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Ο κύριος Τεστ
Ο Πωλ Βαλερύ, από τις σημαντικότερες φυσιογνωμίες του περασμένου αιώνα, είναι ο συγγραφέας του αφετηριακού κειμένου του βιβλίου, της περίφημης «Βραδιάς με τον κύριο Τεστ» που, όταν δημοσιεύτηκε, τον έκανε διάσημο. Η παρούσα έκδοση, που αποτελείται από σειρά κειμένων του Βαλερύ, όλα με επίκεντρο το κύριο Τεστ- το φαντασιακό πρόσωπο που ο συγγραφέας δημιούργησε- αναδεικνύει τη διάθεση αυτοανάλυσης και παρατήρησης της διανοητικής λειτουργίας («το μάτι που κοιτάει το μάτι που κοιτάει»). Ο Γ. Σεφέρης, σε νεαρή ηλικία, πρωτομετέφρασε στα ελληνικά το έργο, ενώ την παρούσα έκδοση μεταφράζει και σχολιάζει ο ποιητής Τίτος Πατρίκιος.
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1896
63 people are currently reading
2241 people want to read
About the author
Paul Valéry
562 books458 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 - 30 of 103 reviews
November 20, 2025
Reading Monsieur Teste and understanding his words as he falls asleep is challenging. Mr. Teste is complicated. You can't imagine. But what a joy it is to live with him. You never know what he will say or if he will say anything at all. We see him diving into his thoughts, entering his inner self, and we imagine all these bubbles of thoughts colliding or rising towards him. A horizon that is not accessible to me. Because he is unique and alone, he does not assess his thoughts based on the thoughts of others." But for me, "there is a beautiful part of the soul that can enjoy without understanding." My life is "zero and useful; his, all habits and absence."
"But I confess to you that nothing attaches me more to him than this uncertainty of his mood. After all, I am thrilled not to understand it too much, not to guess each day, each night, each upcoming moment of my passage on earth. My soul craves more to be amazed than anything else. Waiting, risk, a little doubt, exalt and invigorate it much more than the possession of the certain does.»
If you meet Monsieur Teste, don't take the detour; read the Letter from Madame Émilie Teste, which contains beautiful words.
But what am I saying? I let myself go. "The expression of a feeling is always absurd."
"But I confess to you that nothing attaches me more to him than this uncertainty of his mood. After all, I am thrilled not to understand it too much, not to guess each day, each night, each upcoming moment of my passage on earth. My soul craves more to be amazed than anything else. Waiting, risk, a little doubt, exalt and invigorate it much more than the possession of the certain does.»
If you meet Monsieur Teste, don't take the detour; read the Letter from Madame Émilie Teste, which contains beautiful words.
But what am I saying? I let myself go. "The expression of a feeling is always absurd."
November 16, 2017
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about bullshit. More specifically, I've been thinking about the assumptions that underpin any bullshit-imputing judgment. For instance, it seems to me that judgments of the form "x is bullshit" necessarily presuppose that the judging party has an adequate understanding of the x's semantic content (or alleged lack thereof). And if the judging party further determines that the x in question happens to be truth-apt (i.e., has a truth value of either true or false), then the charge of "bullshit" also requires a firm belief that the conditions upon which the bullshit would be true do not in fact obtain.
The potential dubiety of these two assumptions can be problematic enough in the truth-centered disciplines of science, philosophy and mathematics. (Just look at how many times thinkers like Derrida have had to parry charges of "charlatanism.") But what about literature? When you read a poem or a short story or a novel, how can you ever satisfy that first step? And what about a work like Monsieur Teste, which seems to be a novel masquerading as a philosophical treatise?—or a philosophical treatise masquerading as a novel?—or a novel masquerading as a philosophical treatise masquerading as a novel…?
Suffice to say, I have absolutely no clue what to make of this opaque and puzzling work. Superficially, it purports to comprise a study of "a mind detached from sensibility" (whatever the hell that means); and while the book made me feel as if I was on the cusp of something profound, the critical moment of enlightenment never materialized. Did I simply lack the faculties to comprehend Valéry's genius? Did I miss the point of the book? Or is Monsieur Teste little more than a steaming pile of bullshit?
And importantly, did translator Jackson Mathews find himself struggling with these very uncertainties?
The potential dubiety of these two assumptions can be problematic enough in the truth-centered disciplines of science, philosophy and mathematics. (Just look at how many times thinkers like Derrida have had to parry charges of "charlatanism.") But what about literature? When you read a poem or a short story or a novel, how can you ever satisfy that first step? And what about a work like Monsieur Teste, which seems to be a novel masquerading as a philosophical treatise?—or a philosophical treatise masquerading as a novel?—or a novel masquerading as a philosophical treatise masquerading as a novel…?
Suffice to say, I have absolutely no clue what to make of this opaque and puzzling work. Superficially, it purports to comprise a study of "a mind detached from sensibility" (whatever the hell that means); and while the book made me feel as if I was on the cusp of something profound, the critical moment of enlightenment never materialized. Did I simply lack the faculties to comprehend Valéry's genius? Did I miss the point of the book? Or is Monsieur Teste little more than a steaming pile of bullshit?
And importantly, did translator Jackson Mathews find himself struggling with these very uncertainties?
February 20, 2019
Bartleby bu şurekanın kurucusu ise Mösyö Teste de ceosu bence. Tekrar tekrar okunacak, her cümlesi dolu dolu bir kitap. Teste hem kendini anlatıyor, hem çevresinden dinliyoruz Teste yi. Büyük bir çeviri uğraşı gerektirdiği de belirtilen kitap bence tam bir kayıp hazine.
April 19, 2021
It’s the 150th anniversary of Paul Valéry’s birth and, knowing him primarily as a poet (familiar only with a few of his poems in passable-at-best translations), I was surprised at the amount of his prose writings. His Monsieur Teste came to my attention when I watched a documentary with Thomas Bernhard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSHmANet3Ag
In Bernhard’s words, “Valéry’s Monsieur Teste—it’s a book that’s been thoroughly thumbed through…and I had to buy it again and again, because it always was a mess, read through and through to death, to shreds.” Coming from the great Bernhard, I had no second thoughts about which Valéry to read on this anniversary.
