PAUL VALERY'S

A L B U M D E V E R S A N C I E N S

A PAST TRANSFIGURED

"Je n'aime guere Ie mot influence, qui ne designe qu'une ignorance ou une hypothese, et qui joue un role si grand et si commode dans la critique." (Inspirations Mediterraneennes, Oeuvres I, pp. 1091-92)

Paul Valery's

Album de vers anciens A P A S T T R A N S F I G U R E D

Φ

By Suzanne Nash

P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

P R I N C E T O N , N E W J E R S E Y

Copyright © 1983 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street

Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

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To Franklin

AC KNOW L EDGM ENTS

THERE have been three distinct phases in the development of this study from its earliest draft to the present book, and I am indebted to numerous people who have made special con­tributions at each stage of its growth. I was able to write the first draft during a year's leave which Princeton University granted me as Jonathan Dickinson Bicentennial Preceptor. The emphasis of the argument at that time was on Valery's defensiveness regarding the question of influence and origi­nality, with little attention paid to his insights into the nature of language. It was because of the interest of several of my colleagues at Princeton at this initial and sensitive stage in my thinking that I went on to do more research, to refine my argument and eventually to rewrite substantially the manu­script. My debt to them is incalculable. I would like to thank first James Irby for his painstaking reading and for the many pages of questions and incisive comments which helped me to sharpen the premises of my argument. I am grateful as well to Sylvia Molloy, David Bromwich, Froma Zeitlin, and Karl Uitti for their engagement with the subject and their valuable critical and editorial advice on Part I.

I owe the next stage in the book's development to a con­versation with James Lawler, whose characteristic generosity to younger scholars and exhaustive knowledge of the unpub­lished Valery material have contributed so much to the quality and vitality of Valery studies in English. He placed me in contact with Madame Agathe Rouart-Valery, who generously provided me with access to the Valeryanum of the Biblio-theque Jacques Doucet, and with Madame Florence de Lussy, the curator of the Valery papers at the Bibliotheque nationale. Both Mme. de Lussy and Mme. Rouart-Valery have been tireless in their efforts to locate important unpublished notes, commentaries, and drafts relevant to the genesis of the A l bum de vers anciens, without which I would not have understood the intensity of Valery's struggle with his work and the degree

vi i i · ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

of insight he had regarding both his own relationship to his predecessors and to the problematics of language itself.

It was in the light of these discoveries that I rewrote much of the argument of Part I and enlarged the analyses of many of the individual poems in Part II. Again I am indebted to Princeton colleagues for their reading of the final draft—to Ora Avni for her rigorous critical advice on Part I and to Alban Forcione for his infallible eye for knotty moments in my argument, his elegant stylistic advice, and his patiently reiterated encouragement during the many periods of uncer­tainty. His thoroughness, subtlety of thought, and kindness make him an ideal reader and the one to whom I have most often turned throughout the writing of this book.

These acknowledgments would not be complete without spe­cial thanks to Ludmilla Forani-Wills for offering me the quiet of her Vineyard house during the first period of research; to Elaine Pratt for her abiding friendship; and to Franklin Nash for his practical help and moral support at every step of the way. I am obligated as well to my two anonymous reviewers for the Princeton University Press, whose sympathetic and searching criticisms of the manuscript led me to make signif­icant revisions, and to my editors at the Press, Jerry Sherwood and Miriam Brokaw, for their judicious and discriminating advice throughout the production of this book.

S.N.

C O N TEN T S

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 3

PART ONE. REFLECTIONS ON WRITING

Reading and Influence 21

The Problem of Originality: The Example of

Baudelaire 51

Mallarme and Valery 63

Valery's Originality 83

Valery's Figurative Language 97

PART TWO. THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA OF

THE "ALBUM DE VERS ANCIENS"

"La Fileuse" 115

"Helene" 141 "Naissance de Venus" 149 "Feerie" 157

"Meme Feerie" 160 "Au bois dormant" 163

"Baignee" 169 "Un Feu distinct ..." 175 "Narcisse parle" 180

"Episode" 197 "Vue" 205 "Valvins" 210

"Ete" 217 "Profusion du soir" 228

"Anne" 240

"Air de Semiramis" 254 "L'Amateur de poemes" 264

÷ · CONTENTS

Conclusion 269 Appendix 275

Bibliography 317

Index 323

PAUL VALER Y ' S

A L B U M D E V E R S A N C I E N S

A PAST TRANSFIGURED

INTRODUCTION

IN 1912, twenty years after he had abandoned the practice of poetry, Paul Valery received a letter from Andre Gide, urging him to publish a collection of his early verse. In Fragments des memoires d'utt poeme (1933) Valery speaks of his surprise and distaste at having to respond to Gide's request. He had long ago, as he thought, removed himself from the public eye, and, though he continued to write notebooks, he was their sole reader. Like his own M. Teste, he had achieved a virtually autonomous existence as a writer, "purified," as he put it, of the unreliable and ephemeral controls of public taste and the vagaries of literary modishness. From the works that he had once written in imitation of literary fathers long since dead, for the benefit of a public which no longer existed, he felt completely estranged.

Le souvenir bien vague de ces petites pieces ne m'etait pas agreable: je ne me sentais aucune tendresse pour elles. Si quelques-unes avaient assez plu dans Ie petit cercle ou elles avaient ete produites en Ieur temps, ce temps et ce milieu favorables s'etaient evanouis comme mes propres dispositions d'esprit. . . la mode avait change. Mais fut-elle demeuree celle que je l'avais connue, il m'eut fort peu importe, m'etant moi-meme rendu comme insensible a quelque mode que ce fut.1

Despite extravagant disclaimers of authorship and interest, however, he was drawn back to these early works, like his own Narcissus to his image in the fountain. But, unlike Narcissus, he was shocked and even offended by the face he found there, a face which had an unsettling resemblance to many others: Baudelaire, Verlaine, Heredia, Mallarme. As the

1 Paul Valery, Oeuvres, 2 tomes, ed. Jean Hytier, Coll. Pleiade {Paris: Gallimard, 1957,1960), Tome 1, p. 1464. Henceforth, in citing Valery, I will place the page reference from this edition of his collected works in the body of my text.

4 • INTRODUCTION

older writer examined these early, derivative works, he could

not resist reshaping them, until they gradually began to reflect

the new critical consciousness ("insensible a quelque mode

que ce fut") reading them two decades after their inception:

Jamais poemes ne sont tombes sous des regards plus froids.

lis retrouvaient dans leur auteur I'homme du monde qui

s'etait fait le plus rebelle a leurs effets. Ce pere ennemi

feuilleta le tres mince cahier de ses poesies completes ou

il ne decouvrait que de quoi se rejouir d'avoir abandonne

le jeu. . . . tl se sentatt je ne sais quelles envies de les

renforcer, d'en refondre la substance musicale C'etait

jouer avec le feu. . . . {Ibid., p. 1480)

Valery had always been sensitive to the issue of his origi-nality because from the very beginning of his career critics had insisted upon referring to him as a disciple of Mallarme's. After reading Charles Maurras' judgment of his work in an article of 1 8 9 2 called Les Nouvelles Ecoles—'M. Paul Valery a su devenir le disciple intelligent de Mal larme"—he had writ-ten disconsolately to Gide: "Je suis perfore en huit lignes."^ Thus, when he pondered the implications of publishing a work containing poems written originally under the influence of poetic fathers whom he believed he had outgrown, he found especially troubling the necessity of acknowledging publicly his return to the enterprise he had rejected m the very year which had witnessed the publication of Mallarme's Poesies:

Puis, paraitre a deux minutes du Mallarme, c'est, des trois

ou quatre fagons diverses, epouvantant. Faut-il monter

sur un theatre qui, apres tout et en vente, n'est pas le

mien? Voir des articles du Mercure ou des Phalanges,

revivre sans envie, avaliser les sonnets d'un ex-moi?" (let-

ter to Gide, juillet 1912).^

^ Cited by Carl B Barbier, "Valery et Mallarme jusqu'en 1898," Colloque Paul Valery Amtties de jeunesse Influences-lectures, Umversite d'Edinbourg, Nov 1976 (Pans Nizet, 1978), pp 49-50

3 Andre Gide et Paul Valery Correspondance 1890-1942, ed Robert Mal-let (Pans Galhtnard, 1955), p 426

INTRODUCTION · 5

His return to poetry struck him as a kind of public statement ("monter sur un theatre qui . . . n'est pas Ie mien") which might imply continuing faith in the poetic enterprise as Mal-larme had understood it. It is significant that Valery did not in fact publish the collection of his early works until after he had published La Jeune Parque, which represents both an eloquent tribute to and a profound rejection of his most em­inent predecessor.4 It may even be that his choice of the word "album" for his title was a subtle assertion of a purpose dis­tinct from that of Mallarme, if one considers that Mallarme had already used the word in a letter to Verlaine in 1885s to express his failure to write the "absolute work":

. . . c'est bien juste s'ils composent un album, mais pas un livre. Il est possible cependant que l'Editeur Vanier m'arrache ces lambeaux, mais je ne Ies collerai sur des pages que comme on fait une collection de chiffons d'e-toffes seculaires ou precieuses. Avec ce mot condamna-toire d'Album, dans Ie titre, Album de vers et de proses, je ne sais pas.6

4 Every serious critic of La Jeune Parque has identified Mallarme's Hero-dtade as the crucial predecessor text against which VaIery elaborated his own self-questioning monologue. The Parque's rediscovery of her natural origins and her effort to reintegrate body and mind reverse Herodiade's rejection of her biological self in favor of a sterile but pure idealization of the self.

5 The letter was written in response to Verlaine's request for information to aid in the writing of a short study of Mallarme, which he was preparing for the Hommes D'Aujourd'hui series published by Leon Vanier, as well as for his famous Poetes maudtts, which would appear later that year. Verlaine quoted from Mallarme's letter extensively in the Vanier publication. The letter in its entirety was later published by Messein with a foreword by Dr. Edmond Bonmot. It is hard to believe that Valery did not see a copy of the letter when he helped organize Mallarme's papers after the great poet's death in 1898.

