As far as the frontiers of science are pushed back, over the extended arc of these frontiers one will hear the poet’s hounds on the chase. Astronomers have been bewildered by the theory of an expanding universe, but there is no less expansion in the moral infinite of the universe of man. And the great adventure of the poetic mind is in no way secondary to the dramatic advances of modern science. Discursive thought or poetic ellipsis – which of these travels to, and returns from, more remote regions? And from that primal night in which two men born blind grope for their ways, the one equipped with the tools of science, the other helped only by the flashes of his imagination, which one returns sooner and more heavily laden with a brief phosphorescence? The answer does not matter.
In truth, every creation of the mind is first of all «poetic» in the proper sense of the word and inasmuch as there exists an equivalence between the modes of sensibility and intellect, it is the same function that is exercised initially in the enterprises of the poet and the scientist. When one watches the drama of modern science discovering its rational limits in pure mathematics when one sees in physics two great doctrines posit, the one a general theory of relativity, the other a quantum theory of uncertainty and indeterminism that would limit forever the exactitude even of physical measurements when one has heard the greatest scientific innovator of this century, the initiator of a modern cosmology that reduces the vastest intellectual synthesis to the terms of an equation, invoke intuition to come to the aid of reason and proclaim that «the imagination is the true seed bed of science», going even so far as to claim for the scientist the benefit of a true artistic vision: is one not justified in considering the tool of poetry as legitimate as that of logic? For they are exploring the same abyss and it is only in their modes of investigation that they differ. In this place at least let them no longer be considered hostile brothers. But it is the disinterested thought of both scientist and poet that is honoured here. It would exist for the scientist as well, were it not for the practical uses of science. The poet accepts this split, although he has not sought it.
Without you poetry would not often be held in esteem, for there appears to be an increasing dissociation between poetic activity and a society enslaved by materialism. I have accepted in behalf of poetry the honour which has been given to it here and which I am anxious to restore to it. Saint-John Perse’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1960
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