Vents

Paris, Gallimard, (october 1) 1946.
1 vol. (255 x 315 mm) of [110 p.]. Vernier-style soft binding, natural calf embossed in a cameo of gray and black enhanced with white gold, pearl-gray goatskin velvet endpapers, title in white gold on first board, covers and spine preserved, slipcase and chemise (binding signed by Louise Bescond – Claude Ribal, 2024).

First edition.
One of the first 15 copies on chine, this one hors commerce, justified and signed by Gaston Gallimard.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

Vents [Winds] is the second period of the American production of Alexis Léger, alias Saint-John Perse. After the four poems of the Exil cycle, which marked his return to creation from 1941 to 1944, the great poem of Vents represents his ‘anchoring’ across the Atlantic. Thanks to his American friend Archibald McLeish, Alexis Léger obtained a position as literary advisor at the Library of Congress, of which Leish was then the administrator. It was time for him to resume his poetic production, which began in this year of Allied victory. 1945 marked the beginning of the writing of this great epic poem.

The composition The Winds is closely linked to Seven Hundred Acre Island, a wild island off the coast of Maine, on the Penobscot peninsula, which he had been visiting since 1942; the wind, the sea, the foam. It was there that the poem, which had been taking shape for several months, would be completed, imbued with other striking American landscapes that Perse had discovered in the spring and which the poem would keep track of: Arizona, Texas and Colorado, where the shamanic practices of the Navaho Indians left a lasting mark on his mind.

A letter addressed to his friend Katherine Biddle on 20 September 1942, when he discovered this island in Maine, already testifies to what the future collection would owe to the magical place of Seven Hundred Acre Island: ‘Dear Katherine, For almost a month now I have been abandoning myself to the enchantment of this wild yet private island, where the loving care of an old friend from France, Béatrice Chanler, has enabled me to set up a veritable retreat. […] I would never have dared to dream of isolation like that of this island – increased, it is true, by the war: villas on all the neighbouring islands closed, yachts disarmed, fishermen enlisted, petrol rationed, sailing prohibited after certain hours, etc. What a reward the recovered mystery of this island, now closed in on itself like a strong, silent and self-confident soul, and whose intimacy is a new revelation to me every day. Here I lead a full physical life, exploring trails, logging, wrecking, swimming in cold water, […]. My visitors today: a pair of ospreys, whose nest I know is on a small uninhabited island in the neighbourhood, accessible by rowboat; a great blue heron, familiar with my creeks at twilight; and an old solitary seal, frightened by my dog friend and following us by swimming along the shore where we are walking….’. Thus, in his remarkable study on the poet’s American period, P. J. Archambault will place the collection as the ‘apogee’ of the American influence on the work of Saint-John Perse.

Vents was published by Gallimard in 1946 as a large-format deluxe edition in a limited, numbered edition. Claudel then devoted a major study to him in the Revue de Paris (1 November 1949), to a man who was still ‘unknown’ to the French public, and who was also far away, in exile. When his complete works were published for La Pléiade, for which the poet himself wrote the notes, this is what he had to say about them: ‘Saint-John Perse always gave Vents particular importance in his work. This poem was undoubtedly the least accessible to the French reader because, at the poet’s own request, it was only published in a luxury edition, in large format and large typeface, in a limited, fully numbered edition’.

Spectacular, large binding by Louise Bescond.