6 Stephane Mallarme, Oeuvres completes ed. Henri Monder et G. Jean-Aubry, Coll. PIeiade (Pans: Galhmard, 1945), p. 663. Mallarme's own choice of the word "album" may even have been a conscious echoing of Baudelaire, who wrote to Vigny in 1861: "Le seul eloge que )e sollicite pour ce livre est qu'on reconnaisse qu'il n'est pas un pur album et qu'il a un commencement et une fin." Correspondance generate (Pans: Conard, Tome IV, 1948), p. 9.

6 · INTRODUCTION

One senses in the title Valery's urge to objectify and even recreate a crucial experience of influence in order to redefine the nature of poetry as well as to seize hold of his own work— to rewrite the work of his literary predecessors in order not to be written by them, and thus to obtain for himself a new autonomy: "II s'engendre ainsi . . . une vive perception de la substance tout actuelle de nos images du 'passe' et de notre liberte inalienable de Ies modifier aussi facilement que nous pouvons Ies concevoir, sans aucune consequence . . ." (Oeuvres I, p. 1473).

Valery's troubled and fiercely skeptical reconsideration of his early verse resulted in a dramatic redefinition of the mean­ing of the art of poetry and its realization in the body of work which has been recognized as belonging to the greatest lyric poetry of the French language. This new surge of poetic cre­ation lasted for approximately one decade. Five years after Gide's letter he published La Jeune Parque (1917), and in the years which immediately followed he completed L'Album de vers anciens (the work Gide had requested) and Charmes, which appeared in 1920 and 1922 respectively.

Although critics generally agree that La Jeune Parque and most of the poems in Charmes represent accomplished works which define Valery's mature poetic genius, the Album has not always been received with the same kind of respect. They have criticized its failure to achieve the polish and profundity of thought of the later works, its lack of any overall coherence or consistent imaginative stance, and its adherence to an out­moded Symbolist poetics which appealed to the young poet who had not yet found a voice of his own.7 Yet we know that

7 There are notable exceptions to this perspective. Henry Grubbs has ur­gently called for a study of "the process of revision that turned the poems published in La Conque, La Syrinx, L'Ermttage, etc. 1890-1892, into the poems of the Album de vers anctens:" Paul Valery (New York, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1968), p. 48 and has provided a sensitive scholarly study of the revisions of "Feene," Revue d'Htstoire litteratre de la France, Vol. 60, pp. 199-212. Three critics in particular have revealed the importance of the Album as a work to be taken s eriously in its own right: Pierre-Olivier Walzer in La Poesie de Valery (Geneve: Pierre Cailler, 1953); Mana Teresa Giaven in "L'Album de vers anctens" dt Paul Valery: Studio sulle correziom d'autore

INTRODUCTION · 7

most of the poems in the A l bum, though conceived between 1890 and 1900, were significantly revised for their inclusion

edite ed inedite (Padova: Liviana Editrice, 1969); and James R. Lawler in numerous individual articles, most of which have been collected in The Poet as Analyst (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). These critics have all examined the many revised manuscripts of the Album poems in great detail and hence are sensitive to the craftsmanship and the changing aesthetic values of the final poetic forms. Walzer was one of the first to chart the changes in the manuscript versions, and his research provided Jean Hytier with a wealth of information for his edition of the Album in Galhmard's Pleiade series. But, despite Walzer's sensitivity to early signs of Valery's genius, he was not able to recognize the importance of the Album as an innovative and self-critical work. He perceives the presence of Symbolist and Decadent influences as flaws which the older Valery was simply not able to efface altogether and fails to appreciate the significance of those outgrown models as an essential part of Valery's figurative commentary on his own generative process:

Malgre tout Ie travail depense a la correction de ses vers de ieunesse, VAlbum accuse encore d'evidentes influences. Par un anachronisme cu-neux, Valery ne cherche pas dans ses remaniements a Ieur echapper: il tente simplement de refaire en mieux Ies vers qu'il avait ecnts vers sa vingtieme annee, et dont Ies defauts Iui etaient devenus de plus en plus sensibles. L'Album reste done tout impregne de l'atmosphere symboliste de 1890. Ces influences sont d'ailleurs inevitables, (p. 106)

Giaven sees in the early poems signs of the poet's mature work, uncovering in a detailed comparative study of variants certain constants in Valery's poetic process. She perceives, for example, a progressive refinement of musical effects and a passage from static to dynamic composition characterized by the linking of fragmented figurative episodes into a linear chain. It is in this light that she explains Valery's choppy syntax, his use of exclamation, interrogation, and apostrophe which many poets of his time, she asserts, would have con­sidered "sins of youth." Giaven has isolated numerous other important char­acteristics of Valery's mature poetics, but the effect of her study is to make the Album seem more like Charmes than it really is. Like Walzer, Giaven has ignored the intentional inscription of the tradition against which Valery was writing, that is, the presence of a rejected past integrated critically and even parodically into the collection as a form of poeticized commentary on an early phase in the poet's formation. Her study thus obscures the unique function of the Album as poeticized criticism.

James Lawler, in his searching individual studies of "Air de Semiramis" ("Existe! Sois enfin toi-meme ...," The Poet as Analyst, op.ctt.)·, "Profusion du soir" ("L'Ange frais de l'oeil nu . . . , tbtd); "Valvins" (J'ai adore cet homme . . . ," tbtd.)·, the "Belle endormie" figure in "La Fileuse," "Anne," and "Au bois dormant," tbtd.·, "Un Feu distinct" ("Valery's 'Un Feu dis-

8 · INTRODUCTION

in the 1920 edition8 and that the final versions often result in a mise en question of the earliest writing.9 Moreover, a study of the manuscripts related to the genesis of Valery's three major poetic works reveals that he was working on La Jeune Parque and the revisions of the poems for the Album more or less simultaneously from 1913 on, and that after the pub­lication of La Jeune Parque in 1917 he continued to work intensely on the revisions at the same time that he was writing the "new" poems which would appear in Charmes. By 1918 most of the poems which would appear in the Album and in Charmes were in their final polished state, and unpublished drafts of the table of contents for Charmes suggest that until as late as 1918 Valery was considering publishing only a single collection of lyric works.10

tinct,' " French Studies, Vol. XXVIII, April, 1974, pp. 169-176), and "Or-phee" (The Technique of Valery's 'Orphee,' " J ournal of the Australasian Unwerstttes Modern Language Association, October, 1956, pp. 54- 6 4 ), has gone further than any other critic to date to establish the intricate process of formal and thematic definition in the manuscript revisions for the 1920 publication of the Album. His meticulous and exhaustive studies confirm the unquestionable importance of these poems for consideration amongst Va­lery's finest works. Most importantly for my study, he has uncovered nu­merous mediating intertexts in each of these poems, considering them not as signs of a derivative voice, but as integral to the rich texturing of the complex form which unfolds as a uniquely Valeryan structure. I will have frequent occasion to refer to Lawler's work in more detail when I undertake my own analysis of the individual poems in the Album in Part Two of this study.

8 Jean Hytier provides a thorough account of the revisions made for the various published versions of the poems of the Album de vers anciens, op.cit., but one must turn to Walzer, Giaven, Lawler, and ultimately the manuscripts contained in the Valeryanum of the Bibliotheque nationale to appreciate the extent of the revisions made in his unpublished manuscripts. ' Charles Whiting has studied the earliest published versions of the poems

later to be included in the Album in an effort to understand the direction of Valery's poetics before the crisis of 1892. He has observed that several changes introduced into the version of "La Fileuse" that appeared in La Conque, Sept. 1,1891, already significantly undercut the symbolic implications of the very earliest drafts. See Valery, jeune poete (Pans: Presses universitaires, 1960), p. 31. Lawler is consistently sensitive to the sensuousness and dramatic vigor of Valery's changes, which introduce a vitality subversive to the arti­ficiality of the Symbolist vision. See his analysis of "Au bois dormant," for example, in T he Poet As Analyst, pp. 153ff.

10 For a thorough account of the chronology surrounding the creation of

INTRODUCTION · 9

Valery's decision to separate the two collections suggests that he had perceived that his work of self-revision possessed a unique identity as something more than a body of poetry reflecting an immature stage in his development. Changes in the drafts of a preface for the collection point clearly to a significant shift in what he conceived his project to be after 1917. The 1913 and 1917 drafts dedicated to Pierre Louys,11

with whom he had once shared a fervent belief in the mystical power of poetic language, stress the mature writer's disavowal of any such naive faith and emphasize the antiquated nature of the verse:

A Pierre Louys—ce peu ceci est a toi—depuis 20 ans—

Je ne t'offre rien de nouveau. Ces exercices, imitations courts Car je n'ai jamais songe a etre un poete—ni Ie devenir jamais Mais d'abord rien car nul n'est Thomme puis quelqu'un sans nom dans aucun langage

pu, su, voulu, cru.12

(1913)

or

La Jeune Parque, see Florence de Lussy, La Genese de "La Jeune Parque" de Paul Valery: essat de chronologte (Pans: Lettres modernes, 1975). Mme. de Lussy is preparing a manuscript which will provide a definitive mise au point of the dates surrounding the genesis of all of the poetic works from 1900-1920 related to the publication of Charmes. Her help as curator of the Valeryanum of the Bibliotheque nationale has been invaluable in locating the documents relevant to the genesis of the Album de vers anctens.

11 C. Gordon Millan, who is currently editing the voluminous correspond­ence, comprising some 900 letters, between Louys and Valery, gives a moving account of Louys' influence on Valery as guide, mentor, and friend during the early years, in "Valery et Pierre Louys," Colloque Paul Valery; Amittes de)eunesse . . . , op.cit. Millan points out that their friendship experienced a renewed intensity between 1913 and 1917 while Valery was working on La Jeune Parque. Valery insisted on Louys' detailed critical reading of his various drafts, and although he often ignored his friend's advice it is obvious that Louys provided a valuable interlocutor throughout the long and often anguished gestation of Valery's great poem.

12 Ms., B.N., dossier Charmes II, f. 104. Written on the verso of a draft of "Ma Nuit."

10 · INTRODUCTION

PRAEFATIO ad P. Ces quelques vers sont a toi

Avant que Aphrodite naquit, la seule conque au debut de ma vie jetes ai faits comme exercices tant differe de Ies publier.

