Product Description
According to Carol Rigolot, reading the work of Nobel Prize-winning poet Saint-John Perse (1887-1975) is not unlike eavesdropping on a telephone conversation in which only one side is audible. His poems are antiphonal, and even polyphonic, works where interlocutors are almost always reduced to anonymity. In this book, Rigolot analyzes the poet's multiple strategies of dialogue, capturing his conversations with a surprising range of people--from biblical figures and ancient Greek and Roman authors to artists as diverse as Dante and Shakespeare, Chateaubriand and Hugo, Audubon, Whitman, Poe, Baudelaire, Verne, Mallarmé, Gaughin, Rimbaud, Loti, Claudel, Valéry, Segalen, and Braque. ... Read more

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InOrphan Narratives, Valérie Loichot investigates the fiction and poetry of four writers who emerged from the postslavery plantation world of the Americas -- William Faulkner (USA), Édouard Glissant (Martinique), Toni Morrison (USA), and Saint-John Perse (Guadeloupe) -- to show how these descendants from slaves and from slaveholders wrote both in relation and in resistance to the violence of plantation slavery. She uses the term "orphan narrative" to capture the ways in which this violence severed the child, the text, and history from a traceable origin. Black or white, male or female, Antillean or American, these writers share a common inheritance and transnational connection through which their texts maintain familial, temporal, and narrative patterns without having any central authority figure.

The author specifically cites Saint-John Perse's Éloges (1911), Faulkner'sLight in August (1932), Morrison's S ong of Solomon (1977), and Glissant'sLa Case du commandeur (1981) as postslavery texts. Where the actual family is dismembered, these narrative accounts invent new familial links. Reciprocally, biological family ties endure despite the literal and discursive violence inflicted upon them.

Breaking new ground in trans-American studies by juxtaposing texts from the francophone Lesser Antilles and the U.S. South,Orphan Narratives will be a valuable addition to Caribbean, American, and postcolonial studies, not to mention its appeal to scholars and students of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse.

Product Description
This text provides a biographical and critical study of the work of Saint-Jean Pearse, linked with annotated editions of four of his collections: "Exil", "Pluies", "Neiges", and "Poeme a l'Etrangere". As well as French text, there are notes, commentary, bibliography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The collected works of one of the 20th century's most original poets
The poetry of Saint-John Perse is sui generis, and the immense amount of verse he produced over his long career is so varied in imagery and themes that describing his oeuvre as a whole within the space of a review here is not feasible. For descriptions of his poetry, look at the listings of his individual collections. In this review of the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade OEUVRES COMPLETES, I'll limit myself to describe what exactly is bound together here.

The volume is divded into three parts. The first, "Oeuvre Poetique", contains his poetry up to 1972. This means the publications "Eloges", "La Gloire des Rois", "Anabase", "Exil", "Vents", "Amers", "Chronique", "Oiseaux", "Chante par Celle qui fut la", and "Chant pour un equinoxe". His final poem "Nocturne" appeared too late to be included here.

The second part is Prose, divided into "Discours", "Hommages" and "Temoignages". In the first category is of course his remarkable Nobel lecture "Poesie". The hommages set Perse in the context of the wider arts scene of the 20th century, with figures like Stravinsky and T.S. Eliot.

The third part is the correspondence which Perse wished to preserve for posteriority. This in turn is divided into "Lettres de jeunesse", "Lettres d'Asie", and "Lettres d'exil". The collection "Lettres a l'etranger" is not found here, as Gallimard published it only in the 1980s. The letters range from inconsequential thank you notes to informative commentaries on Perse's life and his poetics. One does regret that some are highly redacted, however. At the end of the book is a helpful commentary on the hommages and the correspondence.

Though this volume is not truly "Oeuvres completes" in that it's missing a couple of volumes, this is nonetheless a fantastic investment for anyone who loves French poetry. The book as ordered from Amazon's sister site in France is considerably less expensive than collecting every volume--or even just the mature poetry--individually, and like all entries in the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade it's a beautiful production with fine paper, lovely typesetting and a flexible leather binding.

The collected works of one of the 20th century's most original poets
The poetry of Saint-John Perse is sui generis, and the immense amount of verse he produced over his long career is so varied in imagery and themes that describing his oeuvre as a whole within the space of a review here is not feasible. For descriptions of his poetry, look at the listings of his individual collections. In this review of the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade OEUVRES COMPLETES, I'll limit myself to describe what exactly is bound together here.

The volume is divded into three parts. The first, "Oeuvre Poetique", contains his poetry up to 1972. This means the publications "Eloges", "La Gloire des Rois", "Anabase", "Exil", "Vents", "Amers", "Chronique", "Oiseaux", "Chante par Celle qui fut la", and "Chant pour un equinoxe". His final poem "Nocturne" appeared too late to be included here.

The second part is Prose, divided into "Discours", "Hommages" and "Temoignages". In the first category is of course his remarkable Nobel lecture "Poesie". The hommages set Perse in the context of the wider arts scene of the 20th century, with figures like Stravinsky and T.S. Eliot.

The third part is the correspondence which Perse wished to preserve for posteriority. This in turn is divided into "Lettres de jeunesse", "Lettres d'Asie", and "Lettres d'exil". The collection "Lettres a l'etranger" is not found here, as Gallimard published it only in the 1980s. The letters range from inconsequential thank you notes to informative commentaries on Perse's life and his poetics. One does regret that some are highly redacted, however. At the end of the book is a helpful commentary on the hommages and the correspondence.

Though this volume is not truly "Oeuvres completes" in that it's missing a couple of volumes, this is nonetheless a fantastic investment for anyone who loves French poetry. The book as ordered from Amazon's sister site in France is considerably less expensive than collecting every volume--or even just the mature poetry--individually, and like all entries in the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade it's a beautiful production with fine paper, lovely typesetting and a flexible leather binding. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A passionate defence of the centrality of poetry in human life
This Nobel Speech is totally dedicated to a description of the role of the Poet, and poetic intuition. Here the poet is arguing for the centrality of his own form of creation.
These are his words.

" But more than a mode of perception, poetry is above all a way of life, of integral life. The poet existed among the cave men; he will exist among men of the atomic age, for he is an inherent part of man. Even religions have been born from the need for poetry, which is a spiritual need, and it is through the grace of poetry that the divine spark lives forever in the human flint. When mythologies vanish, the divine finds refuge and perhaps even continuation in poetry. As in the processions of antiquity the bearers of bread yielded their place to the bearers of torches, so now in the domain of social order and of the immediacies of human need it is the poetic imagination that is still illuminating the lofty passion of peoples in quest of light. Look at man walking proudly under the load of his eternal task; look at him moving along under his burden of humanity, when a new humanism opens before him, fraught with true universality and wholeness of soul. Faithful to its task, which is the exploration of the mystery of man, modern poetry is engaged in an enterprise the pursuit of which concerns the full integration of man."

The language may be a bit flowery, the claims for Poetry in enhancing knowledge may too be somewhat exaggerated. But above all this is a statement of belief in Poetry and Poetry's 'eternal value'.

... Read more