Background
Valéry was born Paul-Ambroise Valéry, on October 30, 1871, the son of a Corsican father and a Genoese mother, in Sète, France.
( This selection from representative works of the great F...)
This selection from representative works of the great French poet-philosopher is based on the Paris Morceaux Choisis volume, which was assembled by Valéry himself. It begins with the poetry (French and English en face), including such masterpieces as "Le Cimetiere Marin" and portions of "La Jeune Parque"; then ranges through Valéry's work in fields as various as architecture, logic, the dance, literature, philosophy, and painting. It concludes with excerpts from his creative writings such as Monsieur Teste and the drama Mon Faust. The list of translators for this volume is distinguished. Among them are Lionel Abel, Léonie Adams, Malcolm Cowly, James Kirkup, C. Day Lewis, Jackson Mathews, Louise Varese, and Vernon Watkins.
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(The Cahiers/Notebooks of Paul Valéry are a unique form of...)
The Cahiers/Notebooks of Paul Valéry are a unique form of writing. They reveal Valéry as one of the most radical and creative minds of the twentieth century, encompassing a wide range of investigation into all spheres of human activity. His work explores the arts, the sciences, philosophy, history and politics, investigating linguistic, psychological and social issues, all linked to the central questions, relentlessly posed: what is the human mind and how does it work?, what is the potential of thought and what are its limits? But we encounter here too, Valéry the writer: exploratory, fragmentary texts undermine the boundaries between analysis and creativity, between theory and practice. Neither journal nor diary, eluding the traditional genres of writing, the Notebooks offer lyrical passages, writing of extreme beauty, prose poems of extraordinary descriptive power alongside theoretical considerations of poetics, ironic aphorisms and the most abstract kind of analysis. The concerns and the insights that occupied Valérys inner voyages over more than 50 years remain as relevant as ever for the contemporary reader: for the Self that is his principal subject is at once singular and universal.
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( Paul Valérys most celebrated collection Charmes was fi...)
Paul Valérys most celebrated collection Charmes was first published in 1922. It contains several of his most famous poems, including Ébauche dun serpent and Le cimetière marin in Yvor Winters view the two greatest short poems ever written. The collection as a whole has achieved classic status as the finest work by the finest modern French poet. Here it is helpfully introduced and discussed by Peter Dale who has also appended some early poems, and one much later piece, of related interest. Peter Dale has been working on his translations for some thirty years. As ever, he takes the hardest and for the reader, most rewarding route in making versions with corresponding rhyme and metre. The result is a fresh view of an intriguing poet, somewhat neglected but now revived in English. Peter Dale is the author of notable translations of Dantes Divine Comedy and selections from the poetry of Tristan Corbière, Jules Laforgue and François Villon. These and his own collections Edge to Edge (1996) and Under the Breath (2002) are published by Anvil.
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(The Cahiers/Notebooks of Paul Valéry are a unique form of...)
The Cahiers/Notebooks of Paul Valéry are a unique form of writing. They reveal Valéry as one of the most radical and creative minds of the twentieth century, encompassing a wide range of investigation into all spheres of human activity. His work explores the arts, the sciences, philosophy, history and politics, investigating linguistic, psychological and social issues, all linked to the central questions, relentlessly posed: what is the human mind and how does it work?, what is the potential of thought and what are its limits? But we encounter here too, Valéry the writer: exploratory, fragmentary texts undermine the boundaries between analysis and creativity, between theory and practice. Neither journal nor diary, eluding the traditional genres of writing, the Notebooks offer lyrical passages, writing of extreme beauty, prose poems of extraordinary descriptive power alongside theoretical considerations of poetics, ironic aphorisms and the most abstract kind of analysis. The concerns and the insights that occupied Valérys inner voyages over more than 50 years remain as relevant as ever for the contemporary reader: for the Self that is his principal subject is at once singular and universal.
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( James R. Lawler's elegant introduction deals with Valér...)