Well, Valéry was right when he warned in the preface that this is “not easy reading”! All the same, I found it more than worth the effort and would add that it probably requires re-reading to fully appreciate Valéry’s ideas embodied in his protagonist. While described as a novel, it’s a genre-defying montage of fiction, philosophical fragments, letters, epigrams, all written over the period of 50 years. This expanded version in the Princeton Bollingen series is a revised translation by the same translator, Jackson Mathews, who rendered it in English 20 years earlier and later rightly received the award for translation. His introduction is also indispensable. While relatively shorter (170 pages), it requires careful reading and, at times, familiarity or comfort with abstract philosophical ideas.
To explore the consciousness, Valéry created the character, Monsieur Teste, whose life is that of “pure mind”. As we learn from the translator's note, “Teste” is not coincidentally a composite of the French word tête (“head”) and Latin testis (“witness” or “spectator”). As a protagonist, he is presented as seen by the narrator (author himself?), then by M. Teste’s wife and his friend in their letters, and M. Teste himself in his logbook with the selection of his “thoughts”, some deeply reflective others ephemeral. In the first “chapter”, seminal in the entire collection and written earlier than others (1896), the narrator is a detached observer of the workings of consciousness and pure mind as figuratively embodied in Monsieur Teste (“the character of consciousness” as the author puts it). In two letters, Valéry then juxtaposes the pure mind (Monsieur Teste) to the sensibility (Mme Teste) and the learned knowledge of “intellectuals” (Teste’s unnamed friend). “Extracts” from M. Teste’s “logbook” give us a glimpse into his private thoughts. When pieced together, we get an idea of this “character of consciousness” or, better, Valéry’s philosophy of mind in its pure form.
Reading it was a fascinating, even if sometimes rocky, ride. There are too many quotes to share, here is just a small sample:
from "The Evening with Monsieur Teste" (1896):
from "A Letter from Madame Émilie Teste" (1924) - I wanted to highlight just about the entire letter, so with a heavy heart I'm sharing only one sentence :-)
from "Extracts from Monsieur Teste’s Logbook" (1925):
from "A Few of Monsieur Teste’s Thoughts" (1945):
4.5/5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSHmANet3Ag
In Bernhard’s words, “Valéry’s Monsieur Teste—it’s a book that’s been thoroughly thumbed through…and I had to buy it again and again, because it always was a mess, read through and through to death, to shreds.” Coming from the great Bernhard, I had no second thoughts about which Valéry to read on this anniversary.
Well, Valéry was right when he warned in the preface that this is “not easy reading”! All the same, I found it more than worth the effort and would add that it probably requires re-reading to fully appreciate Valéry’s ideas embodied in his protagonist. While described as a novel, it’s a genre-defying montage of fiction, philosophical fragments, letters, epigrams, all written over the period of 50 years. This expanded version in the Princeton Bollingen series is a revised translation by the same translator, Jackson Mathews, who rendered it in English 20 years earlier and later rightly received the award for translation. His introduction is also indispensable. While relatively shorter (170 pages), it requires careful reading and, at times, familiarity or comfort with abstract philosophical ideas.
To explore the consciousness, Valéry created the character, Monsieur Teste, whose life is that of “pure mind”. As we learn from the translator's note, “Teste” is not coincidentally a composite of the French word tête (“head”) and Latin testis (“witness” or “spectator”). As a protagonist, he is presented as seen by the narrator (author himself?), then by M. Teste’s wife and his friend in their letters, and M. Teste himself in his logbook with the selection of his “thoughts”, some deeply reflective others ephemeral. In the first “chapter”, seminal in the entire collection and written earlier than others (1896), the narrator is a detached observer of the workings of consciousness and pure mind as figuratively embodied in Monsieur Teste (“the character of consciousness” as the author puts it). In two letters, Valéry then juxtaposes the pure mind (Monsieur Teste) to the sensibility (Mme Teste) and the learned knowledge of “intellectuals” (Teste’s unnamed friend). “Extracts” from M. Teste’s “logbook” give us a glimpse into his private thoughts. When pieced together, we get an idea of this “character of consciousness” or, better, Valéry’s philosophy of mind in its pure form.
Reading it was a fascinating, even if sometimes rocky, ride. There are too many quotes to share, here is just a small sample:
from "The Evening with Monsieur Teste" (1896):
What they call a superior man is a man who has deceived himself.
Finding is nothing. The difficulty is in acquiring what has been found.
from "A Letter from Madame Émilie Teste" (1924) - I wanted to highlight just about the entire letter, so with a heavy heart I'm sharing only one sentence :-)
I said to our priest that my husband often reminded me of a mystic without God…
from "Extracts from Monsieur Teste’s Logbook" (1925):
Between a clear Self and a cloudy Self, a just Self and a guilty Self, there are old hatreds and old compromises, old disavowals and old entreaties.
from "A Few of Monsieur Teste’s Thoughts" (1945):
To consider one's emotions as nonsense, debility, imbecility, a waste, a defect – like seasickness and fear of heights, humiliating.
… Something in us, or in me, rebels against the soul’s creative power over the mind.
For me, "ideas" are means of transformation – and consequently, parts or moments of some change. An "idea" of man "is a means of transforming a question."
4.5/5
October 18, 2018
Aborreceu-me muito, mas suponho que foi por não ter percebido nada. Isto é coisa demasiado complexa e erudita para as minhas posses. Vá lá que ainda lhe aproveitei umas frases para "colar na porta do frigorífico":
"Encontrar nada é. O difícil é acrescentar a nós próprios aquilo que se encontra."
"Há uma boa parte da alma que pode desfrutar sem compreender, e em mim é vasta essa parte."
"Não sei o que é a consciência de um tolo, mas a de um homem de espírito está cheia de tolices."
"Por que amo o que amo? Por que odeio o que odeio?
Quem não sentiria o desejo de derrubar a mesa dos seus desejos e dos seus ascos? De mudar o sentido dos seus movimentos instintivos?"
"em que é que o «destino» do homem me interessa? Quase tanto como a... deusa Bárbara — de quem nunca se ouviu falar e a quem acabo agora de inventar o nome."
"Encontrar nada é. O difícil é acrescentar a nós próprios aquilo que se encontra."
