Paul Valery

Paul Valery (1871-1945), French poet and man of letters, whose work presents a conflict between contemplation and action that must be resolved artistically in order to grasp the meaning of life. He is considered one of the greatest of modern philosophical writers in verse and prose.

Paul Ambroise Valéry was born in Sète and educated at the University of Montpellier. In 1892 he settled in Paris, where he entered the literary circle of the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Valéry’s early poems, written between 1889 and 1898 and collected in Album des vers anciens (Album of Ancient Verse, 1921), were influenced by the symbolists.

Valéry’s first two prose works concern the mastery of intellectual techniques. In Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci (1895; trans. 1929) he discusses the creative method of one of the world’s universal geniuses. The work of fiction An Evening with Mr. Teste (1895; trans. 1925)—that is, “Mr. Head”—is concerned with the introspective processes of his principal character, a man of prodigious mental abilities.

Valéry held posts in the civil service (1897-1900) and in a news agency (1900-22). During most of this period he pursued studies in mathematics. A perfectionist, he refused to have any of his poetry published until 1917, when the allegorical poem La jeune parque (The Young Goddess Fate) appeared. In his poem he views the nature of the world as a combination of the forces of life and absolute essences. As in his later poetry, including Graveyard by the Sea (1920; trans. 1932) and many of the poems in Charmes (Odes, 1923), a rarefied analysis of human self-consciousness is conveyed in a severely classical form with sensuous, natural description and a musical technique.

Valéry’s later prose works consist of philosophical studies and meditations. In Eupalinos, or the Architect (1923; translated 1932), he develops a theory of architecture as the form of art that is most akin to music. In Reflections on the World Today (1933; translated 1948) Valéry is concerned with the ideological bases of modern politics. He was appointed a lecturer in poetics at the Collège de France in 1937. The writer’s other works include Dance and the Soul (1924; trans. 1951), Variété I-V (1924-44), and L’Idée fixe (1932).

Valéry considered poetry the finest of creative techniques; in his own verse he attempted to make abstract ideas concrete through symbolic imagery and subtle rhythms. In his prose writings art, culture, and the potentialities of the human mind are analyzed in a polished aphoristic style. The concentration of purpose and compression of thought in Valéry’s work make it extremely difficult to understand.