Saint-John Perse’s orality is inward and private, not declamatory

Evidence

It astonishes me to hear people sometimes try to reduce Saint:John Perse’s orality to that of declamation. Yet it could never be produced onstage. Too many broad zones of obviousness stretch out within it, blocked here and there by root stumps, when language thickens into nodules. When the obvious is declaimed, it immediately becomes a tautological transparency. Believing that this poet’s text can fill or define the stage of a theater is a mistake too often made. His sort of orality do es not lead to things of a public nature; it is the equivalent of (alternative to) modesty. Underneath, the inner voice weaves its redundant repetitions. This is an orality that is not spoken aloud but articulated in underground understandings. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 257

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes true orality (circle/storyteller, the spoken word) from Perse’s privacy-modesty, which is orality ‘articulated in underground understandings’ — a key contrast for reading the chapter.
• XREF: connects to: Saint-John Perse’s orality points forward to future resolution rather than backward to lost place — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 260; Saint-John Perse’s orality is internal and world-diffracted, not public performance — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 257

Broader Connections

• Saint-John Perse’s orality points forward to future resolution rather than backward to lost place #expands (0.75) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 260