His best subjects as a student were the natural sciences. In , he met the poet Francis Jammes at Orthez , who became a close friend. For St. In , he joined the French diplomatic service, and spent some of his first years in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom. From to , he was secretary to the French embassy in Peking. During his time in Beijing, he lived in a former Taoist temple and "sat with the philosophers and sages" as he phrased it. When ordered to return to France, St. As an expert on China, St.
In in Washington, DC, while taking part in a world disarmament conference, he was noticed by Aristide Briand , Prime Minister of France, who recruited him as his assistant. In Paris, he got to know the fellow intellectual poet Larbaud, who used his influence to get the poem Anabase [ fr ] published, written during Leger's stay in China. In Parisian intellectual and artistic circles, St.
While in China, Leger had written his first extended poem Anabase , publishing it in under the pseudonym "Saint-John Perse", which he employed for the rest of his life.
He 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. The Anabase was widely ignored upon publication, but was praised by various poets such as T.
In , he became the chef de cabinet to Briand. He hated equally stupidity, cowardice, clumsiness and vulgarity He hunted with the lightest arms and fished with the finest lines He brought the refinement of the artist". Watt as the "cold genius" of the Quai d'Orsay, a brilliant diplomat whose intelligence and ruthlessness made him invaluable to successive French foreign ministers over an eight-year period.
