Saint-John Perse and Denis Devlin: A "Compagnonnage"

Saint-John Perse and Denis Devlin: A "Compagnonnage"Author(s): Roger LittleSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 193-200Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25477234 .

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Roger Little

Saint-John Perse and Denis Devlin: A

Compagnonnage

Washington, D.C.: Second World War. Two poet-diplomats meet

far from their homelands. Translations emerge and a friendship is

sealed.

Denis Devlin arrived there from New York in 1940 as First

Secretary to the Irish Legation. Alexis Leger took the same road

in January 1941, but with a humble post only, as adviser to the

Library of Congress, his diplomatic career having been brought to

a sudden halt in the panic of indecision and recrimination of Paris

in May 1940. Devlin, his junior by twenty-one years having been born in 1908, had read and admired the poetry of Saint-John Perse

in the nineteen-thirties. Anabase, of 1924, was compulsory reading in certain Paris circles, and notably in that of Adrienne Monnier, at the Maison des Amis du Livre, frequented by a cosmopolitan group which included James Joyce, who may have provided the

starting-point for Perse's pseudonym.1 The poem was not reprinted in France from 1925 until after the war, on Leger's instructions, but initiates knew the reason for such discretion, and it was only with his exile that Leger the public servant, permanent secretary at

the French Foreign Office, felt able to let his alter ego Saint-John Perse have free rein.

The poems which broke the silence ? "Exil", "Pluies", "Neiges"

and "Po?me ? l'Etrang?re" ? were those which Devlin was to trans

late. They mark a turning-point in Perse's poetic trajectory, the

first examples in his oeuvre of large-scale poems with long lines

adapted to the scope and rhythms of the elemental forces evoked.

The new style blossoms in the later Vents (70 pages) and Amers

(130 pages); for although Anabase is long (25 pages) it is made up of more varied fragments than the later works, and juxtaposed in

more impenetrably elliptical fashion. The Exil tetralogy, no less

profound and beautiful, retains both poignance and accessibility, and its central theme, "l'?ternit? de l'exil dans la condition

humaine" ( C 576)2, would have appealed to the translator's own deep sense of alienation.

The meeting of two minds may best be traced here not through

1. See my hypothesis regarding Saint-John Perse's pseudonym in La Nouvelle Revue

Fran?aise, May 1978.

2. The reference C followed by page numbers is to Saint-John Perse, uvres com

pletes (Paris: Gallimard, Biblioth?que de la Pl?iade, 1972.)

193



IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW

IV

Reports made fco the Aed?le; confessions made at our gates. . . .

Be my death, happiness! A new language offered from ail sides! a fresh breathing about

the world Like the very breath of the spirit, like the thing itself proffered,

^F^Vy^f.Jl \KU}& as essetice> $mh w^n tne spring, its birth:

AW~jf^TaSpe?om of the salubrious god on our faces, certain

breeze in flower

Skimming the blueing grass, outrunning the far, far-off moving

dissidences!

. . . Most suspect Nurses, O Sowers of spores, seeds and light

VUhaîuglw^did^ you betray to us,

Like tht beautiful beings at storms' foot stoned on the cross of

their wings? ^ ^ ^^ ^^_ ^ ^ ^

^jkyMt^j^^ Uk What was it you haunted so far.lwe are

rnau?^cycir?amâwary4fi^

And of what other state do you speak so lowyW.a?^~*m?e~-*a

Did you abandon your beds to traffic in holy things among us,

O Simomacsr

In the ires h intercourse of the spray\where the sky ripens its

.triste of .arum-lily,and neve, l/^^ ^

Youm*?$3-^ and in thefWiw-of great -?r i

/t?pfwdawns, ?*.^lJ? ??-.?i./ ?

On the pure vel i um jâfce&cy by d?vineîmiftgryou will tell us,

O Rains! what new language the great uncial of gveen M re

was hunting out for you.

