| | | PAUL VALERY ‘An Anthology Selected, with an Introduction, by James R. Lawler from The Collected Works of Paul Valéry edited by Jackson MathewsFit published in Gre Bitsin 1977 ‘by Rewedge © Regan Pea Lid PDD and Broaleay Hoe Newt Road, Pd ct Bian by Rede Bar Lind Tri € Esher Comrigie © 1956, 1958 10, 1984, rf, 1971, 1975 ond 1977 by Price Unicity Press No part of is bok may be repre in ‘ay fom wit perio fo he uber, ecepe forthe tation of bef age ron Ditsh Library Cataloguing in Pablication Data Valéy Pat ail Val «an anthony. Laie, Janes Ronald’ 8681911309" PQab 43 AabAG ISBN 0 7100 8806 X ISBN 0 Fron B76 o Poe Fora ist of volumes nthe Called Wonks, page 355 CONTENTS aeTRoDUCTION, by James R. Lawler From Monsieur Teste ‘The Evening with Monsieur Teste A Lower from Madame Emilie Teste Various Essays Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci ‘The Crisis of the Mind Man and the Sea Shell Poetry and Abstract Thought Mallar From Poems in the Rough ABC The Angel ‘The Bath Laura Work From Poems (with French texts) La Filense ‘The Spinner Narcisse parle Narcissus Speaks La Jeune Parque ‘The Young Fate Cantique des colonmes ‘Song of the Columns 3 108 136 166 ” 182 184 186 18k 192 198 236bauche d'un Sespnt Silhouette of Serpent Les Grenades Pomegranates Le Vin perdu The Lost Wine Le Cimettre marin The Graveyard by the Sea Palme Palm Sinistre Disaster Two Dialogues Dance and the Soul Dialogue of the Tree 22 264 266 268 a8 286 201 a7 ast Introduction. Tz was Monsteus Teste, the arch eynic, who knew, wel thatthe mind which consents to fame isa mind fawed ‘Valéry’s own ambition af twenty, a8 at forty, was ro avoid this error, to safeguard his secrets, to choose anonymity He was the bourgeois from the provinces leading a life without events and conforming in exterior things 0 the general face of his age; not for him the voyages to the Fast, the various wanderings of a Claudel or a Gide. At che same time he sought to inhabit an island of the sprit of which he was the Robinson, a domi his alone that he could codify and control, “My dese was for life as simple, and for ‘thought as complex, as posible,” he wrote; again: “Events are the froth of things, but my’ true interest is the se.” ‘One hardly needs to recall the major shift in his positon shortly prior to, and during, che First World War; how, by a singular concourse of circumstances—his revision of | adolescent verse at Gide's urging, his rediscovery of Racine and Mallarmé—he became engrossed inthe composition of ‘a poem that he intended to be 30 to 40 lines in length bot ‘expanded into the 512 alexandrines of La Jeane Parque. Its publication in April 197, when he was forty-five, marked the end of his so-called silence: not 3 period in which he abandoned writing—for fom it—but one in which he eschewed publication, and was appreciated by only a hand- fil of readers as the erstwhile poet, by fewersill as theauthor of Mn Tene an the esey om Leonardo da Vind Yet lon from La Jere Paro, he went et print in sever ones, pronounced helen say nome (is ad wrved 3 Kind of pokoma or the Pench tigre pe pence ane gree although he wat pron to expron dom to ely and friends, whom he onee asked to inscribe upon his grave “Fete le I. done in by my fellow-men.” Quite early he was the subjet of studies im France and abroad, being promoted, as Claudel wryly put it, to the rank of “professorial iol." fe was inevitable that his audience should be fist of all among intellectuals despite attacks by Benda and others, which make curious reading today, on his supposed byzantinism. Bur his celebrity was not re= stricted to academic cixcles, and for many the fist acquain- tance with his work was a revelation, In France there were several such cass, not the eat touching of which concerns the banker Julien P. Monod, who, secing the newly pul lished La Jeune Pargue displayed in G procured a copy and became litle thereafcr Valéry'scomn- ppanion and honorary secretary the quill, “shadow, Foyal to 4 relationship that lasted tun! Valéry’s death, Ehowhere kindred attachments were formed; one thinks of Rainer Mais Rilke cart was waiting, naed’s bookshop, who wrote "1 was alone, I eas waiting, my whole One day, Tread Valéry. knew my wi Rilke was drawn by what he trtned the “composure” and inalty” of Valéry’s language, and he devoted himself without stining to his translations of Charmer and the dialogues, which offer no doube a Valery having suffered scaschange, but are nonetheless admirable, There ate other signal examples of his influcnee. Where 28 in France the mose active currents of poetry were st, and Brecon and Eluaed would publish a checkly reworded ver- sion of Valéry’s 1939 text Lindrature (for instance, "A pos inst be a festivity of the intellece” was corrected to read “A poem must be the debacle of the intellect”), foreign pots were not 30 much conecmed with the quarrels of Schools, Several of the more prominent—Eliot, Ungaret Stevens, Guilé-—geeeted che work with an enthusiasm parallel to Rilke’. Eleven years after Valéy’s death, the 1936 Exhibition at the Bibliothéque Nationale assembled a sur- prising array of translations published in the ewenties and arise” in Chinese to ‘The man who had lived ‘what we would consider to bea homely existence, in no way compatable to the globe-totting of Claudel or even Gide, had received wide recognition, But then of course we thirties, ranging From a version o 4 Czech tranlation of “Aurore.” member that a particular sort of humanism had been his lifelong ambition, the steategy of his mind, and that, eagerly, obsinaely, he had sought to echo Leonardo's words: "Facil coma @ fara universale” (leis easy co make oneself universal) [Novwithstanding this acclaim, Valéry was seldom well un~ derstood. The reception given ¢o La Jeane Parque may be taken as particularly instructive in this ropare. On its ap- pearance, the critics of the day quickly assessed its manner: it was a Symbolist poem thar realled-—for some, all too transparently-—his apprenticeship to Mallarmé, At a ttne when Akoole had anise an impression, and Condrars and Reverdy were publishing, i seemed 0 a great number of these first infuential commentators a kind of relic, the belated testimony of a coterie dead ifnor forgocten. In May 1921 the poet protested in vain: “I cannot std to be com pared to Mallarmé not to be opposed to him. Nothing dis- pleases me more, nor is more haemfal ¢o me. You must not te the workman agains his master.” If we look back today tthe angjorcrtial sti that followed, we find remark-able consistency of interpretation. Approached with greater of les subtlety, in words of praise or disparagement, he was seen essentially in che perspective already established that is, by and large in Mallarméan terms—and catalogued as 3 tardy epigone of Symbolism, ‘We now realize, however, that he had long been con- sidering poetry in a diferent light, analyzing its elements and designs from a rigorous viewpoint, even when, accord ing to a myth he willingly fostered, he was most hostile to such pursuits. His attide, tielessly pu duing the years of retreat, is that the poetic state—the state in which poctry ‘would become aie were the natural language ofits crestor can be isolated ftom other states with which too often itis confused and that, by means of the close definition of this ‘dea, particular applications, or poems, can be deduced. He seeks to move from the general to the particular, from notion t0 object: "Poetry until now,” he writes, “has thought of itself at am accident, The subject ora certain detail is given—and this lights a match. ... People have believed ‘tha this capricious ign was esential to vision, Bu I believe the contrary.” Such a point of view displaces the Symbolist, cult of att for ate, the quest for the single supreme work, and postulates instead a resource that would imply all poems both accomplished and yet to be. So we find among the catiestjotings in his notebooks: "Ik is not one image that seek, but the marvelous group of all posible images.” To envisage more clearly the idea of poetry reduced to its exence, from which everything alien ha been expunged, hae calls on certain key metaphors: the exactness of math~ ‘matic, the purity of chemistry. He also makes much of the comparison of poetry to the sexual act, the organiciy of the tree, the feedom of the dance, and the richness of music ‘specially that of Wagner. Behind these analogics, however, we find a pivotal reference to Mallarmé, on the oceasion of| whose death he wrote 4 remarkable homage intended for himself alone: Jo deo pei le feu le sb (OF your pore spre {have deunk the fies fe) and again: Je ea la tombe deen ombre pensive (Usha be the tomb of your pensive sade). [Moving as they ae, these lines contain a manifest pe cegocentricity that invites a moments reflection. For if the relationship with Mallarmé is patently established, itis not simple one; it patakes of the complexity of filial struggle in which the unlike emerges ftom a fascinated exploration of the like (“an adversary link,” "the ever more accurate groping of signs that reach cowards one another until they attain the point of pure diference”). The artist becomes, not imitator or follower, but a rival and intimate enemy: and itis this struggle with a phantom that Valéry’s early writings trace out with unique detail as he strives again and again to distance and define the qualities of the other, and comes regularly to personal terms with them. “I adored chat extra~ fordinary man,” he sid, “at the very same time as I con- sidered his head to be the only one—a head beyond price! — to cutoff 50 as to decapitate Rome.” Mallarmé substituted consciousness for that which was unconscious, seeking t0 know language as none had known it before, minutely determining its functions and elements, seeing words as previous to ideas. ("Thought expresses the word,” is the ‘way he paraphrased Mallarmé’ project, “All thatthe scho- Iasi sad of being ete.