Valéry, Paul

(1871-1945)

   writer

   one of the most important modern philosophical writers, in both prose and verse, Paul Valéry was born in Sète. Early in his life, he planned to enter the Naval Academy but soon abandoned that goal to pursue a career in letters and painting. A lover of poetry, he studied the sciences and music in Paris. When he was about 21, he met pierre louys, who became his friend, corresponded with stéfane mallarmé, whom he admired, then met andré gide. The conflict between a narcissistic intellectual life and the detachment needed to measure his potentialities provoked a crisis. in 1892, he abandoned his earlier artistic passions and, by 1894, began to write on new themes. He also began to keep a daily journal that he continued throughout his life. At this time, too, he wrote on the great intellectual influences of his life: Mallarmé, Edgar Allan Poe, Leonardo da Vinci (Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci, 1895, and later Europlinos ou l'Architecte, 1921). In 1900, he published the first of his journals, Cahiers, which eventually would total 261. A perfectionist, in 1922 he began an edition of a volume of his works (La jeune Parque, 1917; Le Cimitière marin, 1920; L'Album de vers anciens, 1920; L'+me et la Danse, 1921; and Charmes, 1922). Achieving fame with La Jeune Parque, he was much sought after in intellectual circles, was invited abroad (he was received by Gabriele D'Annunzio and Ranier Maria Rilke) and, in 1925, was elected the Académie Française. Named professor of poetry at the collège de France in 1937, he published La Cantate du Narcisse (1938) and edited Variété IV. During the German Occupation, he finished Mon Faust (1940), and began to publish Mauvaises pensées et autres. When he died in 1945, he was given a state funeral.