by T. S. Eliot
1937 Faber catalogue (initialled by TSE, King’s):
This very remarkable and important poem, Anabase, was translated from the French by Mr. Eliot and published by us in 1930. Much interest was taken in it by poets; and it has, we believe, made its mark on English poetry, so that it will be an essential document in studying English poetry of the present time. In the hope of introducing it to a wider public, because of its great beauty and originality, we have now reduced the price from 10s. 6d. to 5s.
[Poem II 81–129 · Textual History II 643–50]
The front panel of the jacket of 1937 read “ANABASIS | a poem translated by | T. S. ELIOT”, with the spine likewise failing to mention Perse, and the rear panel listed “Other books by T. S. Eliot”. The front of the US 1938 jacket was worded the same, causing TSE to write to Marguerite Caetani, 13 Dec 1938: “I had overlooked the omission of the name of Perse on the cover or jacket. It is of course on the title page, but that is not enough. I had not even seen proofs of the book, but sent Harcourt, Brace & Co a revised copy of the original edition, so that I had no knowledge of what the appearance of the book would be. I will mention the matter to Harcourt, Brace in the hope that they will alter the jacket wrapper · · · P.S. Perhaps you had better remove the jacket before presenting the copy to Léger. But I had assumed that Harcourt, Brace & Co would have sent him six author’s copies. If this was not done, it must have been an oversight.”
The front panel of the US 1949 jacket read: “ST.-JOHN PERSE | ANABASIS | A translation by | T. S. ELIOT | ‘A poem of vast dimensions, impersonal | as the sea journeys of Homer.’ | Archibald MacLeish.”
Peter du Sautoy to Richard de la Mare, 3 Apr 1958 (Faber archive):
Mr. Eliot does not like the format of the American edition · · · He also does not like the way the jacket is laid out, nor the title page, since they both suggest that only the translation is included. He thinks his name is too prominent on the jacket · · · What Mr. Eliot suggests for the title page is something like this:
ANABASIS
A POEM BY ST.-JOHN PERSE
THE FRENCH TEXT WITH A TRANSLATION BY T. S. ELIOT
US 1949 front flap:
“I believe that this is a piece of writing of the same importance as the later work of James Joyce.” T. S. Eliot | ST.-JOHN PERSE | ANABASIS
This is a new, definitive edition of St.-John Perse’s famous poem, Anabasis, which was first introduced to American readers by T. S. Eliot in 1938. The text has been reset and redesigned, and the book presented in a new and larger format with French and English on facing pages. Mr. Eliot has revised and corrected his translation. The French text, corrected by the author, is now presented in definitive form. Three notes on Anabasis by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Valery Larbaud, and Giuseppe Ungaretti are included, together with a bibliography of St.-John Perse’s work.
US 1949 rear panel:
ST.-JOHN PERSE is the pen-name of Alexis Léger. He was born in the Antilles in 1889, served as Permanent Secretary of the French Foreign Office and as Ambassador of France under the Third Republic. A world traveler, he has lived in China and journeyed through the Gobi Desert. His other poems include Exile, Eloges, Vents, and Amitié du Prince. | ARCHIBALD MACLEISH: “The poetry of Perse, with its presentness of time, its odor of eternity, its vast image of life like a landscape without trees, is a poetry written not out of action but against it or behind it.” | ROGER CAILLOIS: “His work, which fills less than a hundred pages, appears to be one of the vastest. [His poems] continue to astonish the reader by an enigmatic power which belongs only to them.” | ALAIN BOSQUET: “St.-John Perse [is] the poet of solitude and of a prophetic gift, one of those who tower above the men and things about which they sing.”
[Poem II 81–129 · Textual History II 643–50]
1959 jacket material:
When the text of Anabasis, together with the translation by T. S. Eliot, was first published in 1931 [1930], neither the author nor his translator was as well known as they have both since become. The fame of St.-John Perse has spread rapidly in recent years and his reputation as a poet has been enhanced by every subsequent volume that he has published. Not only is his genius now universally acknowledged but his influence is recognized in the work of poets writing in other languages, including Mr. Eliot himself. Anabasis, however, remains a landmark in modern French poetry and the demand for a new edition has been insistent. The author, who has become very much at home in the English language, has himself revised the translation for this third edition.
St.-John Perse, as all the world now knows, is the pseudonym of Alexis St. Léger Léger, a brilliant diplomat who, until the fall of France in 1940, was permanent Chief of Staff of the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères.
