Editing Paul Valéry

{{Short description|French poet, essayist, and philosopher (1871–1945)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2018}}
{{Infobox writer
| embed            = 
| honorific_prefix = 
| name             = Paul Valéry
| honorific_suffix = 
| image            = Paul Valéry - photo Henri Manuel.jpg
| image_size       = 
| image_upright    = 
| alt              = 
| caption          = Paul Valéry photographed by [[Henri Manuel]], 1920s.
| native_name      = 
| native_name_lang = 
| pseudonym        = 
| birth_name       = Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|1871|10|30|df=y}}
| birth_place      = [[Sète]], France
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|1945|7|20|1871|10|30|df=y}}
| death_place      = Paris, France
| resting_place    = 
| occupation       = 
| language         = French
| citizenship      = 
| education        = {{lang|fr|[[Collège de France]]|italic=no}}
| alma_mater       = 
| period           = 
| genre            = {{flatlist}}
*Poetry
*Philosophy
*Essayist
{{endflatlist}}
| subject          = 
| movement         = 
| notable_works    = 
| spouse           = Jeannie Gobillard
| partner          = Catherine Pozzi
| children         = Agathe Rouart-Valéry
| relatives        = 
| awards           = 
| signature        = Firma Valery Paul.jpg
| signature_alt    = 
| years_active     = 
| module           = 
| website          = 
}}

'''Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry''' ({{IPA|fr|pɔl valeʁi|lang}}; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet, [[essayist]], and [[philosopher]].  

In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included [[aphorism]]s on art, history, letters, music, and current events. 

Valéry was nominated for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 12 different years.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=9496|title=Nomination%20Archive|date=1 April 2020|website=NobelPrize.org}}</ref>

==Biography==
Valéry was born to a [[Corsican people|Corsican]] father and [[Genoa|Genoese]]-[[Istria]]n mother in [[Sète]], a town on the Mediterranean coast of the [[Hérault]], but he was raised in [[Montpellier]], a larger urban center close by. After a traditional [[Roman Catholic]] 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]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite magazine |last=Kunkel |first=Benjamin |date=2024-12-09 |title=Paul Valéry Would Prefer Not To |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/16/paul-valery-would-prefer-not-to |access-date=2025-01-29 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US |issn=0028-792X}}</ref>

In 1900, he married Jeannine Gobillard, a friend of [[Stéphane Mallarmé]]'s family, who was also a niece of the painter [[Berthe Morisot]]. The wedding was a double ceremony in which the bride's cousin, [[Berthe Morisot]]'s daughter, [[Julie Manet]], married the painter [[Ernest Rouart]].<ref>*Manet, Julie, Rosalind de Boland Roberts, and Jane Roberts. ''Growing Up with the Impressionists: The Diary of Julie Manet''. London: Sotheby's Publications, 1987.</ref> Valéry and Gobillard had three children: Claude, Agathe and François.

Valéry served as a juror with [[Florence Meyer Blumenthal]] in awarding the [[Prix Blumenthal]], a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.<ref name="FMBlumenthal">{{cite web | title = Florence Meyer Blumenthal | publisher = Jewish Women's Archive, Michele Siegel | url = http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/blumenthal-florence-meyer}}</ref>

Though his earliest publications date from his mid-twenties, Valéry did not become a full-time writer until he was fifty. Valéry had briefly earned his living at the Ministry of War,<ref name=":0" /> before assuming a relatively flexible post as private secretary to the increasingly impaired Edouard Lebey, a former chief executive of the [[Agence France-Presse|Havas]] news agency (later renamed "Agence France-Presse"). He held this position for over twenty years, until Lebey's death in 1922.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rudavsky-Brody |first=Nathaniel |date=Spring 2021 |title=Paul Valéry and the Mechanisms of Modern Tyranny |url=https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/who-do-we-think-we-are/articles/paul-valry-and-the-mechanisms-of-modern-tyranny |journal=The Hedgehog Review |volume=23 |issue=1}}</ref>

In 1920, he began a tumultuous affair with a fellow poet, [[Catherine Pozzi]], which lasted for eight years.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pinto |first=Aline Magalhães |date=15 January 2020 |title="A Castaway's Look" The Writing of the Wreck-Metaphor in Catherine Pozzi's Diaries |url=https://socialscienceresearch.org/index.php/GJHSS/article/view/102216/4-A-Castaways-Look_JATS_NLM_xml#citations |journal=Global Journal of Human Social Sciences|volume=20 |issue=A9 |pages=35–44 }}</ref>
 
After his election to the {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]|italic=no}} 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]], and he served on several of its committees, including the sub-committee on Arts and Letters of the [[International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation|Committee on Intellectual Cooperation]]. The English-language collection ''The Outlook for Intelligence'' (1989) contains translations of a dozen essays related to these activities.{{citation needed|date=November 2024}}

In 1931, he founded the [[Collège International de Cannes]],<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.campusinternationalcannes.com/en/ | title=Campus International Cannes }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=France Alumni|url=http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-last-kid-on-the-block/|website=francealumni.fr|date=April 1976 |access-date=February 26, 2025}}</ref> 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]] and [[optics]]).