—power, chance, act, essence, form te—applies only to language.”) Yet throughout Valéry’s remarks one basic criticism prevails: Mallarmé was not ruth less enough, for he continued to worship the clay idol ofoes ew fom it conception ofthe worl, med his anlage wih the sole Wiley could site the dep snd the fics do ‘ovion 03 view of langage dametrzly oppor to tc tub of posit be old nr be bowmd oe alpen are This wat his fundamental eri, ta and beng tne at we ecopnae, whic alowed hin 1s or tery este pep a oe eee ne cacy ve Malar he ade che dover of «fear of oughta lina and pon! vile, vent sent. Reng Sonnets into a sore of " dt em eg of sy go ml een cerned hime wih nent onconing asin pty wt thecresive at, He had dk he poten tht nde 9 neces rection: "loved Malltn, hated i and looked mmo ind something ee Tho same tought wasp in many frm Bur nowhere mae singly tha Ina norton cil on a page bearing te date nee To have known Mali he diction of ny che to have ght i, Ja atch wit the angele honor of my law" Through te ous resitance an apparel fttou encounter breame a tale of ies and Valery emerge s man fried Forte and noe weaken: His loyay to Malla is the yale of one whe sce in 8 new Fane ike ote os generation he spo of Symes, tome: "what hich was baptized Symbols bot had ther nee decd is ha ery pins by which e dee i "The Symbolist was ‘word Symbolism isthe verbal symbol for che intellectual 4ualitis and conditions most opposed to those which reign, and even govern, today.” His ambition was differen, his observances changed. The poetry of che past, including that ‘of Mallarmé, was to be an instrument he could adopt and fashion, but it clearly was not his own, “I could not.” he said, “ignore Mallarmé’s technique, IF my verse at dimes recalls it, that docs me honor, but one docs not think of reproaching the musicians who eame after Bach for having seudied the fugue." “The test of such a eansformation lcs, of course, much in what Valery sid of it himself, btn what his poems feveal, above all in what i revealed by La Jeme Parque, around which his other verse is gathered as around a single feature commanding 4 landape, of as Mallarmé's entice work turns on Hérodide. He had long been developing the theme ofhis prose-poem Aeate, the absrace pre-Parque be- ‘gun in 1898 that proposes the sequence of moods, choughss, land emotions within an individual sensibility over a given period of time, a strange ascesis of che senses and the wil: he had also roferred to, and described, a hauncing musical continuity, a dscply moving contralto that suggested an ideal—"“the real, necewary, absolute thing”—to which his lifeand language aspired, On the one hand, then, a recitative, a warm solo sng by a woman; on the other, the eyele of twansformations within a mind: by virtue of these two el- cements he held, unwittingly, che nub of his grand endeavor. “The fictional character le finally ceeated is a vieginal haeroine who calls to mind several Mediterranean myths. [A true sister of Hérodiade in her vulnerability, she stands, like het a the limits of life and death, “on the golden edge of the univers.” Yet her monologue, far from being yaystry” inthe way of Let Nocesd”Hetadide, san “oper which she sings in several voices and without external drama Valery might well have named her Eve, or Psyche, or Helen, ‘ot Pandora, as he thought of doing: each isthe image of a fatal error and a portentous discovery: he chose instead the ‘which, freed feo any traditional affabu- "Jeune Parqu w body and mind —strag- lation, signifies man's Fato— ling with the dawning knowledge of its own mortalityIn the beginning a strangely intimate self is heard as it weeps and sings its ageless elegy, which corresponds to a kkeening of the moist wind. The Parque remembers days of| translucent pleasure before the fault of self-awareness, she foretells light reborn; but every time she momentarily ‘scapes in thought, she is brought back again to the central ‘equation of consciousness and body, “as a sea anemone is restricted (0 its stone.” She resolves at last, no longer to ‘combat her anxiety, but to accept the pastage of tears, this flaw, like a salutary thread of knowledge, Her poem ends fon the grace of dawn, the transformation of tears into a dance of spray and light, oa splendid integration ofthe sel. Valéey's intention becomes manifest, and decidedly un- ‘Mallarméan, when we look further than the line of discourse For La Jeune Porgue isnot a vignette, however nobly evor- ative, but the portrayal of a sensibility. We are offered a sequence of psychological states, from the fist prick of sorrow and th string of consciousness, through a cycle of sensations, memories, and aspirations. Each section might, bear an abstract subsite such a grief, pleasute, nostalgia, desire: emotions, affetive movements, but not ideas like those we find as the basis of L'Aprésmidi dum faune or ‘Hérodiade, which offer, each ints way, a shimmering mise-en sine of Mallarmé’ aesthetics. On the contrary, Valery isnot so much presenting a philosophy as s mode of being, which ‘an be deciphered from the particularized monologue of his, persona. The poem is therefore not symbolic except insofar as the Parque's drama is also our own, Ie difficulty results from the need ro learn a system of images that are ‘eminently images ofthe body ("a course in physiology,” as hhe put it), and not from any one idiosyneratie meaning in, fr behing, the text. ‘The creative process may be ilastrated by reference to a few lines from one of the manuscripts, Referring to the sage that wil evoke the Pau’ confrontation with the Spee uel el de di sa ane Que dod De wns Suachnt i mon aid / quell sombre soit Seatpost), Vey wri "Tana pit ech point bf the poem dah modus by neal, pen so SSxaons 04 musical change 2 psoge fom double 0 Single, abuertanean etet—byanieverible proces. So thar one eannoe ay wo ene 2 any mame tht some thing has changed, Sesaions bec image the preset inert withthe pst, knowlege ie wy occ, the eo given way othe sel and th death” He hen taker up ‘gan the we question: "How can I give chi futnce and deal? I nec fo go back Fo what have jn wren to what hough inte cough,beoween eal A ofthe though I noted down,” Here we hate, nt pocey, bot a manner of epaing for pot) fer which Mh come caer ofimagerarlating,shes, thoght von the rough” then In of tyne sound, yee parm someines evn companied bya ave being acho and mins, Aral linked 0 tan, pycho™ Toga decipon ("the dental or pemanent ee Bid ‘Be sbuaains erections oinage, the enc") to imagination, From the. daparte beginnings a ft TRmove fom the acta pou? segues, « bodily and holo ae” evolves Py Th originality of project and procedure is evident. Yet one of the mon incesing pes of La jme Page Wes eomseious se of pete ation He enumerates the auton who were his ania spits wh weg Mall of couse, bt ako Eudes, Veg, Peete Rosie Chéner, Hugo, Balas, Rinbwed, Cae sed agi ei vsonary. The I ey appt Trangracs: never he pany socated ech author tevin spate eft, ngage and hy couldcmploy as a model within the structure of his poem, Thos Racine played a vital role in proposing, beyond a paticulae impassioned tone, what Valéy calls "Racinian mimetism,” the intimate correlation of body and mind, the intermingling of vertigo and lucidity, knowledge and guile thirst and poison in order to portray a quastJansenist passion, The Parque becomes Phaedra: Je rauandeis pa moive de mes ihr des (Qual efit de free de ress Leas fonds passions blo de serve Si Lain gue marae otal poor ot a mes nfs pe ke ches an epi (expected no les fom mi sch deserts Than soch a pregnaney of violence and tress ‘Tho pusionate distances glare with barenness ‘The fee T pres, dey wth hi to see “The hopeles confines of my thoughts nfemo,) ‘Bur here is also the recognizable echo of Baudelaire, warm and bitter ("Souvenie, 6 biicher, dont le vent dor maf fronte” [Memory, bonfire whose golden wind assaults me), ‘of Chenier, in the elegive pasages of nostalgia ("O pau piéres qu'opprime une nue de eésor, {Je piss 3 titans dans vos tindbres d'ot!” [Eyelids overborne by a night of riches. | Gropingly I was praying in your golden gloom!) of other poets. And present is Mallarmé, his work occasionally be- getting an awkward phrase, a patent calque, but pre dominantly lending strength as itis eransformed into an uncompromising elevation of thought and langwage Lev, ke ir nde miter ur mse Me dona ur ma vee fete avon Leathe me sila tt lj exe (he eles-eyed tun of miroring the changes Gave me a mournfal prospec of my he Dawn unveil 19 me the whole owt dy) Mallariné was thas a voice among the several that com posed the Pargue's individual drama: voices that did nox {impose themselves in spite of their author, for they were his conscious means, a€ a time when Europe sas tearing itself asunder in war, of paying tribute to living tadiion in 3 spirit not dissimilar to tha of Blo five years later in The Waste Land; of creating 2 poor that has the fllaess of many registers but the controlling mode, the characteristic self awareness, of its author alone. Valéey accomplished his ‘masterpiece in his forties, when he could look back on Sym olism and bend i to his ends, appropriating what he needed, rejecting the dogma. The veedict of many of his contemporaries as to0 hasty and oversimple: his work was a ate practiced when he no longer believed inthe absolute of art but only in the analyical procision with which his poetics could be plied and to which his theme and method lent themselves. Ik is hardly nocessiy to sy that most interpreters outside France inthe thrtos and forties found La Jeowe Parque, and the poems of Charnes, which followed in 1922, no les dite cule to define and situate thaw di ei French colleagues. Indeed, the majority of foreign critiques published! before the 1950's did not aspire to rval in scholarship or daring che best Known French analyses. From this general rule one would except afew studies whose merit i pointed up by the passage of time. One thinks, for example, of the exegesis of La Jemie Parque published in 1938 by the Australian A. R. Chisholm, who saw the posm with personal insight and a philosophical bent in the wake of Thibaudet and Alain; of the miuch more exhaustive approach to dhe language of the same poem by the Danish scholar Hans Sorensen in 19445 of the commentaries om the poctry by the Belgian Jacques Duchesne-Guillemsin (1947), and the Swiss Pierte-OlivieeWalter (1952), and ofthe precise research into che origin and sicaning of "Le Cimetiére