Book Tips - Saint-John Perse

Saint John Perse studied Literature, Law and Medicine. He was sent on a political mission to China in 1917 and in 1922 attended a disarmament conference in Washington. He was appointed the permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs by the government of France. I like and recommend his poem Anabase. Anabase seems to have been brewed in a chemistry lab because its distinctive feature is its power of uniting two diverse kinds of poetry; the epic and the lyric - apparently incompatible by all estimates and precedence. The hero of the poem, the Warrior Prince, rides a see-saw of desires, thoughts and moods ... his own and those of his followers. The poem is about migration of people and imagination alike. A great poem of the 20th century.
/Dilbag Firdausi, India

It's written in a high spirited Language!
/Bert Blom, Denmark

This great poem was written in Perse's exile in USA as many others of his poems were. It’s a poem to the Earth, about Earth, man and time connected in the great age which is a key word to the poem. We are flying out to the space on the winged words of Perse and we are looking on our-selves, on life from birth to death, and we are enjoying the flight with words we will never forget. 'Chronique' was - together with 'Amers' and 'Vents' - one of the reasons why Perse received the Nobel Prize in 1960 ...
/Bert Blom, Denmark

Some of the greatest poetry in the world - if not the greatest!
/Bert Blom, Denmark