Paul Valéry

Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry(French:[pɔl valeʁi]; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was aFrench poet,essayist, andphilosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests includedaphorismson art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for theNobel Prize in Literaturein 12 different years.^[1]

Biography

Valéry was born to aCorsicanfather andGenoese-Istrianmother inSète, a town on the Mediterranean coast of theHérault, but he was raised inMontpellier, a larger urban center close by. After a traditionalRoman Catholiceducation, he studied law at university and then resided in Paris for most of the remainder of his life, where he was, for a while, part of the circle ofStéphane Mallarmé.

In 1900, he married Jeannine Gobillard, a friend ofStéphane Mallarmés family, who was also a niece of the painterBerthe Morisot. The wedding was a double ceremony in which the brides cousin, Morisots daughter,Julie Manet, married the painterErnest Rouart[fr].^{[2]Valéry and Gobillard had three children: Claude, Agathe and François.}

Valéry served as a juror withFlorence Meyer Blumenthalin awarding thePrix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.^[3]

Though his earliest publications date from his mid-twenties, Valéry did not become a full-time writer until 1920, when the man for whom he worked as private secretary, a former chief executive of theHavasnews agency, Edouard Lebey, died ofParkinsons disease. Until then, Valéry had, briefly, earned his living at the Ministry of War before assuming the relatively flexible post as assistant to the increasingly impaired Lebey, a job he held for some twenty years.

After his election to theAcadémie françaisein 1925, Valéry became a tireless public speaker and intellectual figure in French society, touring Europe and giving lectures on cultural and social issues as well as assuming a number of official positions eagerly offered to him by an admiring French nation. He represented France on cultural matters at theLeague of Nations, and he served on several of its committees, including the sub-committee on Arts and Letters of theCommittee on Intellectual Cooperation. The English-language collectionThe Outlook for Intelligence(1989) contains translations of a dozen essays related to these activities.

In 1931, he founded the Collège International de Cannes, a private institution teaching French language and civilization. The Collège is still operating today, offering professional courses for native speakers (for educational certification, law and business) as well as courses for foreign students.

He gave the keynote address at the 1932 German national celebration of the 100th anniversary of the death ofJohann Wolfgang Goethe. This was a fitting choice, as Valéry shared Goethes fascination with science (specifically,biologyandoptics).

In addition to his activities as a member of theAcadémie française, he was also a member of theAcademy of Sciences of Lisbon, and of theFront national des Ecrivains. In 1937, he was appointed chief executive of what later became theUniversity of Nice. He was the inaugural holder of the Chair of Poetics at theCollège de France.

DuringWorld War II, theVichy regimestripped him of some of these jobs and distinctions because of his quiet refusal to collaborate with Vichy and the German occupation, but Valéry continued, throughout these troubled years, to publish and to be active in French cultural life, especially as a member of theAcadémie française.

Valéry died in Paris in 1945. He is buried in the cemetery of his native town, Sète, the same cemetery celebrated in his famous poemLe Cimetière marin.

Work

The great silence

Valéry is best known as a poet, and he is sometimes considered to be the last of the Frenchsymbolists. However, he published fewer than a hundred poems, and none of them drew much attention. On the night of 4 October 1892, during a heavy storm, Paul Valéry underwent an existential crisis, an event that made a huge impact on his writing career. Eventually, around 1898, he quit writing altogether, publishing not a word for nearly twenty years. This hiatus was in part due to the death of his mentor,Stéphane Mallarmé. When, in 1917, he finally broke his great silence with the publication ofLa Jeune Parque, he was forty-six years of age.^[4]

La Jeune Parque

This obscure, but sublimely musical, masterpiece, of 512alexandrinelines in rhyming couplets, had taken him four years to complete, and it immediately secured his fame. With "Le Cimetière marin" and "LÉbauche dun serpent," it is often considered one of the greatest French poems of the twentieth century.

The title was chosen late in the poems gestation; it refers to the youngest of the threeParcae(the minor Roman deities also calledThe Fates), though for some readers the connection with that mythological figure is tenuous and problematic.

The poem is written in the first person, and is the soliloquy of a young woman contemplating life and death, engagement and withdrawal, love and estrangement, in a setting dominated by the sea, the sky, stars, rocky cliffs, and the rising sun. However, it is also possible to read the poem as an allegory on the way fate moves human affairs or as an attempt to comprehend the horrific violence in Europe at the time of the poems composition. The poem is not aboutWorld War I, but it does try to address the relationships between destruction and beauty, and, in this sense, it resonates withancient Greekmeditations on these matters, especially in the plays ofSophoclesandAeschylus. There are, therefore, evident links withle Cimetière marin, which is also a seaside meditation on comparably large themes.

Other works

Beforela Jeune Parque, Valérys only publications of note were dialogues, articles, some poems, and a study ofLeonardo da Vinci. In 1920 and 1922, he published two slim collections of verses. The first,Album des vers anciens(Album of old verses), was a revision of early but beautifully wrought smaller poems, some of which had been published individually before 1900. The second,Charmes(from the Latincarmina, meaning "songs" and also "incantations"), further confirmed his reputation as a major French poet. The collection includesle Cimetière marin, and many smaller poems with diverse structures. Le Cimetière marin is mentioned or indirectly implied or referred to in at least four of Iris Murdochs novels, The Unicorn,The Time of the Angels, The Nice and the Good and The Sea, The Sea.

Technique

Valérys technique is quite orthodox in its essentials. His verse rhymes and scans in conventional ways, and it has much in common with the work ofMallarmé. His poem,Palme, inspiredJames Merrills celebrated 1974 poemLost in Translation, and his cerebral lyricism also influenced the American poet,Edgar Bowers.