4. ANABASE TO ANABASIS
It was through a distant cousin of TSE’s, Marguerite Caetani (Princess di Bassiano), that he came into contact with Perse. In 1924 she founded Commerce, with Fargue, Larbaud and Paul Valéry as editors, and in Winter 1924 it printed Perse’s Chanson (later Chanson du Présomptif), followed by TSE’s Poème (later part I of The Hollow Men) with Perse’s translation opposite.
It was at Caetani’s request that TSE translated Anabase (see TSE to Stephen Spender, 14 Mar 1935, quoted below, 5. TRANSLATION). He continued to support her in the late 1940s when she began another journal, Botteghe Oscure, which he recommended to poets as a place to publish.
TSE’s copy of Perse’s Anabase (TSE’s Anabase) is dated 1926, in which year the Hogarth Press took over British distribution of Commerce. TSE to Marguerite Caetani, 19 May 1926: “about Anabase. Circumstances have been most adverse and complicated—I have got no farther—and it is unlikely that I can even touch it for a couple of months. In the circumstances, and as I have tried your patience so long, it has occurred to me that my friend F. S. Flint is the man. He is a brilliant translator.” TSE had published only one book with Faber & Gwyer when he wrote to Geoffrey Faber, 4 Sept 1926: “About Léger. I am afraid that the arrangement in our conversation, and subsequently in conversation between myself and Madame de Bassiano, was that she should pay the author and should pay me for the translation, and the cost of publishing to be borne by the publishers. But this was purely verbal. The book is a small one; the French text is 41 pages not wholly covered, so that it might be as well to include the preface by Valery Larbaud which does not appear in the French edition but was written for the Russian translation. That is 5 pages. But if there is a misunderstanding, let me have an estimate of the cost of printing etc. and I will take the matter up with her and come to an arrangement. I should suggest a small book, almost a pamphlet, like some of the Hogarth Press, and a printing of 500.” To Caetani, 27 Sept 1926: “I confess it is more difficult than I thought at first, because the idea (and there decidedly is one) is conveyed by a cumulative succession of images—and one cannot simply translate the images. One must find equivalents—that cannot be done bit by bit, but by finding an English key to the combination.”
The first correspondence between the two poets is a letter from Perse, 15 Oct 1926, inviting TSE to visit him at the Quai d’Orsay. At or just after that brief meeting—as is suggested by TSE’s subsequent letter to Perse from London (19 Nov 1926)—they began to come to terms regarding the publication of Anabasis.
[Poem II 81–129 · Textual History II 643–50]
To Caetani, 18 Jan 1927: “complete translation of Anabase enclosed herewith. I have sent another copy to Léger together with thirty or forty notes of passages on which I want his opinion · · · As soon as he answers all my questions it will be a matter of only a few days to repair the translation. I then propose to write a short introduction myself, which I can do because I now like the poem immensely. I only hope that the translation will produce a fraction of the impression which the original has made on me.”
He had sent the translation to Perse three days earlier, writing: “je crois que je pourrais écrire une petite préface que présenterait mieux votre poème aux lecteurs anglaises · ·
· Autre chose: dans ma préface, peux-je dire que St.-J. Perse et St. Léger Léger, l’auteur d’Anabase et l’auteur d’Éloges, sont identiques, ou voulez-vous garder votre anonymat fragile?” [I think I could write a short preface which would better present your poem to English readers · · · Another thing: in my preface, may I speak of St.-J. Perse and St. Léger Léger, the author of Anabase and the author of Éloges, as identical, or would you rather guard your fragile anonymity?]
To Caresse Crosby, Editions Narcisse, Paris, 8 Oct 1928: “I am sorry that I can do nothing about Anabase · · · We have been waiting for two years only for him to sign the contract and make any suggestions about my translation, which I did not wish to publish until he had approved it · · · I have long given up hope that it can ever be published by anybody!”
To Caetani, 9 Aug 1929: “I am very glad to get Léger’s contract and his revision of my translation · · · I shall have to go through Léger’s notes very carefully and type out another text and send it to him with explanations wherever I maintain my own version. I am quite aware that from his point of view some of my departures from the exact translation must seem unjustified, but they are often determined by exigencies of rhythm and association which he could hardly be expected to follow. I see however that there are many places where I can fall in with his recommendations.” TSE offered to dedicate his translation to Caetani, but she declined (letter to her, 12 Dec). Nor did Commerce publish the translation.
