Saint-John Perse
Saint-John Perse
Saint-John Persewas a French poet-diplomat, awarded the Nobel Prize for 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...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionDiplomat
Date of Birth31 May 1887
CountryFrance
age among atomic born cave divine existed forever grace human inherent lives men poet poetry religions spark spiritual
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.
wind gone followers
....followers of trails and of seasons, breakers of camp in the little dawn wind, seekers of watercourses over the wrinkled rind of the world, o seekers, o finders of reasons to be up and be gone....
girl baby world
A world to be born under your footsteps...
laziness menace inertia
The only menace is inertia.
break-through poetry habit
The poet is the one who breaks through our habits.
allies beauty goal itself poetry sole supreme ultimate union uses
Poetry allies itself with beauty - a supreme union - but never uses it as its ultimate goal or sole nourishment.
age poet
It is enough for a poet to be the guilty conscience of his age.
arc bewildered expanding expansion extended far frontiers hear infinite less pushed science theory
Astronomers have been bewildered by the theory of an expanding universe, but there is no less expansion in the moral infinite of the universe of man. As far as the frontiers of science are pushed back, over the extended arc of these frontiers one will hear the poet's hounds on the chase.
exists function initially mind modes poet proper truth
In truth, every creation of the mind is first of all 'poetic' in the proper sense of the word; and inasmuch as there exists an equivalence between the modes of sensibility and intellect, it is the same function that is exercised initially in the enterprises of the poet and the scientist.