194



SAINT-JOHN PERSE AND DENIS DEVLIN: A COMPAGNONNAGE

external biography but through the different states of the trans

lations that have been preserved. We are particularly fortunate in

this case, the more so because Denis Devlin is, with Robert Fitz

gerald, the most accomplished and sensitive of Perse's translators

into English. Other translators either lacked poetic sensibility ? or

its realisation ? to some degree (as must be said for example of

Hugh Chisholm, the translator of Vents) or imposed their own

poetic idiom to the detriment or partial exclusion of the original

(as is the case with T.S. Eliot's Anabasis). The fine balance of

modesty and creativity achieved with Devlin's versions was eviden

tly appreciated by Perse, whose command of English, already con

siderable as a trained diplomat, increased as his years of exile went

by. The recently established Fondation Saint-John Perse at Aix-en

Provence is a treasure-house of documents by and pertaining to

the French Nobel prize winner. It contains, in respect of Devlin, in

addition to all the published versions of the four poems, several

letters he wrote to Perse and offprints of 'Rains' (Pluies) and 'Snows'

(Neiges) annotated in pencil and crayon by the French poet. I have

also, however, in preparing the present preliminary study, had the

benefit of consulting some of Devlin's own archives, generously lent by his literary executor. Since these papers include a much

corrected typescript of the translation of Pluies and the pamphlet of the same poem, published by the Sewanee Review in April 1945,

heavily annotated by both poet and translator, I have chosen to

concentrate on this poem for my examples. They are, I submit,

entirely typical of the cooperative effort that produced a version

both accurate and sensitive, instinct with vital rhythms echoing the gathering, then bursting, then receding storm. It is as if Devlin's

earlier experiments with long lines of verse (as in "Bacchanal" in

Intercessions) had prepared the way for these versions. In a private letter to Alexis Leger, the poet Allen T?te, then editor of the

Sewanee Review, wrote: "Some days ago Denis sent me his trans

lation of Pluies which I hope pleases you as much as it does me. It

seems to me from every point of view one of the very finest

modern translations from the French. It is a fine English poem, and it seems to me to achieve this quality with very little sacrifice

of literal meaning." When Perse recalls the joint effort, he does so in brief but affec

tionate terms: "Le po?te irlandais Denis Devlin fut le premier tra

3. Dated 24 July 1944, the letter is now held at the Fondation Saint John Perse, Aix-en-Provence. I am grateful to its Director M. Pierre Guerre, and to the British

Academy for making it possible to study there during a term's sabbatical leave from the University of Southampton.

195




ducteur en anglais d'Exil. Il fut amicalement aid? dans sa t?che par l'auteur" ( C 1112, cf, p. 1294). Devlin puts flesh on that skel

etal recollection:

Perse, discussing his poetry, elucidating meanings in the light of

problems raised during translations, was completely detached.

He proceeded as though one was faced with a Latin text in

whose composition he had had no part, or better, a fine frag ment rescued from the monuments of one of those mysterious unnamed civilisations which just come to the surface in his

verse. Meanings were explored and explicated almost solely

through grammar or linguistics; the stuff of poetry was lan

guage, and Perse had little patience with interpretations con

ducted under references strictly speaking extraneous to poetry, such as anthropology or archaeology. It is doubtless true that

much of the fascination of his work has its source in those

sciences whose developments, in the last two generations, have given a special quality to the modern consciousness; but

all this is absorbed and triumphantly contained within his

poetics, and this is one way in which he presents to us the

unique figure of the poet. The poet, master and keeper of

language, that most characteristic discovery of man, that mark

by which you will know him; this is the figure Perse incar

nated, as, like the priest of an ancient, secret and hieratic sect, he officiated with words reborn. Such a word would be shown to have its modern French meaning reinforced or commented

upon by the oaken Latin kernel from which it sprang. His

exigencies about the purity of vocables, as well as the import ance he attached to rhythm, made up the charm of our meet

ings; if at the same time Perse the poet, seeing how impossible it is to transfer the work in its integrity

? and it is impossible ? often reduced his translator to the verge of comic despair, the translator would have to insist at times that an English

word having the same Latin root as the French could not be

brought to mean the same, and that similar polysyllables would not keep the same time. Then, as the dusk grew darker and a Negro voice for a moment outside the window under

lined the colour of rhythm, the Latin dictionary would be

piled on Mansion's and the Petit Larousse on top of all, and all end in a burst of laughter.4

4. "St.-John Perse in Washington", Cahiers de la Pl?iade, X (e'te'automne 1950), 87-8. A carbon copy of the original typescript has been donated to the Fondation

Saint-John Perse.