Ces vers a toi. Si tu ne m'avais pas excite j'avoue que je n'aurais pas tire de moi seul l'idee d'en faire la fin— Ces vers sont a toi.13

(1913)

In 1917 the tone is still much the same, but at the bottom of the paper there is a revelatory sentence added, almost as an afterthought, in a different color ink:

corps a corps, style Je te dedie ces exercices ou il n'y a de

ma vieille pensee heureusement plus rien de moi-meme

mes veritables pensees —Il s'agissait de satisfaire a l'idee que je me faisais de la definition des beaux vers telle que je la trouvais dans ceux que j'aimais— Si j'y fusse parvenu, je n'aurais atteint qu'un ideal de convention. Mais cette convention nous l'avons adoree comme verite lumineuse vers 1890.

Ce n'est pas un signe certain de modestie de donner ce titre d'Exercices.14

(1917)

This sentence, underlined by Valery, "Ce n'est pas un signe certain de modestie de donner ce titre d'Exercices," suggests a changing awareness on his part of what was to become the

13 Ibid., dossier Album de vers ancietis, f. 8. 14 Ibid., f. 9.

INTRODUCTION · 11

Album de vers anciens.15 By 1919, he has removed any ref­erence to Pierre Louys in his drafts of the Preface and focuses almost exclusively on the critical and transformative dimen­sion of his project:

Je Ies appelle exercices, ces vers, car ils ne representent pas mes pensees. Ils ne sont pas l'expression de ce qui m'interesse Ie plus. Mais, d'un autre cote, je ne mets rien au dessus de la gymnastique. Je ne vois meme plus—et quoique j'aie eu mes passions, mes emotions, je n'y ai vu jamais d'autre valeur que celle d'investigation pour un domain plus etendu.16 (1919)

or

Friface a premiers vers Ces vers—ou d'autres qui Ieur ressemblent beaucoup— ont ete publies.

Le principal objet et—l'unique sujet de mes vers etant Ie travail, qui Ies accompagne, Ies reprend, Ies change a plusieurs annees de distance, est son charme.17 (1919)

If one compares the early drafts of Fragments des memoires d'un poeme, where Valery recalls the genesis of the Album, to the scattered notes which he jotted down as he contem­plated the creation of La Jeune Parque, one is even tempted to say that this revisionary process involved in the creation

15 The earliest document I have seen bearing the exact title of the collection is a letter written to Adrienne Monnier in 1920, ibid., f. 462:

". . . J'ai ete singulierement sage en vous promettant mes vieux vers, plutot que Ie Mss. qui m'aurait demande du travail.

"Parlons done de cette publication. Le titre d'abord. Il faut bapriser cela dans ce font. Album de vers anciens—(ou quelque chose de ce genre—)

"Je n'ai pas encore arrete la liste des poemes, et ne pourrai Ie faire qu'a mon retour a Paris. Je vous dirai alors la quantite a prevoir. Je donnerai dans ce choix, Ies vers publies dans Ies anthologies, et d'autres moins 'usages.' " Anne, aussi; Semiramis, peut-etre, etc. . . ." 14 Ibid., dossier Album de vers anciens, f. 10. 17 Ibid., dossier Charmes II, f. 35.

12 · I NT R O D U CTI O N

of the Album provided the source of inspiration for all of Valery's later work. It was certainly thanks to the reconsid­eration of his early work that he was able to redefine the poet's function in terms which would distinguish him from Mallarme and which would constitute his own originality. A brief but decisive note which can be found in the Cahier de broutllons of the Fragments des memoires d'un poeme makes his awareness of the unique nature of his project clear:

La Tentative devait etre faite Ie parce qu'elle m'interessait 2e parce qu'elle me paraissait n'avoir jamais ete faite18

The earliest drafts of the Fragments stress, in terms reminiscent of his own treatment of the Narcissus myth, the inevitability of a return to an earlier stage in one's development which occurs in all genuine reflection. This is the concept which will constitute the penultimate section of the published essay and will lead Valery to his definition of figuration and writing on which it concludes:

C'est une impression singuliere que celle d'un retour in­vincible, mais par de si petits degres, de details si divers, qu'on ne s'en avise qu'a la longue, vers un etat de soi que l'on croyait a jamais dissipe.

Un jour, je me suis senti avoir ete reconduit insensi-blement, par Ies circonstances Ies plus fortuites et Ies plus differentes entre elles, dans une region de l'esprit que j'avais abandonnee, et meme fuie. Ce fut comme si, fuyant un lieu, mais la forme de l'espace faisant que Ie point Ie plus eloigne de ce lieu fut ce lieu meme, on s'y retrouvat tout a coup, et qu'on s'y reconnut, et Ie meme, et tout autre, avec une grande surprise. ... ( Oeuvres I, p. 1488)

It is precisely in these terms that he seeks to define the structure of La Jeune Parque—indeed, one might imagine that the fol­lowing were notes for the creation of either the Album or of Fragments des memoires d'un poeme:

1 8 Ibid., dossier Fragments.

I N T R O D UC T I O N · 13

JP C'est en somme, un phenomene interessant (et qui m'est arrive deux fois, au moins dans ma litterature) que de trouver ce qu'il fallait a un dessein neuf en retrouvant ce qui avait ete abandonne comme vieilli.

Le cas n'est pas unique (comme Ie vers "libre" re-conduisait au "vers Ie plus classique")

JP Extreme particularite de Poeme ou Ie role de la

reflexion = resistance a—la premiere intention comme si "tout ce qui est de premier jet" fut frappe d'infe-riorite par la-meme. Sentiment remarquable et fon-damental chez moi. Je ressens que ce qui peut me venir a l'esprit et me donne l'impression de "valeur" a peine produit Ie n'est pas du MOI que je connais et recon-nais pour liaison entre "sentir"—"vouloir"—"faire." 2e est done accidental, non Ie resultat reproductible d'un acte complet.

Done, reprise, resistance—conditions et conven­tions a priori Et deux "temps" bien distincts (au moins par Ie tra­vail) Un temps de la matiere imaginaire un temps des formes19

Valery's conception of genuine reflection, as a dialogical play of identification and difference, affirmation and negation, con­tinuity and discontinuity, provides the structuring principles for all of his poetic works. It is thematized in the drama of Narcissus as he returns each night to contemplate his image in the water; it is emblematized in the recurrent figure of the sleeping woman ("La Dormeuse," "Anne," "Ma Nuit," "Au bois dormant," "Baignee," etc.); it is formalized in the com­plex interplay of semantic and phonological levels of signifi­cance within each poem, and, of particular importance for this study, it accounts for the ordering of the poems in the A l b u m de vers anciens, thus providing the collection with a

1 9 Ibid., Notes diverses sur "La Jeune Parqtte."

14 · INTRODUCTION

narrative as well as a poetic time. The arrangement of the poems in this "album" was apparently important to Valery, because he did not change the order of the 1920 edition even though he added a few poems when the book was reprinted in 1926 and 1932.20 The sleep-wake cycle which determines the range and limitations of human consciousness could be said to have been reflected in Valery's own career, which moved from periods of intense creativity and willing, if cau­tious, communication with the public to periods of violent personal experience, depression, withdrawal, and profound skepticism. It seems to me that the Album in its total design not only recaptures the image of an earlier self during a period of intense creativity, but also reflects, through echoings from one text to the next within the confines of the collection, the crisis which led him to retire into relative silence before he was to resume his public role again in 1912. The Note de I'editeur, obviously written by Valery himself, which intro­duced A. Monnier's first edition of the Album de vers anciens 1890-1900, makes Valery's autobiographical intention very clear:

Presque tous ces petits poemes,—(ou d'auttes qu'ils supposent, et qui Ieur ressemblent assez),—ont ete publies entre 1890 et 1893, dans quelques revues dont la carriere ne s'est pas poursuivie jusqu'a nos jours.

La Conque, Ie Centaure, la Syrinx, I'Ermitage, La Plume, ont bien voulu jadis accueillir ces essais, qui conduisirent assez promptement Ieur auteur a un sincere et durable eloignement de la poesie.

On y a joint deux pieces inachevees, et abandonnees dans Ieur etat vers l'an 1899, ainsi qu'une page de prose

20The order of the 1920 text was as follows: "La Fileuse," "Helene," "Naissance de Venus," "Feerie," "Baignee," "Au bois dormant," "Le Bois amical," "Un Feu distinct," "Narcisse parle," "Episode," "Vue," "Valvins," "Ete," "Anne," "Air de Semiramis," and "L'Amateur de poemes." In 1926 Valery added "Orphee" after "Helene," "Feerie (variante)" after "Feerie," "Cesar" after "Au bois dormant," and "Profusion du soir" after "Ete." For the 1932 edition he changed the title of "Feerie (variante)" to "Meme Feerie," and he added "Les Vaines danseuses" after "Le Bois amical."

INTRODUCTION · 15

qui se rapporte a l'art des vers, mais qui ne pretend rien apprendre, ni rien interdire a personne. (Oeuvres, I, p. 1530)

Valery seems to have understood that any reconsideration of his own work would perforce lead him to a deeper under­standing of problems fundamental to the creative process it­self: problems of genesis, influence, and originality. "II me souvient que l'idee seule de composition ou de construction m'enivrait, et que je n'imaginais pas d'oeuvre plus admirable que Ie drame de la generation d'une oeuvre . . ." (Oeuvres, I, p. 1483).21 This potentially self-constitutive dimension of the Album was certainly for Valery its ultimate justification. Through reading himself writing within the writing of others, he develops a critical awareness which both embraces the past and transcends it. Literary historians are correct in noting the somewhat dated tone of the Album, but that tone is not due to any failing on Valery's part. It is, in fact, the result of his intention to mount a critical engagement with his literary heritage, to offer a portrait gallery of predecessors whose faces emerge transfigured and transvalued according to the exigen­cies of a new poetics.

