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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Anabase was the first of Saint-John Perse's poems to be widely translated into other languages, as well as the first to receive widespread critical attention. Yet, despite several recent attempts at detailed exegesis, the poem remains baffling in many of its details and even in some of its more general implications. Close scrutiny of the text of the poem is, of course, the most natural and legitimate way of coming to grips with its meaning, but the more recent commentaries on Anabase too often prove that close textual examination alone is not an adequate safeguard against runaway interpretation. The present study, therefore, seeks to supplement close scrutiny of the text with references to other of Saint-John Perse's writings, especially to certain of his pronouncements on the nature of poetry in general and, most particularly, to his declaration of intent in writing Anabase.
1 The two most detailed, and also most recent, exegeses of Anabase are: Bernard Weinberg, “L'Anabase de Saint-John Perse,” in Saggi e ricerche di letteratura francese I (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1960), pp. 209–268, republished in English translation under the title “Saint-John Perse's Anabase” in Chicago Review (Winter-Spring 1962), pp. 75–124; and Monique Parent, “La Poésie de la puissance et de l'aventure humaines ou le Poète parmi les hommes,” in Saint-John Perse et quelques devanciers: Etudes sur le poème en prose (Klincksieck, 1960), pp. 187–212. (The first few pages, 187–191, are devoted to Amitié du prince, the remainder to Anabase.)
Among the very numerous shorter commentaries on the poem, three of the earliest and best are: Lucien Fabre, “Anabase” in Les Nouvelles Littéraires (23 août 1924), p. 4; Valéry Larbaud, “Préface pour une traduction russe à'Anabase” in La Nouvelle Revue française (janvier 1926), pp. 64–67; and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Emancipation du lyrisme français,” in Commerce (été 1929), unpaginated. (German text first appeared in May 1929 issue of Neue Schweizer Rundschau under the title “Einige Worte als Vorrede zu Saint-John Perse Anabase.”) All three of the preceding articles have been frequently reproduced. English translations of all three are to be found conveniently grouped together in an appendix to the second British edition of T. S. Eliot's translation of Anabase, i.e., Anabasis / a poem by St.-John Perse / translated by T. S. Eliot (Faber and Faber: 1959). The English translations of the articles are not always accurate, however.
Almost all the translations of Anabase into various languages are preceded by introductory articles, usually of minor interest. Most of these are listed in the appendix to the English translation just referred to. Eliot's preface to his original English translation, first published by Faber and Faber in 1930 and reproduced in all subsequent editions, is among the most significant of these.
The numerous books and articles devoted to the general consideration of Perse's work all contain commentaries on Anabase. Among the more extensive and controversial of these are the indicated passages in: Renato Poggioli, “The Poetry of St.-J. Perse,” in Yale French Studies (Fall-Winter 1948), pp. 12–19; Maurice Saillet, Saint-John Perse: Poète de gloire (Mercure de France, 1962), pp. 62–76; and Alain Bosquet, Saint-John Perse (Seghers, 1953), Collection “Poètes d'aujourd'hui,” no. 35, pp. 32–43.
All quotations from Anabase in the present article are based on the text as found in Saint-John Perse: Œuvre poétique I / Eloges. La Gloire des rois / Anabase. Exil / Edition revue et corrigée (Gallimard, 1960), pp. 119–162.
2 Le Figaro littéraire, 5 novembre 1960. The entire text of this article has been reproduced in Une Journée avec Saint-John Perse (Liège: Editions Dynamo, 1961), 14 pp., and in Jacques Charpier, Saint-John Perse (Gallimard, 1962), pp. 203–208, under the title “Une Journée à la villa ‘Les Vigneaux’ (Entretien avec Pierre Mazars).”
3 The Leader mentions Jabal (Canto iii), Ilion (Canto iv), Saba, i.e., Sheba (Canto v), and the singing statue of Memnon (Canto vi). All but the last are in Asia, and the statue of Memnon was at Egyptian Thebes, a site visited by several Asian conquerors. Monsieur Leger has kindly furnished the information that Jabal refers to a province of medieval Iran. The “Mers Mortes” referred to twice in Canto v could be any of the numerous salt lakes that are scattered across Asia from Palestine to the Gobi Desert.