marin” by the Australian Lloyd J. Astin (1954). "This was the first phase, and che inital fui, of Valéy's international reputation. Nevertheless, we observe that the growth of his fame since 1955 has been almost unique; for to 2 work already held to be among the most important in French literature, a volume of writings of much vaster dimensions was added a decade after his death. The 26,000- ‘odd pages of his Chiers were published in facsimile by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique between 1957 and 196t. We understand today that they were the main spring of his creative life, of comparable, but more oblique, importance for the origins of his work than were Jean Sautvuil and Contre Sainte-Beuve for Proust's masterpiece ‘Begun in 1804 in imitation of Leonardo's notebooks and not as private diary, they were added to each day inthe early ‘morning hours over a period of fifty yeas. Vary saw them as the record of his mental exercises, his logbook compiled in the name of sel-control, the disport of his detachment, clarity, precision, They wete 2 personal enterprise, which he yet acknowledged to have been brought about by his apprenticeship as an adolescent Symbolist poet, literary ‘teation having shown him the intimate connection between verbal maneuver and thought. “All literature is contained in the curve of words, Try to see, try to exhaust the greatest possible number of them.” That was the lesson he read into Mallarmé; but in his Cahiers he applied ie to the curvature fof mental functioning. For, a8 against his master in poetry who put his end in the artifact, he centered his quest on the prospection of the mind—a distinetion that he formulated succinctly in these terms: "For him [hat is, Mallarmé}, the work; for me, the self.” His project reminds us of research such closer ¢0 as in time ito the nature of creativity ‘The publication of the Cahiers was an event of consider able note that showed as never before the unity of a practice that bad appeared highly divers, if not sel-contradictory. ‘We possess the key, unique in its constant application; among the ocean currents of the sensibility we ean follow the accompanying scrutiny of reason, with its ironic distance not always kept but constantly reasserted. We observe, how- ‘ever, that France has been curiously slow to approach these ‘pages with the seriousness they deserve. French critics have not as yet devoted a study of real depth to them, although some more cursory appraisals have appeared. On the other hand, the last fifteen or 50 yeats have seen a number of important esays by foreign authors that have brought about sigoificane progress in our understanding of Valéry. The phenomenon may be ascribed 0 several factors: a tem= porary disaffection for him among French critics, who have preferred to turn to other fields; the dificulty of consulting and utilizing documents that were unedited; the very size of the Cahiers “The volumes seem to have appeared less daunting when approached ftom abroad. The pioneering book L’Analye de esprit dans les "Cahier' de Valéy by the Avstealian Judith Robinson (1963) isolated some of the main orientations of the notebooks and showed in particular Valéry’s radical approach to language. Profesor Robinson followed up her ‘work with admirable care and skill by publibing a version of the Cahir in which she grouped Valéry’s writings, not chronologically, but according to the headings that in later years he himself considered as a possible way of ordering the ‘vast asemblage of notes. Other important resetch on the ‘Cahiers hasbeen done by the Canadian Pierre Laurette in his Le Thime de Marke chez Paul Valry (1967), which raises much more conteal sues than its ctle suggests; and in a study of 1972, “Paul Valéry: Consciousness and Nacure,”by the English scholar Christine M. Crow. One might also refer to work ofa different tenor and reach by ewo Polish born academici: Edouard Gadde, who drew extensively on the Cahiers in his Nietsuhe et Vary,» book which he sob tiled "Esay on the Comedy of the Mind” (1962); and Leon ‘Tauman, who adopted 2 moral and eeligious viewpoint i his Paul Vali etl mal de l'art (1969). Te may seem curious that Ihave 50 far made no mention ‘of research done in the United States, It would not be fr vwrong t0 sy that in this country Valéry has by and large enjoyed little more than a suas dextime, Some research of a fundamental kind has, however, ben carried out by scholars such 3s Charles Whiting on the early poems and Jeanine Parsier-Plottel on the dialogues. But two enterprises snd ‘out. The fist sche Péiad edition of the CEuores, which was prepared with exemplary taste by Jean Hytier. The other is the monumental achievement of Jackson Mathews, who for twenty years devoted himself, with a fidelity that must win ‘our admiration, to the formidable ask of prodocing 2 Valéey in English. Like slmost all such publications, the Bollingen Colleaed Works is the triumph of one man's deter~ mination and vision, {shall not speak ofthe tratlations themselves, nor ofthe carefal groupings and annotations; it sto the introductions, done by a variety of critics from several counties, that 1 should like to draw particular atention. Doubsless the most valuable is. S. Eli's esay on the art of poetry, the last of five in which Elie came to grips with the work of his con- temporary. As early as 1920 he had taken issue with a state= iment concerning philosophical poctry as Valéry Formulated it im the “Avant-propos 3 la Comtisance dela Déese"; four years later, in 1924, he wrote his “Brief Introduction to the Method of Paul Valér fashion, looked at tradition and the individual talent i which, mow in appreciative Valéey’s own work, seeing him as the “completion” and “explanation” of Symbolism; in 1946, a year after the Freach poets death, he composed a homage entitled "Legon de Valéry.” his tribute to an intelligence that, despite what Fliot terms its “nihilistic” climate, continued to cteate by ‘way of personal daring and courage, by: “desperate heroisin swhich isa triumph of character”; chen, in 1998, his "From Poe to Valéey” discussed the tradition of poetic conscious- res in the late nineteenth and eatly wenticth centuries chat calninates in Valéry’s extreme awareness of lnguage. “Valéry will remain for posterity.” he writes, “the rep- resentative poet, the symbol of the poet of the fist half of the twentieth contury-—not Yeats, not Rilke, not anyone clse." The comments inthe 1958 Bollingen volume entitled The Ar of Poetry show the will to take Valéry’s measure one last time, In pra ppoct of his age Eliot docs not rfiain from ‘warns of the dangers inherent ina sharp distinction between povtry and prose, which involve Valery in the dilemma of separating the idiom of poetry from that of ordinary speceh, Jing him as the epitome of the European tics: he Even more eental isa reference ro the fact that Valér offers in his theoretical writings any eriterion of seriousness, any penetration of the special relationship that exists between poetry and life, Val might have answered by saying that the readers experience is estentally 4 matter of digestion, far he profits in elation to his alimentary need his capacity to do justice to what is ot before him: on another occasion, Ihe might have referred tothe essential compleity ofa good ‘poctn, which calls on the whole readcr—intllet, emotion, Sensvousness—in order t0 sate a complete thought, 2 rounded apprchension, Yer even if such answers fil to satisfy s—for they mast—Elit in no way inputes a lack of seriousness to Valty’s own pooms ‘These pages, both economical and probing, are one ofthe minor glories of the Collected Works in English. Yet ‘much still remains to be taken up and examined. With the Cahiers, and ako the published writings, in hand, we have the exceptional testimony ofa poet and thinker who sought to spell out for himself, in its consequences and, hence, its contradictions, his myth of “purty.” One is reminded of Gide'seatly statement: “When the wold is not in accord with your dream, you must dream it in accord with your desire.” The next yeats will no doube be a fertile period for Valéry criticism. We await, for instance, the biography that, demands to be done; we shall examine the system of the ‘mind articulated in the Cahiers. We shal ako no doubt come to see with greater aeweeness the drama of sensibility, the pathos never cultivated in a Symbolist mode but rejected, ‘explored, sated with intensity. This be expressed most oft in indirect fashion; bus i is easy to forget that in 1939 he published a deeply personal poem that was drafted in 1892 fof thereabouts, elaborated in 1908, revised in 1917, and placed in Mélange alongside fragments written fifty years ballad depicting the despair incurred by los of faith, in rexpect of which che rest of his work can be viewed as an opposite tesponse. It begins with the naming of an hour of exis: Quel hear cee cx merle del coe Ce grand coup dobre ot cage nate set? (Quel pine impalpable exrechogue Dans woe ars des east de mrt? (What hor hurdles athe staves ofthe hal “That knock of darknes on which ovr fie cracks? ‘What force untouchable plays the casanets In our tackle with dad man’s boas?) later. Tam thinking of his" Siniste “The Valéry who had been an avid reader of "Bateau ivre™ adapts certain of Rimbaud’ simages toa narrative of tempest, Satanic revo, shipwreck, his decasllables faithful to a sense of foreboding, The lst lines, however, show the figure of ‘Christ drowning in some horrendous death at sea, bearing with him a familiar world _Je vi le Chaar rl verge. Tre 3 mort, ome weeks sens; Son sole aie ce exe UN GRAND NAVIRE A PERI CORPS ET BIENS! (de Christ roped tothe yada! Dancing co deith,Foundering with his hed His Bloodshot eye light me to thi exeepve GREAT SHIP GONE DOWN WITH ALL ON BOARD!) Iris not the tone and imagery ofa detached eynic but of a poet who, as dramatically asthe young Mallarmé or—per~ haps no less near—the Claudel of a wartime “Ballade,” wrested his vision from an imaginary shipwreck ‘We recall a few laconic words he wrote in 3 notebook shortly posterior to Monsicwr Teste: “For having once foolishly skirted the abysses of the mind ..."; forty years