The Album de vers anciens, then, is a particularly precious and innovative poetic document, one which holds, inscribed within its structure, the poet's interpretation of his creative confrontation with his past. It represents a kind of chronicle in which the older poet seeks to recreate the intellectual crisis which led him to reject a nineteenth-century concept of poetry founded on an ethics of Symbolist idealism in favor of a poetry which claims autonomy through critical self-reference. This decisive shift from a concern with poetic language as an ex­alted instrument for attaining to some mystical truth beyond

21 It is interesting that as early as 1912, when Valery first received Gide's request, he momentarily considered writing a work resembling the daily notebooks he was keeping. Even then he" wanted to record a process from the distance of a disengaged and profoundly altered observer. "J'ai une autre idee: faire un volume tres rompu—prose, vers assez meles—comme un cahier tres artificiel de travaux, sans qu'on se fixe a etre plus specialement poete qu'autre chose." Gide-Valery, Correspondance, p. 426.

16 · INTRODUCTION

itself, to a preoccupation with the process by which the poem is produced, makes Valery an innovative poet who anticipated current trends in post-modernist French poetry rather than the curator of an exhausted Symbolist aesthetic he is com­monly thought to be.

In From Poe to Valery, T. S. Eliot expresses the view of Valery, already popular amongst critics of the modern lyric, as the end of the Symbolist line rather than the originator of a unique vision.22 "These three French poets [Baudelaire, Mal-larme, and Valery] represent the beginning, the middle and the end of a particular tradition in poetry."23 Yet it is precisely Valery's innovative insistence on poetry as process, a "moyen" as he put it,24 rather than an end which in another essay seems to account for Eliot's reservations about his French contem­porary's work:

Valery in fact invented, and was to impose on his age, not so much a new conception of poetry as a new con­ception of the poet. The tower of ivory has been fitted up as a laboratory. . . . The one complaint which I am tempted to make against Valery's poetics is that it pro­vides us with no criterion of seriousness. He is deeply concerned with the problem of process, of how the poem is made, but not with the question of how it is related to the rest of life in such a way as to give the reader the shock of feeling that the poem has been to him, not merely an experience, but a serious experience. (Introduction to The Art of PoetryYs

11 See Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle (New York: Charles Scnbner's & Sons, 1931) or Marcel Raymond, De Baudelaire au surrealism, essai sur Ie mouvement poettque contemporatn (Pans: Correa, 1933), for example.

23 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1948), p. 6. 24 One of the notes he wrote while composing La Jeune Parque reads:

JP Le sujet —En somme transformation profonde de l'idee de poesie EUe devient un moyen. Ms. B.N., dossier Notes sur "La J.P."

15 The Art of Poetry, translated by Denise Folliot, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot, The Collected Works of Paul Valery, Bollingen Series XLV, 15 vols. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958), 7, vn-xxiv.

INTRODUCTION · 17

Valery would have agreed with Eliot on every point except, perhaps, for his understanding of what is meant by a "serious experience." To become a scientist in rational control of his own experiment, rather than a mystic at the mercy of divine inspiration, was certainly, as Eliot himself acknowledged, at least a "highly civilized" goal. What Eliot's judgment fails to take into account adequately is the extent to which for Valery reflection upon process and all matters centering on the com­ing into being of a work of art—tradition, sensitivity, crafts­manship, originality, production—are vitally related to the most fundamental concerns of the "life" of the poem. As Valery himself put it in another note to La Jeune Parque:

. . . Et si la poesie exige Ie sacrifice de l'esprit, au diable la Poesie.

Mais je n'en crois rien Je ne crois pas que Ie sacrifice d'une habitude ou d'une tradition ou d'une idole quelconque entame l'essentiel.26

In this study I am seeking to understand the issues of central importance to modern poetry and criticism that Valery's con­cept of poetic process can be seen to raise. I consider the Album de vers anciens within the context of the first thirty years of the poet's career, on the one hand tracing the development of Valery's changing poetic consciousness, on the other analyzing its most revealing manifestations in the poems of the Album. Part One draws from a wide variety of documents outside of Valery's poetic corpus—letters, notebook entries, published essays on painters and poets—to establish the terms in which Valery privately registered and publicly rationalized the ex­perience of reading and influence. I believe that when one considers the rhetoric surrounding these notions in Valery's private writing, one can better understand the motive for the ambiguities and contradictions that abound in his published essays on the predecessors who eventually found their way into the Album. The documents of 1891-1898 relevant to Valery's relationship to Mallarme are of particular importance

26 Ms., B.N., dossier Notes sur 'La J.P.'

1 8 · INTROD UCTION

because it is through Mallarme that he eventually defines his own originality. These documents make it clear that the crisis of 1892, when Valery rejected his "old idols" and stopped writing poetry, was a crucial turning point in the evolution of his creative vision. But far more interesting than the cir­cumstances leading toward Valery's discovery of his authentic voice is the drama of that discovery as it is recorded by the poems which he took up at the insistence of Gide and recon­structed according to his new awareness of himself as a poet. It is this transformative drama which I attempt to analyze in Part Two, examining the individual poems of the Album de vers anciens as critical reinterpretations of orphaned works written and abandoned twenty years before and brought back to life by their new poetic father.

PA RT ONE

RE FLECTIONS ON

W R ITI NG

READING AND INFLUENCE

Rien de plus original, rien de plus soi que de se nourrir des autres. Mais il faut Ies digerer. Le lion est fait de mouton assimile. ("Choses tues," Oeuvres II, p. 478)

Ces environs d'une oeuvre lue, ce sont Ies profon-deurs de celui qui la lit; elles s'eveillent ou s'e-meuvent en chacun par Ies differences et Ies con­cordances, Ies consonances ou Ies dissonances qui se declarent de proche en proche entre ce qui etait secretement attendu. (Commentaires de "Cbarmes," Oeuvres I, p. 1508)

Few writers have studied the complexities of language more seriously than Valery; few have addressed themselves more incisively to the problems related to its transformation into poetry. Yet any effort to paraphrase or synthesize Valery's commentaries concerning reading, influence, and originality is bound to meet with considerable frustration. His position on these matters varies significantly according to whether he speaks as a critical reader of others' literary works or in re­sponse to commentaries on his own text. But, moreover, one finds in his pronouncements themselves, whether offered from the perspective of critic or poet, a puzzling inconsistency re­garding the very nature of the literary text that invests his entire theory of poetic creation with an elusive, anti-systematic character. The ambiguities which frequently complicate his theoretical position may in part arise from his conviction that nothing less than the integrity of the self is at stake each time the thinker places himself as writer within the historical con­tinuum through which poetic transmission occurs. Valery's remarks on influence and many of the strategies of his writing often seem ingeniously designed to rescue the singularity of his work from what he perceives as its inevitable absorption by the past. The problem for the critic who seeks to understand

22 · REFLECTIONS ON WRITING

Valery's position regarding his predecessors is that the con­tradictory nature of many of his statements about influence and originality suggests that they are both rationalizations designed to protect his work from time, and lucid reflections on the nature of the work of art and certain fundamental ambiguities peculiar to the structure of language itself.1

The violence of Valery's own figural language, which often emerges when the question of reading is raised, encourages an approach to his works that would locate these contradic­tions in the kind of anxiety and creative blindness that recent theorists of poetic genesis have associated with the modern sense of belatedness.2 In Fragments des memotres d'un poeme,

1 Paul de Man has suggested that for the modern writer there is no real escape from the predicament arising from his intense need to feel that his creation is absolutely original and his simultaneous awareness of the consti­tutive force of the past. "Modernity and history seem condemned to being linked together in a self-destroying union that threatens the survival of both," Blindness and Insight, Essays in the Rhetonc of Contemporary Crittcism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 151. Modern poetry, then, is never "at ease within its own self-definition," and "steadily puts its own ontological status into question," ibid., p. 164. Judged in this view, Valery is a truly modern poet, more modern, say, than his Decadent or Dadaist and Surrealist contemporaries, who appeared never to question their own claims to originality.

2 See, for example, W. Jackson Bate, The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1970); Paul de Man, "The Lyric and Mo­dernity," m Blindness and Insight, and, most notably, Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, a Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) and A Map of Misreading (New York Oxford University Press, 1975).

There are countless examples of Valery's preoccupation with originality registered throughout his notebooks and private writings—too many to cite here. I quote a few which span his career to show that he was really never free of anxiety concerning the impingement of the past on the originality of his thought.

Imagine ce que c'est de trouver, en plein travail, deux ou trois idees Ies plus cheres, Ies plus originates Ies plus centrales—decouvertes a peu pres par autrui—utilisees largement. Et il ne s'agit pas ici d'un theme ou d'un detail litteraire, mais d'un capital. . . . Te rappelles-tu, je te disais aban-donner Ies idees que j'avais des que d'autres me semblaient Ies avoir. Je veux etre maitre chez moi." (Letter to Gide, 19 Mars, 1908)

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING · 23

for example, where Valery recalls his feeling when faced with the prospect of publishing his early verse after some twenty years of poetic silence, he expresses his relationship to his future public as a kill-or-be-killed duel. From the first sentence of this essay published in 1937, he speaks of the fear he ex­periences of losing his identity at the very moment he uncon­sciously seeks to "viser" his public, that is, to bring it under control at gunpoint by the sheer force of his rhetoric:

Je vivais loin de toute litterature, pur de toute intention d'ecrire pour etre lu, et done en paix avec tous Ies etres qui lisent, quand, vers 1912, Gide avec Gallimard me demanderent de reunir et d'imprimer quelques vers que j'avais faits vingt ans avant. . . . Le souvenir bien vague de ces petites pieces ne m'etait pas agreable. . . . C'est que j'avais abandonne la partie . . . en homme . . . qui voit d'abord dans Ie jeu de viser I'esprit des autres la certitude de perdre son "ame,"—je veux dire la liberte,

Mon travail est extremement lent dans son ensemble. . . . Une cause de lenteur est aussi: tel fragment, vers, proposition s'impose et prend une valeur d'habitude. . . . Sa vraie valeur est deguisee par son anteriorite, je me l'impose—et il m'arrete comme condition necessaire, et probleme insoluble. Il faut done un temps Ýçïðçå pour oublier cette fausse valeur et s'apercevoir qu'en supprimant ou changeant Ies choses un peu plus profondement, on gagne et on passe. (1916, Cahiers VI, Paris, C.N.R.S., 1957-1961, p. 370.) Citations to the Cahiers in the body of the text will be to this edition.

Avoir toujours íÝïé pour etre autre que Ies autres, y avoir tout sacrifie.

