Pour Dante

“Unfortunately, I made it an absolute rule long ago never to accept any invitation that might oblige me to give lectures or public readings.” In these terms, Saint-John Perse declined, in 1963, an invitation from Willy Brandt, then Mayor of West Berlin, to speak at the “Rencontres berlinoises.” This was a rule he followed strictly, judging by the very small number of speeches included in the poet’s Œuvres complètes.

The most notable exception is the speech-poem Pour Dante, which he announced to Jean Paulhan in March 1965: “I will leave for Italy on 14 April. I am to deliver, on 20 April in Florence, an opening address at the International Congress for the 7th Centenary of Dante. An obligation I finally accepted, against all my tastes and principles, because maintaining my refusal would, in this instance, have meant abandoning a long tradition of the French language. (It was Hugo, in 1865, who had been entrusted with the inaugural text.)” (Letter to Jean Paulhan, 22 March 1965, OC, p. 1031). Saint-John Perse often recalled this precedent: at the previous centenary, Victor Hugo had been given the task of the inaugural address, but, unable to leave his land of exile for Italy, had to send his text from Jersey, where it was read on his behalf at the opening ceremony.

After being published in France in 1965, Pour Dante was included in the Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Danteschi, then translated and published in the United States.

The Gallimard edition is the first publication of the text, three months after it was read in Tuscany.