In a letter of 2 Sept 1929, Perse granted TSE great latitude “to take liberties with the necessities of rearrangement which any living translation inevitably demands” (tr. Haffenden).
Meanwhile, Edouard Roditi had set about translating the poem. Discovering that TSE had already done so, he approached TSE (who was subsequently to publish Roditi’s poem Trafalgar Square in Criterion Apr 1934). TSE to Roditi, 31 Aug 1929: “Léger has now sent me back my first draft of the poem, with a great many corrections and suggestions, including those which you noticed yourself. So I have rewritten my translation with his alterations in front of me. For this reason I do not think I should accept your kind offer; for I have all I need to ensure approximate accuracy; and I do not want to go further and pilfer from another translator. And perhaps in the end your translation will supersede mine.”
[Poem II 81–129 · Textual History II 643–50]
To Perse, 2 Sept 1929: “Cher ami, Since your revision of my translation makes evident that you know English much more intimately than I know French, and indeed puts me to shame, I shall write to you henceforward in this language · · · I marvel first at the pains that you have taken, and more at the accuracy of your emendations. You will find that I have used most of your suggestions. Where I have not, it has been usually for some reason of rhythm, or for compensation: that is to say, trying to supply by a richness of association of the word in English in one place, a richness of the word in French in another place which could not there be conveyed. After all, a translation must be made globalement, by loading in one place to compensate for an impoverishment in another place! I shall send you shortly a copy of my revision. If you have any alterations to make in that, and if you can let me have them by the end of this year, I shall use them and shall be glad of them. But if you have not time · · · then the copy you will receive will be printed in the spring · · · I must say that it has been a great pleasure to me to know and to translate your poem, which has indeed, in at least one or two places which I could point out, affected my own subsequent work.” (To Vernon Watkins, 8 June 1944, on Watkins’s translations of Heine: “this work is a useful exercise to keep your hand in; and you will probably find, as one does with translation, that in doing it you have learned something which will be of future use in your own poetry”.)
To Perse, 15 Nov 1929, enclosing galley proofs: “You will observe that I have accepted the great majority of your revisions, that in a few places I have compromised, and only in a few have stuck to my first version. I think I could justify most of these; but if you still find any gross alterations of the sense I hope you will let me know quickly.”
Perse was to prove a demanding collaborator, repeatedly failing to reply to letters, but then asking for last-minute revisions. For details of his changes in the successive editions, see Textual History and Rigolot.
Hayward’s copy of US 1938 (King’s) is inscribed: “to John Hayward Esqre in grateful acknowledgment of his inestimable assistance in correcting and much improving the text of this the second edition of this Translation. 5. iii. 38 T. S. Eliot”. Later, TSE would publicly acknowledge his obligation to Hayward “for improvements of phrase and construction” of Four Quartets (see headnote, 8. PUBLICATION).
TSE did not give details when he wrote of G. W. Stonier (of the New Statesman & Nation): “several years ago he wrote an intelligent review of my translation of Anabase, in which he made some useful suggestions of which I have subsequently taken advantage”, On a Recent Piece of Criticism in Purpose Apr–June (1938).
On 25 Feb 1948, TSE wrote to John D. Barrett declining to translate Perse’s Vents for a collection of Perse in English. “I would, of course, have liked to be able to do this, but I know from experience that it would be a major undertaking of many months and I should have, incidentally, to discuss interpretations continually with the author in Washington, and this correspondence would further protract the labours.”
5. TRANSLATION
To Laurence Binyon, 16 May 1930: “The only attempts at any translation that I have made, suggest to me that it is quite impossible to translate anything.”
To Donald Gallup, 11 Oct 1951, discussing the arrangement of his Bibliography: “If my work in translation had been more extensive, I might have pleaded for a separate section, but I think it would be ridiculous and tiresome to make a section for Anabasis alone.”
[Poem II 81–129 · Textual History II 643–50]
Anabasis was the only translation other than prose that TSE ever published, although at a date unknown he also began a translation from Johannes Theodor Kuhlemann (1891–1939); see headnote to The Dry Salvages, 3. COMPOSITION. He also considered making a translation from Hugo von Hofmannsthal (whose Preface to Anabase was published in Commerce in Summer 1929 and reprinted in US 1949); see headnote to Sweeney Agonistes, 11. BRITISH PERFORMANCES. To Herbert Read, “Friday” [6 Dec 1929]: “I am glad you like Anabase. I think it is a big thing myself—as important as Anna Livia Plurabelle—but there is a considerable loss in the translation—which I have tried to compensate as far as possible by drawing on the greater resources of our language—but what Léger has done with French is prodigious.”
