fowlie - st-john perse

5/25/2018 Fowlie - St-John Perse

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Saint-John PerseAuthor(s): Wallace FowlieReviewed work(s):Source: Poetry, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Oct., 1951), pp. 31-35Published by: Poetry FoundationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20591552.

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WALLACE FOWLIE

opinionSAINT-JOHNPERSETHE ART OF SAINT-JOHN ERSE provides one of the loftiest ontem

porary lessonsof themeaning ofpoetry and on the role of the poetboth inhis own timeand inall times.His poetry is always theact ofunderstanding,which is equivalent to the seizure of the intimate ndessential relationship xistingbetween ordersorphenomena or objects.This seizurehe narrates in such sumptuous language, of such dazzlingspectacular beauty, thata unity is engendered surrounding nd combining all diversity, ll antinomy. The consciousnessof thispoet isthe principal instrumentf his art: it is the rapportbetween man'sdeepest instincts e learns and sings.He wills to learnand thereforetoknow and dominate whatever there is to see and feel and hear intheuniverse. It ishis will toward eternity, ather than immortality,in this particular case. Behind everymanifestation ofmobility andfluctuation e finds pure and constantrelationship, pure and constant truth, sign of the immutable. The realworld, in the poetryofPerse, becomes lessapproximateand lessdegraded. To man and toevery aspirationofman he ascribes some eternalmeaning. Everythingprecarious and ephemeral appears less so in the condition of hispoetry,which is a relentlessconquest of reality,a transcription freality utside of time.The present is sung of in thispoetry, so flagrantlynd pervasivelythat it becomes eternal. The oneness of the poet is lostwhen hesings.What in him as a human being is a state of becoming ismiraculously transposed into a state of being. This is like a decisiveeventwhich explodes and marks the end of some temporarystateand thebeginning of an eternal one. The sorrowsand joyswe associatewith time lose theirtemporalaspect in thepoems ofPerse, andfind a new meaning, a new accomplishment. The poet discovers inthemnew resources and new reasons. This is perhaps vision. Atleast it is consciousness by which all color and formare modified.The universe is recognizable in these poems, but it is changed. Ithas escaped the tyranny fminutes. It ismore sovereign,more real,more powerful. And thepoet, too, ismore than a mere individual.

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He reaches in his function of poet a fullness of being which leavesfar behind the imperfect nd limited individual he is in every otherfunction.What elevates himmust be thisnew sense of existence, thisnew energywhich joinshimwith the cosmos. His consciousness is anact of such fullness that it recreateshim so that in him the absoluteisconsummated.Alexis Leger was born in 1887, on a coral island nearGuadaloupe,Saint-Leger-les-Feuilles,which belonged to his father'sfamily.Hisearly yearswere spent there and on Guadaloupe itselfwhere hismother's familyowned plantations. At the age of eleven, he wentto France to complete his education. In 1914 he entered theDiplomatic Service, and was sent to China in 1917. In 1922 he attendedtheDisannament Conference inWashington inhis capacity as experton the Far East, and thenaccompanied back toParis Aristide Briandwhom he served for the next ten years. Legend has it thatwhilewalking with the poet beside the Potomac, Briand was struckbyLeger's statementthata book is thedeath of a tree. (Un livre,c'est

lamort d'un arbre.) At Briand's death, in 1932, Leger became Permanent Secretary of Foreign Affairs. At the capitulation of France,in 1940, Leger, ratherthan submit to appeasement, left forEngland,and arrived inCanada on July 14th. Archibald MacLeish offeredLeger a post at theLibrary ofCongresswhere the French poet tookup an importantservice for the library nd French letters. At thistimehe wrote Exil, which initiated a new series of poems. He stilllives inWashington today.Eloges was first ublished in 1910, in theEditions de laNouvelleRevue Francaise, with the signature Saint Leger Leger. The newedition, of 1925, appeared with the signatureSt.-JohnPerse. Thenamemay well have been chosen because of Leger's admiration forthe ancientwriter Persius. Eloges are poems evocative of childhoodspent in themidst of exoticvegetation, in a harbor clutteredup withColonial merchandise. The vision of the sea dominates this childhood, with its memories of cyclones, plantations, volcanoes, tidalwaves. Anabase, firstpublished in Paris, in 1924, preserves thememory of the fiveyears Leger spent inChina and theGobi Desert.This work, translated y T. S. Eliot, in 1930, is one of the key poemsof our age. It representsthe poet as conqueror of theword, in theguise of a literal conqueror associated with arms and horses, with