In addition to his activities as a member of the {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]|italic=no}}, he was also a member of the [[Academy of Sciences of Lisbon]], and of the ''Front national des Ecrivains''. In 1937, he was appointed chief executive of what later became the [[University of Nice]]. He was the inaugural holder of the Chair of Poetics at the {{lang|fr|[[Collège de France]]|italic=no}}.

During [[World War II]], the [[Vichy regime]] 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 {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]|italic=no}}. From 1942 he became a member of the National Committee of Writers, an offshoot of the anti-Nazi [[French Resistance|resistance]] movement [[National Front (French Resistance)|National Front]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=prixnathankatzdupatrimoine |date=2021-04-26 |title=Paul Valéry |url=https://editionsarfuyen.com/2021/04/26/9341/ |access-date=2025-03-26 |website=Éditions Arfuyen |language=fr-FR}}</ref>

Valéry was nominated for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] twelve times. It is believed that the [[Swedish Academy]] intended to award Valéry the prize in 1945, had he not died that year.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/the-nobel-prize-in-literature-nominations-and-reports-1901-1950/ |title=The Nobel Prize in Literature - Nominations and reports 1901-1950 |publisher=nobelprize.org }}</ref>

Valéry died in Paris in July 1945. He is buried in the cemetery of his native town, Sète, the same cemetery celebrated in his famous poem ''Le Cimetière marin''.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Zaman|first=Nasima|date=2011-07-23|title=Remembering Paul Valéry|url=https://www.thedailystar.net/news-detail-195289|access-date=2021-09-28|website=The Daily Star|language=en}}</ref>

==Work==

===The great silence===
Valéry is best known as a poet, and he is sometimes considered to be the last of the French [[Symbolism (movement)|symbolists]]. 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 of ''La Jeune Parque'', he was forty-six years of age.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.kb.nl/en/themes/koopman-collection/la-jeune-parque|title=La jeune Parque &#124; Koninklijke Bibliotheek|website=www.kb.nl}}</ref>

===''La Jeune Parque''===
This obscure, but sublimely musical, masterpiece, of 512 [[French alexandrine|alexandrine]] 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]], but it does try to address the relationships between destruction and beauty, and, in this sense, it resonates with [[Ancient Greek literature|ancient Greek]] meditations on these matters, especially in the plays of [[Sophocles]] and [[Aeschylus]]. 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]]. 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 [[Stéphane Mallarmé|Mallarmé]]. His poem "Palme" inspired [[James Merrill]]'s celebrated 1974 poem "[[Lost in Translation (poem)|Lost in Translation]]," and his cerebral lyricism also influenced 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.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Poet's Dance: On "The Idea of Perfection: The Poetry and Prose of Paul Valéry"|url=https://www.clereviewofbooks.com/home/paul-valery-nathaniel-rudavsky-brody-the-idea-of-perfection-review|access-date=2021-12-07|website=Cleveland Review of Books|language=en-US}}</ref> 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 [[liberalism|liberal]] insofar as he believed that state power and infringements on the individual should be severely limited.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gifford |first1=Paul |title=Reading Paul Valéry: Universe in Mind |date=1998 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=239}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Berman |first1=Paul |title=Extreme Diamonds: Paul Valéry and the Last Centennial of 1917 |url=https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/251734/paul-valery-and-the-last-centennial-of-1917 |website=Tablet Mag|date=19 December 2017 }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gifford |first1=Paul |title=Reading Paul Valéry: Universe in Mind |date=1998 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=237}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Valéry |first1=Paul |title=Reflections on the World Today |date=1948 |publisher=Pantheon |pages=84–85}}</ref>

[[Raymond Poincaré]], [[Louis de Broglie]], [[André Gide]], [[Henri Bergson]], and [[Albert Einstein]]<ref name="references">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. [[Académie française]]'s website in French, [http://www.academie-francaise.fr/les-immortels/paul-valery]</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."{{Citation needed|date=April 2020}}