Prose works

His far more ample prose writings, peppered with many aphorisms andbons mots, reveal a skeptical outlook on human nature, verging on the cynical. His view of state power was broadlyliberalinsofar as he believed that state power and infringements on the individual should be severely limited.^{[5]Although he had flirted with nationalist ideas during the 1890s, he moved away from them by 1899, and believed that European culture owed its greatness to the ethnic diversity and universalism of the Roman Empire.[6]He denounced the myth of "racial purity" and argued that such purity, if it existed, would only lead to stagnation -- thus the mixing of races was necessary for progress and cultural development.[7]In "America as a Projection of the European Mind", Valéry remarked that whenever he despaired about Europes situation, he could "restore some degree of hope only by thinking of the New World" and mused on the "happy variations" which could result from European "aesthetic ideas filtering into the powerful character of native Mexican art."[8]}

Raymond Poincaré,Louis de Broglie,André Gide,Henri Bergson, andAlbert Einstein^{[9]all respected Valérys thinking and became friendly correspondents. Valéry was often asked to write articles on topics not of his choosing; the resulting intellectual journalism was collected in five volumes titledVariétés.}

The notebooks

Valérys most striking achievement is perhaps his monumental intellectual diary, called theCahiers(Notebooks). Early every morning of his adult life, he contributed something to theCahiers, prompting him to write: "Having dedicated those hours to the life of the mind, I thereby earn the right to be stupid for the rest of the day."

The subjects of hisCahiersentries often were, surprisingly, reflections on science and mathematics. In fact, arcane topics in these domains appear to have commanded far more of his considered attention than his celebrated poetry. TheCahiersalso contain the first drafts of many aphorisms he later included in his books. To date, theCahiershave been published in their entirety only as photostatic reproductions, and only since 1980 have they begun to receive scholarly scrutiny. TheCahiershave been translated into English in five volumes published by Peter Lang with the titleCahiers/Notebooks.

In recent decades Valérys thought has been considered a touchstone in the field ofconstructivist epistemology, as noted, for instance, byJean-Louis Le Moignein his description of constructivist history.^[10]

In other literature

One of three epigraphs inCormac McCarthys novelBlood Meridianis from Valérys Writing at the Yalu River (1895):

"Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time".^[11]

In the book "El laberinto de la soledad" fromOctavio Pazthere are three verses of one of Valérys poems:

Je pense, sur le bord doré de l’univers
A ce gout de périr qui prend la Pythonisse
En qui mugit l’espoir que le monde finisse.

In popular culture[edit]

Oscar-winning Japanese directorHayao Miyazakis 2013 filmThe Wind Risesand theJapanese novel of the same name(on which the film was partially based) take their title from Valérys verse "Le vent se lève... il faut tenter de vivre!" ("The wind rises… We must try to live!") in the poem "Le Cimetière marin" (The Graveyard by the Sea).^{[12][13]The same quote is used in the closing sentences ofAnthony Burgesss 1962 novelThe Wanting Seed.}

Selected works

• Conte de nuits(1888)
• Paradoxe sur l’architecte(1891)
• Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci(1895)
• La soirée avec monsieur Teste(1896)
• La Jeune Parque(1917)
• Album des vers anciens(1920)
• Le cimetière marin(1920)
• Charmes(1922)
• Eupalinos ou l’Architecte(1923)
• Variétés I(1924)
• La Crise de lEsprit (1924) Translated into German in 1956 byHerbert Steiner(Die Krise des Geistes)
• LÂme et la Danse(1925)
• Variétés II(1930)
• Regards sur le monde actuel. (1931)
• Lidée fixe(1932)
• Moralités(1932)
• Variétés III(1936)
• Degas, danse, dessin(1936)
• Variétes IV(1938)
• Mauvaises pensées et autres(1942)
• Tel quel(1943)
• Variétes V(1944)
• Vues(1948)
• ŒuvresI (1957), édition établie et annotée par Jean Hytier,Bibliothèque de la Pléiade/ nrf Gallimard
• ŒuvresII (1960), édition établie et annotée par Jean Hytier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade / nrf Gallimard
• Prose et Vers(1968)
• CahiersI (1973), édition établie, présentée et annotée parJudith Robinson-Valéry, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade / nrf Gallimard
• CahiersII (1974), édition établie, présentée et annotée par Judith Robinson-Valéry, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade / nrf Gallimard
• Cahiers (1894–1914)(1987), édition publiée sous la direction de Nicole Celeyrette-Pietri et Judith Robinson-Valéry avec la collaboration de Jean Celeyrette, Maria Teresa Giaveri, Paul Gifford, Jeannine Jallat, Bernard Lacorre, Huguette Laurenti, Florence de Lussy, Robert Pickering, Régine Pietra et Jürgen Schmidt-Radefeldt, tomes I-IX, Collection blanche, Gallimard

In English translation:

• 1964.Selected Writings of Paul Valery. New Directions.
• 1968.Sketch of a Serpent.R. A. Christmas, trans.Dialogue. Second version printed in Christmass collection of his own work,Leaves of Sass(2019).
• 1975.Collected Works of Paul Valéry.Princeton University Press.
• 1977.Paul Valery: An Anthology. James Lawler, ed. Bollingen (Princeton Univ. Press).
• 1989.The Outlook for Intelligence. Denise Foliot and Jackson Mathews, trans. Bollingen (Princeton Univ. Press).
• 2000.Cahiers/Notebooks. Volume I. Editor-in-chief: Brian Stimpson. Associate editors Paul Gifford, Robert Pickering. Translated by Paul Gifford. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.