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Sea Shells
Presents the French poet's meditations in prose on seashells and the questions raised by their forms
101 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1937
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254 people want to read
About the author
Paul Valéry
560 books457 followersAmbroise-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.
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.
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May 9, 2025
"MEN ARE DIFFERENT IN WHAT THEY REVEAL, BUT THE SAME IN WHAT THEY HIDE."
Valery
What is our life nowadays? If you said a Shell Game, you’re right!
Most sources readily available to us insist that it is primarily a utilitarian affair, with the primary though veiled sole purpose of buying and selling.
I remember a rather fussy old professorial type in one of Dickens’ novels droning out to his students from the front of a classroom that the human being is nothing but an erect biped with characteristics “x” and “y” - of not much use to anybody save through its animal and motor functions.
Reductionism.
It’s everywhere now, isn’t it? That’s the grain of sand within our own modern oyster shell, when most shells are empty of meaning...
But Paul Valery had an expansivist rather than reductionist mind.
Just as we now know the universe is in a state of constant outward movement, so Valery insisted on being able to expand his mental landscape outward to ever new vistas.
Inner richness! That’s the place to start.
Back in the late sixties, when I first read this book, Princeton University was engaged in publishing his complete writings in their prestigious Bollingen series (another famed author in that edition was C.J. Jung).
I still remember the night I cheered on my alma mater’s football team in the Canadian Varsity Cup final. Lulled gently by the motions of our bus on the long and boisterous Victory trip back to campus, I wandered, sober and fascinated, through Valery’s meditations in this book.
Valery compares a sea creature’s slow changes as its shell takes shape, colour and design to the ways in which our own mental makeup - and by extension our character - grows.
Fascinating stuff.
Celeste Headlee, a wonderfully innovative and creative young thinker from Britain, suggests we could all do much worse than to drop all our incessant chatter that centres around our various moods of appetency, circling around a utilitarian core.
And do nothing. Except the essentials, and developing our headspace.
Her book by that name, Do Nothing (alas - the paper version has to be shipped from Britain) seems to me to herald a shift in young people’s minds towards the type of ruminative and heuristic thinking Paul Valery practiced in the early twentieth century.
Why DO we let our minds be reduced to material coordinates, as Dickens’ character would have us do?
We are infinitely more than our bodies, Valery infers. We are a creature of oneiric thought!
“Oneiric” - now, there’s a word we never hear anymore.
Gaston Bachelard coined it in the post-War structuralist years to mean “heuristically DAYDREAMING thought.”
Yes. We’ve forgotten how to daydream.
So say Valery, Bachelard and Headlee.
And isn’t daydreaming, Valery seems to suggest here, the interior side of a sea creature’s process of constructing a shell for itself?
And wasn’t daydreaming behind all of Leonardo’s great thought? And the source of the great inventions? It sure wasn’t today’s angry, aggressive brainstorming that produced those.
We have to totally DROP our hurry, because from a logical point of view it’s entirely pointless.
So - are we just erect and endlessly desiring bipeds?
C’mon, guys.
There’s MORE to life than that!
Much more.
Why not simply create SPACE for OUR DREAMS?
Valery
What is our life nowadays? If you said a Shell Game, you’re right!
Most sources readily available to us insist that it is primarily a utilitarian affair, with the primary though veiled sole purpose of buying and selling.
I remember a rather fussy old professorial type in one of Dickens’ novels droning out to his students from the front of a classroom that the human being is nothing but an erect biped with characteristics “x” and “y” - of not much use to anybody save through its animal and motor functions.
Reductionism.
It’s everywhere now, isn’t it? That’s the grain of sand within our own modern oyster shell, when most shells are empty of meaning...
But Paul Valery had an expansivist rather than reductionist mind.
Just as we now know the universe is in a state of constant outward movement, so Valery insisted on being able to expand his mental landscape outward to ever new vistas.
Inner richness! That’s the place to start.
Back in the late sixties, when I first read this book, Princeton University was engaged in publishing his complete writings in their prestigious Bollingen series (another famed author in that edition was C.J. Jung).
I still remember the night I cheered on my alma mater’s football team in the Canadian Varsity Cup final. Lulled gently by the motions of our bus on the long and boisterous Victory trip back to campus, I wandered, sober and fascinated, through Valery’s meditations in this book.
Valery compares a sea creature’s slow changes as its shell takes shape, colour and design to the ways in which our own mental makeup - and by extension our character - grows.
Fascinating stuff.
