However much one may see seeds of Perse's style and imagery in the earliest published work, and see the same forceful guiding hand behind all the poems, a development is [clear]…. [It] is a gradual move away from a specific preoccupation with the physical, through broader connotations of the material image, towards a gesture of speculation on the metaphysical. It is a shift in emphasis rather than of subject, which remains essentially grounded in this world.

Early suggestions of an interest in the in-between states on which Perse is to build so much offer only in retrospect a basis for wider application. Reading Eloges, for example, the immediate reaction is to the physical and sensual qualities of the poems. The plenitude of the land and solitude of the sea are posited explicitly, without the poet delving into the nature and implications of their point of meeting. Halcyon expanses of purity stand in opposition to the 'végétales ferveurs' of the poet's tropical island home. Distinctions were sharp, brilliant colours reflecting the child's clear-cut ideas, brought up as he was with a sure sense of hierarchy and propriety in all things…. (p. 785)

If the child has an instinctive liking for the doorstep (and how often children seem to concentrate their games at this point midway between safety and adventure) … it is Exil that brings us face to face with its full poetic significance. It is Exil, too,… that specifies and elaborates upon the conjunction of threshold and beach…. [It] is on the shore—the threshold—of the New World, though essentially on any shore in the world, that Perse can construct his poem out of the very quicksand ambivalence of the site. (p. 786)

Both Exil and Amers are played out at the edge of the sea, and both derive much of their central imagery from the fact. But in most of the other poems too the critical shore is mentioned or its equivalent proposed. If it starts essentially as an expression of la poésie des départs with which Perse was to sympathize so much … it did not remain at that stage…. Ideas and epithets of distance recur more and more often in Perse's output, and that of departure and travel becomes the very framework for the majestic epic of oriental spaces, Anabase. As an expression of the nomadic nature of man's spirit, it epitomizes the very notion of la poésie des départs while avoiding any of the superficiality or Romantic exoticism into which the genre has all too often slipped. Reinforced by all the overtones of poetic creation and profound spirituality, the poem concludes triumphantly…. The precarious restlessness is something accepted as a force for good. To stand still is to atrophy, to die. Consequently it is seen as an integral part of the human condition that however splendid and satisfying the immediate environment may appear, we are always aware of an urge to 'fare forward'. We are always in a state of exile, and none more so than the man who uses his faculties to the full, since he is more fully receptive to the present, but also more acutely aware of his unfulfilled potential.

Although Anabase shows an important manifestation of the same idea, the terms are necessarily different since the poem is set inland, although starting beside the sea. The series of American poems includes, apart from Exil and Amers which take place on the sea-shore itself, a number of references to its importance…. The poet's own position is clearly allied to that of the special intercourse of land and sea, or of any equivalent image evoking ambiguity, insecurity, and at the same time creativity, poetry being born of the conjunction of such forces, in themselves nothing, but being sublimated through the art of words. (pp. 787-89)

The extension of [the] newly found positive aspect of the sea shore as the threshold to new vistas of plenitude can well be seen by reference to Amers. The multiplicity of connotation in the title itself suggests that of the poem: apart from the 'Seamarks' of the translated title, there are echoes of bitter gall, of 'amour' (sometimes spelt 'amer' in medieval French) and of 'mer' itself. From the poem, with its central imagery revolving around the sea and love, the title could be a crossing of mer with amour. It is truly Persean that an actual word with even wider associations, and just as appropriate, should have been used. But lurking also is what Miłosz called 'l'amer amour de l'autre monde'. (pp. 789-90)

[The] constantly repeated notion of being on the verge of some marvellous discovery, whether of a rare plant or bird or of some mystical insight, provides intense excitement, and captivates by its immense enthusiasm for life in all its forms…. [There] is a double view of the relationship between things and the sea: if things pay homage or lemming-like disappear into the primeval element, it is the sea, 'ellemême voyageuse', which allows things to be appreciated for what they are…. The sea is in its turn the threshold, as we have seen, to that sort of 'super-reality' in which things play their part, both as themselves and as images of metaphysical counterparts…. Both spatial and temporal concepts are included in a sort of 'pan-time', partaking of both immensity and eternity…. The maieutics of threshold and beach sharpen sensitivity so as to allow an over-all appreciation of its significance. Only an attachment to concrete phenomena can permit any exploration of mystery and abstraction.

Not only in space, but also in time Perse shows a predilection for the threshold of day and night, and again these are gradually assembled into a broader conception of man standing on the verge of eternity. Any mystical tendency which this might suggest is, as in other fields, subordinate to the physical bases of the idea. The mention of dawn or dusk comes so frequently to Perse's pen that elaboration seems scarcely necessary. What is true of the spatial images of the threshold is also true of the temporal…. But dawn and dusk are not the only fulcrum-points of the fourth dimension. Noon and midnight are also springboards to something greater, and are frequently evoked in Perse's work…. Corresponding to the four main points of the day—dawn, noon, dusk and midnight—which are all temporal 'thresholds' in Perse's world, are their equivalent seasons in the course of the year: the solstices and equinoxes. Again links are forged with broader connotations, with the doorstep itself, with love, and with the intoxication of creation…. (pp. 790-92)

[Perse] is far more attracted to spatial than to temporal extension….

The virtue, then, of threshold, beach, dawn, and noon is a precariousness which heightens awareness. In itself, each 'threshold' remains unchanged, stated unequivocally as valid for its own sake. But like a catalyst in a chemical reaction, it must be present for the reaction to take place. The sublimation occurs without denying or denaturing the area of space or time which lies on either side of the threshold, yet with a very complete exploration of both the contents and limits of either direction. The dialectic is a form of dualism in which both elements are positive…. [Perse's] quest for order leads him from the precarious here and now into universal history and geography, but also into that spiritual infinity which alone can suggest a sense and pattern in existence. (p. 792)