"Há uma boa parte da alma que pode desfrutar sem compreender, e em mim é vasta essa parte."
"Não sei o que é a consciência de um tolo, mas a de um homem de espírito está cheia de tolices."
"Por que amo o que amo? Por que odeio o que odeio?
Quem não sentiria o desejo de derrubar a mesa dos seus desejos e dos seus ascos? De mudar o sentido dos seus movimentos instintivos?"
"em que é que o «destino» do homem me interessa? Quase tanto como a... deusa Bárbara — de quem nunca se ouviu falar e a quem acabo agora de inventar o nome."
August 14, 2024
Valery made me a collector. A collector of quotes and oddities of language affectionately bound between leather and then pocketed. A pasttime inspired by W. Benjamin in form and now by Valery in content. As for Paul I always imagine him in some abstract locale holed away, perhaps the back of a Parisian townhouse under vaunted roof, distilling the mumbled sounds of the world heard around him, as if some anecdotal alchemist, into what you could call pure prose concentrate. One can tell that 'he wasted his time neither with the impossible nor with the easy', that he was 'the act that annulled his desirés, that desire being only to play easily in the bounds of language and achieving mastery solely through attunement, "Why? For the function of spirit is to attempt".
It is no surprise that if the foremost French critic and poet retreats from the public sphere for 40 years to only attend himself to his notebooks and journals, with the belief that 'all literature is contained in the curve of words, try to see, try to exhaust the greatest possible number of them', that his consequent publications will read like the musings of an early savant large-language-model. With one key difference; whilst such modern models brutishly align themselves with stacatto quantitative patternings of h'you'man speech, his is instead powered by a flame over which one has poured high % human-spirit, Valery lending his mind only to the qualities of words in combination or when self orchestrated.
This bubbling distillation in his frontal lobe that separates art from speech seems however to have the concerning side-effect of causing the steady dilution of his ego! Valery, recognizing this slowly unfolding terrible fate, takes this process to its natural conclusion through the figuration of the figure of Monsieur Teste; a monster or experimental Frankenstein of the Cartesian subject, a walking ideal division of thought and body, with corpus as corpse and mens as mental. Monsieur Teste speaks in some crystalline language that does not even attempt to relate itself to the muddied world and by extension minds of mortals. In scenes when sat at the opera or over a glass of wine he sends his speech soaring far over heads of his parlé partner with no parabolic action occurring that could make it tractable for even the most desperately grasping minds. But Monsieur is not deified, non, he is a monster (monsteur), an aberration of reason. For what capacity does he have left to love those closest to him, why does his language appear empty, his gaze seeking? (Read here: a playful critique the French symbolist poetry circle, 'art pour art', Valery's influences (Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine) who saw no bounds to language and thus no reason for lowering ourselves to its common rules) For M. Teste, notes his only sympathetic friend, "Everything seemed a particular function of the mind, a functioning that itself had become conscious, identical with the sense or idea he had of it"; if the self were a point of gravity it had suddenly become all encompassing and gained so much weight that all abstractions imploded into it, self immolation, pure form reflecting on form. Then what balance is man? How does Nature love its children and must the cessation of its soothing speech to us annihilate our ability to speak back? Concerning any investigation into these matters Valery was aware that 'An 'idea' of man is a means of transforming a question', otherwise, by posing the very question we generate new ones, we only transform the nature of our subject and complicate our non-reducible position in relation to that anthropological quandary.
To read Valery's M. Teste is to dare a trust fall. The trust however not being founded on the belief that you will be caught, but that you will fall forever more. Once weightless and having surrendered any hope in the advancement of a plot or the possibility of finding resistance in the prose to your own imaginings, you may attempt some saltos or choose to soar back up to great heights. After the fun that came served as a side-dish to liberation, you may then place your hands behind your head as if relaxing or holding some strange orb. It may then strike you that you have learned the rules of the ego's game:
"THE GAME OF THE EGO: The match is won if we find we deserve our own approval. If the match has been won by calculation, exercise of the will, with thoroughness, and lucidity - the gain is the greatest possible"
It is no surprise that if the foremost French critic and poet retreats from the public sphere for 40 years to only attend himself to his notebooks and journals, with the belief that 'all literature is contained in the curve of words, try to see, try to exhaust the greatest possible number of them', that his consequent publications will read like the musings of an early savant large-language-model. With one key difference; whilst such modern models brutishly align themselves with stacatto quantitative patternings of h'you'man speech, his is instead powered by a flame over which one has poured high % human-spirit, Valery lending his mind only to the qualities of words in combination or when self orchestrated.
This bubbling distillation in his frontal lobe that separates art from speech seems however to have the concerning side-effect of causing the steady dilution of his ego! Valery, recognizing this slowly unfolding terrible fate, takes this process to its natural conclusion through the figuration of the figure of Monsieur Teste; a monster or experimental Frankenstein of the Cartesian subject, a walking ideal division of thought and body, with corpus as corpse and mens as mental. Monsieur Teste speaks in some crystalline language that does not even attempt to relate itself to the muddied world and by extension minds of mortals. In scenes when sat at the opera or over a glass of wine he sends his speech soaring far over heads of his parlé partner with no parabolic action occurring that could make it tractable for even the most desperately grasping minds. But Monsieur is not deified, non, he is a monster (monsteur), an aberration of reason. For what capacity does he have left to love those closest to him, why does his language appear empty, his gaze seeking? (Read here: a playful critique the French symbolist poetry circle, 'art pour art', Valery's influences (Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine) who saw no bounds to language and thus no reason for lowering ourselves to its common rules) For M. Teste, notes his only sympathetic friend, "Everything seemed a particular function of the mind, a functioning that itself had become conscious, identical with the sense or idea he had of it"; if the self were a point of gravity it had suddenly become all encompassing and gained so much weight that all abstractions imploded into it, self immolation, pure form reflecting on form. Then what balance is man? How does Nature love its children and must the cessation of its soothing speech to us annihilate our ability to speak back? Concerning any investigation into these matters Valery was aware that 'An 'idea' of man is a means of transforming a question', otherwise, by posing the very question we generate new ones, we only transform the nature of our subject and complicate our non-reducible position in relation to that anthropological quandary.
