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Introducción al método de Leonardo da Vinci
Me propongo imaginar un hombre del que hubieran surgido acciones tan distintas que si yo les supongo un pensamiento, no podría haber ninguno más amplio. Y quiero que tenga un sentido infinitamente vívido de la diferencia de las cosas, y cuyas aventuras bien podrían ser tomadas como un análisis. Veo que todo lo orienta: es el universo y el rigor con los que él que siempre sueña. stá hecho para no olvidar nada de aquello que entra en la confusión de lo que es: ningún arbusto. Desciende hacia la profundidad de aquello que pertenece a todo el mundo, se aleja de ello y se contempla. Alcanza las costumbres y las estructuras naturales, las elabora desde todos los ángulos, y comprueba que es el único que construye, enumera, conmueve. Y deja en pie iglesias, fortalezas; diseña ornamentos plenos de suavidad y grandeza, mil ingenios y las rigurosas figuraciones de tantas búsquedas. Abandona los desechos de quien sabe qué juegos grandes. En esos pasatiempos que se van entremezclando con su ciencia, la cual no se distingue de una pasión, posee el encanto de parecer estar siempre pensando en otra cosa... Lo seguiré mientras se mueve en la unidad bruta y en la densidad del mundo, donde la naturaleza le será tan familiar que la imitará para poder tocarla y tendrá la dificultad de concebir un objeto que no esté contenido en ella.
A esta criatura del pensamiento le falta un nombre, un nombre para contener la expansión de términos que normalmente están bastante alejados y que de todos modos se escaparían. Ningún nombre me parece más convincente que Leonardo da Vinci. Quien se imagine un árbol está obligado a imaginarse un cielo o un fondo para verlo erguirse frente a él. En esto hay una lógica casi sensible y casi desconocida. El personaje del que hablo se reduce a una deducción de este tipo. Casi nada de lo que podré decir del hombre que ilustra el nombre deberá ser escuchado: no estoy persiguiendo una coincidencia que juzgo sea imposible definir. Lo que trato es de dar una visión del detalle de una vida intelectual, una sugerencia de los métodos que cualquier hallazgo implica, una entre la multitud de todas las cosas imaginables, modelo que uno intuye grosero, pero de todas formas preferible a una serie de anécdotas dudosas, a los comentarios de catálogos de colección, a los datos. Una erudición semejante no haría más que falsear la intención, a todas luces hipotética, de este ensayo. No me es desconocida, pero tengo que tener cuidado para no hablar de ella, para no generar una confusión entre una conjetura relativa y los términos muy generosos, con los restos exteriores de una personalidad si bien ya desvanecida, que nos ofrece tanto la certeza de una existencia pensante, como la de no haber jamás conocido una mejor.
Paul Valéry
A esta criatura del pensamiento le falta un nombre, un nombre para contener la expansión de términos que normalmente están bastante alejados y que de todos modos se escaparían. Ningún nombre me parece más convincente que Leonardo da Vinci. Quien se imagine un árbol está obligado a imaginarse un cielo o un fondo para verlo erguirse frente a él. En esto hay una lógica casi sensible y casi desconocida. El personaje del que hablo se reduce a una deducción de este tipo. Casi nada de lo que podré decir del hombre que ilustra el nombre deberá ser escuchado: no estoy persiguiendo una coincidencia que juzgo sea imposible definir. Lo que trato es de dar una visión del detalle de una vida intelectual, una sugerencia de los métodos que cualquier hallazgo implica, una entre la multitud de todas las cosas imaginables, modelo que uno intuye grosero, pero de todas formas preferible a una serie de anécdotas dudosas, a los comentarios de catálogos de colección, a los datos. Una erudición semejante no haría más que falsear la intención, a todas luces hipotética, de este ensayo. No me es desconocida, pero tengo que tener cuidado para no hablar de ella, para no generar una confusión entre una conjetura relativa y los términos muy generosos, con los restos exteriores de una personalidad si bien ya desvanecida, que nos ofrece tanto la certeza de una existencia pensante, como la de no haber jamás conocido una mejor.