Celeste Headlee, a wonderfully innovative and creative young thinker from Britain, suggests we could all do much worse than to drop all our incessant chatter that centres around our various moods of appetency, circling around a utilitarian core.
And do nothing. Except the essentials, and developing our headspace.
Her book by that name, Do Nothing (alas - the paper version has to be shipped from Britain) seems to me to herald a shift in young people’s minds towards the type of ruminative and heuristic thinking Paul Valery practiced in the early twentieth century.
Why DO we let our minds be reduced to material coordinates, as Dickens’ character would have us do?
We are infinitely more than our bodies, Valery infers. We are a creature of oneiric thought!
“Oneiric” - now, there’s a word we never hear anymore.
Gaston Bachelard coined it in the post-War structuralist years to mean “heuristically DAYDREAMING thought.”
Yes. We’ve forgotten how to daydream.
So say Valery, Bachelard and Headlee.
And isn’t daydreaming, Valery seems to suggest here, the interior side of a sea creature’s process of constructing a shell for itself?
And wasn’t daydreaming behind all of Leonardo’s great thought? And the source of the great inventions? It sure wasn’t today’s angry, aggressive brainstorming that produced those.
We have to totally DROP our hurry, because from a logical point of view it’s entirely pointless.
So - are we just erect and endlessly desiring bipeds?
C’mon, guys.
There’s MORE to life than that!
Much more.
Why not simply create SPACE for OUR DREAMS?
August 8, 2020
The subject of this essay is the lowly sea shell: how its shape appears to the human eye and how it got formed that way. But do not be deceived, for the essay itself is not always easy to follow. I think this is partly because it was written by a poet, who uses his subtle philosophical skills primarily in the service of metaphor, not the other way round.)
Paul Valery’s short but elaborate inquiry unites naive fancy, philosophical analysis and poetic vision in a meditation, ostensibly on the seashell itself, but in actuality on the unique creative methods of nature. Its author observes that shells and other natural objects—crystals and flowers, for example—are beautiful but also mysterious: although we immediately intuit their formal structure, the method by which their form is created continues to baffle us:
We can appreciate the structure of these objects, and this interests us and holds our attention, but we do not understand their gradual formation, and that is what intrigues us. Although we ourselves were formed by imperceptible growth, we do not know how to create anything in this way.It is this wondrous process of development, by which the simple gastropod, with a glacial slowness, creates in a way man cannot observe or completely comprehend, which provides the heart of Valery’s meditation.
Nothing we know of our own actions enables us to imagine what it may be that so gracefully modulates these surfaces, element by element, row by row, without other tools that those contained in the thing that is being fashioned; what it may be that so miraculously harmonizes and adjusts the curves, and finished the work with a boldness, an ease, a precision which the most graceful creations of the potter or bronze founder are far from equaling. Our artists do not derive the material of their works from their own substance, and the form for which they strive springs from a specialized application of their mind, which can be completely disengaged from their being. Perhaps what we call perfection in art (which all do not strive for and some disdain) is only the sense of desiring or finding in a human work the sureness of execution, the inner necessity, the indissolable bond between form and material that are revealed to us in the humblest of shells.
September 17, 2018
“Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable so much as to conceive of making use of it, let it waste away. Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously in what we think we know best. Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo.”
Paul Valery’s essay, “Sea Shells”, which, in its Beacon Press Edition, is put beautifully within a red covered and gold titled illustrated book, is, quite simply, a masterpiece of thought. It makes sense that this book would not be classified under philosophical works, but rather a form of (literary) criticism and theory. In it, Valery thinks about seashells. His goal is to write down his thoughts and observations of and about seashells without using any pure framework. Even so, this text does not read like someone who is just musing on what a seashell is, but rather, a text that takes the dialectics of thought very seriously, and urges to the reader to go along with him as the writer, Valery, presents his thoughts on paper as honestly as possible.
Originally published in 1937, “Sea Shells” was republished and translated into English, from French, by Ralph Manheim in 1964. None of the poetry seems to be lost within the translation. In fact, the writing is very beautiful in that exquisite way - where the subject is technical but the writing is fluid - that only some can actually do. In describing his initial reactions to an object as profound as a sea shell (which he likens to reacting to something such as a crystal; different than how one would react to a mere rock):
“Living nature must solve it in all the types it displays, all of which involve extremities to be modeled and cavities or tubes that must be made to reach the outside world. The mind staggers at the mere thought of analyzing the innumerable solutions it has found. We yearn for a profound geometry, a very exact knowledge of what is revealed by dissection and microscopic examination, and an exquisite artistic feeling which, taken together, might enable us to isolate some simple basic principle of natural morphology… for me, perfect modulation is the crown of art.”
