“always be thought of as outside the boundaries of space and time, as ruled by the absolute”
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Saint-John Perse
Alexis Leger, better known by his pseudonym Saint-John Perse, was a French poet, writer and diplomat, awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time".
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culture · French poet and diplomat (1887–1975) · poet · translator · diplomat · writer · also Saint-John Perse, Alexis Léger, Perse
Born 31 May 1887 · Died 20 September 1975 · Q132684
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2026· 10 entries
“...la langue française le seul refuge imaginable, le seul lieu où je puisse me tenir pour y rien comprendre”
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“The game is lost. France is alone against three dictators. Great Britain is not ready and the United States has not even amended the neutrality act. Once again, the democracies have arrived too late”
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“Every effort to bring them [the Italians] back to us is destined to fail; it will only encourage them in their two-faced policy, leading them to name the highest price for their assets and making them value even more highly the benefits the Axis could offer them”
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“s request to settle the Danzig crisis peacefully by renouncing the German-Polish nonaggression pact; that the tone of Hitler”
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“integration into the entente between the great world powers”
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“unqualified approval of Chinese claims and methods”
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“s special rights in China, but wrote that Japan was by far the more dangerous of the two. St. Léger wrote that ever since the mid-1920s Japan had been”
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“s other colonies in the Pacific, and its special rights in China, especially the French Concession in Shanghai, were profitable and worth defending against Japan. He also wrote that the main danger to French Indochina was the”
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“had no need of duplicity or violence to win....He hated equally stupidity, cowardice, clumsiness and vulgarity....He hunted with the lightest arms and fished with the finest lines....He brought the refinement of the artist.”
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2023· 1 entry
MutualArt.com: Saint-John Perse
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1992· 1 entry
In the garden of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris
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1975· 9 entries
Died 1975-09-20.
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“Na piasku waszych brzegów dojrzewał pęd salikornu,O smaku ciała, szczęśliwego pomiędzy szczęśliwymi,A ziemia okrzyknięta na porowatych wybrzeżach, między żarłocznym cierniem i żywą różąPiany, była nam rzeczą lekką i rzeczą bardzo cenną,Jak w snach bielizny kobiece, jak w snach bielizny ducha.”
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“Et la grande robe prosodique dont nous nous revêtons… (fr.)”
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“J’ai fondé sur l’abîme et l’embrun et la fumée des sables. Je me coucherai dans les citernes et dans les vaisseaux creux, En tous lieux vains et fades où gît le goût de la grandeur. (fr.)”
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“Dans la promiscuité divine et la dépravation de l’homme chez les dieux… (fr.)”
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“Nous t’évoquons enfin toi-même, hors de la strophe du Poète. Qu’il n’y ait plus pour nous, entre la foule et toi, l’éclat insoutenable du langage. (fr.)”
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“„Pragnę! Pragnę dla was rzeczy niezwykłych”: krzyk ptaka morskiego w miłosnym zapamiętaniu! I już rzeczy nie mają znaczenia na ziemi jarmarcznej… Dla nas Kontynent morza, nie ziemia weselnych godów w zapachu kozieradki; dla nas swobodna przestrzeń wód, a nie zbocze na którym żyje człowiek oślepiony przez udomowione gwiazdy.”
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“Ils m’ont appelé l’Obscur et j’habitais l’éclat. (fr.)”
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“Nous qui mourrons peut-être un jour disons l’homme immortel au foyer de l’instant.L’Usurpateur se lève sur sa chaise d’ivoire. L’amant se lave de ses nuits.Et l’homme au masque d’or se dévêt de son or en l’honneur de la Mer. (fr.)”
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1963· 1 entry
Robert Fitzgerald in 1966, Roger Little in 1967, Derek Mahon in 2002)
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1962· 1 entry
Georges Braque worked with master printmaker Aldo Crommelynck to create a series of etchings and aquatints, L'Ordre des Oiseaux, which was published with the text of Perse's Oiseaux by Au Vent d'Arles
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1961· 1 entry
The American poet Wallace Fowlie praised St
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1960· 5 entries
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time.
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Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature (1960).
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Awarded Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour (1960).
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“Opis: ostatnie zdanie przemówienia noblowskiego, 10 grudnia 1960.”
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Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
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1959· 1 entry
Awarded Grand prix national des Lettres (1959).
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1958· 2 entries
Extracts by George Huppert in 1956, Samuel E
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Married the American Dorothy Milburn Russell
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1957· 1 entry
American friends gave him a villa at Giens, Provence, France
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1955· 2 entries
Hammarskjöld visited Beijing to meet the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to negotiate the freedom of 15 United States Air Force pilots shot down during the Korean War who were still imprisoned by the Chinese in violation of t
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“Opis: w liście do Berkeley Review, 1955.”
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1950· 1 entry
The prestigious Cahiers de la Pléiade devoted an entire issue to St
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1942· 2 entries
“Opis: przemówienie poświęcone Aristide’owi Briandowi, 3 lipca 1942.”
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“La France est moi-même et tout moi-même”
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1940· 1 entry
The Vichy government dismissed him from the Légion d'honneur order and revoked his French citizenship (it was reinstated after the war)
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1939· 1 entry
“there were eighty chances in a hundred”
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1938· 2 entries
Had made it "impossible" for France to face Germany on its own
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Where the timetable of the cession of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany was agreed to
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1936· 1 entry
“It was the London conference of March 1936, not Munich, which must bear the responsibility for Hitler”
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1935· 2 entries
Awarded Commander of the Legion of Honour (1935).
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And he tended to take a strong pro-Czechoslovak line
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1934· 1 entry
“The structure of Locarno was for a decade our only cornerstone in Europe; the only one which inspired the respect of Hitler by the precision and strictness of its mechanism, the only one which felt obliged to acknowledge officially and repeatedly until the moment which he discerned the inner weaknesses of the beneficiaries of the system”
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1933· 2 entries
Awarded Officer of the Legion of Honour (1933).
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Career landmark: Secretary General of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry (1933–1940).
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1932· 1 entry
Leger served as the General Secretary (number one civil servant) of the French Foreign Office (Quai d'Orsay) until 1940
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1931· 1 entry
The Chinese delegation at the League of Nations had accused Japan of aggression by conquering Manchuria, which led the League to appoint a commission under Lord Lytton to determine if Japan had committed aggression or no
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1930· 1 entry
Roger Little in 1970; revised and corrected edition, often referred to as the "third edition," was published by Faber and Faber in 1959)
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1928· 1 entry
Louise Varèse in 1944, Eleanor Clark and Roger Little in 1965, King Bosley in 1970)
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1925· 1 entry
“the boldness of the dream...tempered...by the dictates of common sense”
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1924· 2 entries
Awarded Knight of the Legion of Honour (1924).
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Under the pseudonym "Saint-John Perse", which he employed for the rest of his life
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1921· 2 entries
Described Beijing as "the astronomical capital of the world, outside of space, outside of time, and ruled by the absolute"
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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
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1914· 1 entry
Joined the French diplomatic service, and spent some of his first years in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom
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1912· 1 entry
When he, Larbaud, and Gide were elected to the John Donne Club of London, which sought to encourage innovation in poetry
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1907· 1 entry
The resulting strain on his family's finances led Leger to temporarily interrupt his studies, but he eventually completed his degree in 1910
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1904· 1 entry
Met the poet Francis Jammes at Orthez, who became a close friend
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1887· 1 entry
Born 1887-05-31.
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