Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry (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.

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 de 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 à la Méthode de Leonardo da Vinci (1895; trans. 1929) he discusses the creative method of one of the world’s artistic geniuses. The work of fiction La Soirée avec Monsieur Teste (1896; 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 (1900-1922). 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 this 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 Le Cimetière Marin (1920; trans. 1932) and many of the poems in Charmes (Odes, 1922), 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, ou l’Architecte (1923; trans. 1932), he develops a theory of architecture as the form of art that is most akin to music. In Regards sur le Monde Actuel (1933; Reflections on the World Today, 1948) Valéry is concerned with the ideological bases of modern politics. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1925 and was appointed Professor of Poetry at the Collège de France in 1937. The writer’s other works include L’Ame et la Danse (1921; Dance and the Soul, trans. 1951), Variété I-V (1924-1944), and L’Idée Fixe (1932).

Although Valéry’s reputation is founded upon his success as a poet, he wrote little verse after 1923 and concentrated on weightier intellectual preoccupations. He returned repeatedly to the divisions in human nature: contemplation versus action, emotion versus intellect, Being versus Not-Being. He is a consummate stylist, graceful and aphoristic. His poetry is subtle in its rhythms, rich in imagery, occasionally allusive to the point of obscurity, but always musical. His reputation in France was such that when he died in 1945 he was given a state funeral.