4 See Bosquet, p. 105.
5 I am here following a suggestion of Fabre.
6 The phrase is a peculiarly arresting one. I think it is the unusual occurrence of scandale that is pivotal here. Its primary meaning of a shocking or indecent act, if present at all, is certainly attenuated here.
[Subsequent to completion of the present article, Monsieur Leger himself supplied information indicating that scandale and the allied esclandre are often used by him without pejorative intent, but rather with the meaning of éclat. Perhaps an English equivalent such as “sudden and brilliant disclosure” may catch something of this rather special use of the word.]
7 “Une Lettre de Saint-John Perse,” The Berkeley Review (Winter 1956), p. 40.
8 “Hommage à la mémoire de Rabindranath Tagore,” in La Nouvelle Revue française (octobre 1961), p. 868.
9 See quotation on p. 329 from the Mazars interview. The word commerce as used in this passage became the title of the exclusively non-commercial review sponsored by the Princess Caetani in the 1920's. See Francis Biddle, A Casual Past (Doubleday & Co., 1961), p. 328. The Summer 1924 issue of Commerce contains the first printing of Saint-John Perse's Amitié du Prince.
10 Poétique de St.-John Perse (Gallimard, 1954), p. 92.
11 See Mircea Eliade, Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase (Payot, 1951), pp. 45–75.
12 Saint-John Perse's poem Amers, the full text of which first appeared in 1957, is a vast celebration of the sea “sous la vocation de l'éloquence.” See especially the section entitled “Chceur.” Even the earlier Exil (1942) exploits the sea as a source of eloquence.
13 I am indebted to Professor Leon Roudiez of Columbia for pointing out that “le malingre” does not mean a malingerer, i.e., one who feigns illness, but simply a person susceptible to illnesses, a weakling. This detail seems to have escaped T. S. Eliot, who has perpetuated the erroneous “malingerer” in all four versions of his translation of Anabase.
14 Monsieur Leger kindly supplied the information concerning the offering of the quail and the significance of the flask-merchant.
15 In modern usage the expression is preserved only in its negative aspect: “Il m'a dessillé les yeux.” That is, “He opened my eyes (to the real facts).” Here, as elsewhere, Saint-John Perse has exploited the forgotten concrete meanings of an expression that has become an abstract fixed phrase.
16 “Oiseaux,” in La Nouvelle Revue française (1er décembre 1962), p. 969.
17 Among the “choses de la paix” are “les messages échangés sur des lamelles d'or”—another unlikely detail that is hard fact. In his famous letter to Archibald MacLeish, Saint-John Perse wrote: “De tous les Musées d'Europe que j'ai dû traverser par courtoisie (la politesse n'est-elle pas encore la meilleure formule de liberté?) j'ai gardé peu de souvenirs: ... à Varsovie, une lettre princière sur feuille d'or battu ...” (“Fragments d'une lettre privée de Saint-John Perse à Archibald MacLeish [1942],” in Les Cahiers de la Pléiade, été-automne 1950, p. 155).
18 Information regarding the “cancers du camphre et de la corne” was supplied by Monsieur Leger.
19 For the importance of horse and sheep sacrifices among Asiatic peoples see Eliade, Le Chamanisme . . ., as well as Chapter xiv of Miss M. A. Czaplicka's Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), and Chapter ii of Owen Lattimore's Mongol Journeys (Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1941).
20 Included in this particular group are references to the destruction of albino animals and to ritual cleansing by fire of places contaminated by death. One would rather have expected these in the preceding list.
21 In a letter written to Gide in 1911, Leger makes the following mention: “Les Botanistes vous ont-ils dit encore: que c'est ce grand palmier [Orcodoxa], le plus beau de la race que l'on voue à la mort en allant lui trancher, pour le manger haché en une salade extraordinairement bonne, le cœur, c'est-à-dire les feuilles encore blanches et tendres renfermées au principe de la touffe? Et deux mois après on peut faire une belle récolte de 'vers palmistes,' ces grosses larves d'un coléoptère ('calandra palmarum') qui pond en pleine moelle. On les mange vivants ou légèrement passés au feu: en salade toujours, avec du jus de citron, du piment et du sel. C'est bon.” (Letter partially reproduced in André Gide's “Don d'un arbre,” in Les Cahiers de la Pléiade, été-automne 1950, p. 26.) Gide's printed text gives “Oreodoxa,” a misprint for “Oreodoxa” from Greek “oreos” (mountain) and “doxa” (glory). See R. P. Düss, Flare phanérogamique des Antilles françaises (Mâcon: Protat frères, 1897), p. 487. The Oreodoxa (cabbage-palm) is now usually referred to as “Roystonea.”
