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Alexis Leger (pronounced [ləʒe]; 31 May 1887 20 September 1975), better known by his pseudonym Saint-John Perse (French: [pɛʁs]; also Saint-Leger Leger),[1] was a French poet-diplomat, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, after which he lived primarily in the United States until 1967.

Saint-John Perse
BornAlexis Leger
(1887-05-31)31 May 1887
Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe
Died20 September 1975(1975-09-20) (aged 88)
Giens Peninsula, Provence, France
Pen nameSaint-John Perse
OccupationPoet, diplomat
Alma materUniversity of Bordeaux
Notable awardsNobel Prize in Literature
1960

Early life


Alexis Leger was born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. His great-grandfather, a solicitor, had settled in Guadeloupe in 1815. His grandfather and father were also solicitors; his father was also a member of the city council. The Leger family owned two plantations, one of coffee (La Joséphine) and the other of sugar (Bois-Debout).

In 1897, Hégésippe Légitimus, the first native Guadeloupan elected president of the Guadeloupe General Council, took office with a vindictive agenda towards colonists. The Leger family returned to metropolitan France in 1899 and settled in Pau. The young Alexis felt like an expatriate and spent much of his time hiking, fencing, riding horses and sailing in the Atlantic. He enrolled at Lycée Louis-Barthou and passed the baccalauréat with honours and began studying law at the University of Bordeaux. When his father died in 1907, the resulting strain on his family's finances led Leger to temporarily interrupt his studies, but he eventually completed his degree in 1910.

In 1904, he met the poet Francis Jammes at Orthez, who became a close friend. He frequented cultural clubs, and met Paul Claudel, Odilon Redon, Valery Larbaud and André Gide.[2] He wrote short poems inspired by the story of Robinson Crusoe (Images à Crusoe) and undertook a translation of Pindar. He published his first book of poetry, Éloges, in 1911.


Diplomatic service


In 1914, he joined the French diplomatic service, and spent some of his first years in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom. When World War I broke out, he was a press corps attaché for the government. From 1916 to 1921, he was secretary to the French embassy in Peking. He probably had a secret relationship with Madame Dan Pao Tchao (née Nellie Yu Roung Ling), although according to the latter, he was just using her for obtaining information from Peking high society.[3] In 1921 in Washington, DC, while taking part in a world disarmament conference, he was noticed by Aristide Briand, Prime Minister of France, who recruited him as his assistant. In Paris, he got to know the fellow intellectual poet Larbaud, who used his influence to get the poem Anabase [fr] published, written during Leger's stay in China.

Leger was warm to classical music and knew Igor Stravinsky, Nadia Boulanger, and Les Six.

Saint-John Perse attends the negotiations for the Munich Agreement on 29 September 1938. He stands behind Mussolini, right.
Saint-John Perse attends the negotiations for the Munich Agreement on 29 September 1938. He stands behind Mussolini, right.

While in China, Leger had written his first extended poem Anabase, publishing it in 1924 under the pseudonym "Saint-John Perse", which he employed for the rest of his life. He then published nothing for two decades, not even a re-edition of his debut book, as he believed it inappropriate for a diplomat to publish fiction. After Briand's death in 1932, Leger served as the General Secretary of the French Foreign Office (Quai d'Orsay) until 1940.

Within the Foreign Office he led the optimist faction that believed that Germany was unstable and that if Britain and France stood up to Hitler, he would back down.[4] He accompanied the French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier at the Munich Conference in 1938, where the cession of part of Czechoslovakia to Germany was agreed to. He was dismissed from his post right after the Fall of France in May 1940, as he was a known anti-Nazi. In mid-July 1940, Leger began a long exile in Washington, DC.


Later life


In 1940, the Vichy government dismissed him from the Légion d'honneur order and revoked his French citizenship (it was reinstated after the war). He was in some financial difficulty as an exile in Washington until Archibald MacLeish, the director of the Library of Congress and himself a poet, raised enough private donations to enable the library to employ him until his official retirement from the French civil service in 1947. He declined a teaching position at Harvard University.

During his American exile, he wrote his long poems Exil, Vents, Pluies, Neiges, Amers, and Chroniques. He remained in the US long after the end of the war. He travelled extensively, observing nature and enjoying the friendship of US Attorney General Francis Biddle and his spouse, philanthropist Beatrice Chanler,[5] and author Katherine Garrison Chapin. He was on good terms with the UN Secretary General and author Dag Hammarskjöld.

In 1957, American friends gave him a villa at Giens, Provence, France. He then split his time between France and the United States. In 1958, he married the American Dorothy Milburn Russell.

In 1960, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. After receiving the Nobel Prize, he wrote the long poems Chronique, Oiseaux and Chant pour un équinoxe and the shorter Nocturne and Sécheresse. In 1962, Georges Braque worked with master printmaker Aldo Crommelynck to create a series of etchings and aquatints, L'Ordre des Oiseaux,[6] which was published with the text of Perse's Oiseaux by Au Vent d'Arles.[7]

A few months before he died, Leger donated his library, manuscripts and private papers to Fondation Saint-John Perse, a research centre devoted to his life and work (Cité du Livre, Aix-en-Provence), which remains active to the present day. He died in his villa in Giens and is buried nearby.


Works



See also



Secondary literature in English


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Notes


  1. During his lifetime, he wanted to make believe that Saint-Leger Leger was his real name.
  2. They are some of the intellectual friendships over the course of his lifetime that are attested to by the correspondence published in his Œuvres Complètes.
  3. Meltz, Renaud (2008). Alexis Léger dit Saint-John Perse (in French). Paris: Éditions Flammarion. p. 200. ISBN 978-2-0812-0582-6.
  4. May, Ernest Strange Victory, New York: Hill & Wang, 2000, p. 150.
  5. Hunt, Gérard M., author. (March 2010). Rambling on Saint Martin : a witnessing. ISBN 978-1-4269-0045-7. OCLC 673142947. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. Grimes, William (January 29, 2009). "Aldo Crommelynck, Master Printer for Prominent Artists, Is Dead at 77". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-05-27.
  7. Mellby, Julie L. (November 30, 2011). "L'ordre des oiseaux". Highlights from the Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton University Library. Retrieved 2012-05-27.


{{Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 19511975}}


На других языках


- [en] Saint-John Perse

[es] Saint-John Perse

Marie-René-Alexis Saint-Leger Leger,[1] cuyo seudónimo fue Saint-John Perse (Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadalupe, 31 de mayo de 1887 - Hyères, Francia, 20 de septiembre de 1975) fue un poeta y diplomático francés, nacido en la isla americana de Guadalupe, entonces dependencia del Imperio Colonial Francés en las Antillas y, desde 1946, departamento de ultramar de la República Francesa. Formó parte del cuerpo diplomático francés de 1914 a 1940 y recibió el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1960.

[fr] Saint-John Perse

Alexis Leger, dit Saint-John Perse, né le 31 mai 1887 à Pointe-à-Pitre en Guadeloupe et mort le 20 septembre 1975 à Hyères dans le Var, est un poète, écrivain et diplomate français, lauréat du prix Nobel de littérature en 1960.

[ru] Сен-Жон Перс

Сен-Жон Перс (фр. Saint-John Perse; 31 мая 1887, Пуэнт-а-Питр, Гваделупа — 20 сентября 1975, департамент Вар, Франция) — литературный псевдоним французского поэта и дипломата Алекси́са Леже́ (или Сен-Леже́) (фр. Alexis Leger, фр. Alexis Saint-Leger Leger), лауреата Нобелевской премии по литературе (1960).



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