Avoir eu Ie degout de recommencer ce qui est ecrit partout.

Avoir con§u quelque chose qui jamais n'a ete fait. Lui avoir donne un prix infini. (1922, C. VIII, p. 500)

Je n'aime pas Ies idees des autres, et c'est pour ne pas faire des miennes Ies idees des autres que je ne Ies ai pas publiees. (1924, C. X, p. 163)

La notion du "passe" est a bien separer de celle de la memoire. Nous ne pouvons penser activement que pour avoir OUBLIE Ies origines de notre pensee. (1934, C. XVII, p. 537)

I have found Judith Robinson's edition of the Cahiers Coll. PIeiade (Paris: Gallimard, I, 1973; II, 1974) a valuable tool in locating relevant material throughout this study.

24 · REFLECTIONS ON WRITING

la purete, la singularite et l'universalite de Pintellect. . . . (Oeuvres I, p. 1464, my italics)

Throughout this essay Valery returns over and over to the threat to his autonomy and hence the authenticity of his thought posed by any reader other than himself. It is not that he is afraid of a negative judgment by this unknown public. On the contrary, their approval will only indicate the weakening of his own critical faculties to resist appropriation and hence of the rationally imposed principles he would like to believe govern the structure of his work. The risk, as he will say later in the essay, is that, unbeknownst to himself, he may be se­duced by his awareness of a public into forms of expression which will in turn control him and thus deter him from the great task of self-discovery that he imagined his private writing had come to represent. Thus despite his constant references to the reader as potential enemy, Valery seems to recognize that the danger lies not in the reader at all, but in the duplicity of language itself. This insight does not, however, prevent him from attributing the loss of his autonomy to the fact that he is being read by someone other than himself rather than to anything inherent in language itself. At one point in the essay he even sees himself insidiously invaded and dispossessed of his critical self by these future readers:

Quelle que soit Tissue de l'entreprise, elle nous engage done dans une dependance d'autrui dont l'esprit et Ies gouts que nous Iui pretons s'introduisent ainsi dans I'in-time du notre. Meme la plus desinteressee, et qui se croit la plus farouche, nous eloigne insensiblement du grand dessein de mener notre moi a Textreme de son desir de se posseder, et substitue la consideration de lecteurs prob­ables a notre idee premiere d'un temoin immediat ou d'un juge incorruptible de notre effort. (Ibid., pp. 1465-66)

The battle line is drawn between subjectivities. The writer must fight to keep himself free of the seductive power of the imagined reader in order to remain under the god-like control ("d'un juge incorruptible") of his own critical consciousness.

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING · 25

The passages where Valery describes his own combative reading habits further encourage a psychological explanation of these fears and his consequent preference for journal writ­ing—writing not destined for anyone other than himself. He tells us in the Fragments . . . that he can find interest only in objects of his own creation. Thus his reading is consistently re-creative—he reads against the grain, always refusing the structures presented to him by the writer at hand and substi­tuting his own in their place: "II m'est presque impossible de lire un roman sans me sentir, des que mon attention active s'eveille, substituer aux phrases donnees d'autres phrases que l'auteur aurait pu ecrire tout aussi bien, sans grand dommage pour ses effets" (p. 1468). Echoing the journal entry cited above, he suggests that simply to yield to another's writing is like falling asleep and becoming prey to the dictates of one's seductive affective self: "J'ai 1'impression d'avoir ete joue, manoeuvre, traite comme un homme endormi auquel Ies moindres incidents du regime de son sommeil font vivre l'ab-surde, subir des supplices et des delices insupportables" (p. 1479). The diction he uses in the Cahiers to describe himself as reader is even more candidly aggressive and tells us some­thing about the mode of self-defense that underlies his own evasive literary tactics:

Parmi mes caracteres, celui-ci—(on peut generalised: Je lis avec une rapidite superficielle, pret a saisir ma proie, mais ne voulant articuler en vain des choses evidentes ou indifferentes. Done si j'ecris, je tente d'ecrire de telle sorte que si je me lisais je ne pourrais me lire comme je lis.

Et il en resulte une densite. (C. VIII, p. 32)

One can imagine the excruciating nature of Valery's ordeal the day when he sat on a bench in the Sorbonne among stu­dents taking notes at they listened to Gustave Cohen explicate, stanza by stanza, Valery's own "Cimetiere marin." Listening to himself being read for future readers, listening to his elab­orately constructed poetry of concealment methodically trans­lated into "scientific" prose, was as he put it like witnessing the loss of his own being:

26 · REFLECTIONS ON WRITING

Ce que j'ai publie n'a jamais manque de commentaires, et je ne puis me plaindre du moindre silence sur mes quelques ecrits. Je suis accoutume a etre elucide, disseque, appauvri, enrichi, exalte et abime,—jusqu'a ne plus savoir moi-meme quel je suis, ou de qui Ton parle;—mais ce n'est rien de lire ce qui s'imprime sur votre compte aupres de cette sensation singuliere de s'entendre commenter a l'Universite, devant Ie tableau noir, tout comme un auteur mort. . . . Je me sentais mon Ombre. . . . Je me sentais une ombre capturee. . . . (Oewvres I, p. 1498)

Toward the end of his account of Cohen's reading of himself, Valery resorts to a strategy of self-protection through ironic diversion by evaluating Cohen's achievement according to the values of scientific positivism which would fix and categorize literature in terms of its responsiveness to demonstrable truth; yet his own rhetorical trick seems to provide him with the insight that it is precisely on the level of intentionality that he himself is most vulnerable to such analysis.

Il a recherche mes intentions avec un soin et une methode remarquables, applique a un texte contemporain la meme science et la meme precision qu'il a coutume de montrer dans ses savantes etudes d'histoire litteraire. . . . (Ibid., p. 1506, my italics)

For Valery understanding a writer's intentions in historical terms is tantamount to relegating him to chance, to "acci­dent," to depriving him once and for all of the freedom that constructions of the mind are meant to provide. Having un­dermined the value Cohen attaches to history earlier in the essay, Valery reads against the grain by adapting history or "accident," as he puts it, to his own purposes in order to rescue his poem and hence himself from the clutches of the literary historian. The poem being interpreted in the Sorbonne was, we learn, only the illusion of a finished object—an il­lusion created by the very forces which would insist upon its finite, interpretable nature. Despite the fact that he was still working on the poem, Valery insists, Jacques Riviere simply took it away one day to publish it in his review. This pure

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING · 27

accident or whim had produced the myth of completeness which motivated Cohen's reading. What is more, by removing authority from the reader in this way, Valery is led to question his own identity as author of the text and even of the "self" more generally:

C'est ainsi que par accident fut fixee la figure de cet ou-vrage. Il n'y a point de mon fait. Du reste, je ne puis en general revenir sur quoi que ce soit que j'aie ecrit que je ne pense que j'en ferais tout autre chose si quelque in­tervention etrangere ou quelque circonstance quelconque n'avait rompu l'enchantement de ne pas en finir. . . . Pas plus que la notion d'Auteur, celle du Moi n'est simple: un degre de conscience de plus oppose un nouveau Meme a un nouvel Autre. (Ibid., p. 1500)3

Thus Valery denies a certain kind of "authorship" to his work. This is the work of a self whose skin he has shed, a self which ceases to exist the moment he rereads and hence recreates that

3 The same presentation of his work as unfinished appears in the Nottce Valery wrote in 1926 when he agreed to allow Ronald Davies to publish a collection of unrevised early poems which had appeared in La Conque be­tween 1891 and 1892:

Ad Lectorem Ce petit livre est Ie recueil des poesies pubhees dans la Conque de Pierre Louys, par M. Paul Valery, en 1891 et 1892. Il contient la version primitive de la plupart des pieces qui figurent, profondement modifiees, dans 1 'Album de vers anctens.

On salt que l'auteur n'est pas ennemi du systeme des transformations successives et indefinies d'un ouvrage, et qu'il considere un poeme comme un objet inteneur inepuisable de reprises et de repentirs. (Quoted by Walzer, La Poeste . . . , pp. 53-54)

Edmund Wilson found Valery's readiness to insist upon the unfinished nature of his work whenever he felt especially prey to a critical reading particularly galling in view of the pride Valery displayed regarding the intellectual diffi­culty of his enterprise: "A great poet, we should prefer not to have him continually explaining what superhuman labor it has cost him to compose his poems and intimating that, in comparison with his own work, the poetry of other poets is mosdy facile and superficial—especially when we remember his replying to a correspondent who had complained of some awkward in­version in La Jeune Parque that the reader had happened to hit upon precisely one of the passages in the poem which Valery had 'literally improvised in the hasty lassitude of finishing it up.' " (Axel's Castle, p. 84)

28 · REFLECTIONS ON WRITING

self in a new work. An act of transformation from real, his­torical to abstract, atemporal or metaphorical selves—Paul Valery/Gustave Cohen, Authorial-Self/Reader-Self, Meme/ Autre—is performed which causes the initial assumption of a writer/reader opposition to become a relationship of mutual displacement as Valery reconstructs the genesis of the reading process which occurred that day in the Sorbonne.

It is illuminating to compare Valery's account of Cohen's analytical, dissective reading to the Preface Valery wrote for Alain's commentary on Charmes because a very different im­age of a reader emerges; one which blends with the writer himself, one which both gives birth to and is born from the text read. Alain makes no attempt to capture Valery's thought and present it to others. Rather than to interpret Valery's poems, as Cohen tried to do, he responds to them with a meditation of his own, one which, to the casual reader, often appears to bear no relationship to Valery's text at all, yet nevertheless guarantees its creative force.

. . . c ' e s t e n t e n d r e , I e l o n g d e s v e r s , s e m u r m u r e r I e m o n o ­logue dissolu qui repond a une lecture, la traverse, la soutient d'un contrepoint plus ou moins etroit, l'accom-pagne continuement du discours d'une voix seconde, qui parfois eclate. . . .

