biography
| name: |
Saint-John Perse
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| |
pseudonym of Marie-René-Auguste-Alexis-Saint-Léger Léger
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pronunciation:
[sã zhõ pairs
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1887–1975)
|
| biography:
| Poet and diplomat, born in St Léger des Feuilles, Guadeloupe. He studied at Bordeaux, and after many adventures entered the French foreign ministry (1904), serving in China and France. He became secretary-general (1933), was dismissed, and deprived of French citizenship by the Vichy government (1940), and fled to the USA, where he became a consultant on French literature in the Library of Congress. The best known of his earlier works, influenced by Symbolism, is the long poem Anabase (1924). Later works were more personal and pure, appealing to a small public; they include Exile (1942), Pluies (1944), Amers (1957) and Chroniques (1960). He returned to France in 1957, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960. |
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