To read Valery's M. Teste is to dare a trust fall. The trust however not being founded on the belief that you will be caught, but that you will fall forever more. Once weightless and having surrendered any hope in the advancement of a plot or the possibility of finding resistance in the prose to your own imaginings, you may attempt some saltos or choose to soar back up to great heights. After the fun that came served as a side-dish to liberation, you may then place your hands behind your head as if relaxing or holding some strange orb. It may then strike you that you have learned the rules of the ego's game:
"THE GAME OF THE EGO: The match is won if we find we deserve our own approval. If the match has been won by calculation, exercise of the will, with thoroughness, and lucidity - the gain is the greatest possible"
January 4, 2025
I am not made for novels or plays. Their grand scenes, rages, passions, tragic moments, far from exciting me, strike me as cheap outbursts, rudimentary states in which all kinds of stupidity are let loose, where the human being is simplified to the point of foolishness and drowns instead of swimming in the waters of circumstance.
Monsieur Teste is Charlotte Mandell's translation of selected writings on his eponymous character by Paul Valéry, and the first book in my 2024-5 re-subscription to the Asympote Book Club. The Book Club's introduction to the text can be found here.
The publisher is the NYRB in their Classics series:
I must admit it isn't a series that appeals generally - particularly where it involves, as here, retranslation of works that have already been translated, when so much remains untranslated.
Monsieur Teste itself comes, as Vesna observes in her excellent review, cited as a key text by the great Thomas Bernhard:
(translation from Douglas Robertson from the documentary Drei Tage)
And (as if often the case I find with authors who influenced authors I love), I'm glad Bernhard wrestled with Monsieur Teste so I don't have to - or rather didn't have to till I picked this up.
As Vesna's review comments, this text 'requires careful reading and, at times, familiarity or comfort with abstract philosophical ideas' - the former I didn't have the patience for as I don't have the comfort with the latter - definitely a case of me, not the book, but not for me.
Monsieur Teste is Charlotte Mandell's translation of selected writings on his eponymous character by Paul Valéry, and the first book in my 2024-5 re-subscription to the Asympote Book Club. The Book Club's introduction to the text can be found here.
The publisher is the NYRB in their Classics series:
The NYRB Classics series is dedicated to publishing an eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction from different eras and times and of various sorts. Many of these titles are works in translation and almost all feature an introduction by an outstanding writer, scholar, or critic of our day.
I must admit it isn't a series that appeals generally - particularly where it involves, as here, retranslation of works that have already been translated, when so much remains untranslated.
Monsieur Teste itself comes, as Vesna observes in her excellent review, cited as a key text by the great Thomas Bernhard:
Yes…intercourse with philosophy, with written texts is extremely dangerous…for me especially…I sometimes beat about the bush for hours, days, weeks on end…I don’t want to have any contact with anyone…I don’t want to have anything to do with anything.
On the other hand, it happens that the authors I deem most important are my greatest adversaries or enemies. You’re constantly sparring with the very people you’ve already surrendered to completely. And I have surrendered to Musil, Pavese, Ezra Pound…there is of course nothing lyrical about them, they are absolute prose.
There are quite simply sentences, a landscape, that is built up in a few words in Pavese’s diary, one of Lermontov’s rough drafts, naturally Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, basically all Russians…I’ve pretty much never taken any interest in any of the French, apart from Valéry…Valéry’s Monsieur Teste—that’s a book that’s been thoroughly thumbed through…and I’m always having to pick up a new copy, because it’s always going kaput on me, because it’s been read to death, to shreds.
(translation from Douglas Robertson from the documentary Drei Tage)
And (as if often the case I find with authors who influenced authors I love), I'm glad Bernhard wrestled with Monsieur Teste so I don't have to - or rather didn't have to till I picked this up.
As Vesna's review comments, this text 'requires careful reading and, at times, familiarity or comfort with abstract philosophical ideas' - the former I didn't have the patience for as I don't have the comfort with the latter - definitely a case of me, not the book, but not for me.
July 30, 2008
a brief, but thought-provoking read. teste seems as though he could easily have been a compatriot to one of fernando pessoa's heteronyms (perhaps bernardo soares). monsieur teste is an exploration of the role of the intellect on being.
certain people sense that their senses separate them from the real, from being. this sense in them infects their other senses. what i see blinds me. what i hear deafens me. what i know renders me ignorant. i am ignorant of as much, and in so far, as i know. this brightness before me is a blindfold that covers either a night or a light plus... plus what? here the circle closes, of this strange inversion: knowledge, like a cloud over being; the world shining, like an opaque film on the eye. take everything away, that i may see.
certain people sense that their senses separate them from the real, from being. this sense in them infects their other senses. what i see blinds me. what i hear deafens me. what i know renders me ignorant. i am ignorant of as much, and in so far, as i know. this brightness before me is a blindfold that covers either a night or a light plus... plus what? here the circle closes, of this strange inversion: knowledge, like a cloud over being; the world shining, like an opaque film on the eye. take everything away, that i may see.
October 24, 2022
"Hay una bella parte del alma que puede gozar sin comprender"
"Yo no sé lo que es la conciencia de un tonto, pero la de un hombre inteligente está llena de tonterías"
"Existen personajes que sienten que sus sentidos los separan de lo real, del ser. Este sentido en ellos infecta sus demás sentidos"
"Sométete por entro a tu mejor momento, a tu más grande recuerdo. Es él a quien hay que reconocer como rey del tiempo."
"La superioridad no es más que una soledad situada en los límites actuales de una especie"
"Usted siente como envidio a todos estos humanos lúcidos cuyas obras nos hacen pensar en la suave facilidad del sol dentro de un universo de cristal... Mi mala conciencia me sugiere a veces incriminarlos para defenderme. Ella me murmura que no son más que los que no buscan nada"
"Desconfío de todas las palabras, pues la más mínima meditación vuelve absurda nuestra confianza en ellas"
"El infinito, querido amigo, ya no es gran cosa; es un asunto de escritura. El universo no existe más que sobre el papel. Ninguna idea lo presenta, ningún sentido lo muestra. Se habla y nada más"
"El dolor buscaba el aparato que hubiera convertido el dolor en conocimiento, lo que los místicos han entrevisto, mal visto"
"Los hombres se asemejan más mientras más corto sea el tiempo durante el que se les observa, al grado de que en el instante no se distinguen ya"
"Lo que verdaderamente importa alguien [...] es justamente lo que le hace sentir que está solo"
"Se trata de pasar de cero a cero. Así es la vida. De lo inconsciente e insensible a lo inconsciente e insensible.