Cette ecriture dans Ies marges produit en quelque sorte aux regards Ie complement secret du texte, Ieur montre la fonction du lecteur, rend sensibles Ies environs spiri-tuels d'une lecture. Ces environs d'une oeuvre lue, ce sont Ies profondeurs de celui qui la lit: elles s'eveillent ou s'emeuvent en chacun par Ies differences et Ies concor­dances, Ies consonances ou Ies dissonances qui se declar-ent de proche en proche entre ce qui est lu, et ce qui etait secretement attendu. (Ibid., p. 1508)

The writing that flows all around Valery's own is, then, an emanation not of Alain's particular self, but of his creative potential, secreted and given discrete life by the subject of its contemplation. Rather than a dead body or a shadow, Valery becomes, through his work, an engenderer, and he engenders

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING · 29

a kind of reader who in turn imposes no constraints on his author, but rather serves as a vessel in which the dynamic principles of Valery's own verse are given "meaning" through their translation into another form of meditative discourse. "Alain peuple en philosophe mes constructions de paroles, il Ies anime de merveilleuses significations" (p. 1511).4 Thus emerges the paradoxical image of an ideal reader who is both passive and vigilant, whose critical accompaniment produces a musical score that enriches the significance of the original. The aggressive reader Valery projects into the unknown public when he first considers publishing his work in 1912, that is, the very reader he privately describes himself to be, has been rendered benevolently creative here by the autonomous force of his writing.

This striking difference in Valery's appreciation of Cohen's and Alain's reading of his work is evidence that Valery was not necessarily caught in the grip of a psychological complex involving fear of appropriation by future heirs, but that by reading himself being read he had gained an insight into some-

4 Maurice Blanchot seems to conceive of the act of reading in very similar terms: "La lecture ne fait nen, j'ajoute nen; elle laisse etre ce qui est; elle est liberte, non pas liberte qui donne l'etre ou Ie saisit, mais liberte qui accueille, consent, dit oui, ne peut que dire oui et, dans l'espace ouvert par ce oui, laisse s'affirmer la decision bouleversante de I'oeuvre, l'affirmation qu'elle est—et nen de plus," L'Espace litteraire (Pans: Gallimard, 1955), p. 202, or again: "Lire, ce n'est done pas obtenir communication de I'oeuvre, e'est 'faire' que I'oeuvre se communique et, pour employer une image fautive, e'est etre l'un des deux poles entre lesquels jaillit, par mutuelle attraction et repulsion, la violence eclairante de la communication," ibid., p. 208. In glossing Blan-chot's conception of reading, Paul de Man points out a logical connection between the authorless text and this view of generative reception that seems applicable to Valery: "This passive and silent encounter with the work . . . differs entirely from the subject-object polarities involved in objective obser­vation. . . . Neither are we dealing with a so-called intersubjective or inter­personal act, in which two subjects engage in a self-clarifying dialogue. It would be more accurate to say that the two subjectivities involved, that of the author and that of the reader, cooperate in making each other forget their distinctive identity and destroy each other as subjects. Both move beyond their respective particularity toward a common ground that contains both of them, united by the impulse that makes them turn away from their particular selves." (Blindness and Insight, pp. 63-64)

30 · REFLECTIONS ON WRITING

thing fundamental to his vocation. At times, at least, he seems to understand that the battle for autonomy resides not in a struggle between writer and reader, but rather in a struggle between writer and his own writing. Language itself is du-plicitous; in his darker moments Valery even conceives of it as treacherous, as in this entry from the notebook of 1910, where writing is figured as an unfaithful mistress who gives the self that the writer has "emptied" into her to another:

Qu'importe, pensais-je, l'ecrit? Vais-je me vider dans la parole? Elle est infidele; elle devient etrangere.

(C. IV, p. 452)

At other times, as in the commentary on Alain's reading of Charmes, he credits this evasiveness with the continuing vi­tality of the creative process. In Questions de poesie, an essay written in 1935 as preface to an anthology of NRF poets, he is even capable of connecting misguided strategies of reading with misconceptions concerning the nature of poetic language. Purely analytical or "scientific" types of literary criticism are based on the mistaken assumption that one can separate "forme" and "fond," that one can analyze the thematic or imagistic level of a text in terms of the purely sensorial level of rhythm and sound, for example, produced by the material reality of the word as such.

Distinguer dans Ies vers Ie fond et la forme; un sujet et un developpement; Ie son et Ie sens; considerer la ryth-mique, la metrique et la prosodie comme naturellement et facilement separables de l'expression verbale meme, des mots eux-memes et de la sytitaxe; voila autant de symptomes de non-comprehension ou d'insensibilite en matiere poetique. (Oeuvres I, p. 1293)5

5 Cntics have been too quick to dub Valery a "literary structuralist" because of his insight into the arbitrary composition of language. For a corrective to this view, see Tzvetan Todorov, "Valery's Poetics," Yale French Studies, No. 44,1970, pp. 65-71. Todorov points out that, unlike the structuralists, Valery refuses to see "an equivalence between works of the mind and objects." In his "Poetics Course," Valery insists that works of the mind can only be con-

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Poetic discourse, Valery explains, like the individual word, is made up of an indissoluble but arbitrary union of form and meaning; it is always both sensorial and conceptual at the same time. "Entre la Voix et la Pensee, entre la Pensee et la Voix, entre la Presence et l'Absence, oscille Ie pendule poe-tique" (Poisie et pensee abstraite, ibid., p. 1333). Critics (like Cohen) who try to separate this irreconcilable alliance have not understood the impossibility of a fully adequate interpre­tive act. "Nous avons beau compter Ies pas de la deesse, en noter la frequence et la longueur moyenne, nous n'en tirons pas Ie secret de sa grace instantanee" (Questions de poesie, p. 1285). In this same essay, Valery goes even further to locate the model of the paradoxical structure of language in figures of rhetoric, the very force which in Fragments des memoires d'un poeme he feared would backfire and annihilate him as he turned it on his public. It is worth noting that Valery credits this power to both poet and critic:

Que si je m'avise a present de m'informer de ces emplois, ou plutot de ces abus du langage, que Ton groupe sous Ie nom vague et general de "figures," je ne trouve rien de plus que Ies vestiges tres delaisses de l'analyse fort imparfaite qu'avaient tentee Ies anciens de ces pheno-menes "rhetoriques." Or ces figures, si negligees par la critique des modernes, jouent un role de premiere im­portance, non seulement dans la poesie declaree et or-ganisee, mais encore dans cette poesie perpetuellement agissante qui tourmente Ie vocabulaire fixe, dilate ou re­straint Ie sens des mots, opere sur eux par symetries ou par conversions, altere a chaque instant Ies valeurs de cette monnaie fiduciaire; et tantot par Ies bouches du peuple, tantot pour Ies besoins imprevus de !'expression technique, tantot sous la plume hesitante de l'ecrivain, engendre cette variation de la langue qui la rend insen-siblement tout autre, (p. 1289-90)

sidered "in either their production or consumption activities," that is, only in an action. "Outside of this action, all that remains is but an object that offers no particular relationship to the mind." (Cited by Todorov, p. 67)

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Readers like Alain do not try to interpret poetic writing ac­cording to a quantitative analysis of its structural components, but allow its fundamentally subversive nature to produce in themselves a commentary which is both complementary and discontinuous. Unlike the reader whom the authority-obsessed Valery proposes for himself in the Cahiers—"Auteur obscur, je ne fais rien pour permettre au lecteur de sauter. Je veux etre ou suivi ou quitte, mais point Ies deux ensemble" (XIV, p. 69),—the commentary he approves of here is one which does just that—both follows and leaves him as it accompanies his script in the margin; a commentary produced by the very discontinuities which constitute Valery's own writing. What appears to be a surface structure ("ces environs d'une oeuvre lue") turns out to have secret depths from which a new ("ce sont Ies profondeurs de celui qui la lit"), equally deceptive text emerges. He even goes so far as to claim that poetic transmission occurs unconsciously ("Le Poete, sans Ie savoir, se meut dans un ordre de relations et de transformations pos­sibles, dont il ne pergoit ou ne poursuit que Ies effets mo-mentanes et particuliers qui Iui importent dans tel etat de son operation interieure.... La Poesie se forme ou se communique dans l'abandon Ie plus pur ou dans l'attente la plus profonde ...," p. 1290) and compares the poet's function to that of a miner or diamond cutter whose task it is to remove the crude rock in which the precious gem is embedded so as to reveal its "figure bizarre." Valery seems to be recognizing here that the poet-maker, the technician, the formalist, can go only so far before language itself takes over. The trope for poetry as "ces cristaux de figure bizarre" asserts that figural language possesses a structure which defies penetration.

This insight into the limitations imposed upon the writer by the nature of his instrument may account for Valery's genuine originality as a poet, but it by no means granted him peace of mind; indeed, it is an insight which much of his theoretical writing about poetry seems to vigorously deny. Eliot's image of Valery as scientist in rational control of his experiment is one shared by many intelligent readers and is based on the theories Valery elaborated regarding his project

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throughout his life. Perhaps it was because Valery understood that one is never free of the structures of language that he became all the more determined to define his originality pre­cisely in terms of his mastery over these structures inherited from the past. He liked to distinguish himself from his rev­olutionary avant-garde contemporaries—the Futurists, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists, for example—by opposing the enabling power of literary conventions and traditional pros-odic constraints to the dissipating force of modishness. In his notebooks Valery always refers to the iconoclastic procedures advocated by Breton with the utmost contempt:

Litter(ature) modernissime—A(ndre) B(reton) etc.— Maximum de facilite et maximum de scandale—produire Ie max(imum) de scandale par Ie maximum de facilite. Surr(ealisme)—Ie salut par Ies dechets. (C. XII, p. 742)6

6 Breton, in turn, was often highly critical of Valery, as one would expect, but their relationship was not always that of antagonists. When Breton first began writing, Valery served as a kind of mentor to him, reading his work, advising him. Breton seemed, in fact, to idolize Valery during the "silent" years, seeing him as a second Rimbaud. It was when Valery returned to writing poetry that Breton became repelled by his conservatism. Breton's remarks to Andre Pannaud in an interview in 1952 are surprisingly candid regarding his former admiration for France's poet laureat:

P. On aimerait savoir si, a vos yeux, dans ce passage d'un siecle a l'autre, il existait au moins un homme capable d'assurer la liaison?