Tate, afier he had long since emerged from reclusion, his [Apollo likened! poetry toa thunderbolt that implacably sears 2 mountain—"as a summit i elected by the bolt.” He “appears to us today in more than one regard to resemble his Parque: “bitten by the marvel” of self-awareness, he suf fered the flash and knew the matine depths of whieh his sensibility bre the trace. Formalisthe sought to be, and was, in noble i poignant fashion—to quell a turmoil too much with him, So we follow, against a primal division within the sel, the lucid adventure that French Symbolism alone ‘ould inform yet whose erystalline expression is rightly the reserve of no single time ot place JAMES LANIERFrom Monsieur TesteThe Evening with Monsieur Teste Vite Cae eo simple Sturip1y is not my strong point. Ihave seen many pes sons; I have visited several countries; I have taken part in various enterprises without liking them; Thave caten neatly every day; Ihave had women, Tan now recall a few hun dred faces, two 0 thee great spectacles, and che substance of| pethaps twenty books, Ihave not retained the best nor the ‘worst ofthese things: what could say with me did Such arithmetic spares me any surprise at growing old. I could aso count up the victorious moments of my mind and imagine chem joined and blended, composing a happy lie... But I thnk Ihave always been a good judge of my= self I have rately lost sight of myself; I have detested and adored myself s, we have grown old together. (Often I have supposed that all was over for me, and I would begin ending with ll my stength, anxious to deain and clarify some painful situation. This made me aware that we appraise our own thought t00 neatly 2s others expres theis! From that moment, the billions of words that Ihave buzzed in my cats have rarely sized me with what they were meant to mean; and all those T have myself spoken to others, I have always felt chem become distinct from my thought—for they were becoming invariable If Thad decided like most men, not only should I have {ele superior to them but should have appeared 50. 1 pee 3ferred myself. What they call a superior man isa man who has deceived himself. To be astonished at him, one must see hhim—and to be seen, he must show himself. And he shows ‘me that he is possessed by an inane infatuation with his own name, So every great man is awed with an ercoe. Every mind said to be powerfil begins with the mistake that makes it known. In exchange for the publc’s dime, he gives the time required 10 make himself noticeable, the energy spent in.conveying hime goes even so far as to compare the tude sport of fame with the joy of fcling unigue—the grat private pleasure ‘Ae that time I dreamed that the most vigorous minds, the canniest inventors, the most procize connoiswurs of thought, must be unknown men, misers, or those who die without confessing. Theie existence was gevealed to me pee~ cisely by those brill individuals bit ls oid ‘This conclusion wae so easy that I could see it eking shape from moment to moment. All that was nceded was t0 imagine the usual sort of great men fce ofthe first error, preparing to satisfy someone ele. He for even to base oneself on that error in order to conccive a higher degree of consciousness, a less erude sense of the rmind’s freedom. So simple sn operation opened curious perspectives before me, as if I had gone down under sea Along, with the neglected creations produced every day by commerce, fear, boredom, or poverty, I thought I could make out certain ier masterpieces, lost amid the brilliance of published discoveries, Ie amused me to extinguish known, Ihistory beneath the annals of anonymity Invisible in their Iimpid lives, they were solitries who knew before al the rest. I seemed to me that in their obscur- ity they were twice, three times, many times greater than any famous petson-—they, in thei disdain for revealing thet eee ee ee eer "The des exe tome ding Ontoer of 9, hoe er eee ee ere Tmt oping t hk no sc boo thm, hen 1 eng andre een a or pan enna ene eee every day.) Before I came to know Monsieur Teste, I was attracted by his special ways. I studied his eye, his clothes, his slightest mafled words tothe waiter at the caf€ where used t0 see him. I wondered whether he fle observed. 1 swould turn my eyes quickly away from his, so as to catch his following me. I would take up the newspapers he had {just boon reading, I would rehearse in my mind the sober gestures he made unawares; [noticed that no one paid him. any attention. Thad nothing more of this kind to Tear when our rela tions began. Inever saw him except at night. Once in 2 sort of. showses often at the theater. I was told chat he ived by’ frugal weekly speculations on the stack market. He took his meals in a small restaurant in che Rue Vivienne. There he would eat as if he were taking a purgative, with the same quick gestures. Occasionally he would allow himself a fine Ieisurely meal elsewhere Monsieur Teste was perhaps forty yeats old. His speech was extraordinarily rapid, and his voice low. Everything about him was unobtrusive, his eyes, his hands. Yet his shoulders were military and his step had an astonishing rege lacty. When he spoke he never lifted an arm ora finger; he had led hs puppet. He never smiled, nor sid good morning. ‘ot goodnight; he seemed not to hear a “How are you?" 5Fis memory gave me much thought. The signs by which 1 could judge led me to imagine incomparable intellectual gymnastics. This wasnot, in him, an excessive ait but rather a trained and transformed faculty. Here ate his own words: “I gave up books twenty yeats ago. [have burned my papers aso. Iscrape the quick... keep what | want. But that is not the difcuty.Iisrarhert keep what Isl want tomorow... Thave tied to invent 2 mechanical seve ‘After a good deal of thought, I came to believe that ‘Monsieur Teste had managed to discover laws of the mind ‘we know nothing of. Certainly he must have devoted years to this esearch: even more certainly, other years and many more years had been set aside for maturing his inventions, ‘making them his instincts. Finding is nothing. The dificulry isin acquiring what has been found. ‘The delicate art of duration, time, its distribution and regulation—using it on well-chosen things to give them special nourishment—this was one of Monsieur Teste’s ‘reat experiments. He watched forthe repetition of certain ideas; he sprinkled them with numbers. This served to make the application of his conscious studies i the end mechanical He even sought to summarize this labor. He would often, say: "Maturare!..”” Certainly his singular memory must have retained for hhim almost solely those impressions which our imagina- tion, by itself, is powerless to construct. If we imagine an ascent in a balloon, we may with shrewdness and force produce many of the probable sensations of an aeronauts but there will always remain something peculise to the real ascent, and that diference from what we imagine ex= presses the value of che methods of an Edmond Teste. ‘This man had known quite exey the importance of what might be called human platiciy. He had investigated its smechanies and its limits. How deeply he muse have reflected on his own malesbilty' {Thad a glimpse of feelings in him that made me shudder, 4 teerble obstinacy in his delirious experiments. He was a ‘man absorbed in his own variations, one who becomes his ‘own system, who commits himself without reservation to the frightening dicipline of the free mind, and tts his ples- sures to killing his pleasures, che ronger killing the weaker the mildest, the transitory, the pleasure of the moment and the hous utt hegun, destroyed by the fundamental-—by hope forthe fundamental. ‘And fee that he was master of his thought: I record this absurdity here. The expresion of fecling if always absurd. ‘Monsieur Teste had no opinions. I believe he sired his passions when he willed, and to atain a defini end. What had he done with his personality? What was his view of him- self. .He never laughed, there was never a look of dsress ‘om his face. He hated sadness. He would talk and one felt included among things i his ‘mind: one fle remote, mingled withthe houses, che magni tudes of space, the sifting colors of the street, the street, comers... And the most artflly touching words—the very ‘ones that bring their author closer to us than any other man, those that make us believe the eternal wall between minds i falling—would occur to im... He was wonderfully aware that they would have moved anyone els, He would tak and cone realized, though unable to discern the motives or the ‘extent ofthe taboo, that a large number of words had been Danished from his discourse. Those he used were at times so ccriously sustained by his voice or lighted by his phrasing that their weight was altered and their meaning renewed ?At times they would lose all sense, seeming merely to Gl a blank for which the appropriate term was sil in doubs, or not provided by thelanguage Ihaveheardhim designateacon- cxete object by a group of abstract words and proper names. To what he said there was no reply. He killed polite assent. Conversations were kept going by leps that were no surprise to hin, If his man had changed the object of his inner medit- tions, ifhe had rormed upon the world che controlled power ‘of hit mind, nothing could have rested him. Tam soory £0 speak of him as wespeak of those of whom statues atemade, samsure tha between genius” and him chee is quantity of weakness He, 50 real! So new'! So fre of ll deception, ofall ‘wonders! Sohard! My own enthusiasm spoils him forme. How can one not fee enthusiasm forthe man who never said anything vague? For the man who calealy remarked: “In all chings Iam intceested only in the ease othe dificult ‘of knowing them and doing them. I take extreme care in ‘measuring the degree ofeach, and in remaining detached. ‘And what do I eate for what I know all too well How can one not be won over by 2 man whose mind seemed to transform for iss alone every existing thing, a mind that performed everything that oecurred to it? 1 imagined it handling, combining, transforming, connecting, and, within the field of its knowledge, able to cut off and deviate, illuminate, freeze this or heat that, suppeess, heighten, name the unnamed, forget 2t will, subdve oF brighten this or that Tam grosly simplifying his impenetrable powers. 