However much one may see seeds of Perse's style and imagery in the earliest published work, and see the same forceful guiding hand behind all the poems, a development is [clear]…. [It] is a gradual move away from a specific preoccupation with the physical, through broader connotations of the material image, towards a gesture of speculation on the metaphysical. It is a shift in emphasis rather than of subject, which remains essentially grounded in this world.

Early suggestions of an interest in the in-between states on which Perse is to build so much offer only in retrospect a basis for wider application. Reading Eloges, for example, the immediate reaction is to the physical and sensual qualities of the poems. The plenitude of the land and solitude of the sea are posited explicitly, without the poet delving into the nature and implications of their point of meeting. Halcyon expanses...