El tránsito imposible de ser visto pues va del ver al no ver después de haber pasado del no ver al ver"
"Yo no sé lo que es la conciencia de un tonto, pero la de un hombre inteligente está llena de tonterías"
"Existen personajes que sienten que sus sentidos los separan de lo real, del ser. Este sentido en ellos infecta sus demás sentidos"
"Sométete por entro a tu mejor momento, a tu más grande recuerdo. Es él a quien hay que reconocer como rey del tiempo."
"La superioridad no es más que una soledad situada en los límites actuales de una especie"
"Usted siente como envidio a todos estos humanos lúcidos cuyas obras nos hacen pensar en la suave facilidad del sol dentro de un universo de cristal... Mi mala conciencia me sugiere a veces incriminarlos para defenderme. Ella me murmura que no son más que los que no buscan nada"
"Desconfío de todas las palabras, pues la más mínima meditación vuelve absurda nuestra confianza en ellas"
"El infinito, querido amigo, ya no es gran cosa; es un asunto de escritura. El universo no existe más que sobre el papel. Ninguna idea lo presenta, ningún sentido lo muestra. Se habla y nada más"
"El dolor buscaba el aparato que hubiera convertido el dolor en conocimiento, lo que los místicos han entrevisto, mal visto"
"Los hombres se asemejan más mientras más corto sea el tiempo durante el que se les observa, al grado de que en el instante no se distinguen ya"
"Lo que verdaderamente importa alguien [...] es justamente lo que le hace sentir que está solo"
"Se trata de pasar de cero a cero. Así es la vida. De lo inconsciente e insensible a lo inconsciente e insensible.
El tránsito imposible de ser visto pues va del ver al no ver después de haber pasado del no ver al ver"
February 22, 2023
Sanırım kaleme alındığı dönemden uzak oluşum bu metinle aramda kapanmaz bir mesafeye neden olmuş... Yine de okumaya değer bir metindi diyebilirim.
"Gençlik, uzlaşımların yeterince anlaşılmadığı, anlaşılmamasının gerektiği bir dönemdir: Ya körü körüne karşı çıkılır ya da körü körüne kabul edilir." (sayfa 12)
"Kendimi çok az gözden kaçırdım; kendimden nefret ettim, kendime hayran oldum sonra, birlikte yaşlandık." (sayfa 17)
"Sever, acı çeker, canı sıkılır. Herkes yapar bunları. Ama, sıradan iç çekişlere, inlemelere, onun, bütün aklının kurallarını, girinti çıkıntılarını katmasını isterim." (sayfa 23)
"En bizim olan, en değerli şeyimiz, söylemeye gerek yok, bizim için karanlıktır. Bana öyle geliyor ki, kendimi bütünüyle tanısaydım, bu olduğum şey olmazdım. Evet, birine göre saydamım, görülüyor ve öngörülüyorum, nasılsam öyle, gizemsiz, gölgesiz, kendi bilinmeyenime -kendimin kendimle ilgili bilgisizliğime- kesinlikle başvurmadan!" (sayfa 37)
"Gençlik, uzlaşımların yeterince anlaşılmadığı, anlaşılmamasının gerektiği bir dönemdir: Ya körü körüne karşı çıkılır ya da körü körüne kabul edilir." (sayfa 12)
"Kendimi çok az gözden kaçırdım; kendimden nefret ettim, kendime hayran oldum sonra, birlikte yaşlandık." (sayfa 17)
"Sever, acı çeker, canı sıkılır. Herkes yapar bunları. Ama, sıradan iç çekişlere, inlemelere, onun, bütün aklının kurallarını, girinti çıkıntılarını katmasını isterim." (sayfa 23)
"En bizim olan, en değerli şeyimiz, söylemeye gerek yok, bizim için karanlıktır. Bana öyle geliyor ki, kendimi bütünüyle tanısaydım, bu olduğum şey olmazdım. Evet, birine göre saydamım, görülüyor ve öngörülüyorum, nasılsam öyle, gizemsiz, gölgesiz, kendi bilinmeyenime -kendimin kendimle ilgili bilgisizliğime- kesinlikle başvurmadan!" (sayfa 37)
February 10, 2022
No entendí nada 👁👄👁
Read
March 17, 2020The hell was that?
I don't know. But I know I was impressed, in the truest sense of the word, in that I was impressed-upon. I know that it was peculiar and abstract and at times ethereal. And yet I just don't know what the hell that was.
While no one reads Valery in the English-speaking world, he's a titan in Latin Europe, and so I feel like I'm missing something. Is his genius in his poems? His other prose? Or is Monsieur Teste just too much for me? I get down with Blanchot, Lispector, and all manner of other abstract unreal novelists, so why am I coming up blank here?
Seriously. I'm looking for insight from the audience here.
I don't know. But I know I was impressed, in the truest sense of the word, in that I was impressed-upon. I know that it was peculiar and abstract and at times ethereal. And yet I just don't know what the hell that was.
While no one reads Valery in the English-speaking world, he's a titan in Latin Europe, and so I feel like I'm missing something. Is his genius in his poems? His other prose? Or is Monsieur Teste just too much for me? I get down with Blanchot, Lispector, and all manner of other abstract unreal novelists, so why am I coming up blank here?
Seriously. I'm looking for insight from the audience here.
April 16, 2013
Valéry braves a new form of biography. In it, there is no place for the incidental, the accidental, or unnecessary. The book comprises of the short anecdote referenced above, two others like it, selections from a logbook, some recorded thoughts of M. Teste, & two letters written by others.* It is an eloquently fragmented, perfectly modern text. It cannot resign its centre to concretion. Valéry on Teste: “I am sorry to speak of him as we speak of those of whom statues are made” (13); Teste on Teste: “All that I do & think is merely a Sample of my possibility. [/] Man [sic] is more general than his life & his acts. He is designed, as it were, for more eventualities than he can experience” (78).
http://etzeichen.wordpress.com/2013/0... has more complete opinions, although the book lends itself to be talked of & quoted at much greater length.
http://etzeichen.wordpress.com/2013/0... has more complete opinions, although the book lends itself to be talked of & quoted at much greater length.
