Saint-John Perse - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1960 (3 books)

SAINT-JOHN PERSE, the pseudonym of Alexis Saint-Léger (1887-1975) , was a French poet who was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was also a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, when he left for the United States and was deprived of his citizenship and possessions by the Vichy regime.

Perse is, for some, the embodiment of the French national spirit: intellectual yet passionate, deeply conscious of the tragedy of life, a man of affairs with an artist's feeling for perfection and symmetry. His early poetry, published before his diplomatic career began in earnest, includes ÉLOGES (1911), which shows the influence of Symbolism. The language of his verse, admired especially by poets for its precision and purity, is difficult, and he made little appeal to the general public; his hypnotic vision is conveyed by a liturgical metre and exotic words. The best-known early work is the long poem "Anabasis" (1924), translated by T.S. Eliot. In the poems written in exile, he achieved a deeply personal note.

The COLLECTED POEMS (1983) includes the posthumous "Song for an Equinox", to form a complete edition of his poetic oeuvre, including also the 1960 Nobel speech "On Poetry" and his 1965 essay on Dante.


The following books are in PDF format:

* Collected Poems (Princeton UP, 1983). Bilingual edition. Various translators.

* Éloges & Other Poems (Pantheon, 1965). Bilingual edition. Translated by Louise Varése.

* Nobel Prize Banquet Speech (Nobel Foundation, 1967).

* Seamarks (Harper & Bros., 1961). Bilingual edition. Translated by Wallace Fowlie.