196




The inevitable compromises of the work show in the hesitations

and in the dialogue which can in part be retraced through the

marginalia. On the typescript (here designated T) are notes in

Perse's hand, but they are few, whereas Devlin has reworked his

script considerably. Yet there are some differences between the

annotated typescript (Tn) and the Sewanee Review version (S) of

Autumn 1944 (Volume LII, Number 4) which then remains un

changed but for the addition of the French text en regard in its

pamphlet form. What prompted these changes has left no trace in the records I have been able to consult. On the basis of the anno

tated Sewanee Review version (Sn) however, a further step is taken

towards the full-scale publication in book form of the four poems

by Pantheon Books in their handsome Bollingen Series. The first

edition (B) appeared in 1949 and the second (B2) in 1953, with a

further impression in 1961. Again there are some (minor) differ ences between Sn, B and B2, showing the continuing attention of both poet and translator to their common task to which only Devlin's death in 1959 put an end.

The stages of annotation both on typescript and pamphlet may be logically deduced and a kind of scenario suggested for the dial

ogue. At least some, and probably most if not all of Devlin's alter

ations to the typescript post-date Perse's marginal queries or

suggestions. These consist mainly of no more than signs: x, ?, ?

and f . Two series of alternatives offered beside the second strophe of the first canto, the first giving French words (I, 4: "cri?e

clameur, ?clat [deleted], cri, exclamation, ovation [deleted], pro

clamation, publication") and the second English (for foul?e, I, 5:

"crashing? [sic, for crushing, no doubt] trampling? fulling?") give

way to the signs, an indication not of Perse's unwillingness to con

tinue being precise (certain other translators had their work almost

entirely rewritten by him) but, on the contrary, of a rapidly esta

blished confidence in the translator. Devlin's changes take account

of these notes, and it is clear that a full and close discussion occurred between the establishment of the typescript and its anno

tation. One valuable note by the translator, evidently made in res

ponse to Perse's explanation, throws light on the precise meaning and imaginative source of one image otherwise open to several in

terpretations: "le jeu des factions" (II, 8) has beside it "Capulets and Montagues".

In Canto IV occurs another elucidation by the French poet,

referring to "l'aubier des grandes aubes lacer?is" (IV, 14). Against the word "laburnum" (the typist's understandable mistake for the

rare word "alburnum"), Perse writes the following note: "la partie

197




tendre, blanche, fra?che et neuve, la substance pure, non encore

lignifie'e, du bois, entre l'?corce et le coeur de l'arbre, la partie qui se renouvelle." For the translator, such precision is valuable,

though he prefers at first to keep "resin", for its accessibility for

the reader as well as for its overtones of vitality, rather than the

more technical but accurate "alburnum" or "cambium". ("Albur num" is adopted, however, from B onwards.) For the careful reader

or scholar, Perse's explanation illustrates a whole poetics of pre cision in reference and imagery which is confirmed at every turn

and revelation. Here the association of new wood before it is really wood and the new day before it is really day (since "l'aube" pre cedes "l'aurore"); the texture and colour of the cambium when

the bark is stripped likened to certain skies at dawn; the purity and vital renewal of life in the great cycle of nature; all these com

bine with phonetic resonances (l'aubier des grandes aubes lac?r?es) to make the translator's task more interesting ?like all impossible,

unattainable goals. It is this same Canto IV which illustrates compactly the give and

take of poet and poet-translator. Take the Sewanee Review version

and its annotations. There seem to be three stages: (a) notes in red

ink by Perse, (b) thoughts thereupon noted in pencil by Devlin

and (c) further notes in black ink by Devlin, sometimes covering the pencil marks, which are on occasion erased (but generally leg ible after some detective work with a magnifying glass). Most of

the pencilled notes are ticks or crosses at the ends of lines signifying acceptance or otherwise of Perse's suggestions. "Stet" often occurs on black ink written over a pencilled cross, showing that Devlin

has argued successfully against Perse's proposal. So the evolution

would thus seem to be: Perse annotates in red ink; Devlin indepen

dently accepts or rejects those suggestions and marks in pencil

accordingly (though by no means all suggestion are so marked); then during discussions an agreed solution is reached and wrritten

in by Devlin in black ink.