February 24, 2022
<< Só aprecio em todas as coisas a facilidade ou a dificuldade em conhecê-las, em consumá-las. Ponho um cuidado extremo na medição destes graus, e em não me prender... E que me importa o que estou farto de saber? >>
January 11, 2018
Paralel okuma önerisi: Stefan Zweig- Kendileriyle Savaşanlar (Şeytanla Savaş diye de çevrildi) Sonrasında depresyon istiklal marşı kapanış.
February 17, 2025
Utterly obnoxious and deeply transfixing. Valery rides a tricky line in this novel-cum-philosophical investigation-cum-novel-cum-diary-cum-research for a profile never written-cum-novel. Monsieur Teste becomes the enigmatic embodiment of the man of the mind, one who treats his stream of consciousness as uncharted territory, as unending plains that must be transcribed upon a map. So he's really a cartographer of nothing but himself. Yet the self may be obliterated by a perpetual search for abstraction after abstraction after abstraction. Valery sidewinds among the pompous isolation of solipsism and the genuine beauty and existential thrill (and dread) of delving deep into thought. The magic to me is in Valery's surprisingly quippy aphorisms and peculiar employment of perspective. Reminds me that I need to read some Pessoa. And now I need to read Valery's verse
April 19, 2023
this is a novel in the same way brautigan's trout fishing in america is, except this is good. other analogs include the duino elegies, man and his symbols, milk and honey, the song "a letter from home" by "blue" gene tyranny, and the experience of reading the tao te ching for the first time at 19 during the pandemic.
"One must go into himself armed to the teeth" (72).
"One must go into himself armed to the teeth" (72).
October 2, 2025
es un delirio total. creo que en todo lo que dice como si fuera un evangelio. puras huevadas que son su propio medio y su propio fin.
October 1, 2015
Really, I just want to quote, but it's worth noting that what other characters write about M. Teste is much more interesting than the texts attributed to Teste himself.
"Coming back to Monsieur Teste... a character of this kind could not survive in reality for more than a few quarters of an hour."
"He said in his low quick voice: 'Let them enjoy and obey!'"
"I sometimes amuse myself with an idea of our hearts borrowed from physics: they are made of an enormous injustice and a very small justice intimately combined."
"Simply remember that between men there are two relations only: logic or war."
"At the end of the mind, the body. But at the end of the body, the mind."
And so it goes on: intellectually difficult, beautifully expressed, all a fascinating experiment.
"Coming back to Monsieur Teste... a character of this kind could not survive in reality for more than a few quarters of an hour."
"He said in his low quick voice: 'Let them enjoy and obey!'"
"I sometimes amuse myself with an idea of our hearts borrowed from physics: they are made of an enormous injustice and a very small justice intimately combined."
"Simply remember that between men there are two relations only: logic or war."
"At the end of the mind, the body. But at the end of the body, the mind."
And so it goes on: intellectually difficult, beautifully expressed, all a fascinating experiment.
October 19, 2016
yani aslında aşırı çok beğendiğim bölümleri vardı ama genel olarak biraz sıkıcıydı.
özür dilerim ayberk hocam
3/5
özür dilerim ayberk hocam
3/5
September 12, 2024
He de decir sobre Monsieur Teste y sin acudir demasiado a la modestia, que pronunciar el título me queda sumamente atractivo al lenguaje mío con tantas florituras que le enfrasco. Me lo recomendaron unos amigos poetas cuyos discursos son realmente, románticos, reivindicativos y cuanto menos dignos de escuchar; sin percatarme de lo que trataba la obra y confiando plenamente en sus gustos literarios, decidí sumergirme en estas páginas sin pensar más de dos minutos en las consecuencias (así hago siempre con todo y acabo sangrando, pero he de reconocer que me gusta el sabor rojo y metálico) Monsieur Teste requiere de paciencia y profundidad reflexiva, carece de una trama definida por lo que es cómo un semicírculo que no se cierra hecho de pensamientos, metáforas y mucho, pero que mucho simbolismo.
He encontrado en Monsieur una persona casi irreal, como un ente que es incapaz de vivir entre nosotros porque su propia existencia es dificultosa de sobrellevar en un mundo como este.
Él es un ser superior cuyo mayor afán es la completa liberación mental y reflexiva sin obstáculos exteriores que la alteren en su totalidad.
Es enemigo de las emociones que nos alejan de la estabilidad, suena de maravilla la frase de: "tener la capacidad de pensar libremente" pero el proceso para conseguir este don es verdaderamente solitario, inmersivo y arduo, no se consigue de la noche a la mañana, es más, me atrevería hasta a decir, que se llega a conseguir luchando por él en todas las noches y todas las mañanas.
He encontrado en este libro ciertas similitudes al momento vital en el que me encuentro...
A menudo el propio hecho de ser seres humanos nos conduce a la soledad, cada uno experimentamos una situación mental diferente que se vive de forma única y provoca cierto aislamiento en nuestra propia cabeza o cierta dependencia a un individualismo absoluto que nos empuja efectivamente a ese sentimiento de "sentirnos solos o incomprendidos".
Monsieur era un gran enemigo de las emociones debido a que con frecuencia, la máquina indicadora de nuestro pensamiento está estropeada y sirve de meramente poco, basar nuestro estado emocional en una manija descolgada, que nos descuelga a nosotros de lo superfluo y real.
Es enemigo del amor, puesto que el amor es aquella fuerza sobrehumana que nos lleva a los abismos más extremos de la locura y nos hace perder autonomía y propio sentido del camino que seguimos y queremos seguir, el amor no complementa, ni ayuda a crecer, paraliza y estanca, hiere y nos hace abusar de los excesos, los vértices y las borracheras.
Los libros a su vez no nos hacen pensar libremente, si no tomar argumentos o ideas que ya han sido pensadas con anterioridad por otro alguien, e incluirlas en nuestro diccionario que catalogamos como "cosecha propia".