22 The “songe” is surely the “songe, notre aînesse” of Canto i. And the refusal to participate in building, likewise, goes back to the First Canto: “Je ne tracerai point de grands / quartiers de villes” etc. The ancient dream is land that may be ploughed, land from which new crops may spring, new manifestations of “la ressource humaine.”
23 This “three-level” interpretation of the poem is propounded in both of the two recent long essays on Anabase, though not in identical terms: “Bien entendu, certains éléments d'une fable, d'une intrigue, entrent en cause; on pourrait même résumer brièvement cette intrigue: 'Un aventurier, après avoir reçu une invitation à l'aventure et après avoir vaincu ses propres hésitations, part pour la conquête de terres nouvelles; il les conquiert et il accomplit sa mission civilisatrice; mais il est mécontent du repos, et le cycle invitation-départ-marche-étape se renouvelle constamment.' Il serait possible aussi, en passant au plan métaphorique, de proposer un résumé parallèle, qui serait celui de l'action de 1 âme humaine: 'l'âme après avoir été réveillée par des promesses d'activité fructueuse et après avoir vaincu ses habitudes d'inactivité, entreprend de nouvelles conquêtes humaines; elle les accomplit et atteint des hauteurs intellectuelles et spirituelles jusque-là inconnues; mais loin de vouloir y rester, elle repart toujours (après des périodes de repos) vers un idéal supérieur.' En des termes également métaphoriques, on pourrait appeler Anabase 'une épopée del'âme humaine.'Mais ily aurait même une troisième 'action' à tracer, et ce sertait celle de l'émotion de la joie à travers sa création, son développement, et son apaisement: 'La possibilité que I âme puisse atteindre une expression toujours meilleure soulève chez le lecteur l'émotion de la joie; à chaque nouvelle réalisation de cette possibilité, la joie augmente; et malgré des alliages d'autres émotions, elle s'installe chez lui sous une forme définitive et pure'.” (Weinberg, p. 266.) Weinberg goes on to develop this three-level interpretation
at some length. Compare it to the declarations of Monique Parent: “les trois thèmes dont nous avons parlé: celui de la conquête militaire, celui de l'aventure poétique, celui de l'aventure humaine” (p. 205). By “le thème de l'aventure humaine” Parent means “la marche . . . de l'ascension lente de l'humanité vers la civilisation” (p. 195). The “aventure poétique” is explained as “cette conquête progressive et très réelle que le poète, homme exemplaire, mène pour posséder son âme, acquérir un pouvoir d'expression qui traduise fidèlement sa personnalité” (p. 193). These parallelisms are developed with considerable ingenuity.
In a similar vein, Alain Bosquet writes in his most recent essay on Perse: “le poème ne doit pas traduire ce qui est extérieur à lui. Il a une fonction, qui est de mener au but le sujet de son choix: ce faisant, il est indispensable qu'il en soit lui-même transformé et qu'il transforme le poète. L'expédition [d'Anabase] ne vaut que s'il y a, parallèles, et toutes proches, une expédition du verbe et une expédition du poète. . . . il s'agit pour le lecteur, de passer sans cesse de l'histoire racontée à l'histoire du poème, et de celle-ci à l'histoire du poète.” (Verbe et Vertige: Situations de la poésie, Hachette, 1961, pp. 141–142.)
“Une Lettre de Saint-John Perse,” p. 86.
25 T. S. Eliot, fn. 1, “Preface,” p. 10.
26 P. 4.
27 In a date-book of Adrienne Monnier under “Mai, 1940,” one finds the following entries: “Mardi 14.— . . . Pour remercier Hoppenot, Benjamin va lui faire présent d'Anabase, l‘édition originale que Rilke lui avait envoyée tout près de mourir en lui demandant de traduire ce poème qu'il n'avait plus le temps de traduire lui-même. Jeudi 16.— . . . Vu l‘Anabase de Benjamin. Porte en trois endroits des essais de traduction écrits par Rilke au crayon.” (Trois Agendas d'Adrienne Monnier. Texte établi et annoté par Maurice Saillet, Firmin-Didot, 1960, hors commerce, p. 27.)