and through the course of his diplomatic career, she equally balances the activities of Leger the diplomat, master of European wheeling and dealing, and Perse the poet.

What I found annoying about Ostrovsky's biography, however, is its highly speculative tone. The biography begins with long and often irrelevant musings on what Leger's mother "must" have been feeling as she gave birth to her son. The description of Leger being brought to his baptism reads like a scene from a novel: "As the prow headed towards the open sea, the wind freshened. An odor of salt filled the air. Soon, the outlines of the island blurred, and the servants on the shore were only a brilliant patch of color against the foliage. Then all traces of land disappeared, and one saw nothing but the sapphire expanse of sea. The child, asleep before, seemed to stir as soon as they were afloat."

Similarly, the account of Perse's death is unnecessarily speculative: "Surely, the great window stood open to the water as he lay dying. And his last gaze encompassed all the seas he had known: the Mediterranean, finally reconciled; the Atlantic at the west, ocean of the past and his whole lineage; the terrestrial sea trail that led to Ourga; the trackless deep he had traveled the world over; and the great 'Sea within us'." Couldn't she just stick to facts?

I also feel that Ostrovsky's sources were to limited. While she does claim use of Perse's archives and interviews with some figures close to the man, the bulk of citations seem to be from the "Oeuvres completes", which are notoriously unreliable for biography. The last 20 years have seen a greater familiarity with Perse's papers left to his Foundation, and some interesting clues to Perse's personal life and relationships with women. If you are a fan of the poet and haven't yet found a more recent French biography, this is entertaining reading, for all its limitations.

Useful for the general facts of Perse's life, but unnecessarily florid
Erika Ostovsky's UNDER THE SIGN OF AMBIGUITY is one of the few English-language biographies of the great 20th century figure known in diplomatic circles by his birth name Alexis Leger and in poetry under the pseudonym Saint-John Perse. The biography does assume that one can read French, as all quotations from French sources are left untranslated. The body of the book is just over 200 pages, occasionally illustrated with photos. Ostrovsky does a good job of sketching the course of her subject's life, and through the course of his diplomatic career, she equally balances the activities of Leger the diplomat, master of European wheeling and dealing, and Perse the poet.

What I found annoying about Ostrovsky's biography, however, is its highly speculative tone. The biography begins with long and often irrelevant musings on what Leger's mother "must" have been feeling as she gave birth to her son. The description of Leger being brought to his baptism reads like a scene from a novel: "As the prow headed towards the open sea, the wind freshened. An odor of salt filled the air. Soon, the outlines of the island blurred, and the servants on the shore were only a brilliant patch of color against the foliage. Then all traces of land disappeared, and one saw nothing but the sapphire expanse of sea. The child, asleep before, seemed to stir as soon as they were afloat."

Similarly, the account of Perse's death is unnecessarily speculative: "Surely, the great window stood open to the water as he lay dying. And his last gaze encompassed all the seas he had known: the Mediterranean, finally reconciled; the Atlantic at the west, ocean of the past and his whole lineage; the terrestrial sea trail that led to Ourga; the trackless deep he had traveled the world over; and the great 'Sea within us'." Couldn't she just stick to facts?

I also feel that Ostrovsky's sources were to limited. While she does claim use of Perse's archives and interviews with some figures close to the man, the bulk of citations seem to be from the "Oeuvres completes", which are notoriously unreliable for biography. The last 20 years have seen a greater familiarity with Perse's papers left to his Foundation, and some interesting clues to Perse's personal life and relationships with women. If you are a fan of the poet and haven't yet found a more recent French biography, this is entertaining reading, for all its limitations. ... Read more

Product Description
Presented here in English translation are letters selected for publication by the poet himself, shortly before his death, from his wide correspondence with famous writers and public figures such as W. H. Auden, Francis and Katherine Biddle, Paul Claudel, Joseph Conrad, E. E. Cummings, Mina Curtiss, T. S. Eliot, Andre Gide, Dag Hammarskjold, Archibald MacLeish, Jean Paulhan, Jacques Riviere, Igor Stravinsky, Allen Tate, and Paul Valery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fine purchase
No complaints except an initial email query never was responded to. The book arrived though without any hassle or other remarks.

Entranced by this vision of life, adopting it...
Also, in love with "Amerse" (or "Seamarks")... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Brief, but useful for the Perse beginner
Roger Little's survey SAINT-JOHN PERSE appeared in the Athlone French Poets series in 1973. Perse was to live for two years more, but as Little's book covers both the Gallimard volume of collected poems and the subsequently published work "Nocturne", it does cover the whole of Perse's poetic career. Perse is sadly a neglected poet, with very little written on him in English (and scarcely more available in French), so this Athlone guide is a fine resource for readers of Perse. Note that while Little writes in English, all quotations from Perse's poetry or the reactions of French critics are left in the original language, with no translation, so knowledge of French is essential.

The description of Perse's life and work is fairly light, and this is certainly meant more for the Perse neophyte than one involved in serious study of his poetry. The book opens with a biography of Alexis Leger, though this is little more than a chronological listing of his government positions and literary output. Little prefers to separate Perse the poet from Leger the diplomat and private citizen, and not only does he not inquire much into the events of Leger's personal life, but except for the matter of exile he never speaks of how matters in the poetry could derive from the poet's personal experience. This is rather a pity, and one still waits for a more probing biography of the man. The description of Perse's poetry ranges from the early "Eloges" to the final "Nocturne". This coverage is brief, with some books ("Oiseaux", "Nocturne") getting hardly a page, though "Amers" and "Anabasis" are appropriately given more coverage. Little speaks of the major themes and meaning behind each of the work, and gives some representative quotations.

Even if the description of the individual poems is meagre, Little nonetheless offers the very helpful chapter "An Approach to Perse", which removes much of the mystery that surrounds Perse's poetry and makes it daunting to new readers. Another chapter explores Perse's published correspondences and shows how it can serve as a poetics. The chapter "Points of View" contains quotations from French and English-speaking critics on Perse, and the bibliographical citations here can spur the reader on to more writing about the poet.

Little's survey is long out of print, but thankfully used copies abound, and are quite inexpensive. If you are an English-speaking reader intriguied by the poetry of Saint-John Perse, Little's guide is worth picking up. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Saint-John Perse: praise and presence
The first 25 pages are a lecture delivered on December 2, 1968 under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund. The balance of the book is a listing of his writings in the collection of the Library of Congress compiled by Ruth S. Fritag.
--- from book's card catalog notes. ... Read more