1 don't dare say all char my subject suggests. Logic stops me. But in myself, every time the problem of Teste arises, curi= ‘ous formations appear, ‘On certain days T recover him quite clearly. He re- appears in my memory, siting beside me. T breathe the smoke of our cigars, I listen to him, Iam wary. At times, reading a newspaper brings me up against some thoughe of | his now justified by an event. And again [ty afew of those ‘experiments in illusion that used to delight me when we spent our evenings together. That is, imagine him doing something I never saw him do, What is Monsicur Teste like ‘when he is sick? In love, how does he reason? Is he ever sad? ‘What would frighten him? What could make him tremble? wondered. I held the complete image of this rigorous man before me, trying to make it answer my questions. Ie kept on fading. He loves, he sues, he is bored like everyone ese. But when he sighs, or heaves an elemental groan, T want him £0 bring into play the rules and forms of his whole mind. Exactly two years and three months ago this evening T was swith him at the theater, in box lent to him, I have been thinking about ehis all day. Tan sil se him standing beside the golden column at che Opéra; cogether. He looked only at the audience. He was breathing the great burst of brilliance atthe edge ofthe pit. He was red, ‘An immense copper gil separated us from a group mur- ‘muring beyond the dazalement. Deep inthe vapor gliteered a naked bt of woman, smooth as pebble. Numerous ladies’ fans were independendy alive over the audience, dark and bright, foaming up to she top lnyps. My glance picked ove dozens of small faces, alighted on a sad head, rippled over bare arms, over people, and finally Bickered ou Everyone wasin hisseat, ree to make aslight movement.1 liked the system of classification, the almost theoretical simplicity of the audience, the social order. Uhad the delight- fal sensation thal who breathed in that cube would follow its laws, fare up in great circles of laughter, grow excited in sections; fel in groups things intimate—unique secret stir rings, ising to che unavowable! I strayed over those layers cof people row by row, in orbits, fneying that I could bring together ideslly all those having the same illness or the same theory or the same vice....One music touched us all; it swelled to abundance, then became quite small It vanished. Monsieur Teste was murmuring: “One is handsome or extraordinary only to others. They are eaten by = ryonly y ‘The last word arose from the silence created by the orchestra. Teste drew his breath, His fice, fushedwith heat and color, his broad shoulders, his dark figure splashed with ligt, the shape of the whole clothed block of him propped against the heavy column, seruck me again, Not an atom escaped him of all that was becoming perceptible, momentarily, in that grandeur of red and gold. {watched his skull making acquaintance with the angles of the capital, the right and cooling itself among the gilt comices; and in the purple shadow his large fet, From the far reaches of the theater, his eyes tutned toward me; his ‘mouth ssid: “Discipline isnot bad....I’s atleast a begin- ning, found nothing to reply. He sid in his low quick voice: “Let them enjoy and obey!"” His eyes were fixed for a long moment on a young man seated ficing us, chen ona woman, then on a whole group jn the upper gallerie-—overflowing the balcony in five or six peesssssseeesy a ‘glowing faces—then on the whole audience, the whole theater filled like the heavens, tense, fascinated by the stage ‘we could not see. The stupor that held all the others told ts that something or other sublime was going on. We watched the dying light reflected from all the faces in the audience. And when it was quite faint, when the light no longer shone, all cha was left was the vast phosphorescence of those thousand faces. Isaw that the ewilight was making all ehese souls passive, Their attention and the darkness, both increasing, formed a continuous equilibrium. I was myself attencive inevitably to all that attention. Monsieur ‘Teste sid: “The supreme simplifies them. 1 wager they ae all thinking, more and more, toward the same thing. They will be equal 3t the climax or common limit. ‘Yer the law is not so simple. since it des not inde me; and—here Tam.” He added: "The lights hold them.” sid, laughing: "You too?” He replied: “ You to “What a dramatist you would make!” I ssid. “You scom to be watching some experiment on the frontiers of all the sciences! I would like to see a theater inspired by your meditations He said: “No one mediates” ‘The applause and the houselight: drove us out. We circled and went down. The people passing seemed free. Monsieur Teste complained mildly of the midnight chill. He alluded to fd pains ‘As we walked along, he was muttering almost incoherent phrases. Although I tried, I could barely follow his words, and in the end merely recalled them, The incoherence of specch depends on the one listening to i. The mind seemsto me so made that i cannot be incoherent to itself. ‘Tha is why I was careful not to clasify Teste among the mad. ‘Besides, {could vaguely make out the thread of his idess, and T noticed no contradiction in them; alo, | should have feared t00 simple a solution, ‘We were going theough stccts made quict by the dark hess, turning corners in the void, finding our way by in- stinet—wider, narrower, widee. His military step dominated "And ye repli, “how can we eeape mui of sch power! And why shold" speci ectement int Inu jc indinithellsion of amends work height adel become posible forme anton fives me abiract ntn, dctighliages of evrything Fovemchange, ovement, mise, fw, tanformaten, Will you deny sha cern things are ansesete? Tres tha make ode, men who give us sent ils who potas shies that sri ws dumb?" Monte Te ated is vie in coply: "Bat Monica Wit ds the al of your ees oc nds 9m Ta ce ava spk my vm langage {ht entaodnary thingy. On wrk minireed der Bteve nel ete bay ini eny. mean simply.-that Tho how eo beanie. eeu. "inthe pat—aome twenty yeas 2go—anyhing above the oracle by anther man ore ene def, At tht tne, Iculd see nothing bute olen from met How spill. --T ay that ou o¥m image not 2 mater of ndieens co us! nou imaginary bats, we tei either wel oro bly!" He coughed. He suid to himself: “Que pet un homme? What isa man’s potential?” He said to me: "You know man who knows that he doesn’t know what he is saying!” ‘We were at his door. He invited me to come in and smoke a cigar with him. ‘Ac the top loor of the house, we went into a very small *famnished” apartment, There was nota book in sight. No- thing indicated the usual sort of work at a able, beneath a lamp, amongst pens and papers. Inthe gecensh room smell ing of mint, there around the candle was nothing, but the Gall abstract furniture—a bed, a clock, a wardrobe with a ‘mieror, two armeairs—Hike creations of the mind, On the mantelpiece a few newspapers, a dozen ealing cards covered ‘with numbers, and a medicine bottle. U have never had a stronger inpeesion ofthe ondary. This was any room, hike “ny point” in geometry—and perhaps 2s useful. My host existed in lodgings of the most usual sort. I thought of the hours he would spend in that armchair. Twas terrified by the infinite dteariness posible in that abstract and banal place. have lived in sach rooms could never believe, without a shudder, that they were my final destination, ‘Monsieur Teste talked about money. I cannot reproduce his special eloquence: it semed to me less precise than usa Fatigue, the sknce deeper by the hour, th bitter cigars, the relaxation of night, seemed to overtake him. I tll hear his voice, softer and slower, futcring the fame of the single candle burning between us, while he cited very large numbers, wearily. Eight hundred ten million seventy-five thousand five hundred fifty... listened to that extraordin= ary music without following the calculation. He was reciting, for me the Rutuations of the stock market, and the long sequences ofthe names of numbers held me like a poem. He 8‘would compare events of the day, industrial phenomena, public taste and the passions, and still more ntmbers, one with another. He would sy: "Gold is somehow the mind of Sauidenly, he was silent. He was in pai, ‘Again Iooked around the chill room a the nality ofthe farniture, not co look at him. He took his flask and deank, 1 stood up to lea “Stay on," he said, “you don’t mind. I'm going to bed. ‘moments I'll be asleep. You'll ake che candle to go He undressed quietly. His gaunt body slid beneath the covers and lay sil. Late he tamed over and sink deepee into the bed—ie was too short. He said with a smile, “I'm a plank, .loaing!. 