(Marie-Rene) (Auguste) Alexis Saint-Leger Leger | Biography

Saint-John Perse is chiefly remembered for his antiphonal, psalmodic celebration of a vitalist natural religion founded on the principle of the coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites). Perse specialists have long recognized that he embodies the perspective of a Janus-like seer with "la reconnaissance du sacré et de sa fondamentale ambiguïté . . . le caractère équivoque de la réalité" (the recognition of the sacred and its fundamental ambiguity . . . the equivocal character of reality), in the words of Henriette Levillain in her 1977 monograph. Response to the versets (verses) of this latter-day "dieu bifront" (two-faced god) has accordingly registered a high degree of ambiguity and wonder, even mystification. The resolutely "pagan" sense of divinity basic to Perse's writings understandably has not invited unqualified assent from traditionalist Christian readers--"Mais Dieu est un mot que Saint-John Perse évite . . . religieusement" (But God is a word that Saint-John Perse...
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