Valery thinks the sea shell, as an object, is incredibly fascinating by the way in which it forms itself, the way it is formed in completion, and how something like this (again, it helps to liken his fascination with a simple sea shell as how one might react to finding a crystal, with eyes becoming larger) is akin to the perfection of how a human is formed, like the development of the ears and nose within the womb. There is a sense of awe that Valery feels and which he clearly aches to share:
“ We are always refusing to listen to the simple soul within us. We ignore the inner child who always wants to see things for the first time. If he questions, we discourage his curiosity, calling it childish because it is boundless, on the pretext that we have been to school and learned that there is a science of all things, which we might consult if we wished, and that it would be a waste of time to think in our own way and no other about an object that suddenly arrests us and calls for an answer… I look for the *first time* at this thing that I have found. I note what I have said about its form, and I am perplexed. Then I ask myself the question: *Who made this?*”
The conclusion that Valery gets to starts with his acknowledgement that there are theories and facts to be amassed in order to understand a thing. But sometimes, he writes, knowing these theories and scientific facts can get in the way of something much more precious to humankind: the acknowledgement that there are a multitude of answers, just as there is a multitude of reasons why and how something, like a sea shell is made, and thus not a singular entity can be the cause of its creation. Art, he says, is like this too:
“The problem after all is not more futile nor any more naive than speculation about who made a certain fine work in music or poetry; whether it was born of the Muse, or sent by Fortune, or whether it was the fruit of long labor. To say that someone composed it, that his name was Mozart or Virgil, is not to say much; a statement of this sort is lifeless, for the creative spirit in us bears no name; such as a remark merely eliminates from our concern all men but one, within whose inner mystery the enigma lies hidden, intact…”
Towards the end of the essay, Valery digresses a bit from the object itself and begins to think about objects that humans create themselves. When a human creates something, like a tool such as the flint, something that can only be made it one way, the object becomes something completely un-human despite its maker. It becomes, in a sense, technology (though he never calls it such in this work). What makes the biggest difference is when a human creates something with an extreme intentionality, when our efforts and projects are “considered”, letting everything “incidental” come through, then - though this activity seems “alien to underlying organic activity" - it might actually hold something more similar to nature than we can even imagine. Perhaps something that would do us great good to become in touch with.
Paul Valery’s essay, “Sea Shells”, which, in its Beacon Press Edition, is put beautifully within a red covered and gold titled illustrated book, is, quite simply, a masterpiece of thought. It makes sense that this book would not be classified under philosophical works, but rather a form of (literary) criticism and theory. In it, Valery thinks about seashells. His goal is to write down his thoughts and observations of and about seashells without using any pure framework. Even so, this text does not read like someone who is just musing on what a seashell is, but rather, a text that takes the dialectics of thought very seriously, and urges to the reader to go along with him as the writer, Valery, presents his thoughts on paper as honestly as possible.
Originally published in 1937, “Sea Shells” was republished and translated into English, from French, by Ralph Manheim in 1964. None of the poetry seems to be lost within the translation. In fact, the writing is very beautiful in that exquisite way - where the subject is technical but the writing is fluid - that only some can actually do. In describing his initial reactions to an object as profound as a sea shell (which he likens to reacting to something such as a crystal; different than how one would react to a mere rock):
“Living nature must solve it in all the types it displays, all of which involve extremities to be modeled and cavities or tubes that must be made to reach the outside world. The mind staggers at the mere thought of analyzing the innumerable solutions it has found. We yearn for a profound geometry, a very exact knowledge of what is revealed by dissection and microscopic examination, and an exquisite artistic feeling which, taken together, might enable us to isolate some simple basic principle of natural morphology… for me, perfect modulation is the crown of art.”