He sentido a lo largo del libro cierto sentimiento de condolencia hacia Monsieur Teste, puesto que tener ese nivel tan alto en tantos aspectos del intelecto, hace que pierda cierta esencia de la vida que consiste en equivocarse e intentar remendar errores (y eso es hirientemente triste). Su capacidad lo hace vivir en la constante intranquilidad e ineptitud de creerse algo por completo, se obliga a pasar por procesos analíticos que meditan y reflexionan sobre todo de forma tediosa. La más mínima cuestión se le es convertida en un mundo, en una escalera que se debe bajar y subir cien veces al día para comprobar que verdaderamente esté hecha de mármol. No sé descifrar con exactitud hasta donde quiere llegar el caballero francés, este modelo de vida a parte de irreal me resulta cansino e innecesario a no ser que se tenga como aspiración convertirse en un pequeño y subjetivo Monsieur Teste, que finalmente acabará muerto como todo el mundo independientemente de su condición de; Intelectual, ignorante, amante de la lectura, de la noche, enamorado, decepcionado, libre, esclavo, fornicario, vírgen, marido, mujer, jóven, anciano...Hombres, solo hombres que mueren sobre un universo que sigue girando. ¡Oh Monsieur Teste, desde la estúpida ignorancia alumbra con potencia el luminoso faro!
He encontrado en Monsieur una persona casi irreal, como un ente que es incapaz de vivir entre nosotros porque su propia existencia es dificultosa de sobrellevar en un mundo como este.
Él es un ser superior cuyo mayor afán es la completa liberación mental y reflexiva sin obstáculos exteriores que la alteren en su totalidad.
Es enemigo de las emociones que nos alejan de la estabilidad, suena de maravilla la frase de: "tener la capacidad de pensar libremente" pero el proceso para conseguir este don es verdaderamente solitario, inmersivo y arduo, no se consigue de la noche a la mañana, es más, me atrevería hasta a decir, que se llega a conseguir luchando por él en todas las noches y todas las mañanas.
He encontrado en este libro ciertas similitudes al momento vital en el que me encuentro...
A menudo el propio hecho de ser seres humanos nos conduce a la soledad, cada uno experimentamos una situación mental diferente que se vive de forma única y provoca cierto aislamiento en nuestra propia cabeza o cierta dependencia a un individualismo absoluto que nos empuja efectivamente a ese sentimiento de "sentirnos solos o incomprendidos".
Monsieur era un gran enemigo de las emociones debido a que con frecuencia, la máquina indicadora de nuestro pensamiento está estropeada y sirve de meramente poco, basar nuestro estado emocional en una manija descolgada, que nos descuelga a nosotros de lo superfluo y real.
Es enemigo del amor, puesto que el amor es aquella fuerza sobrehumana que nos lleva a los abismos más extremos de la locura y nos hace perder autonomía y propio sentido del camino que seguimos y queremos seguir, el amor no complementa, ni ayuda a crecer, paraliza y estanca, hiere y nos hace abusar de los excesos, los vértices y las borracheras.
Los libros a su vez no nos hacen pensar libremente, si no tomar argumentos o ideas que ya han sido pensadas con anterioridad por otro alguien, e incluirlas en nuestro diccionario que catalogamos como "cosecha propia".
He sentido a lo largo del libro cierto sentimiento de condolencia hacia Monsieur Teste, puesto que tener ese nivel tan alto en tantos aspectos del intelecto, hace que pierda cierta esencia de la vida que consiste en equivocarse e intentar remendar errores (y eso es hirientemente triste). Su capacidad lo hace vivir en la constante intranquilidad e ineptitud de creerse algo por completo, se obliga a pasar por procesos analíticos que meditan y reflexionan sobre todo de forma tediosa. La más mínima cuestión se le es convertida en un mundo, en una escalera que se debe bajar y subir cien veces al día para comprobar que verdaderamente esté hecha de mármol. No sé descifrar con exactitud hasta donde quiere llegar el caballero francés, este modelo de vida a parte de irreal me resulta cansino e innecesario a no ser que se tenga como aspiración convertirse en un pequeño y subjetivo Monsieur Teste, que finalmente acabará muerto como todo el mundo independientemente de su condición de; Intelectual, ignorante, amante de la lectura, de la noche, enamorado, decepcionado, libre, esclavo, fornicario, vírgen, marido, mujer, jóven, anciano...Hombres, solo hombres que mueren sobre un universo que sigue girando. ¡Oh Monsieur Teste, desde la estúpida ignorancia alumbra con potencia el luminoso faro!
October 11, 2025
the failure of singularity, the diffusion of identity
There is, at the heart of MONSIEUR TESTE, a kind of intellectual geas, a binding curse of the mind against the mind, wherein the self—seeking refuge in pure rationality—attempts to subtract itself from the world of projection only to find out that the very act of subtraction reifies the thing being subtracted, that is, by watching himself think, by watching himself watch himself think, Monsieur Teste becomes a form of personhood endlessly reborn through its own disavowal—self-surveilling—a psychomachia without protagonist or antagonist, merely the ceaseless trembling of thought encountering its own aftermath. It is this recursive awareness, this infernal metempsychosis of self-observation, that nullifies the very ideal of unity; for if there is a ‘self’, it can no longer be singular, no longer intact, for it exists only as a manifold of awarenesses layered like sedimentary fog—the watcher, the watcher of the watcher, the imagined watcher watching the watcher, and so on ad infinitum, each iteration a further dilation of meaning until thought itself becomes porous, abstract, diffused across a topology with no centre.
If we were to invoke Derrida, it is precisely in this différance that Teste is entrapped: what he chases is presence—pure, incandescent, impervious to the adulterations of language or the vagrancies of social thought—but what he enacts is deferral, an asymptotic passage towards a clarity that recedes the moment it is neared (in Valéry’s words, mind as ‘the maximum capacity for incoherence’). To be Teste is to be irrevocably misaligned with one’s own cognition because meaning is no longer anchored to thought. He desires to exist without consequence, to shape a life in negation of an image, but in doing so invites others to mythologise. He is a man without qualities, which is to say: a man curated precisely by the absence of such qualities. Others speak of him. Others narrate him. Others attempt to approximate what he would say, were he to speak plainly. And so Teste’s dream of a sovereign, crystalline self—unshaped by the world, unblemished by the filth of admiration or contempt—is rendered inert because existence cannot not be watched, and even negation or absence becomes a manner of being when conceived by another.