One instructive example will have to stand for many which could

be adduced. It shows a protracted debate between the unsatisfac

tory and the unsatisfied. There are no particular lexical difficulties

but the syntactical ones are thorny; and the tone has a measure of

grandiloquence in the French which tends towards pomposity in

English if not handled with care. The original (IV, 10-11) reads:

Que hantiez-vous si loin, qu'il faille encore qu'on en r?ve ? en

perdre le vivre?

Et de quelle autre condition nous parlez-vous si bas qu'on en




perde m?moire?

There are the stages of its transformations in the versions at our

disposal:

T What were you haunting so far so that we dream of it,

dreaming away how to live

And to what other state do you speak to us so low

that we lose our memory? Tn What was it you haunted so far so that we are made

to dream away life still dreaming about it

And of what other state do you speak to us so low we

are made to lose memory? S What was it you haunted so far we are made to dream

away life, still dreaming about it?

And of what other state do you speak so low we are

made to lose memory?

Sn(a) What was it you haunted so far that we are made to

dream of it for ever, dreaming away life?

And of what other state do you speak so low that we

are made to lose memory?

Sn(b) tick after 1. 10; ? before 1.11; 'must forget it' mostly erased above end of 1. 11.

Sn(c) What was it you haunted so far that we must dream

of it always, dying of our dreaming? And of what other state do you speak so low that we

cannot remember it?

B and B2 retain this final reading. It could easily be demonstrated that at no stage on this journey

of metamorphosis does the English clearly restate the French. The

addition of "away" after "far" would clarify that element: "parler bas" is normally "to speak softly". But what is equally manifest

is the combined effort tending towards a version which balances

accuracy and harmoniousness. If the parallelism of "perdre / perde" has been lost, it is replaced by "so far that / so low that", which

thus take priority over the more normal versions, the sense being subordinated to the rhythm and shape of the lines. Poetry thus assumes its rights in the remaking of the text.

The judgements consequent upon the translator's close analysis are akin to those of the critic but differently expressed: the primary

movements are exactly the same. And translation, like criticism, can, as Leger put it in a letter of October 1910 to Jacques Rivi?re,

199




"accomplir un acte propre, cesser d'?tre un parasitisme pour devenir un compagnonnage" ( C 677). In Devlin, Perse found

such a compagnon whose human as well as poetic qualities he could

respect. In Saint-John Perse, Devlin found a grand master of the

art of poetry whose influence on his later work must be seriously considered by whoever answers Maurice Harmon's call for an anno

tated edition of his poetry, "or a study of his poems that will iden

tify and assess the European and other allusions."5 For despite the difference of denominational allegiance (Leger

was a pantheistic spiritualist who had survived Claudel's prosely

tising assault as an adolescent and yet remained a friend), Leger and Devlin shared that sense of a primal solitude which whets the

religious appetite. If Stan Smith is right in suggesting that "uncons

ciously [. . .] Denis Devlin's diplomatic vocation has become the

metaphor and rationale of a spiritual condition; but only because

the career itself was in the first place the sought ratification of a

personal plight,"6 much the same might be said (indeed has often

been said) of Leger, in whose work and life solitude and politeness were salient features. Each also constructed a personal poetics of

which a cornerstone was the respect of things as they were, allied

to a principle of rhythmic adequation in the structuring of a text.7 The circumstances of war for two poet-diplomats in Washington

paradoxically provided the perfect meeting-ground for concentra

tion on poetry in its most timeless form.

5. "Denis Devlin", Advent VI: Denis Devlin Special Issue (Southampton: Advent

Books, 1976), p. 17.

6. "Frightened Antimonies: Love and Death in the Poetry of Denis Devlin", Advent

VI, p. 30.

7. For the application of Perse's "loi d'?quivalence" to the poems of Exil, see my edition of the poems, London: Athlone Press, 1973. (The companion volume

provides an introductory monograph to the life and work of Saint-John Perse.) On Denis Devlin, cf. Robert Welch: "rhythm must be ready to accommodate itself to anything, even the invisible. It must be ready, chameleon-like, to respond to the shifting quality of what happens, or may happen, given other circumstances.

This is, in fact, a kind of imaginative courtesy, a courtesy honouring the unique ness of each thing, and of each aspect of each thing." "Devlin's Rhythm", Advent

VI, pp. 14-15.

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Saint-John Perse and Denis Devlin: A "Compagnonnage"

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