Poems ranging from "La Jeune Parque" and "Le Cimetière marin" to
occasional and light verse written as letters to friends, dedications in
books, and inscriptions on ladies' fans demonstrate the wide scope of
Valéry's lyric preoccupation. The bilingual edition, with David Paul's
English translations facing the French texts, includes the
autobiographical "Recollection," quoted below, and excerpts on poetry,
selected and translated from Valéry's notebooks by James Lawler.
Paul Valéry turned to the discipline of poetry during the First World
War, to escape from the "commotion of a world gone mad." "I fashioned
myself a poetry," he wrote, "that had no other law than to establish for
me a way of living with myself, for a part of my days."
Originally published in 1971.
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