Man of the Sea

As someone once put it, the distinction between the minor and major poet is largely a matter of size: the greater the poet, the bigger his world. By this standard, France's Saint-John Perse was a giant from the beginning, for he wrote of the oceans, the deserts, the globe, and of a timeless Man. His form was neither verse nor prose, and to many the vivid imagery was enigmatic, possibly cryptic, as in Seamarks (1954 ):

The Sea . . . on its confines, under its falconry of white clouds, like a tax-free domain and like entailed land, like a province of rank weeds that was wagered on the dice.

Saint-John Perse is the pen name of Alexis Saint-Leger Leger, 73, a diplomat who wrote poetry in secret after his day's work at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris, where he served for years as Secretary-General of the French Foreign Ministry. ''Is this true, Leger, that, as people say, you write poetry in your spare time?" asked Aristide Briand of his faithful assistant. "It is." replied the writer firmly, "an imposture."

When war came. Leger's refusal to join the Vichy regime brought him disgrace and exile to the U.S.. where Poet Archibald MacLeish, then Librarian of Congress, gave him a $45-a-week job collating bibliographies in the stacks. He has lived in Washington ever since; now, with a more lucrative contract from his publisher, he can afford an annual trip to the French Riviera. He never talks European politics in public, though he knew the secrets of 15 years of French diplomacy. His comments were saved for Chronicle, his latest work, which ends: "Summit of time, here are we! Measure the heart of man!"

In the Washington phone book, he remained plain "Alexis Leger." When a publisher requested poems for an anthology, he replied: "My name does not belong to letters." Disagreeing, the Swedish Academy last week awarded Saint-John Perse the 1960 Nobel Prize for Literature.

A poetry lover named Dag Hammarskjold, who, as a member of the Nobel jury for literature, reportedly nominated Saint-John Perse, might have won a Nobel Prize of his own but for the fate of the calendar. For his work in the Congo as U.N. Secretary-General, Hammarskjold was an obvious candidate for the 1960 Peace award. But the Nobel deadline for nominations is Jan. 31. long before the Congo emergency appeared. With Hammarskjold ruled out on this technicality (and perhaps with an eye toward avoiding controversy with Hammarskjold's vociferous detractor, Nikita Khrushchev), the committee decided to make no award.

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