Valery thinks the sea shell, as an object, is incredibly fascinating by the way in which it forms itself, the way it is formed in completion, and how something like this (again, it helps to liken his fascination with a simple sea shell as how one might react to finding a crystal, with eyes becoming larger) is akin to the perfection of how a human is formed, like the development of the ears and nose within the womb. There is a sense of awe that Valery feels and which he clearly aches to share:
“ We are always refusing to listen to the simple soul within us. We ignore the inner child who always wants to see things for the first time. If he questions, we discourage his curiosity, calling it childish because it is boundless, on the pretext that we have been to school and learned that there is a science of all things, which we might consult if we wished, and that it would be a waste of time to think in our own way and no other about an object that suddenly arrests us and calls for an answer… I look for the *first time* at this thing that I have found. I note what I have said about its form, and I am perplexed. Then I ask myself the question: *Who made this?*”
The conclusion that Valery gets to starts with his acknowledgement that there are theories and facts to be amassed in order to understand a thing. But sometimes, he writes, knowing these theories and scientific facts can get in the way of something much more precious to humankind: the acknowledgement that there are a multitude of answers, just as there is a multitude of reasons why and how something, like a sea shell is made, and thus not a singular entity can be the cause of its creation. Art, he says, is like this too:
“The problem after all is not more futile nor any more naive than speculation about who made a certain fine work in music or poetry; whether it was born of the Muse, or sent by Fortune, or whether it was the fruit of long labor. To say that someone composed it, that his name was Mozart or Virgil, is not to say much; a statement of this sort is lifeless, for the creative spirit in us bears no name; such as a remark merely eliminates from our concern all men but one, within whose inner mystery the enigma lies hidden, intact…”
Towards the end of the essay, Valery digresses a bit from the object itself and begins to think about objects that humans create themselves. When a human creates something, like a tool such as the flint, something that can only be made it one way, the object becomes something completely un-human despite its maker. It becomes, in a sense, technology (though he never calls it such in this work). What makes the biggest difference is when a human creates something with an extreme intentionality, when our efforts and projects are “considered”, letting everything “incidental” come through, then - though this activity seems “alien to underlying organic activity" - it might actually hold something more similar to nature than we can even imagine. Perhaps something that would do us great good to become in touch with.
October 13, 2022
literally a man talking about and analyzing shells for dozens of pages. hes just like me
June 3, 2022
[Λέγοντας πως κάποιος με το όνομα Μότσαρτ [Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756- 1791)] ή Βιργίλιος [Pablius Vergilius Maro (70-19 π.Χ)] το συνέθεσε, δεν λες και πολλά πράγματα: δεν ζει τούτο στο πνεύμα, γιατί αυτό που δημιουργεί μέσα μας δεν έχει όνομα' το μόνο που κάνεις είναι να απαλείφεις από την υπόθεσή μας όλους τους ανθρώπους π λ η ν ε ν ό ς - στο μύχιο μυστήριο του οποίου συμπυκνώνεται άθικτο το αίνιγμα...]
🐚[ Πολλά εκατομμύρια χρόνια, όμως, πριν τον Ευκλείδη και τον επιφανή Αινστάιν, ο ήρωάς μας, που δεν είναι παρά ένα απλό γαστερόποδο και που δεν διαθέτει καθόλου πλοκάμια, όφειλε κι αυτό να λύσει κάμποσα, επαρκώς φλέγοντα, προβλήματα. Έχει να φτιάξει το κοχύλι του και να ποριστεί τα αναγκαία για την ύπαρξή του. Δυο πολύ διαφορετικες δραστηριότητες. Ο Σπινόζα [Baruch/Benedictus (de) Spinoza (1632 -1677) ]έφτιαχνε γυαλιά. Όχι λίγοι ποιητές ήταν εξαιρετικοί γραφειοκράτες. Και δεν είναι αδύνατο να διατηρηθεί μία επαρκής ανεξαρτησία ανάμεσα στα επαγγέλματα αυτά που ασκεί το ίδιο πρόσωπο. Άλλωστε τι είναι το ίδιο; Εδώ όμως πρόκειται για ένα μαλάκιο και δεν γνωρίζουμε τίποτα για τη δική του μύχια ενότητα.]
🐚 [Θα πετάξω το εύρημά μου, όπως πετάς ένα τσιγάρο που έχεις καπνίσει. Το κοχύλι τούτο με υ π η ρ έ τ η σ ε διεγείροντας διαδοχικά αυτό που είμαι, αυτό που γνωρίζω, αυτό που αγνοώ... Όπως ο Άμλετ περιμαζεύοντας από το παχύ χώμα ένα κρανίο και πλησιάζοντάς το στο ζωντανό του προσώπου καθρεφτίζεται εκεί, κατά κάποιον τρόπο αποτρόπαια, και όπως εισέρχεται σε αδιέξοδο διαλογισμό από παντού κλείνει ένας κύκλος ναρκής [William Shakespeare (1564 -1616)], Hamlet (1600...),πρ.5., σκ. 1.], έτσι και υπό το ανθρώπινο βλέμμα, το μικρό τούτο ασβεστολιθικό σώμα, κούφιο και σπειρωτό, συναγείρει γύρω του πλή��ος τις σκέψεις που καμία τους δεν καταλήγει...]