During the Second World War, TSE lent his name to one further translation. To Hayward, 15 Oct 1944: “Dr. Slonomski, has asked me if I will ‘do something for his distressed country’ · · · revise his translation of some Polish carols”. Five Fantasies on Polish Christmas Carols with music by Arnold Bax, 1945, included Jan Sliwinski’s translation of God is Born, “kindly approved by T. S. Eliot”.
To Anne Ridler 20 Mar 1946: “André Gide’s translations of Shakespeare, for instance, are quite able—that is to say, they sometimes manage to convey about half of the meaning of the original.” See letter to Jean Mambrino, 24 July 1952, quoted in headnote to Landscapes.
To Mrs. J. J. Hawkes, 9 Oct 1947, in response to a proposal from UNESCO: “it is most undesirable that all the classics should be translated in all the languages”.
To W. H. Auden, 11 May 1931: “I have read The Orators with great interest · · · The second part seems to me very brilliant, though I do not quite get its connexion with the first. My chief objection to it is that it seems to me to have lumps of undigested St. Jean Perse embedded in it. I admire your success with the Perse method, which I should not have believed possible, but I think it still needs a further process of purification. And the third part is apparently perfectly lucid, but I must confess that so far I cannot make head or tail of it.”
Proust, À la recherche du temp
s perdu: Sodome et Gomorrhe I (1921): “Un jour pourtant, elles trouvèrent sur mon lit un volume. C’était des poèmes admirables mais obscurs de Saint-Léger Léger. Céleste lut quelques pages et me dit: ‘Mais êtesvous sûr que ce sont des vers, est-ce que ce ne serait pas plutôt des devinettes?’” [One day, however, they found lying on my bed a book. It was a volume of the admirable but obscure poems of Saint-Léger Léger. Céleste read a few pages and said to me: “But are you quite sure that these are poetry, wouldn’t they just be riddles?”], Scott Moncrieff tr. VII 346.
TSE to Stephen Spender, 14 Mar 1935: “I am entirely in agreement with you that translations of Hölderlin ought to be made, and also in agreement that it is equally important if only a few people read them · · · As for Anabase, I quite agree that it was worth it, even on the assumption that no one read it but you and Wystan [Auden]. I may tell you, however, in confidence, that I was paid to translate it by a friend and admirer of the author, so that Faber and Faber had only the cost of production without having any royalties to worry about.” 24 Apr 1936: “as I may have told you, the sales of my translation of Anabase, over which I took a good deal of trouble, stopped completely after only some hundreds. I am very glad that I did it, both for my own sake and because it brought the poem to the notice of the few people who could make the most use of it, but it certainly did not pay the firm to do it.”
[Poem II 81–129 · Textual History II 643–50]
TSE was pressed to contribute to a special issue of Cahiers de la Pléiade (Summer/Autumn 1950) in homage to Perse and on 7 Dec 1949 he sent to Jean Paulhan a letter of tribute: “Nearly twenty-five years ago I made the acquaintance of Éloges and of Anabase, and set myself to translate the latter work into English. I am proud of the fact that my translation of Anabase—imperfect as it was, though improved, I think, in later editions—was the first presentation of St.-J. Perse to the English and American public. It appeared with the French text and English translation en regard, and will never, I hope, be printed by itself: for its sole purpose was to introduce a new and important poet to a foreign audience, and to facilitate understanding of his work. Certainly, a quarter of a century ago, St.-J. Perse was to be considered a difficult poet. He fitted in to no category, he had no obvious literary ancestry or consanguinity: a great part of the difficulty was that his poem could not be explained in terms of anything but itself. I myself should have a far more imperfect understanding of Anabase if I had not set myself to the task of translating it. It was beyond my resources to do it justice: I came to think that not only my command of the French but my command of English was inadequate. But its influence appears in some of the poems which I wrote after completing this translation: influence of the imagery and perhaps of the rhythm. Critics of my later work may find that this influence still persists.” (See, for instance, note to Journey of the Magi 9–10.)