James R. Lawler's elegant introduction deals with Valéry's concerns and his influence, and also with critical interpretations of his work. The volume begins with "The Evening with Monsieur Teste" (1896), from the famous "anti-novel" Monsieur Teste, for whose translation Jackson Mathews received the National Book Award in 1974. It includes such notable essays as the "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci," "The Crisis of Mind," and "Poetry and Abstract Thought." The importance of Valéry's prose poetry has only recently been recognized, and a selection is presented here. There are also ten of his best-known poems in verse, among them "La Jeune Parque" and "Le Cimetiere Marin," with the French texts facing the English translations by David Paul. The anthology closes with two dialogues, one dating from the twenties, the other from 1943; which demonstrate the play of ideas--the intellectual vigor and grace--that are characteristic of Valéry's work as a whole.
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Valéry was born Paul-Ambroise Valéry, on October 30, 1871, the son of a Corsican father and a Genoese mother, in Sète, France.
After a traditional Roman Catholic education, Valéry studied law at university.
While reading law at the University of Montpellier Valéry was encouraged by Pierre Louÿs to contribute essays and poems in the Symbolist manner to various small reviews. On settling in Paris, he was employed from 1897 to 1900 in the Ministry of War and then as private secretary to Lebey, director of the Havas news agency. He became a regular guest at the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé's Tuesday evening gatherings in the Rue de Rome; and he wrote in 1894 (for Juliette Adam, the founder and editor of La Nouvelle Revue) Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci, one of his most striking critical productions, and in 1897 (for the English author William Ernest Henley) Une conquète méthodique, analyzing the reasons for the increasing German hegemony of Europe. But soon afterward - having in 1892 undergone some spiritual crisis whose exact nature he never divulged - he withdrew from literary life and absorbed himself chiefly in mathematical studies, until, in 1913, André Gide proposed to publish a volume of his collected poems and sent him copies of them for revision. The effect of this action was to revive Valéry's poetic impulse, and he produced in 1917 La jeune Parque, a kind of reflective monologue supposedly uttered by a representative human spirit awaking to full sensuous and functional consciousness; it originally was planned to occupy about fifty lines but in its final form extended to over 500. He had taken to noting down his miscellaneous reflections each morning on rising; these by now filled several dozen cahiers (notebooks), from which he occasionally allowed extracts to be printed. A facsimile edition of Les Cahiers was published posthumously in 29 volumes (1957-1961). Valéry was elected to the Académie Française in 1925, succeeding Anatole France; as academician it fell to him to deliver an address of welcome to Marshal Pétain, elected in 1931, and an obituary speech on the death of Henri Bergson in 1941. Valéry was never a wealthy man, and after losing his secretarial post on the death of his chief in 1922, he felt more than ever obliged to accept literary commissions, as well as to lecture publicly; he wrote numerous prefaces to others' work, pieces written to order (such as the dialogue L'Idée fixe), and essays in which he put forward a "constructivistic" theory of poetry like Edgar Allan Poe's, discounting the idea of inspiration. Other notable works include Eupalinos ou l'Architecte (1924) and L'Ame et la danse (1924), both of them in the form and with the personages of the Socratic dialogue; another volume of verse called Charmes ("Odes") containing the famous Le Cimetière marin and Ebauche d'un serpent; and a series of fugitive pieces concerning an imaginary character called Monsieur Teste, whose name indicates that he is both a witness (Lat. testis) to the uniqueness of man in the world and (Fr. tête) an intellectual in his embodiment of that uniqueness. Throughout Valéry's work there runs the theme of a quest for the essential self (le moi pur), which is approached by progressive differentiation from all that is subject to biological change and decay. Valéry died on July 20, 1945, in Paris. The Rue de Villejust in Paris where he lived is now called Rue Paul Valéry.
( This selection from representative works of the great F...)
( Paul Valérys most celebrated collection Charmes was fi...)
(The Cahiers/Notebooks of Paul Valéry are a unique form of...)
(The Cahiers/Notebooks of Paul Valéry are a unique form of...)
( James R. Lawler's elegant introduction deals with Valér...)
Member of the Académie française, member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, member of the Front national des Ecrivains, chief executive of the University of Nice, holder of the Chair of Poetics at the Collège de France
In 1900, Valéry married Jeannie Gobillard, who was a niece of the painter Berthe Morisot. The wedding was a double ceremony in which the bride's cousin, Morisot's daughter, Julie Manet married the painter, Ernest Rouart. Valéry and Gobillard had three children: Claude, Agathe and François.