B. Oui, certes, il s'appelait Paul Valery, et il etait seul de son espece. Longtemps il fut pour moi la grande emgme. De Iui je savais a peu pres par coeur La Sotree avec M. Teste. . . . Pour moi Valery avait atteint a la formulation supreme: un etre cree par Iui . . . s'etait porte a ma rencontre.

P. Etiez-vous aussi sensible a ses poemes d'autrefois?

B. . . . Chaque fois que j'avais mis la main sur l'un d'eux, je ne parvenais pas a en epuiser Ie mystere et Ie trouble. Il y allait d'une pente tres glissante de la reverie, volontiers erotique d'ailleurs. Je pense a un poeme comme "Anne." . . .

On Valery's silence:

B. C'est ce qui me Ie rendait, de loin, Ie plus fascinant.... Je pensais qu'en Valery, M. Teste avait a jamais pns Ie pas sur Ie poete et meme sur '!'amateur de poemes,' comme il s'etait plu naguere a se definir. A mes

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T o be classical or "modern" for Valery is to accept certain rules of the game inherent in the structure of language, genre, and prosody so that one can remain in rational control of one's text.

Entre classique et romantique la difference est bien sim-ple: c'est celle que met un metier entre celui qui I'ignore et celui qui I'a appris. Un romantique qui a appris son art devient un classique. Voila pourquoi le romantisme a fini par le Parnasse. (C. VII, p. 4 6 6 )

It was Baudelaire's recognition of the importance of form over theme and the necessity of the constraints of convention that made him both classical and modern for Valery and that m-spired the younger poet's somewhat grudging admiration:

Le classique impiique done des actes volontaires et refle-chies qui modifient une production "naturelle," con-formement a une conception claire et rationnelle de I'homme et de I'art Comme on le voit par les sciences, nous ne pouvons faire oeuvre rationnelle et construire

yeux, il beneficiait par la du prestige inherent a un mythe qu'on a pu voir se constituer autour de Rimbaud—celui de I'homme tournant le dos, un beau jour a son oeuvre comme si, certains sonnets atteints, elle "repoussait" en quelque sorte son createur. . . . Rien ne resista a la deception, a la desillusion de le voir tout a coup contredire son attitude, publier de nouveaux vers, retoucher (d'ailleurs maladroitement) ceux d'autrefois, tenter—mais bien en vain—de faire revivre M. Teste. (£«-trettens 1913-1952 avec Andre Parmaud. Pans; Gallimard, 1952, pp. 14-16)

In a sense, it was Valery himself who authorized Breton's pejorative as-sessment of the Album, for in 1916 he wrote the following critique of his work to Breton:

Je fais des vers, devoir et artifice, jeu depuis longtemps oublie. Pourquoi? II y a des raisons. Ne fut-ce que I'etat de guerre, trop excitant pour admettre, a cote, des analyses et des rigueurs suivies (d'autres motifs aussi!). C'est une poesie surannee qui m'ennuie et que je prolonge in-definiment. Rien de ce que vous aimez ni moi-meme. Je me figure un travail du temps des vers latins. II y a eu des rheteurs, jadis, a I'heure d'Attila et de Gensenc, qui mastiquaient des hexametres dans un com. Pour qui? Pour Quoi {Oeuvres II, p. 1615)

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par ordre que moyennant un ensemble de conventions. L'art classique se reconnait a l'existence, a la nettete, a l'absolutisme de ces conventions; qu'il s'agisse des trois unites, des preceptes prosodiques, des restrictions du vo-cabulaire, ces regies d'apparence arbitraire et devenues difficiles a defendre, presque impossibles a observer, elles n'en procedent pas moins d'une antique, subtile et pro-fonde entente des conditions de la jouissance intellectuelle sans melange. (Oeuvres I, pp. 604-05)

Valery affirms the same view in the account of his decision to return to poetry, this time dismissing with contempt the extravagant claims and innovations of his more radical young contemporaries. He even devastatingly points out that their use of a rhetoric that enacts a rupture with the past reveals the "symmetry" of their determination to be original:

D'ailleurs, Ies combinaisons ne sont pas en nombre infini; et si Ton se divertissait a faire l'histoire des surprises qui furent imaginees depuis un siecle, et des oeuvres produits a partir d'un effet d'etonnement a provoquer,—soit par la bizarrerie, Ies deviations systematiques, Ies anamor­phoses, soit par Ies violences de langage, ou Penormite des aveux, on formerait assez facilement Ie tableau de ces ecarts, absolus ou relatifs, ou paraitrait quelque distri­bution curieusement symetrique des moyens d'etre orig­inal. (Ibid., p. 1488)

Again, when speaking to the conservative French Academy, Valery assumes an attitude toward the past clearly meant to distinguish him from the radical avant-garde:

Il n'est rien de plus neuf que l'espece d'obligation d'etre entierement neufs que l'on impose aux ecrivains. Il faut une bien grande et intrepide humilite, de nos jours, pour oser s'inspirer d'autrui. On observe plutot assez souvent une contrainte, une volonte trop sensible de priorite, et, en somme, je ne sais quelle affectation d'une virginite qui n'est pas toujours delicieuse. Ni Virgile, ni Racine, ni Shakespeare, ni Pascal ne se sont prives de nous laisser

3 6 ' REFLECTIONS O N WRITING

voir qu'ils avaient lu. Mais dedaignant Popinion recente et regardant de plus pres, il est facile d'eclaircir cette petite question de vanite. (Remerciement a I'Academie fran-qaise, ibid., pp. 731-32)

This characteristic generosity toward the past whenever his contemporaries' claims for originality are at stake can be found even in Valery's youth. When he aligned himself with the Decadents rather than the Symbolists, he did so not to insist on the destructive, iconoclastic elements of Decadentism, but rather to keep himself free of any incipient dogmatism and to protect himself from any vulgarizing appropriation by the public. The eighteen-year-old poet who introduced himself to Pierre Louys was already capable of irony directed both at his peers for their quarrels with definitions ("tout cela m'est egal") and at himself for his cliched account of the will to be new ("quel jargon"). Nevertheless, at this age, his feigned indifference to fashion is belied by his repeated efforts to define who he is in terms of these fashions.

. . . Vous etes un fier dicadent—j'ai dit dicadent (sans penser a une decadence pas plus qu'a une Renaissance— tout cela m'est egal)—decadent pour moi veut dire, artiste ultra affine, protege par une langue savante contre l'as-saut du vulgaire, encore vierge des sales baisers du pro-fesseur de litterature,7 glorieux du mepris du journaliste, mais elaborant pour lui-meme et quelques dizaines de ses pairs . . . l'esprit toujours pret a exprimer Ie jus de toutes Ies impressions de l'etre (quel jargon!), vivant en un mot mille vies!

Voila pourquoi je ne m'intitule pas Esthete ni sym-

7 Here Valery's youthful declaration of radicalism is reminiscent of Rim­baud's letter to Izambard, Charleville, 13 mai 1871 (Rimbaud, Oeuvres [Paris: Garnier-Freres, 1960], p. 343)

Cher Monsieur! Vous revoila professeur . . . vous faites partie des corps enseignants.

... Au fond, vous ne voyez en votre pnncipe que poesie subjective: votre obstination a regagner Ie rateher universitaire—pardon!—Ie prouve. Mais vous finirez toujours comme un satisfait qui n'a nen fait. . . .

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boliste—cela a des significations trop precises et trop etroites. Je suis esthete et symboliste mais a mon heure, mais je veux quand il me plaira de Ie faire, verlainiser, oublier la rime, Ie rythme, la grammaire, vagir a ma guise et laisser crier mes sens . . . et je suis Decadent. (A Pierre Loiiys, 22 juin, 1890)8

Thus for Valery originality is even more strikingly felt when a writer is given less rather than more freedom from the con­straints imposed by the conventions of genre and prosody. He resists the authorization for radical formal innovations which the Symbolists and the vers libristes offered him, returning to the fixed forms favored by the Parnassians in order to focus more intensely the poetic deviations he introduces. Gerard Genette can thus persuasively argue that Valery considered the formal inventions of the past to play an essential role in the creations of the present: indeed, that the "new" is really a bringing to life of what was inherent in the "old."

Pour Valery comme pour Borges, Ie vrai createur n'est pas celui qui invente, mais celui qui decouvre (c'est-a-dire invente de qui veut etre invente), et Ie critere de valeur d'une creation n'est pas dans sa nouveaute, mais a l'in-verse, dans son anciennete profonde: "ce qui est Ie meil-Ieur dans Ie nouveau est ce qui repond a un desir ancien." (Oeuvres II, p. 561) La vraie surprise, la surprise infinie qui est l'objet de l'art ne natt pas d'une rencontre avec l'inattendu; elle tient a "une disposition toujours renais-sante, et contre laquelle toute l'attente du monde ne peut prevaloir." (p. 560)9

There is no doubt, however, despite his disclaimers to the contrary whenever the so-called avant-garde is concerned, that Valery is never as sanguine about the uses of the past as Eliot appeared to be. His generous insistence on the creative value of working within certain formal conventions is not always

8 Lettres a quelques-uns (Paris: Gallimard, 1952, pp. 12-13). ' "La Litterature comme telle," Figures I (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966,

p. 263).

