21 Facts About Saint-John Perse

Saint-John Perse's grandfather and father were solicitors; his father was a member of the city council.

Saint-John Perse enrolled at Lycee Louis-Barthou, passed the baccalaureat with honours, and began studying law at the University of Bordeaux.

Saint-John Perse frequented cultural clubs and met Paul Claudel, Odilon Redon, Valery Larbaud, and Andre Gide.

Saint-John Perse wrote short poems inspired by the story of Robinson Crusoe and undertook a translation of Pindar.

Saint-John Perse published his first book of poetry, Eloges, in 1910.

Saint-John Perse had a secret relationship with Madame Dan Pao Tchao, although according to the latter, he was just using her for obtaining information from Peking high society.

Saint-John Perse then published nothing for two decades, not even a re-edition of his debut book, as he believed it inappropriate for a diplomat to publish fiction.

Saint-John Perse hunted with the lightest arms and fished with the finest lines.

Saint-John Perse was a poet, and as a poet, lived in a world not much frequented by other diplomats.

Saint-John Perse's courtesy was famous, though not always comfortable, and of a kind to put him out of reach.

Saint-John Perse was a man of absolute moral and intellectual integrity.

Saint-John Perse concluded that Japan was conducting "a systematic program of wild imperialism", which he predicated might one day cause a war.

Saint-John Perse saw Laval's policy of seeking to improve relations with Italy at the expense of Ethiopia as amoral and sabotaged the Hoare-Laval pact by leaking it to the French press.

Saint-John Perse described him as "a man of the Left, an opponent of everything antirepublican".

Saint-John Perse therefore argued to Blum that France should cease supplying arms to the Spanish Republic and agree to the British plan for arms embargo on both sides.

Saint-John Perse accompanied the French Premier Edouard Daladier at the Munich Conference in 1938, where the timetable of the cession of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany was agreed to.

Saint-John Perse was in some financial difficulty as an exile in Washington until Archibald MacLeish, the director of the Library of Congress and himself a poet, raised enough private donations to enable the library to employ him until his official retirement from the French civil service in 1947.

Saint-John Perse remained in the US long after the end of the war.

Saint-John Perse travelled extensively, observing nature and enjoying the friendship of US Attorney General Francis Biddle and his spouse, philanthropist Beatrice Chanler, and author Katherine Garrison Chapin.

Saint-John Perse was on good terms with the UN Secretary General and author Dag Hammarskjold.

Saint-John Perse died in his villa in Giens and is buried nearby.