Paul Valéry
33 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1919
6 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
Paul Valéry
558 books461 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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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 20, 2018
Title: Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci
Author: Paul Valéry
Release Date: July 20, 2018 [EBook #57547]
Language: French
Produced by Laura N.R. & Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)
Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
Page 85:
...je crois cependant que la méthode la plus sûre pour juger une peinture, c'est de n'y rien reconnaître d'abord et de faire pas à pas la série d'inductions que nécessite une présence simultanée de taches colorées sur un champ limité, pour s'élever de métaphores en métaphores, de suppositions en suppositions à l'intelligence du sujet—parfois à la simple conscience du plaisir—qu'on
n'a pas toujours eu d'avance.
Author: Paul Valéry
Release Date: July 20, 2018 [EBook #57547]
Language: French
Produced by Laura N.R. & Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)
Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
Page 85:
...je crois cependant que la méthode la plus sûre pour juger une peinture, c'est de n'y rien reconnaître d'abord et de faire pas à pas la série d'inductions que nécessite une présence simultanée de taches colorées sur un champ limité, pour s'élever de métaphores en métaphores, de suppositions en suppositions à l'intelligence du sujet—parfois à la simple conscience du plaisir—qu'on
n'a pas toujours eu d'avance.
October 11, 2022
Ἡ μορφὴ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου ἀποτελεῖ τμῆμα μιᾶς οἰκογένειας μορφῶν, ἀπὸ τὴν ὁποία κατέχουμε χωρὶς νὰ γνωρίζουμε ὅλα τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ ἀπέραντου συνόλου. Αὐτὸ εἶναι τὸ μυστικὸ τῶν ἐπινοητῶν.
🪶 Κι ὕστερα, σκεφτόμουν, ὁ Ἡρακλῆς δὲν εἶχε περισσότερους μῦς ἀπὸ μᾶς, μονάχα ἦταν πιὸ ἀνεπτυγμένοι. Δὲν μπορῶ νὰ μετακινήσω μὲ τὸν τρόπο του τὸν βράχο ποὺ σηκώνει, ἀλλὰ ἡ δομὴ τῶν μηχανών μας δὲν εἶναι διάφορη ἀπὸ αὐτόν· τοῦ μοιάζω κάτι καλο τὸ κόκκαλο, φλέξα τὴ φλέδα, πράξη τὴν πράξη, καὶ ἡ ὁμοιότητά μας μοῦ ἐπιτρέπει νὰ φανταστῶ τὰ ἔργα του.
🪶 Κι ὕστερα, σκεφτόμουν, ὁ Ἡρακλῆς δὲν εἶχε περισσότερους μῦς ἀπὸ μᾶς, μονάχα ἦταν πιὸ ἀνεπτυγμένοι. Δὲν μπορῶ νὰ μετακινήσω μὲ τὸν τρόπο του τὸν βράχο ποὺ σηκώνει, ἀλλὰ ἡ δομὴ τῶν μηχανών μας δὲν εἶναι διάφορη ἀπὸ αὐτόν· τοῦ μοιάζω κάτι καλο τὸ κόκκαλο, φλέξα τὴ φλέδα, πράξη τὴν πράξη, καὶ ἡ ὁμοιότητά μας μοῦ ἐπιτρέπει νὰ φανταστῶ τὰ ἔργα του.
November 6, 2017
"From this point of view all displacement of elements made to be perceived and judged depends on certain general laws and a particular application defined in advance for the category of known minds specially addressed; and the work of art becomes a machine designed to awaken and to combine the individual formations in these minds."
January 12, 2020
"Ένα έργο τέχνης θα όφειλε πάντοτε να μας μαθαίνει πως δεν είχαμε δει αυτό που βλέπουμε"
Το βρήκα εξαιρετικό. Υπέροχη έκδοση, σε αγαπημένη μου γραμματοσειρά. Χαίρεσαι που το πιάνεις στο χέρια σου. Το κείμενο ιδιαίτερο, διεισδυτικό, ευρύ.
Το βρήκα εξαιρετικό. Υπέροχη έκδοση, σε αγαπημένη μου γραμματοσειρά. Χαίρεσαι που το πιάνεις στο χέρια σου. Το κείμενο ιδιαίτερο, διεισδυτικό, ευρύ.
October 5, 2025
In his essay Paul Valéry attempts to define Leonardo Da Vinci's method in different spheres. He explores the genius's way of thinking as as a model of universal inquiry—a blend of art, science, and philosophy united by disciplined observation and imagination. Leonardo seeks to understand the principles behind natural phenomena rather than merely imitate appearances. His mind, Valéry says, moves between intuition and analysis, always connecting art with scientific curiosity.
