Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet,

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

, and

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included

aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by ...

s on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the

Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

in 12 different years.

Biography

Valéry was born to a Corsican father and Genoese-

Istria Istria ( ; Croatian and Slovene: ; ist, Eîstria; Istro-Romanian, Italian and Venetian: ; formerly in Latin and in Ancient Greek) is the largest peninsula within the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic betwe ...

n mother in

Sète Sète (; oc, Seta, ), also historically spelt ''Cette'' (official until 1928) and ''Sette'', is a commune in the Hérault department, in the region of Occitania, southern France. Its inhabitants are called ''Sétois'' (male) and ''Sétoises ...

, a town on the Mediterranean coast of the

Hérault Hérault (; oc, Erau, ) is a department of the region of Occitania, Southern France. Named after the Hérault River, its prefecture is Montpellier. It had a population of 1,175,623 in 2019.Montpellier Montpellier (, , ; oc, Montpelhièr ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the department of Hérault. In 2018, 290,053 people l ...

, a larger urban center close by. After a traditional

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

education, 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 of

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...

. In 1900, he married Jeannine Gobillard, a friend of

's family, who was also a niece of the painter

Berthe Morisot Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (; January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a French painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. In 1864, Morisot exhibited for the first time in the highly e ...

. The wedding was a double ceremony in which the bride's cousin,

's daughter,

Julie Manet Julie Manet (14 November 1878 – 14 July 1966) was a French painter, model, diarist, and art collector. Biography Born in Paris, Manet was the daughter and only child of artist Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet, younger brother of painter Édou ...

, married the painter Ernest Rouart. Valéry and Gobillard had three children: Claude, Agathe and François. Valéry served as a juror with

Florence Meyer Blumenthal Florence Meyer Blumenthal (1875–1930) was an American philanthropist who founded the ''Fondation franco-américaine Florence Blumenthal (Franco-American Florence Blumenthal Foundation),'' which awarded the Prix Blumenthal from 1919-1954 to paint ...

in awarding the

Prix Blumenthal The Prix Blumenthal (or ''Blumenthal Prize'') was a grant or stipend awarded through the philanthropy of Florence Meyer Blumenthal (1875–1930) – and the foundation she created, ''Fondation franco-américaine Florence Blumenthal (Franco-Am ...

, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians. 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 the

Havas Havas SA is a French multinational advertising and public relations company, headquartered in Paris, France. It operates in more than 100 countries and is one of the largest advertising and communications groups in the world. Havas consists of ...

news agency, Edouard Lebey, died of

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms beco ...

. 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 the

Académie française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosop ...

in 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 the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference th ...

, and he served on several of its committees, including the sub-committee on Arts and Letters of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. The English-language collection ''The 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 of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. This was a fitting choice, as Valéry shared Goethe's fascination with science (specifically,

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

and

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultrav ...

). In addition to his activities as a member of the

, he was also a member of the

Academy of Sciences of Lisbon The Lisbon Academy of Sciences ( pt, Academia das Ciências de Lisboa) is Portugal's national academy dedicated to the advancement of sciences and learning, with the goal of promoting academic progress and prosperity in Portugal. It is one of Po ...

, and of the ''Front national des Ecrivains''. In 1937, he was appointed chief executive of what later became the

University of Nice A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

. He was the inaugural holder of the Chair of Poetics at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris n ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, the

Vichy regime Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its ter ...

stripped 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 the

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

Work

The great silence

Valéry is best known as a poet, and he is sometimes considered to be the last of the French

symbolists Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and real ...

. 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,

. When, in 1917, he finally broke his 'great silence' with the publication of ''La Jeune Parque'', he was forty-six years of age.

''La Jeune Parque''

This obscure, but sublimely musical, masterpiece, of 512

alexandrine Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French ''Roman ...

lines in rhyming couplets, had taken him four years to complete, and it immediately secured his fame. With "Le Cimetière marin" and "L'Ébauche d'un serpent," it is often considered one of the greatest French poems of the twentieth century. The title was chosen late in the poem's gestation; it refers to the youngest of the three '' Parcae'' (the minor Roman deities also called ''The 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 poem's composition. The poem is not about

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, but it does try to address the relationships between destruction and beauty, and, in this sense, it resonates with

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

meditations on these matters, especially in the plays of

Sophocles Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or c ...

and

Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; grc-gre, Αἰσχύλος ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Gree ...

. There are, therefore, evident links with ''le Cimetière marin'', which is also a seaside meditation on comparably large themes.

Other works

Before ''la Jeune Parque'', Valéry's only publications of note were dialogues, articles, some poems, and a study of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on ...

. 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 Latin ''carmina'', meaning "songs" and also "incantations"), further confirmed his reputation as a major French poet. The collection includes ''le Cimetière marin'', and many smaller poems with diverse structures.

Technique

Valéry's technique is quite orthodox in its essentials. His verse rhymes and scans in conventional ways, and it has much in common with the work of Mallarmé. His poem, ''Palme'', inspired James Merrill's celebrated 1974 poem '' Lost in Translation'', and his cerebral lyricism also influenced the American poet, Edgar Bowers.