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]], as noted, for instance, by [[Jean-Louis Le Moigne]] in his description of constructivist history.<ref>[[Jean-Louis Le Moigne]], ''Les épistémologies constructivistes'', 1995, PUF, " Que sais-je ? "</ref>

==In other literature==

One of three epigraphs in [[Cormac McCarthy]]'s novel ''[[Blood Meridian]]'' 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".<ref>{{cite book|last1=McCarthy|first1=Cormac|title=Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West|date=1985|publisher=Random House|location=New York|isbn=0-394-54482-X|edition=1st edition, hardback}}</ref>

In the book ''El laberinto de la soleda'' by [[Octavio Paz]] there are three lines from Valéry's poem "La jeune parque": 
<blockquote><poem>
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.</poem></blockquote>("I think, at the golden brink of the universe, / Of that longing for death which possessed the Sibyl / And which feeds on the hope that the last days are near.")<ref>{{cite web |title=La Jeune Parque (The Young Fate)|url=https://issuu.com/abjcdsss/docs/collected_poems_-_paul_valery_1_/s/17168526|access-date=May 18, 2025 |website=issuu}}</ref>


In Ray Bradbury’s ''Fahrenheit 451'', the book-burning fire chief Beatty quotes Valery: <blockquote>The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.</blockquote>From ''Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci''.

==In popular culture==
Oscar-winning Japanese director [[Hayao Miyazaki]]'s 2013 film ''[[The Wind Rises]]'' and the [[The Wind Has Risen|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'').<ref>Shone, Tom (21 February 2014). "[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/21/wind-rises-hayao-miyazaki-animated-film-review The Wind Rises: a flight into Hayao Miyazaki's magic and poetry]". ''[[The Guardian]]'' (London). Retrieved 4 March 2014.</ref><ref>[http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/fr/valery.daylewis.html "Le Cimetière marin"].</ref> The same quote is used in the closing sentences of [[Anthony Burgess]]'s 1962 novel ''[[The Wanting Seed]]''. "Le Cimetière marin" is also quoted in the French comic "Le concombre masqué: Comment devenir maître du monde?", authored by Mandryka and published in 1980.

==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)
* ''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

=== English translations ===
* ''Selected Writings of Paul Valéry'' (New Directions, 1964)
* "Sketch of a Serpent", trans. [[R. A. Christmas]] in [[Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought|''Dialogue'']] (Spring 1968). Second version printed in Christmas's collection of his own work, ''Leaves of Sass'' (2019).
* ''Collected Works of Paul Valéry'', series ed. Jackson Mathews ([[Princeton University Press]], 1956–75)<ref>{{Cite web |title=Collected Works of Paul Valery {{!}} Princeton University Press |url=https://press.princeton.edu/series/collected-works-of-paul-valery |access-date=2024-04-12 |website=press.princeton.edu |language=en}}</ref>
** ''Volume 1. Poems'', translated by D. Paul. ''On Poets and Poetry'', selected and translated from the ''Notebooks'', by J.R. Lawler
** ''Volume 2. Poems in the Rough'', translated by H. Corke
** ''Volume 3. Plays'', translated by D. Paul and R. Fitzgerald
** ''Volume 4. Dialogues'', translated by W.M. Stewart
** ''Volume 5. Idée fixe'', translated by D. Paul
** ''Volume 6. Monsieur Teste'', translated by J. Mathews
** ''Volume 7. The Art of Poetry'', translated by Denise Folliot. With an Introduction by [[T. S. Eliot]].
** ''Volume 8. Leonardo. Poe. Mallarmé'', translated by M. Cowley and J.R. Lawler
** ''Volume 9. Masters and Friends'', translated by M. Turnell
** ''Volume 10. History and Politics'', translated by D. Folliot and J. Mathews
** ''Volume 11. Occasions'', translated by R. Shattuck and F. Brown
** ''Volume 12. Degas. Manet. Morisot'', translated by D. Paul
** ''Volume 13. Aesthetics'', translated by R. Manheim
** ''Volume 14. Analects'', translated by S. Gilbert
** ''Volume 15. Moi'', translated by M. and J. Mathews.
* ''Paul Valery: An Anthology'', ed. James R. Lawler (Princeton, 1977)
* ''The Outlook for Intelligence'', trans. Denise Folliot and Jackson Mathews (Princeton, 1989)
* ''Cahiers''/''Notebooks'', series ed. Brian Stimpson (Peter Lang, 2000–10)
** ''Volume 1'', translated by Paul Gifford, Siân Miles, Robert Pickering and Brian Stimpson (2000)
** ''Volume 2'', translated by Rachel Killick, Robert Pickering, Norma Rinsler, Stephen Romer and Brian Stimpson (2000)
** ''Volume 3'', translated by Norma Rinsler, Paul Ryan and Brian Stimpson (2007)
** ''Volume 4'', translated and edited by Brian Stimpson, Paul Gifford, Robert Pickering, Norma Rinsler and Rima Joseph (2010)
** ''Volume 5'', translated and edited by Brian Stimpson, Paul Gifford, Robert Pickering and Norma Rinsler (2010)
*''The Idea of Perfection: The Poetry and Prose of Paul Valéry''; A Bilingual Edition. Trans. Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody ([[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]], 2020).
*''Collected Verse'', trans. Paul Ryan (Oxford University Press, 2024).
*''Monsieur Teste'', trans. [[Charlotte Mandell]] (New York Review Books, 2024)