1 feel an imperceptible relling under me—a vast movement? [ sleep for an hour or to at most....I'm fond of navigating the night. Ofien I can’ distinguish my thought from sleep. don't know whether Uhave been asleep. Inthe pat, when ‘ever I drowsed I would think ofall that had given me plea- sute—faces things, moments. I would bring them to mind so that thinking, would be a pleasant as possible, smooth as the bed....I'm old, I ean show you that I feel old. Remember! Whan we are children we dicover ourselves, wwe lear litle by litle the extent of our body, we express ‘our body's particularity by series of movements, I suppose? We twist and discover or rediscover ourselves, and are amazed! We couch our heel, or hold the eight foot in the lefe hand, we take a cold foot into a warm palm... Now, T know myself by heart. My heat included. Bah! The whole cart i staked off, all the Rags are ying over all teretores, My bed remains 'm fond of this flow of lecp and linen: the shee athe and fled, or crumpl—Elng over inet tand when {ie ‘dead il cms sud me in deep A very comple i of mechani. Along the warp br the wo te dg devon Abe" Te ws in in, Noha’ he mae?” Fi, “Tan, “tte nothing, unde,” head. "10. tenth of second ppesting.. Wait. Aten moments my body Highs up -Ths i very odd Suen, ean sein my sels can make ou the dep ofthe layers of my Be Te Sones of puns, oes ple of pain. Do you se tho living for his geometry of my aig? There freer estat ae enact hikeMeas. They tke me Adertand—fom he to tee. Ye they lve me ute fern," Uncen snot the word, When coming onal find someting confor ified in me. Inde my {5 fogy plo ci, he ae open xp ht come ino view: Ten I pck outs queton om my memory, some problem oor. and plane cone gait of snd. and so lng Tae them. My nrg pain rcs me o ones Ihink bout Waiting oye Fear my ery-sand the moment Theat it the ob, he tebl ar, slr and il ale, vais fom my fame sight Wha sa man's potential? ight pain verhing— excep the ring fy body, beyond» cain ney. SYeuitisthere {shuld bin, Bente. ert give trpeeme anenon 10 something, and {mn wemevbot 4 man of attention... .Let me tell you that I foresaw my future ines, hed though with recon abou sorehing every fone ch know believe hat such bok at an vio por Son ofthe fae soul bes prof ones eden. Ye 5hnad foreseen what is now beginning. At the time, it was an ida lke any other, So Iwas able o purse i.” He was calm now. He tured on his side, closed his eyes; and 2. moment later was talking again. He was beginning to lose himself His voice was no more than a murmur inthe pillow. His reddening hand was already asleep. He was stil talking: “I am thinking, and that hinders no= thing, Tam alone. How comfortable solitude is! Nothing soft is weighing on me... The same reverie here asin the ship's cabin, or at the Café Lambert....If Bert's arms become important, am robbed—st by pain... Any man who talks ro me, ifhe has no proof, isan enemy. I prefer the brilliance ofthe least face ehat happens, Lam being and secing myself; seeing mesee myself, and so forth. Le’ think very closely. Rubbish! Any subject at all will pat you to sleep. Sleep will prolong any idea at all He was snoring softy, A little mote sofily, I took the candle and went out on tiptoe. A Letter from Madame Emilie Teste Kind Sir, send you thanks for your gift and for your letter to Mon- Sieur Teste fel sure thatthe pineapple and the jam were ‘not unwelcome, and [know thatthe eigatetes pleased him AAs forthe leer, anything I might say about it would be deceiving. 1 road ie to my husband, but searcely understood it, Yet I confess that it gave mea certain delight, Listening t0 things that are abstract or beyond my understanding does not bore me: [find an almost musical enchantment in them. A good part of the soul can enjoy without understanding, and in me it isa large part Sal read you letter aloud to Monsieur Teste. He istened ‘without showing what he thought of i, nor even that he swasthinking about it, You know thathereadsalmostnothing with his eyes, but cs them in a strange and somehow inner way. Lam mistaken mean a patlor way. Bucehatis not it at all. [don't know howe to put its let's soy ier, partion. lay... and universal!!! His eyes are beautiful; Ladmie them. for being somewhat large tha all that i visible. One never knows if anything 2a escapes them, of, on the other hands whetherthe worlditselfisnocsimply adetailinallthartheysce, a floating speck that can besiege you but docs not exist. Sir, inall the time Ehave been married to your friend Ihavenever ben sure of what he see. The object his eyes foe upon may bie the very object chat his mind mcans to reduce to nothing.Our life i sll just as you know it: mine, dull and useful; his, all habit and abstraction. Not that he doesn’t wake and. come back, when he wishes, teribly alive I like him this way. He is fierce and tall suddenly. The mechanism of his monotonous acts explodes; his fae sparkles; he says things that, often, T can barely make out, yet they remain wn- diminished in my memory. But I don’t wish to hide any= thing from you, or very litle: ot times he is impenetrable. don't believe anyone can be so adamant as he is. He breaks ‘your spiric with a word, and I fel like a awed vase rejected by the potter. He is stern as an angel, Sir. He does not know hisstrengeh: he utters unexpected words that carry too much ‘ath; they destroy people, waken them in the midst of theie stupidity, face to face with themselves, trapped in what they arc, and living so naturally om nonsense. We live at ease, cach in his own absurdity ike fish in water, nd are never aware but by accident of all he folly contained inthe life of | a reasonable person. We never think hat what oe think conceals from us what we are. I do hope, Sir that we are worth more than all our choughts, and thae our greatest merit before God will be in having tied to stand on somo~ thing more durable than our mind babbling to itself, how ‘ever beautify. Moreover, Monsieur Teste need not speak 10 reduce those around him to humility and an almost animal stupidity, His very existence seems to disqualify all others, and even his rmanias make one think. But you must not imagine that he is always dificult or overwhelming, If you knew, Sit, how otherwise he can bel... Certainly he is stern on oceasion; but at other times he takes on an exquisite and surprising gentlenes that seems to come down from the heavens. His smile isa mysterious and irresistible gift, and his rare tendemess is a winter's rose. Yet neither his mildness nor hs violence can be foreseen. It is vain to predict either his harshness or his kindness: all the ordinary calculations that people make about the character of their fellows are thrown off by his profound abstraction and the impenetrable order of bis thoughts. My kindnesses, my willingness, my silly notions, my lle feelings~I never know how they will fect Monsieur Teste. Bur I confess that nothing binds me to him more than the uncertainty ‘of his moods. Afterall, Iam quite happy not to understand hhim too well, not to foresee every day, every night, every next moment of my passage on earth. My soul longs to be surprised more than anything else. Expectation, risk, abit of dou, these exalt and vivify my spit far more than oer= tainty. I believe this is not good; but itis how Iam, though, Teeproach myself for it. have more than once made con fesson for thinking that I would rather believe in God than sce Him in all His glory, and I was blamed for it. My con- fessor told me that it was nonsense rather than a sin Forgive me for writing o you about my poor slf when ‘you want only to have news ofthe man who interests you so ‘much, But Iam somewhat more than the witness of his life: Tam part, almose an organ of, though nonestental, Hus- band and wife as we are, our actions are harmonized in marriage and our temporal necesitics are well enough ad- usted, despite the immense and indefinable diference of out ‘minds, So {am obliged to tell you incidentally about her, who is now telling you about him. Pechaps you find it diff cal to conceive my situation with Monsieur Teste, and how T manage to spend my days in the intimacy of such an ‘original man, finding myself s0 near and so far from him? “The ladies of my age, my true or apparent friends, are cy‘greatly surprised chat I, who seem so well suited to 2 life like thers, being an agreeable enough woman, not undeserv- ing ofa simple comprehensible life should accept arole they cannot in the leas imagine for themselves inthe life of such 4 man, whose reputation for eccentricities must shock and scandalize them. They are unaware thatthe slightest show of alfection from my dest husband isa thousand times more precious than all the caress of theirs, What is their love, always repeating itself, always the same—love that long. since lost all surprise, the unknown, the impossible, every- thing that charges the slightest touch with meaning, tsk, and power, knowing that the substance of one voice i the only sustenance of th soul, and that in the end ll things are more Dezutifal, more meaningful—more luminous of sinister, more remarkable or empty—according to a mere guess at what is going on inside a changing person who has become mysteriously essential to ws? ‘You see then, Sir, one must not be a connoisseur of the pleasures fhe wants them fce of anxiety. However sheltered may be, Ican well imagine how much the voluptuous de- lights lose in being tamed and svited to domestic habit Mutual abandon and possesion gain infinitely, I believe, by beginning in ignorance of their approach, ‘That supreme certainty must arise out of «supreme uncertainty, and show ise co be the climax of a kind of drama whose pace and development we should find it dificul eo trae, from calm up to the extreme threat of the event. Fortunately—or not—I am never sure of Monsicur ‘Test’ feelings toward me; and this matters less to me than you would believe. Though mine sa very strange marrage, {am fally aware that itieso, Lknew very well that great souls set up a household only by accident; ot perhaps to provide a A GETTER Fnow MADAME éuiLiD TESTE warm room where, insofir as a woman ean enter into the system of thei lives, she will always be at hand and shut in. The soft glow ofa rather smooth shoulder isnot to be des pised, seen dawning between two thoughts!...Men are ike that, even the deep ones 1 do not say this about Monsiour Teste. He iss strange! In fact, nothing can be said about him that isnot mistaken at the moment!...1 believe he has roo much sequence in his ideas, He misleads you at every step in a web that he alone knows how to weave, break off, take up again. He spins out in himself such fragile threads that they survive ther delicacy only with the concerted help of all his vital powers. He stretches them over the unknown depths within him, and ventures no doubs fa beyond ordinary time, into some abyss of the dificult. I wonder what becomes of him there? Iti clear that one is no longer himself under those constraint. ‘Our humanity cannot follow us roward such distant lights. His soul, no doubt, changes into some peculiar plant whose root, and not the foliage, would chrus against ature toward the light! Is that not aiming beyond the world? Will he find life or death, atthe extremity of his attentive will? Willi be God, for some frightful sense of encountering, atthe deepest point of thought, nothing but the pale ry of his own miserable substance? ‘One would have to have scen him in those excesses of abstraction ! At such times, his whole countenance is altered obscured... bit more