🐚[ Πολλά εκατομμύρια χρόνια, όμως, πριν τον Ευκλείδη και τον επιφανή Αινστάιν, ο ήρωάς μας, που δεν είναι παρά ένα απλό γαστερόποδο και που δεν διαθέτει καθόλου πλοκάμια, όφειλε κι αυτό να λύσει κάμποσα, επαρκώς φλέγοντα, προβλήματα. Έχει να φτιάξει το κοχύλι του και να ποριστεί τα αναγκαία για την ύπαρξή του. Δυο πολύ διαφορετικες δραστηριότητες. Ο Σπινόζα [Baruch/Benedictus (de) Spinoza (1632 -1677) ]έφτιαχνε γυαλιά. Όχι λίγοι ποιητές ήταν εξαιρετικοί γραφειοκράτες. Και δεν είναι αδύνατο να διατηρηθεί μία επαρκής ανεξαρτησία ανάμεσα στα επαγγέλματα αυτά που ασκεί το ίδιο πρόσωπο. Άλλωστε τι είναι το ίδιο; Εδώ όμως πρόκειται για ένα μαλάκιο και δεν γνωρίζουμε τίποτα για τη δική του μύχια ενότητα.]
🐚 [Θα πετάξω το εύρημά μου, όπως πετάς ένα τσιγάρο που έχεις καπνίσει. Το κοχύλι τούτο με υ π η ρ έ τ η σ ε διεγείροντας διαδοχικά αυτό που είμαι, αυτό που γνωρίζω, αυτό που αγνοώ... Όπως ο Άμλετ περιμαζεύοντας από το παχύ χώμα ένα κρανίο και πλησιάζοντάς το στο ζωντανό του προσώπου καθρεφτίζεται εκεί, κατά κάποιον τρόπο αποτρόπαια, και όπως εισέρχεται σε αδιέξοδο διαλογισμό από παντού κλείνει ένας κύκλος ναρκής [William Shakespeare (1564 -1616)], Hamlet (1600...),πρ.5., σκ. 1.], έτσι και υπό το ανθρώπινο βλέμμα, το μικρό τούτο ασβεστολιθικό σώμα, κούφιο και σπειρωτό, συναγείρει γύρω του πλή��ος τις σκέψεις που καμία τους δεν καταλήγει...]
July 17, 2022
In some ways, this might remind you of the story of Louis Agassiz and the fish, where the scientist sends his student, Scudder, back time and time again to look closely at the fish, while it slowly decays over the day. And, of course, the student is never told what he is looking for. But there is a fundamental difference. Agassiz is trying to teach something about scientific observation. Valery, while beginning in the same place (close observation without preconceived notions of what will be seen), goes somewhere else entirely.
The poet is willing to follow the poetic associations wherever they follow. As Mary Oliver writes in her introduction to this beautifully produced volume: "Valery does not decide, finish, and file away, but ruffles and spins, turning his ideas to the light that they will shine more brightly; then he flows off in yet another direction."
The poet is not particularly interested in recounting the life habits of the creatures under discussion, although he is fascinated by the intricate shells they make. Without intention. And that gets compared with the human intentions of making things (including art, although he's never completely explicit about that). He concludes: "Perhaps what we call perfection in art (which all do not strive for and some disdain) is only a sense of desiring or finding in a human work the sureness of execution, the inner necessity, the indissoluble bond between form and material that are revealed to us by the humblest of shells."
The poet is willing to follow the poetic associations wherever they follow. As Mary Oliver writes in her introduction to this beautifully produced volume: "Valery does not decide, finish, and file away, but ruffles and spins, turning his ideas to the light that they will shine more brightly; then he flows off in yet another direction."
The poet is not particularly interested in recounting the life habits of the creatures under discussion, although he is fascinated by the intricate shells they make. Without intention. And that gets compared with the human intentions of making things (including art, although he's never completely explicit about that). He concludes: "Perhaps what we call perfection in art (which all do not strive for and some disdain) is only a sense of desiring or finding in a human work the sureness of execution, the inner necessity, the indissoluble bond between form and material that are revealed to us by the humblest of shells."
August 18, 2021
Like a Weird Studies episode on seashells
May 22, 2025
Lotta fluff. I like Valéry, but I was not moved by this navel gazing.
August 11, 2016
Zanimljivo filozofiranje, prije svega jer je nekad filozofiranje značilo da razmišljaš o svijetu koji te okružuje i pitaš se kako on funkcionira. Danas samo prihvatimo sve nove tehnologije i stvari bez da uopće razmišljamo kako oni funkcioniraju.
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