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1897–1915:

Symbolism, Post-Symbolism, Cubism,

Simultanism

Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, Paul Claudel, Jean Cocteau,

Léon-Paul Fargue, Max Jacob, Pierre-Jean Jouve, Valéry Larbaud,

Saint-John Perse, Pablo Picasso, Catherine Pozzi, Pierre Reverdy, Saint-

Pol Roux, Victor Segalen, Jules Supervielle, Paul Valéry, Renée Vivien

M

artyred at the hands of the Nazis, Saint-Pol Roux is the
great transitional figure in early twentieth-century
French poetry. He and Paul Claudel, seven years his
senior, represent the ongoing heritage from the great ur-Symbolist Stéph-
ane Mallarmé—a heritage that continues with Paul Valéry. The latter is
best known for his epic poem ‘‘Le Cimetière marin,’’ published here in its
entirety in a recent translation by the Irish poet Derek Mahon. Just as
Valéry’s figure of the rameur, or rower, strains against the current, so
the translator struggles with and against the French rhyme; Mahon places
equivalent, if nonrhyming, stresses on his own lines. Valéry’s ‘‘La Fileuse’’
remains one of the most di≈cult and impressive manifestations of how
form and visuality work together. Grace Schulman’s translation, com-
missioned for this volume, threads its own understanding through form
and vision.
The wide-reaching poems of Saint-John Perse (Alexis Saint-Léger
Léger) stretch from his early Exils through the classic recall of Anabase to
the triumph of Amers, a title that suggests both the sea (mer) and bitter
memory (amer)—Seamarks is Wallace Fowlie’s ingenious English title.
The poetry of Perse calls to mind Paul Claudel’s biblically toned versets,