of sich absorption, and Lam sue that he would be invisible! ‘But Sir, when he comes back to me from the depehs! He seems to discover me like a new land! To him Tscera un known, now, necesary. He seizes me blindly in his arm, as‘fT were a living rock of real presenes, om which hie gest and incommuniable genius night stumble, clutch, and sud denly ake hold, afer so much monstrous and inhuman silence! Hef back upon me as iff were the earth ielf. He awakes in me, comes back to bimslfin me, what joy! His head lcs heavy on my face, and [am prey call his nervous strength, He has force and feightening presence in hishands feel myselfin the rip of stonecter, surgeon, a murderer, under thee bral and precise handlings and 1 imagine, in terror, that Ihave fillen under the claws of an intellectual eagle. Shall ive you the whole of my thought? imagine that e isnot filly aware of what he is doing, what, he is molding His whole being, concencstd in a certain pla on the frontiers of consciousness, has just losis ideal objec, that object which doos and does no exis since tis only a mater ofsightly more ot ess tension. te reguted the whole energy of the whole ofa great body’ to sustain in the mind tht diamond insta, a once idea and Thing, both entrance and end. You see, Sir, when this extraordinary husband takes hold and masters me, a € wore, putting ee imprint of is szrength upon me, [fs the Tama substitute for some object cofhis will hat just chen escaped hima. Lam like the plaything of muscular thought—I expres i as best Tea, The ruth he was awaiting took on my strongth and my living cei nd by a uit inefable transposition, his ier urge subside, dicharged throug his haed and determined bands Thescare vey difiule moments. Wht cn Ido then! Ttake refiyg in my heart, where lowe hin as I wish ‘Astohis felng for me, what opinion of myself he may fave thee are hg do not know, jst 8 T know nothing ‘more about him thn is to Be sen and heard. told you a A verter rnoM MADAME éMiite TESTE ‘moment ago what I assume, but {do not really know what thoughts or plans occupy him for so many hours. As for my= self, keep to the sufice of life; I drift with che passing days. Tell myself that Lam the servant ofthat incomprehensible ‘moment when my marriage was decided, 2 of itself. A won erful moment, perhaps supernatural? Teannot say that !am loved. You may be sure chat the word love, 3 vague in its ordinary use and suggesting many iferent images, is entirely meaningless when it describes the relations between my husband's heart and my person His head ia locked treasury, and Iam not sure that he has a heart, Am [ever sure that he recognizes me; that he loves or observes me? Or does he observe through me? You will understand that [do not mean to make much ofthis. Inshore, feel that Iam in his hands and among his thoughts, ike an object, at times the most Gmiliar and again the strangest thing in the world to him, according to the nature of his sight, varying as it focuses. TEL dared tll you about a frequent impression of mine, |justas am aware of it myself, and as Thave often confided it to Abbé Mosion, I would say, figuratively, that I fel as if live and move in a cage, where a superior mind holds me captive—by its very exidenc. His mind contains my own, ‘a man's mind contains a child's ora dog's. Don’t mistake me, Sir, Attimes I move about in our howse, going and coming: the notion of singing comes over me, and rises a T skip and ddance from room to room with improvised gaiety and a remainder of youth. But however sprightly my dance, 1 never cease to fel the sway of that powerful absent figure, somewhere in an armchair, musing, smoking, looking a his, hand, lowly Aexing all ts joints. Never do I fel my spirit, without its bounds, But surrounded, enclosed. Heavens! aHow diet so epi! do's all mean. free, but classified, : : "Whar we ve hat imo ous, mo pei obscure spat yu wl know sens tome tha soa ise my beng, ew mp comply, Wel fron sana eatpatent sens force ut a, int impr orikne, ory publeeounet myeniaoen ‘cto my own gerne a pl ama, iting hough eager che iver ofa utinching ees sen tne ten sen, bu eet uo ig I know at vey moment ha et win Consciousness aways wae and more general tha al my Wiglns away ur than my prompt nd gue hogs The ie inal fy Sous rh mal sd nga ven, And yet Lave a nity of my ove Tonnot bu cgnn dttncomained tl canot cnn tht sl bes. Tesomeing inp, Si, tt {shoul be pale of tiki and sensation eke ‘il syting that frac, o pera, or newt Monier Tee tan sre out sc ange conta fing gives nee at go very ep may ‘ay tat nye eso mea ey ome avin a Of man's exten the dvne 1 have the onl experince of being win the spre ob, uo al ‘oan Beg Bur Ti ery se fa preenceon cama eae, andofuchdsp nigh dcsnotfltoleadeareneins le hog am tompe ll yse hat is man perhaps dans tt ns company fam in ret nger $n Tam ving inthe sae ofan ev eee Ben Sloot immediacy {am awe at thse pcos ele ™ A Lerten mom Mapane Hawe reste sions themscives conceal the perl which they warn me to beware of. [sense in thee implications avery clever temptar sion to deeam of another and more delight if, of other tnen...and Lam appalled at myself. [dink back over my cov life Feel thas as emus be; ell myself chat will ry lot, that I choose it anew at every instant; | eae within me the clear deep voie of Monscur Tex calling me But if you knew by what names! "No woman inthe woeld is called by such names as Lam. ‘You know what ridiculous epthes lovers se with each other: pee names of dogs and parrots ace the natural fruits ‘of carnal intimacy. Th voices ofthe hart are chilish, The voices of the fesh are elemental. In ict, Monsieur Teste thinks chat love consists in the privilege of bing ily beasts Aegether—the complete licence of nonsense and bestiality So he calls me whatever he wil. He nary always names me according to whit he wants of me. The name alone that he gives me tls me in one word what Tam to expect or what | rst do, When he wants nothing in parca, he als me “Being” or “Thing.” And sometimes he cals me " Oasis.” which pleases me. But he never els me that Lm stupid—and this touches sme very deply Our pret, who hasagreatand chariable curosty about any husband and a sor of compassionate sympathy for a rind so isolated, tll me frankly that Monsieur Teste in spies feclings in in very dificul to reconcile. He aid to sme the other day: Your hasan’ faces ne numeral! He considers him “a monster of izlation and peculie knowledge.” and he exphins him, though with regret, by his pride, one of those prides that cut us af from the living, and noconly the now hiving bat the ctrl living: a pridethat would be wholly abominable and almost Satanic if, in a soul already too much exercised, such pride were not 40 bitterly turned agains itself and with o precise a knowledge ‘of tself thatthe evil is somchow impaired a its source. “He is feightfully ext off from the good,” my confessor told me, “but fortunately hei also cut off fom evil. ..He has in him 2 sore of frightening purity, a detachment, an undeniable strength and clarity. [have never observed such, an absence of uncertainty and doubt in mind so profoundly tormented. He is terribly tranquil! No uneasiness of spirit can be attributed to him, no inner darkness~and nothing, moreover, derived from the instincts of fear or desire. Yernothing chat tends toward Charity “His heare is a desert island.,..The whole scope, the whole energy of his mind surround and protect him; his depths isolate him and guard him against the truth. He fa ters himself that he is entirely alone there.,..Patience, dear lady. Perhaps, one day, he will discover some footprint on the sand....What holy and happy terror, what salucary fight, once he recognizes in that pure sign of grace that his island is mysteriously inhabited!" So I suid to our pres that my husband often reminded me of a mystic without God, “What an insight!” he ssid, “what insights women sometimes derive from the simpliciey of thes impressions and the vagueness of ther language! But immediately and to himself, he replied: “A mystic without God!..Brillime nonsense!...1 too eaty! Spurious light....A Godless mystic, dear lady! But no ‘movement is conceivable without direction and aim, with- cout going somewhere in the end!...A Godless mystic! ‘Why not 2 Hippogryph, a Centaur!” “Why not a Sphinx, Father?” ‘Asa Christan, he i even grateful to Monsicur Teste forthe frcedom allowed me to follow my faith and give myself to ‘my devotions. lam enticely free to love God and serve Him, and I find it possible to share myself very happily between ‘Our Lord and my dear husband. Monsieur Teste sometimes asks me to tell him about my prayers and explain to him as ‘exactly a8 I can how I go about them, how I concentrate and sastain myself them, and he wants to know if I lose my- selfin chem as tely as [believe do. But Ihave hardly begun. searching my memory for the words, when he is already ahead of me, interrogating himself; then putting himself ‘miraculously in my place he tells me such things about my ‘own prayers, and in such precive detail tha they are clarified, penetrated somehow in ther secret depths—and so he reveals to me their tendency and desire! ..His language has some strange power to make us see and understand what is most hidden in us....And yet his remarks are human, no more than hurnan; they are simply the deeper forms of faith covered by artifice and marvelously articulated by a mind of incomparable audacity and depth! He would seem to have cooly explored the fervent soul...But what I find fright- fally lacking in this restoration of my burning heart and its faith, is its essence which is hope... There is nota grain of hope in the whole substance of Monsieur Teste; and that i why I fel a certain uneasines in this exercie of his power. T have very litle more to tll you today. I shall not excuse myself for writing at such length, since you asked me to do40 and since you say that you have an insatiable appetite for your friend's every acr and gesture. But I must stop. It is time now for our daily walk. Iam going to put on my hat. ‘We shall walk slowly through the stony and tortuous litle sereets of this eld city which you know somewhat. In the end, we go down where you would like