To show oneself doing—to think, and to know that one is thinking—is already a dissolution of the singular into a series of displacements. There is no action that does not bear the stain of reflection, and no reflection that does not pre-empt the gaze of another. What Teste proves—tragically, inevitably—is that no mind, however sealed or hermetic, escapes the sediment left by the imaginations of others.
There is, at the heart of MONSIEUR TESTE, a kind of intellectual geas, a binding curse of the mind against the mind, wherein the self—seeking refuge in pure rationality—attempts to subtract itself from the world of projection only to find out that the very act of subtraction reifies the thing being subtracted, that is, by watching himself think, by watching himself watch himself think, Monsieur Teste becomes a form of personhood endlessly reborn through its own disavowal—self-surveilling—a psychomachia without protagonist or antagonist, merely the ceaseless trembling of thought encountering its own aftermath. It is this recursive awareness, this infernal metempsychosis of self-observation, that nullifies the very ideal of unity; for if there is a ‘self’, it can no longer be singular, no longer intact, for it exists only as a manifold of awarenesses layered like sedimentary fog—the watcher, the watcher of the watcher, the imagined watcher watching the watcher, and so on ad infinitum, each iteration a further dilation of meaning until thought itself becomes porous, abstract, diffused across a topology with no centre.
If we were to invoke Derrida, it is precisely in this différance that Teste is entrapped: what he chases is presence—pure, incandescent, impervious to the adulterations of language or the vagrancies of social thought—but what he enacts is deferral, an asymptotic passage towards a clarity that recedes the moment it is neared (in Valéry’s words, mind as ‘the maximum capacity for incoherence’). To be Teste is to be irrevocably misaligned with one’s own cognition because meaning is no longer anchored to thought. He desires to exist without consequence, to shape a life in negation of an image, but in doing so invites others to mythologise. He is a man without qualities, which is to say: a man curated precisely by the absence of such qualities. Others speak of him. Others narrate him. Others attempt to approximate what he would say, were he to speak plainly. And so Teste’s dream of a sovereign, crystalline self—unshaped by the world, unblemished by the filth of admiration or contempt—is rendered inert because existence cannot not be watched, and even negation or absence becomes a manner of being when conceived by another.
To show oneself doing—to think, and to know that one is thinking—is already a dissolution of the singular into a series of displacements. There is no action that does not bear the stain of reflection, and no reflection that does not pre-empt the gaze of another. What Teste proves—tragically, inevitably—is that no mind, however sealed or hermetic, escapes the sediment left by the imaginations of others.
November 25, 2024
I don't get it. I understand that Teste is supposed to be an impossible intellectual character, one who somehow exhibits an inhuman devotion to pure thought. Maybe I'm just too muddle-headed and human, but I barely understand any of Teste's insights, or his appeal. Maybe that's the idea? the reader is supposed to be cast into a space of wonder? But to me M. Teste comes off as a solipsistic bore. Or maybe that's the point???
December 1, 2024
Read in one sitting right after a much longer book, and it was a much needed relief. This book is a quasi-poem and quasi-philosophical text from Valéry on the nature of internal knowledge and the brilliance it can generate. It’s style is loose and subtle, sacrificing structure for something akin to rhythm. I really enjoyed this work and I think anyone with an interest in rejecting the solipsism of the intellectual life will be very interested in this book.
November 14, 2021
Meneer Teste is geen romanpersonage, het is een filosofisch personage - een conceptueel personage, een idee - geschapen door Paul Valéry - de Denker.
Uit het nawoord: "...een mens die zich uitsluitend zou beperken tot denken. En dan ook nog tot een denken dat voornamelijk geïnteresseerd is in de manier waarop het zelf functioneert." En "...hij is vrij gebleven van de smet die aan elk 'groot man' kleeft, die eerste misstap waarmee hij zich bekend maakt. Meneer Teste is een Leonardo zonder geschiedenis, zonder prestaties en zonder reputatie."
Een binnen zonder buiten; opgesloten in de eeuwige mogelijkheid.
Uit het nawoord: "...een mens die zich uitsluitend zou beperken tot denken. En dan ook nog tot een denken dat voornamelijk geïnteresseerd is in de manier waarop het zelf functioneert." En "...hij is vrij gebleven van de smet die aan elk 'groot man' kleeft, die eerste misstap waarmee hij zich bekend maakt. Meneer Teste is een Leonardo zonder geschiedenis, zonder prestaties en zonder reputatie."
Een binnen zonder buiten; opgesloten in de eeuwige mogelijkheid.
December 23, 2024
Her anlama, bir yanlış anlamadır…
Monsieur Teste, zihinsel gücüyle hayranlık uyandıran, ancak duygusal dünyadan ve toplumsal yaşamdan kopmuş, yalnız bir “aşırı insan” figürü. Bu kadar akılcılık, bir insanı gerçekten mutlu edebilir mi?
Monsieur Teste, zihinsel gücüyle hayranlık uyandıran, ancak duygusal dünyadan ve toplumsal yaşamdan kopmuş, yalnız bir “aşırı insan” figürü. Bu kadar akılcılık, bir insanı gerçekten mutlu edebilir mi?
August 25, 2021
3 étoiles pour les fascinants passages ❤️
Du reste, l'on dirait des fragments de pensées mal cousues entre elles. Cela devrait plutôt être "classé" comme une sorte de recueil
Du reste, l'on dirait des fragments de pensées mal cousues entre elles. Cela devrait plutôt être "classé" comme une sorte de recueil
September 1, 2024
Continuei sem entender se o Sr. Teste era só uma má pessoa e mau marido ou se o homem era, secretamente, um génio naquela sociedade
March 30, 2025
'Waarom is meneer Teste onmogelijk? — Deze vraag is zijn ziel. Ze verandert u in meneer Teste. Want hij is niets anders dan de demon van de mogelijkheid zelf.'
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September 7, 2025I think I’m an idiot—this book made no sense and I was totally unable to engage with it at all. A book perhaps only its mother could love!
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