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a willed exile in foreignplaces. As soon as the plans of the futurecity are drawn up, the conqueror leaves. Experiences and joys areenumerated, but there is alwaysmore to see and tohear: Beaucoupde choses sur la terre entendre et a voir,choses vivantesparminousBut the literalconquest related isnot so important s theactual conquest of language carriedout by thepoet in thewriting ofhis poem.The primitivemeaning of words is foughtover andwon. The historyof the poet is the history ofman seeking possession of the entireearth.InMarch 1942, Poetry (of Chicago) published theoriginalFrenchtextofLeger's new poem, Exil. This ismuch more than a poem onthewar and on the exile of Perse. It is a more profoundworlr onthe same theme of Anabase, on the poet's exile, on the necessary"absence" which precedes everywork of art: un grand poeme n4 derien. This concept, traditionally associated with Mallarme, is explored and revitalized inExil. The poet is theman who inhabitshisname. His syntax is the pure language of exile. Isolated from therest of the long poem, the final line is both the summation of thework and the announcement of the poems to come:Et c'est rheure, 6 Po6te, de decliner ton nom, ta naissance et tarace.The sensationswhich come to him from the rains, the snows, thewinds and the sea are each in turn to be the subject of the newpoems. Only thebeginning of the sea poem, Et vous, mers, has appeared inprint, inLes Cahiers de la Pleiade of spring-autumn, 950.The poem on the winds, Vents (Gallimard, 1946), is to date thelongestpoem of Perse, and hismost remarkable in scope and poeticachievement.Claudel, in the essay he has devoted to thispoem (Revue de Paris,Nov., 1949, and reproduced in Les Cahiers de la Pleiade, 1950),calls it an epic. Part I contains an invocation to all dead and driedthingswhich have to be dispersed by thewind. Everything has tobe seized again. Everything, for the poet, has to be spoken again.The west is the source of thewind and the source of the extraordinary accidents which thewind will resuscitate. Part II contains allusions toAmerica and to the coming of evening in a new age of theearth. Part III revives the theme of conquerors and viceroys, andalways throughoutthe conquests the problem of man and of the

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poet in his particular site of the century. Part IV is the conclusion.It ison thevoyager's return, n thepoet's giftof thehorizons he hasseen. The wind has both dispersed and founded. The poem isbothchronicle of thepast and song of thepresent. Denis de Rougemontsees the poem essentiallyas the epic ofAmerica, as one of the tonicpoems of the centuryand one of the rareworks representing refusal of despair.The form of these poems is non-traditional.Leger has perfecteda broad stanza containing its own beat and pulsation. He observesthe world and spells it out in his verse, as it comes to him in hismeditation. His speech isbreath and concretewords. He enumeratesall parts of the familiarworld surroundingman: animals and plantsand the elements, and he doesn't hesitate to use precise technicalterms.The poem is a ceremonial, involvingall thediverse activitiesofman, and stating them in successive gestures. The world of hispoetry has the freshnessof a new creation. It is total and totallypresent.Whatever legendary elements remain are actualized in thispoetrywhich is always praise, as the titleof the first olume,Eloges,revealed.It is impossible to separate the scansion, or the articulation, fromthewords of the line in Perse's poetry. One supports the other,one authorizes theother,and to such a degree that sound andmeaning are dilated far beyond their usual limits. The poem seems toform nd grow before one's eyes. Language creates thework of art,and thework of art grows out of the language. Almost every criticwho has written on Perse has been struckby the opulence of hiswork, by its solemnity, y thepersistentuse of grand and grandeur,of haut and hauteur, of vaste, and other suchwords which providethework with cosmic dimensions. The figure f thePrince is associatedwith the themesofpower and exile and language. The princein his world is the prototype of thepoet in his poem. Each has tounder,goa similarparadox and learn to live in accordancewith twoseemingly opposed regimens. The prince: inpower and impoverishment, in adornment and nudity; the poet: in silence and language,inmagic and mysticism.Saint-JohnPerse is heir to one of the richestpoetic traditions.The form f his poetryas well as themetaphysical use he puts it to,recall the examples of Rimbaud inLes Illuminations,ofLautreamont

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in Les Chants de Maldoror, and Claudel inCinq Grandes Odes. Heis the contemporary oet who comes perhaps closest to consideringhimself the instrument f superior revelation.When he speaks as apoet, something is affirmedn him and in itself.He knows that themost simple object or themost trite vent is capable of givingbirthto a poem. In this sense, his being is the restorationof etemity,the actualizing of eternity.This doesn'tmean that he always knowsthe full significance fwhat he says and does. On the contrarylHispoetry is the yielding to somethingmore imperious than his ownvoice, something that cannot be defined with the research and theprecision which are found in the actual stanzas. Yet the poetryreveals the desire to reach this inaccessible source. It is constantlystrivingtomake presentwhat is for all time. This will, by definition, is never without a struggle against death. The poet has toaccomplish simultaneouslytwo actswhich appear contradictory.Hehas to represent himself outside of his normal state of becominga mortalman, and at the same timehe must not abolish any partof his personality,any part of his uniqueness. To become possessedby such a will is equivalent to being itsmartyr. Perse is obsessedand martyred by his vision, as Mallarme and Rimbaud were bytheirs. The poet's vocation is his drama. To transcendone's existence by participating in itmore profoundly is the poet's honor andsuffering. hether itbe Besangon orAden orWashington, thepoet'sexile is his solitude and his ethics.

WALLACE FowLE

A GUIDE TO THENEW CRITICISMFormerly Glossary of theNew Criticism4th printingbyWilliam Eltonisnowavailable. One dollarper copy.Studentrate:fifty cents per copy inmailings of ten or more.POETRY, 232 E. Erie Street, Chicago 11

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fowlie - st-john perse

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