«Peinture. L'objet de la peinture est indécis. S'il était net, - comme de produire l'illusion de choses vues, ou d'amuser l'oeil et l'esprit par une certaine distribution musicale de couleurs et de figures, le problème serait bien plus simple, et il y aurait sans doute plus de belles oeuvres (c'est-à-dire conformes à telles exigences définies) - mais point d'oeuvres inexplicablement belles. Il n'y aurait point de celles qui ne se peuvent épuiser». Pendant un quart de siècle Paul Valéry a pris des notes sur tous les problèmes qui le préoccupaient. La philosophie et l'art se détachent particulièrement au cours de ce recherches instantanées. Chacun de ces textes contient à l'état d'aphorismes, de formules, de fragments ou de propos, voire de boutades, mainte remarque ou impression venue à l'esprit, çà et là, le long d'une vie, et qui s'est fait noter en marge de quelque travail ou à l'occasion de tel incident dont le choc, tout à coup, illumina une vérité instantanée, plus ou moins vraie. De ces pensées et aphorismes se dégage une pensée d'une rigueur exemplaire et qui propose une méthode d'investigation d'une rare acuité.
Author
Ambroise-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.
