Reading Paul Valéry: Universe in Mind

by Edited by Paul Gifford , Brian Stimpson

• ISBN13: 9780521584944
• ISBN10: 0521584949
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-01-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Paul Valèry's work is a unique odyssey in the universe of ideas and mental forms. The most recently acknowledged - and the most private - of the masters of modernity, Valèry is perhaps the most radical and wide-ranging. He navigates freely within the mental galaxies known to scientists, poets, literary theorists, musicians, philosophers, historicans and social anthropologists, always concerned to explore the potential and limits of the human mind. The present volume of essays by internationally recognised scholars offers the first comprehensive account of Valèry's work in English or French. It provides a series of readings bringing into focus the deeper coherence that animates what Valèry called his 'unitary mind in a thousand pieces', and offers new perspectives on the immense range of his experimental and fragmentary writings. This book moves forward the frontiers of our understanding of Valèry's work, and substantially alters the way in which he is perceived.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. Self-Science: 1. Towards a biography of the mind Ned Bastet

2. Thinking-writing games of the Cahiers Paul Gifford

3. Paradigms of the self: Valé

ry's mythical models Robert Pickering

4. The fascination of science Judith Robinson-Valé

ry

5. An art of rethinking: Valé

ry's 'negative philosophy' Ré

gine Pietra

Part II. Self-Writings: 6. The poetics of practice and theory M. Jarrety

7. 'Esprit, Attente, pur, é

ternel suspens ... ' Valé

ry's prose poetry Stephen Romer

8. The Dialogues and 'Mon Faust': Valé

ry's republic of the mind William Marx

9. Counter-fiction Brian Stimpson

10. Major poems: the voice of the subject J.-M. Maulpoix

11. Other voices: intertextuality and the art of pure poetry Suzanne Nash

12. Manuscript steps: 'Les Pas' Florence de Lussy

Part III. Body, Mind, World: 13. An aesthetics of the subject: music and the visual arts Brian Stimpson

14. Politics, history and the modern world Nicole Celeyrette-Pietri

15. Valé

ry and the feminine Kirsteen Anderson

16. Dream and the unconscious Malcolm Bowie

17. Self and other: Valé

ry's 'lost object of desire' Paul Gifford

Conclusion.