CHAPTER 1

History in Saint-John Perse [1953]

All the critics have observed that in commingling history with hisworks Saint-John Perse has entered into an area long scorned by poetry.Indeed, in the eyes of contemporary poets—who evince only disdain forwhat is not pure consciousness, that "closed palace of mirrors, made fecundby a solitary lamp," or who, on the contrary, seek their marvels inthat which escapes this consciousness and which does not rise to the levelof concepts—what is more lacking in its apparent abundance, or evenmore suspicious, than the historical event? Should we not be surprised,then, to see Paul Valéry and André Breton—these two stars whose rivalforces of attraction appear impotent here—come to agreement in praisingthe qualities of an author as indifferent to the art poétique of the formeras to the mots d'ordre of the latter? Of course, not everyone has welcomedPerse so warmly. Some doubted, as Denis de Rougemont reminds us, thata "pure delight" would be able to "stand the test of time." What some sawas an enigma or a curiosity, and what led others to suspect Perse's intentions,has only been the subject of passing remarks. It is nonetheless clearthat one cannot determine Perse's place in contemporary poetry, even provisionally,so long as we are unable to understand precisely what it meansto speak of a "historical presence" in his work.

Perse does not write "historical poems." In his work, history does notfurnish a "subject," that is, a specific historical event that provides the settingfor his poems. Anabase seems to constitute an exception, since the entirework appears to be situated in the remote past. But history is in needof precise points of reference, and critics have endeavored—in vain—todetermine the spatial and temporal identity of the world described by thepoet. The works of the second period, which begins with Exil in 1942,could be the subject of inquiries as fruitless as those concerning Anabase,if their autobiographical details did not appear to provide verifiable referencepoints. Thus we know that the "subject" of these poems is present inthe same manner as in Anabase. It is therefore the form—that is to say, theessence—of this poetry that is affected by history.

When one selects a page at random from the poetry of the second period,it is apparent that the past presents itself in multiple ways: in the useof archaic terms and turns of phrase, and above all in the constant usage ofhistorical or legendary images and metaphors:

And a bird of pink ash, which was a burning ember all summer, suddenly lightsup the crypts of winter, like the Phasian bird in the Books of Hours, Year OneThousand.

(Et un oiseau de cendre rose, qui fut de braise tout l'été, illumine soudain lescryptes de l'hiver, comme l'oiseau du Phase aux livres de l'An Mille.)

The second part of the image, its explicative part, is precisely the one thatcontains the larger share of the unknown; the first bird, which one moreword would have allowed us to identify, is suddenly compared to a secondbird, about which we know next to nothing. We were almost confidentabout the bird, and then it inherits a bit of the mystery and anguish associatedwith the year one thousand. Perse's historical image thus plays exactlythe opposite role as that of the historian. For neither can the historiando without images. If his work is not bejeweled with images, it is becausemost of them are implied. The second part of these images is always takenfrom the present, a present that a convention—which is most often tacit—allowsus to consider as perfectly transparent, and even the source of a lightthat can always accompany us in the exploration of the shadowy regions ofthe past. Thus, the historian always assimilates the medieval bird to a modernbird—an assimilation without which no historical knowledge wouldbe possible. It is the opposite that occurs in Perse's poems. One could almostspeak of an "anti-image" and of its "obfuscating function." The pastcasts its shadow over the poem.

Could one not even be more precise and say that the past casts itsshadow over the present? Indeed, we know that the subject of the poemsof the second period is contemporary. The "bird of pink ash" is an Americanbird. Such a formula could obviously not be applied to Anabase, butour desire to reach conclusions that are valid for Perse's entire oeuvre mustnot blind us to the differences made possible—if not probable—by thelong time span separating the two periods of Perse's poetic production.Thus, without invoking Anabase, we will endeavor to show that the...