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Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry (October 30, 1871 - July 20, 1945 ) 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.
It was my very first read of 2019 (I had decided to read Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse but the New Year's Eve drained me of my ability to successfully follow a stream of consciousness). And I really enjoyed it (it even gave me some energy back!).
It consists of a very pleasant succession of thoughts - and Paul Valéry sure knew how to write. As a good poet does, his sentences are carefully constructed and he makes sure that the words he uses are the most suited to highlight, in the best possible way, his thoughts.
(Reading the "Inscriptions sur la mer" part in front of the ocean caused me pure delight. Books are truly a wonder).
Ok. On ne cote pas ce genre de livre. Ceci dit, je me joins à la terrible comédie de Goodreads : je donne 5/5 et je dis : médite, bon lecteur, chacune des réflexions de Valéry.