Guadeloupe (France) / All works
Poetry
Eloges and Other Poems
Éloges
Saint-John Perse · 1911
Synopsis
The collection brings back to life a childhood spent in the Antilles and the lost family plantation, which the poems paint in dense images as a vanished paradise. It brings together in particular “Images à Crusoé”, “Pour fêter une enfance” and the sequence that gives it its title. The house reclaimed by the forest and the figure of the father reappear in it, and nostalgia for the island turns into a longing for other shores.
Context
The poems first appeared in the Nouvelle Revue française in 1909 and 1910, then in a volume from the review's publishing house in 1911. The book opens what critics call the Antillean cycle of the work; its arrangement was revised over successive editions. Louise Varèse translated it into English in 1944, in New York, for Norton, with an introduction by Archibald MacLeish. From 1924 the author signed with the name Saint-John Perse, under which he received the Nobel Prize.
Who it is for
For reading the Guadeloupe of the plantations as dreamed by a child who became an exile, in the language of a great poet.
Prizes and reception
Translated in New York during the war, then crowned, with the rest of the work, by the 1960 Nobel Prize.
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