Prose works

Valéry described his “true oeuvre” to be prose, and he filled more than 28,000 notebook pages over his lifetime. His far more ample prose writings, peppered with many aphorisms and ''bons mots'', reveal a skeptical outlook on human nature, verging on the cynical. His view of state power was broadly liberal insofar as he believed that state power and infringements on the individual should be severely limited. 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. 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. In "America as a Projection of the European Mind", Valéry remarked that whenever he despaired about Europe's 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."

Raymond Poincaré Raymond Nicolas Landry Poincaré (, ; 20 August 1860 – 15 October 1934) was a French statesman who served as President of France from 1913 to 1920, and three times as Prime Minister of France. Trained in law, Poincaré was elected deputy in ...

Louis de Broglie Louis Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th Duc de Broglie (, also , or ; 15 August 1892 – 19 March 1987) was a French physicist and aristocrat who made groundbreaking contributions to Old quantum theory, quantum theory. In his 1924 PhD thesis, he pos ...

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism ...

Henri Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson Le Roy, ...

, and

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

C’est ainsi que ces interrogations sur le savoir se nourrirent chez le poète de la fréquentation de l’univers scientifique : lecteur de Bergson, d’Einstein, de Louis de Broglie et Langevin, Paul Valéry devait devenir en 1935 membre de l’Académie des Sciences de Lisbonne.

's website in French

/ref> all respected Valéry's 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 titled ''Variétés''.

The notebooks

Valéry's most striking achievement is perhaps his monumental intellectual diary, called the ''Cahiers'' (Notebooks). Early every morning of his adult life, he contributed something to the ''Cahiers'', 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 his ''Cahiers'' entries 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. The ''Cahiers'' also contain the first drafts of many aphorisms he later included in his books. To date, the ''Cahiers'' have been published in their entirety only as photostatic reproductions, and only since 1980 have they begun to receive scholarly scrutiny. The ''Cahiers'' have been translated into English in five volumes published by Peter Lang with the title ''Cahiers/Notebooks''. In recent decades Valéry's thought has been considered a touchstone in the field of

constructivist epistemology Constructivism is a view in the philosophy of science that maintains that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, which seeks to measure and construct models of the natural world. According to the constructivist, natur ...

, as noted, for instance, by Jean-Louis Le Moigne in his description of constructivist history.

In other literature

One of three epigraphs in

Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr., July 20, 1933) is an American writer who has written twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays and three short stories, spanning the Western and post-apocalyptic genres. He is known for his g ...

's novel

Blood Meridian ''Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West'' is a 1985 in literature, 1985 Epic (genre), epic novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, classified under the Western (genre), Western, or sometimes the Revisionist Western, anti-Western, g ...

is from Valéry's 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". In the book "El laberinto de la soledad" from

Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and ...

there are three verses of one of Valéry's 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

Oscar-winning Japanese director

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widel ...

's 2013 film ''

The Wind Rises is a 2013 Japanese animated historical drama film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for the Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Walt Disney Japan, Mitsubishi, Toho and KDDI. It was rel ...

'' and the Japanese novel of the same name (on which the film was partially based) take their title from Valéry's 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'')."Le Cimetière marin"
The same quote is used in the closing sentences of

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire ''A Clockwork ...

's 1962 novel

The Wanting Seed ''The Wanting Seed'' is a dystopian novel by the English author Anthony Burgess, written in 1962. Theme Although the novel addresses many societal issues, the primary subject is overpopulation and its relation to culture. Religion, government ...

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 l'Esprit (1924) Translated into German in 1956 by Herbert Steiner (''Die Krise des Geistes'') * ''L'Âme et la Danse'' (1925) * ''Variétés II'' (1930) * ''Regards sur le monde actuel''. (1931) * ''L'idée 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) * ''Œuvres'' I (1957), édition établie et annotée par Jean Hytier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade / nrf Gallimard * ''Œuvres'' II (1960), édition établie et annotée par Jean Hytier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade / nrf Gallimard * ''Prose et Vers'' (1968) * ''Cahiers'' I (1973), édition établie, présentée et annotée par Judith Robinson-Valéry, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade / nrf Gallimard * ''Cahiers'' II (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 Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American and British English spelling differences, American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literature, literary and theatrical form that depicts suc ...

''. Second version printed in Christmas's collection of his own work, ''Leaves of Sass'' (2019). * 1975. ''Collected Works of Paul Valéry''.

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

. * 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. *2020. ''The Idea of Perfection: The Poetry and Prose of Paul Valéry''; A Bilingual Edition. Trans. Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody (

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...

References

External links

Ressources sur Paul Valéry.

essay
Essay on Paul Valery's Aesthetics

Research Guide on Intellectual Cooperation – Notable Members
by UN Archives Geneva. * Books by Paul Valéry at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...

(in French) {{DEFAULTSORT:Valery, Paul 1871 births 1945 deaths People from Sète French people of Italian descent French people of Corsican descent Lycée Condorcet alumni Collège de France faculty French journalists French poets Symbolist poets Aphorists Epistemologists 20th-century French philosophers Members of the Académie Française Prix Blumenthal French male essayists French male poets 20th-century French essayists 20th-century French male writers French agnostics