to go if you were here, to that ancient garden whee all those who think, of worry, or tlk to themselves, go down towards evening 3s water goes tothe river, and gather necesarily together. They are scholars, lovers, old men, press, and che disillusioned; all dreamers, of every posible kind. They sem to be seeking their distances from each other. They must like to sce but not know one another, and thei separate sorts of biteress are accustomed to encountering each other. One drags his ile ness, nother is driven by his anguish; they are shadows fccing from each other; but there is no other place to eteape the others but this, where the same idea of solitude invincibly ‘draws each of ll those absorbed souls, Ina few minutes we shall bein that place worthy ofthe dead. eis botanical ruin, ‘We shall be there alte before sunset. Imagine us walking slowly, exposed tothe sun, the eypreses, the cries of birds. ‘The wind is cool in the sun; the sky, too beatiful a mes, {tips my heat. The unscen cathedral tll. Here and there are round basins, banked and sanding waist-high. They arc filed to the brim with dark impenetrable water,on which the enor- ‘mous eaves of the Nymphea Nelumbo lie fa; and the drops ‘hat venture upon those leaves roll and glitter like mercury. ‘Monsieur Teste absently gazes at those large living drops, for walks slowly among the rectangular flower beds with their areen labels, where specimens of the vegetable kingdom are more or ess cultivated, He is amused at this ather ridiculous order and takes delight in spelling out the baroque names A berren PROM MADAME danEte TESTE Abin Sioa Solanaon Waracewiesii! ‘And that Sisymbrijllum, what jargon’... And the Vil gore, and the Aiper, and the Pelustis, and che Siuata, nd the lexus, and the Pram!!! “This is a garden of epithets," he sad the other day, “a dictionary and cemetery garden. ‘And after moment be said, “Learnedly to dic ‘Trost lsifiend.” ‘Accept, Sir and Friend, all our thanks and our pleasant »Various EssaysIntroduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci [1894] To Maral Schwob WHAT A MAN leaves after him are the dreams cha his name inspires and the ‘works that make his name a symbol of admiration, hate, of indifference. We think of how he thought, and we are able to find within his works a kind of thinking derived from ourselves that ‘we attribute to him; we ean refashion this thought in che image of our own, Ie is easy to picture to ourselves an ‘ordinary man; his motivesandelemen- tary reactions ean be supplied quite simply ftom oue own memories. The commonplace acts that form the sut= face of his life and those that form the surface of ours ae linked in the same fashion. We too can serve asthe bond that holds the acts together, and the circle of activity suggested by his name ie no wider than our own. If we choose an individual who excelled in some respec, we shall find it harder €o picture the workings and the ways of ” In the embarrasient af having torte & great bj, Tf ‘pelle conser and tat the robles Afr ying fo aoe it Tha tenet what tcaalybappes ws tie litrary ind thse inst isto ip crs the Imeasire the depth oftrowanpo ror MALLARME I should write is mind. In order to go beyond an this first paragraph in indiscriminate admiration, we shall tery dict Jahon see resin is xen Sa non Fort purpose i rea tk se ihe pct of ony roe of then Thar, but he situation of and the eon ave to tind that tot 9 ingen bbe forced to stretch in some particular ‘way ow conception of his dominating guality, which we doubtless possess only in the germ. Bue fall the faculties ofthe choten mind were widely devel- ‘oped atthe same time, or if consider~ able traces of its activity are to be found in all fields of endeavor, then the figure of our hero grows more and ‘more dificult co conceive in is unity and tends to scape ovr strivings. From ‘one boundary to another ofthis mental territory there are immense distances that we have never traveled. Our une derstanding fils to grasp the continu- ity of this whole—just as it fails to perceive those formless rags of space that separate known objects and fl ia the random intervals between; just a8 it loses myriads of facts at every moment, beyond the small number of those evoked by speech, Nevertheless, ‘we must linger over the tak, become inured to it, and lem to surmount the dificultes imposed on ourimagination by this combination of elements heter- ‘ogencous tit. In this proces all our intelligence is applied to conceiving a unique order and single motive force. We wish to place being in out ike= nese at the heart of the system we impose on ourselves. We struggle 10 form a decisive image. And our mind, ‘with adegree of violence depending on its lucidity and breadth, ends by wine ning back its own unity. As if prox duced by mechanism, a hypothesis takes shape and proves to be the indi- ‘vidual who achieved all these things, the central vision where allthis must Ihave taken place, the monstrous brain for strange animal that wove a pure ‘web connecting so many form, These cnigmatic and diverse constructions ‘were the labors of this brain, its ine stinct making a home for islf. The production of such a hypothesis is a phenomenon that admits of variations bar not of chance. Iehas the ssme value as the logical analysis of which it should be the object. I isthe bass of the method that we will take up to serve out purpose. T propose to imagine a man whore activities ate so diverse tha iI posta late ruling idea behind them all there could be none more universal. And 1 ‘want this man to possess an infinitely kkeen perception of the diference of things, the adventures of which per- cxption might well be called analysis. 1 see him a8 aiming at all things: he is as In reality man and Leonardo were the names I gove to what then impresed me as tnt power ofLEONARDO FoR MaLLARNS Unive beter word wold have been“ una.” What Toe ec as a 0 smh the blows ‘oxi hate ‘rd ave” el ok, the fi Sate ‘lag «sem contain (yy tha) at recta to dine wey ee altways thinking in terms of the uni verse, and of rigor.* He isto formed as to overlook nothing that enters into the confusion of things; not the least shrub. He descends into the depths of that which exists forall men, but there hae draws apart and studies himself. He penetrates tothe habits and structures of nature, he works on them from every angle, and finally itis he alone who constructs, enumerates, set in ‘motion. Heleavesbehind him churches and forcreses; he fashions omaments instinet with gentleness and grandeur, besides a thousand mechanical devices and the rigorous calculations of many a research, He leaves the abandoned relics and remnants of unimaginable games and fancies. In the midst of these pastimes, which are mingled with his science, which in turn cannot be distinguished from a passion, he has the charm of always seeming to think of something ele....t shall follow him as he moves through the density and raw unity ofthe world, where he will become so familiar with nature ‘that he will imitate tin order to use it, and will end by finding it dificult to + Horinato rie, obstinate rigor Leonard's motto, [rt al oceotes a ‘is seton conceive ofan object that nature does not contain. ‘This creation of our thoughts re- quires a name that will serve asa limit to the expansion of terms usualy so far removed as to excape exch other. I can find none mote suitable than that ‘of Leonardo da Vini. Whoever pictures tree must alo picture a sky or back- ‘ground from which the tree stands forth; in this there is a sort of logic that is almost tangible and yet almost unknown, The figure Tam presenting ‘ean be reduced oan inference from this type. Very lite that U shall have to say of him should be applied to the ‘man who made this name illustrious: Twill not pursue a coincidence that I think would be impossible to define incorrectly. T am trying to give one view of the deci of an intellectual life, one suggestion of the methods implied by every dicovery, one, chosen among the multitude of imaginable thinge—a crude model, if you will, but preferable in every way to 4 collection of dubious anecdotes, fof a commentary upon museum cata- Togues, or a list of dates. That kind of erudition would merely falsify the purely hypothetical intention of this aay. Tam not ignorant of such ” Arathor who conse oes bier S ny inci onstrace him and there is decided opposition between these 00 onze, To frei Heeb Incomplete hfe In tha sensei com posed of oncites, fet, moment Conszeion, on the other hand, Inples the a pics condition of an existe mt ade complecly di fexen. This sot of lg i what leads by way of isthe contcon of what T have clits wanes, “lr it leads 0 3 personage. irae epi ito use the, penal of ones [ing tr he ‘onl of the highesttoNARDO FOE MALLARME possible degree of hal een tna a wi te ei rena eens aoe ete The efits ofa work care veveresmple onsequnce of the ics i which iter generated. On the contrary, we night sy that the ‘eae in of a work is maine tht ete ie “ ea from the raters, but my tik above alls to omit them, so that a conjecture based fon very general terms may in no way be confused with che visible fragments ofa personality compleely vane, leaving us equally convinced both of histhinkingexinenceand of theimpor- silly of ever knowing it bene. Many an erro that distorts our judg- ‘ment of human achievements is due € a strange disregard of their genesis. We seldom remember that they did not always exist. This has led to a sort of reciprocal coquetry which leads authors to suppress, to conceal ll t00 wel, the origins of a work. We fear the later may be humble; we even suspect them of being natural. And although there are very few authors ‘with the courage to say how their ‘work took shape, I believe there are ot many more Who venture even to understand the process. Such an under- standing can only begin with one's painfully relinguthing all laudatory epithets and notions of glory; ie wall not allow for any idea of personal superiority or delusion of grandee. I leads tothe discovery of the relativity that underlies che apparent perfection. ‘And this research into origins is neces sary if we are not to believe that minds are as radically diferent as their pro-