==See also==
{{portal|Poetry}}
*[[Bonini's paradox]]
*[[Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Sylvie Ballestra-Puech, ''Lecture de la Jeune Parque'', Klincksieck, 1993
* Philippe Baudry, ''Valéry trouveur: métaphysique et littérature'', Kindle, 2010; CreateSpace, 2011
* Philippe Baudry, ''Valéry Finder: Metaphysics and Literature'', Kindle, 2011; CreateSpace, 2011
* Denis Bertholet, ''Paul Valéry, 1871–1945'', Plon, 1995 (biography)
* Serge Bourjea, ''Paul Valéry, le sujet de l'écriture'', L'Harmattan, 2000
* Emile Michel Cioran, ''Valéry face à ses idoles'', L'Herne, Essais et Philosophie, 2007
* Andrea Pasquino, ''I Cahiers di Paul Valéry'', Bulzoni Editore, 1979
* Michel Jarrety, ''Paul Valéry'', Fayard, 2008 (biography)
* Octave Nadal, ''La Jeune Parque, manuscrit, présentation, étude critique'', Le Club du Meilleur Livre, 1957
* Suzanne Nash, ''Paul Valéry's Album de Vers Anciens – A Past Transfigured'', Princeton University Press, 1983
* Jeanine Parisier-Plottel, ''Les dialogues de Paul Valéry'', Presses universitaires de France, 1960
*Jeanine Parisier Plottel, ''[https://www.jstor.org/stable/26283816 The Poetics of Autobiography in Paul Valery],'' L'Esprit Créateur, (Johns Hopkins University Press), vol 20, no. 3, 1980, pp.&nbsp;38–45
*Michel Philippon, ''Paul Valéry, une Poétique en poèmes'', Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 1993
* Michel Philippon, ''Un Souvenir d'enfance de Paul Valéry'', Éditions InterUniversitaires, 1996
* [[Judith Robinson-Valéry]], ''L'Analyse de l'esprit dans les Cahiers de Valéry'', Corti, 1963
* Judith Robinson-Valéry, ''Fonctions de l'esprit: treize savants redécouvrent Paul Valéry'', Hermann, 1983
* Fabien Vasseur ''commente La Jeune Parque, Poésies'', Foliothèque, Gallimard, 2006

==External links==
{{commons category}}
{{wikiquote}}
{{wikisource author}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060424092509/http://valery.fabula.org/ Ressources sur Paul Valéry.] {{in lang|fr}}
* [http://www.historyguide.org/europe/valery.html Crisis of the Mind] essay {{in lang|fr}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110501161732/http://nonsite.org/issue-1/paul-valery-from-author-to-audience Essay on Paul Valery's Aesthetics]
* [http://libraryresources.unog.ch/lonintellectualcooperation/notablemembers Research Guide on Intellectual Cooperation – Notable Members] by UN Archives Geneva.
* {{Gutenberg author |id=49451 |coda=(in French)}}

{{Académie française Seat 38}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Valery, Paul}}
[[Category:1871 births]]
[[Category:1945 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Sète]]
[[Category:French people of Italian descent]]
[[Category:French people of Corsican descent]]
[[Category:Lycée Condorcet alumni]]
[[Category:Academic staff of the Collège de France]]
[[Category:French journalists]]
[[Category:French poets]]
[[Category:Symbolist poets]]
[[Category:Aphorists]]
[[Category:French epistemologists]]
[[Category:20th-century French philosophers]]
[[Category:Members of the Académie Française]]
[[Category:Prix Blumenthal]]
[[Category:French male essayists]]
[[Category:French male poets]]
[[Category:20th-century French essayists]]
[[Category:20th-century French male writers]]
[[Category:French agnostics]]