'He never separated the painter from the physicist, nor the anatomist from the poet.'
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'His eyes questioned all things, and all things answered.'
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'He dreams as a man of science and observes as a poet.'
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'He never finished anything because he saw too much to be satisfied with any one form.'
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'This symbolic mind held an immense collection of forms, an ever lucid treasury of the dispositions of nature, a potentiality always ready to be translated into action and growing with the extension of its domain.'
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'He makes a Christ, an angel, a monster, by taking what is known, what exists everywhere, and arranging it in a new order.'
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'No example I could give of the general attitude toward painting would be more amusing than the celebrated "smile of Mona Lisa," to which the epithet "mysterious" seems irrevocably fixed. That dimpled face has evoked the sort of phraseology justified in all literatures, under the title of
"Sensations" or "Impressions" of art. It is buried beneath a mass of words and disappears among the many paragraphs that start by calling it disturbing and end with a generally vague description of a state of soul. It might deserve less intoxicating studies. Leonardo had no use for inexact
observations or arbitrary symbols, or Mona Lisa would never have been painted. He was guided by a perpetual sagacity.
'He never separated the painter from the physicist, nor the anatomist from the poet.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
'His eyes questioned all things, and all things answered.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
'He dreams as a man of science and observes as a poet.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
'He never finished anything because he saw too much to be satisfied with any one form.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
'This symbolic mind held an immense collection of forms, an ever lucid treasury of the dispositions of nature, a potentiality always ready to be translated into action and growing with the extension of its domain.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
'He makes a Christ, an angel, a monster, by taking what is known, what exists everywhere, and arranging it in a new order.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
'No example I could give of the general attitude toward painting would be more amusing than the celebrated "smile of Mona Lisa," to which the epithet "mysterious" seems irrevocably fixed. That dimpled face has evoked the sort of phraseology justified in all literatures, under the title of
"Sensations" or "Impressions" of art. It is buried beneath a mass of words and disappears among the many paragraphs that start by calling it disturbing and end with a generally vague description of a state of soul. It might deserve less intoxicating studies. Leonardo had no use for inexact
observations or arbitrary symbols, or Mona Lisa would never have been painted. He was guided by a perpetual sagacity.
April 14, 2019
Dans ce regroupement de trois textes sur Léonard de Vinci, Valéry parle peu de Vinci, et beaucoup - même indirectement - de Valéry. Parmi quelques lentes réflexions on peut tout de même trouver quelques pages très éclairantes sur ce qu'est une analyse picturale ou poétique, ou sur l'histoire de la philosophie.
December 21, 2023
This Valery guy was all over the place, with very little actual Leonardo analysis. Essaying, self reflection, reviewing his own essay 30 years later, getting scared of postmodernism. Not an actual book discussing Leonardo's works and thoughts. Clickbait title.
July 4, 2013
...or the benefits of amazon.com of buying a book only because of its title...
As an introduction to Valery's work, I thought I was buying a book that would analyze
some of Leonardo's major works, their historical context, the methods used to build them, the way they inter-connected, and got instead of this a rather dense essay about the structure of thoughts, the universal man, the differences and similitudes between artists and philosophers, the accidental vs the "constructed" characteristics of works of art, and so on.
The kind of book that needs to be discussed, analyzed, and put in a place where it's
easy to go back to once in while for further meditation as every page contains multitude. Multitude of topics too conceptual for my own criterias and center(s) of interest but probably relevant if this is your field as it addresses a lot of fundamental (unanswered) questions about each one of topics mentioned hereabove. A book I'll get back to, with a (humble) raised eyebrow.
As an introduction to Valery's work, I thought I was buying a book that would analyze
some of Leonardo's major works, their historical context, the methods used to build them, the way they inter-connected, and got instead of this a rather dense essay about the structure of thoughts, the universal man, the differences and similitudes between artists and philosophers, the accidental vs the "constructed" characteristics of works of art, and so on.
The kind of book that needs to be discussed, analyzed, and put in a place where it's
easy to go back to once in while for further meditation as every page contains multitude. Multitude of topics too conceptual for my own criterias and center(s) of interest but probably relevant if this is your field as it addresses a lot of fundamental (unanswered) questions about each one of topics mentioned hereabove. A book I'll get back to, with a (humble) raised eyebrow.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews