Dialogues

by Paul Valéry, W.M. Stewart (Translator), Jackson Mathews (Editor)

Valery's dialogues are his most important works of imagination in prose. Many consider the prose masterpieces Eupalinos and Dance and the Soul as the fullest and most characteristic expression of his genius. The dialogue form, "the most supple of the forms of expression, " was natural to Valery. "I found I was talking to myself in two voices, and began to write accordingly, " he said. His imagination and his philosophical mind found in his major dialogues the common ground they were always seeking. In the present volume, all the formal imaginary dialogues are brought together for the first time.

Genres: Philosophy, Poetry, Literature, French Literature, France, Nonfiction, Classics

223 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath. In addition to his fiction (poetry, drama and dialogues), he also wrote many essays and aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events.

Valéry is best known as a poet, and is sometimes considered to be the last of the French Symbolists. But he published fewer than a hundred poems, and none that drew much attention. On the night of 4 October 1892, during a heavy storm, Paul Valéry entered an existential crisis, which made a big impact on his writing career. Around 1898, his writing activity even came to a near-standstill, due partly to the death of his mentor Stéphane Mallarmé and for nearly twenty years from that time on, Valery did not publish a single word until 1917, when he finally broke this 'Great Silence' with the publication of La Jeune Parque at forty-six years of age. This obscure but superbly musical masterpiece, of 512 alexandrine lines in rhyming pairs, had taken him four years to complete, and immediately secured his fame. It is esteemed by many in France as the greatest French poem of the 20th century.

Reviews

[Graychin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books, which a second reading several years after my first now confirms. I appreciate Paul Valery in general and have read several of his other pieces, but this collection beats them all. “The Dialogue of the Tree” is terrific, and “Eupalinos, or The Architect” is one of most rewarding bits of speculative fiction/philosophy I’ve ever read. Though I can’t read it in the original French, the translation here seems wonderful; modern English prose doesn’t get much better.

From "Socrates and His Physician" -

“The purpose of a life seems to me to be to use its time and strength to make, or create, or perceive, something which should render quite useless, and even inconceivable and absurd, the rebeginning of an existence.”

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

The major dialogue included in this volume, "Eupalinos, or the Architecht," is a masterpiece of speculative fiction rendered in a pearly and opulent English prose translation.

[Dan Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've only read half of this book, but I'm going to claim full credit anyway. I suspect that some of the subtlety in Valery's thought is lost in translation.

[Obetta Maurice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A masterpiece revealing the ideas of Paul Valery. Valery discusses wide range of issues with brilliant, philosophic insight

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is beautiful