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matched by a similar generosity regarding the accomplish­ments of his literary fathers. For Valery, the past conceived as a body of literature is not so much a well from which one drinks, as a threatening force to be identified, assimilated, and overcome. In 1902 he wrote to Henri de Regnier: "L'existence litteraire est a demi faite de gigantesques combats contre Ie passe."10 The first epigraph I have placed at the head of this part of my study, "Le lion est fait de mouton assimile," is not uncharacteristic of Valery's rhetoric whenever the question of influence is at stake. Moreover where other writers' "debts" to each other are concerned, Valery significantly replaces the figure of the Titan or Lion by the one of thief. In the essay on Baudelaire, he points to an unacknowledged plagiarism in Baudelaire's Preface to his translation of Poe's stories, and at the end of L'ldie fixe, as an illustration of the naivete of any belief in radical originality, he evokes the "vol a la tire" scene stolen by Dickens in Oliver Twist from Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris:

Vous rappelez-vous l'etrange exercise de vol a la tire au-quel se livrent Ies truands et filous dans la Cour des Mi­racles? .. . Ces messieurs, s'entrainent a subtiliser la bourse d'un mannequin pendu, et tout cousu de sonnettes et de grelots. C'est tres difficile. Au moindre mouvement, Ie pendu reagit; en avant la musique! Le coup est manque.— Mais la meme histoire est dans Dickens, dans Oliver Twist. . . . Dickens l'aura volee a Hugo.—Sans faire Ie moindre bruit. . . . Mais qu'est-ce que je viens faire la-dedans? Je n'ai devalise personne: et si quelques-uns m'ont explore Ies poches, je n'ai pas fait Ie moindre bruit. (Oeuvres II, pp. 272-73)

Valery often suggests that innovation is generated out of deftly concealed, but intensely critical, readings of one's predeces­sors.11 It was, he considered, Baudelaire's assimilation of Poe

10 Lettres a Quelques-uns, p. 66. 11 Claude Hoffmann goes so far as to stress Valery's obsessive concern with

originality throughout his life in order to explain the poet's unconscious

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combined with his ability to read Romantic literature a re­borns, so to speak, which helped to define him, for the public anyway, as a classic and a progenitor of modern poetry: "L'oeuvre romantique, en general, supporte assez mal une lecture ralentie et herissee des resistances d'un lecteur difficile et raffine. Baudelaire etait ce lecteur" (Oeuvres I, p. 601).

Valery's acknowledgment of the enabling or debilitating effect of anteriority, both on habits of the mind and on the linguistic structures which, to some extent, shape all com­munication, was intimately connected with his effort to pre­serve "his freedom, his purity, his singularity, the universality of his intellect," in a word, his autonomy. The elaborate sleight of hand by which he often seeks to retrieve himself from the past and defend himself against the future can be most clearly discerned, not surprisingly, in the essays where he presents himself as reader of his various poetic fathers.

The priority Valery accords certain texts is determined by their power to resist appropriation by the public. Least inter­esting are those message-laden works which use language as an instrument to explain and elucidate reality, as a conceptual tool possessing no inherent value of its own. Newspaper writ­ing supplies the extreme example. These journalistic texts flat­ter and soothe the reader in his belief that language, and by extension the writer's organization of it, interpose no obstacle between the author and the world. They are deceptively kind, "humanistic" texts of the sort Valery claimed Anatole France preferred, texts which lull the unsuspecting reader into a state

suppression of certain literary sources in his own work—unconscious "pla­giarisms" of the sort Valery himself accuses Baudelaire of committing in the Preface to the Histoires extraordmaires. "De quelques sources a Paul Valery," Entretiens sur Paul Valery (Paris: Mouton, 1968). Valery's response to Hoff­mann would probably have been to say that if the sources were that apparent (Michelet's Sorctere in La Jeune Parqtte, according to Hoffmann), then he had simply not assimilated them thoroughly enough: "Plagiaire est celui qui a mal digere la substance des autres: il en rend Ies morceaux reconnaissables. L'onginalite, affaire d'estomac. Il n'y a pas d'ecnvains onginaux, car ceux qui meriteraient ce nom sont inconnus; et meme inconnaissables. Mais il en est qui font figure de l'etre." (Oeuvres II, p. 677)

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of unconscious receptivity. Writing of this sort produces the kind of reading Valery compared to falling asleep or to "letting go" with a potentially treacherous mistress. Like his Symbolist contemporaries whom A. France frequently ridiculed for their elitism and obscurity, Valery clearly despised this kind of com­mercial discourse produced by liberal Republican humanists for consumption by a naive public. It is one of the ironies of history that Valery should finally have inherited France's seat in the French Academy. Only in the world of ceremony and officialdom could France be considered Valery's predecessor, and the younger poet made this very clear in his acceptance speech—a speech which became famous or infamous for its icy condescension and sarcasm. Valery is particularly hostile when he describes France's easy and ingratiating style, which in fact hides in its folds satiric barbs aimed at the very public it is seducing:

Il sembla que l'aisance, la clarte, la simplicite revenaient sur la terre. Ce sont des deesses qui plaisent a la plupart. On aima tout de suite un langage qu'on pouvait gouter sans trop y penser, qui seduisait par une apparence si naturelle, et de qui la limpidite, sans doute, laissait tran-sparaitre parfois une arriere-pensee, mais non myste-rieuse; mais au contraire toujours bien lisible, sinon tou-jours toute rassurante. Il y avait dans ses livres un art consomme de l'effleurement des idees et des problemes Ies plus graves. Rien n'y arretait Ie regard, si ce n'est la merveille meme de n'y trouver nulle resistance.

Quoi de plus precieux que l'illusion delicieuse de la clarte qui nous donne Ie sentiment... de gouter du plaisir sans peine, de comprendre sans attention, de jouir du spectacle sans payer? (Ibid., p. 722, my italics)

France is portrayed as a parasite who prostitutes language to flatter the public's deluded sense of well-being. By the end of the Academy address, his "illustrious predecessor," whom Valery significantly refuses to name anywhere in the speech, emerges as an example of a writer-assimilator, an absolutely unoriginal spirit and hence a predecessor incapable of a gen-

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erative influence of any kind—quite simply a conduit through which the past flows, unobstructed and unmodified.12

In the same address Valery describes the period in the 1890's, when he first began to write, as one in which literate readers were divided in their loyalites between the easily readable texts of the type France wrote and a new kind of intentionally obscure text (Decadent and Symbolist, no doubt) which re-sisted penetration except by an elite of initiates:

C'est alors que se produisit le phenomene tres remar-quable d'une division profonde dans le peuple cultive. Entre les amateurs d'une beaute qui n'offre pas de re-sistance et les amants de celle qui exige d'etre conquise, entre ceux qui tenaient la litterature pour un art d'agre-ment immediat, et ceux qui poursuivaient sur toute chose une expression exquise et extreme de leur ame et du monde, obtenue a tout prix, il se creusa une sorte d'abime, mais un abime traverse dans les deux sens de quolibets et de risees (p. 7 2 0 )

The form-conscious works of the Decadents and the Sym-boUsts ( "amants" rather than "amateurs" of beauty) clearly represent a superior type of writing for Valery—writmg which

" "On le voit au )ardin des racines fran^aises attirant a soi la plus odorante et la plus rare, et quelquefois la plus naive des fleurs; combmant ses bouquets et ciselant ses haies; grand amateur de culture, pour qui Part de la taille et de la greffe n'a point de secrets. Ainsi nourri de miel, visitant legerement les vastes tresors de I'histoire et de I'archeologie, comme il faisait ceux de la litterature, mais ne haissant pas les douceurs, les facilites, les liberies de son temps, recevant les suffrages du public et des femmes, disposant a sa guise des amusements de la societe, et ne se faisant faute, au milieu de tant d'a-vantages, en depit de tant de delices, d'observer les contradictions, de saisir et de tourmenter les ridicules, il composait a I'aise ses ouvrages ou circulait, sous les beautes d'un agrement perpetual, un jugement assez smistre; et il vivait suptoeurement" (pp. 729-730).

Henri Mondor attributes Valery's lifelong hostility toward Anatole France to France's rejection m 1874 of Mallarme's "Apres-midi d'un faune" for publication in the third installment of Le Pamasse contemporam. France voted against Mallarme's friends Francois Coppee and Theodore de Banville, claiming that the pubhc would laugh at them if they were to publish it. See Vte de Mallarme (Pans: Gallimard, 1941), pp. 372-73.

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seeks through a variety of deviations to call attention to itself as artifice, and in so doing invites the kind of recreative ap­proach which we have seen characterizes Valery's own reading habits. This kind of writing is superior to the first, then, be­cause it is generative of new forms and may even produce a great writer like Baudelaire. But precisely because self-con-sciously experimental texts of the sort produced by the Par­nassians and many of the minor Symbolists reveal no pro­found, critical insight into the ambiguities of their own structures, they are prey to the designing intellects of the very writers who turn to them as a source of inspiration. Valery, tormented as he was by his own position in history, could not fail to note that their impressive power was, paradoxically, the source of their weakness:

La maitrise, Ie mot Ie dit, est de sembler commander aux moyens de Part—au lieu d'en etre visiblement commande.

Il en resulte que la maitrise est parfois prise au defaut et vaincue par quelque original, qui, par chance ou par don, cree de nouveaux moyens—et semble d'abord mettre au monde un monde nouveau. Mais il ne s'agit jamais que de moyens. (Oeuvres II, p. 565)

Triumphant over the past, these texts which invite an inter­ested critical reading through predominantly technical means are still at the mercy of the future. In Existence du Symbolisme, Valery presents the portrait of a young poet—clearly a pro­jection of himself—who comes of age in the '80's. His reaction to Parnassian poetry illustrates the limitations of this type of writing: ". . . Ies Poetes du Parnasse se font admirer de Iui pendant quelque temps, Ie temps qu'il faut a un esprit delie pour s'assimiler Ies precedes et Ies conventions dont !'obser­vance conduit a faire assez facilement des vers d'apparence assez difficile"13 (Oeuvres I, p. 697).

13 It is important to remember that Parnassianism represented the poetic avant-garde of the '70's in reaction against Romanticism, and that the Dec-

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Valery's own early verse is typical of such "school" poetry. One can imagine the shock of the forty-year-old writer when he looked back at the highly derivative works he had written in the '90's and saw himself historicized, a relic of the past, in a word, "ancien." From his account in Fragments des mi-moires d'un poeme, we learn that at first his work had an unpleasantly antiquated, dead quality ("choses sechees"). It

adent poets of the '80's continued to work within the fixed forms and rules of prosody set down by this school. Like that of the Parnassians, the poetic vocabulary of the Decadents was meant to evoke exotic or lost moments of history, to conjure forth a visible and sonorous dream landscape "tout mi-roitant de pourpre et d'or." The word "decadent" itself suggested a particular time in history and a vision of cyclical renewal common to Parnassian thought. Verlaine, the idol of the young Decadents m 1885, began by writing Par­nassian poetry. Valery recognized both Verlaine's and Mallarme's debt to Parnassiamsm, for he wrote in an article on Verlame in Le Gaulois, 1921:

Leconte de Lisle aurait pu, d'un oeil philosophique et satisfait, considerer que cette posterite rebelle avait en somme pour guides, sinon pour au-teurs, deux fits prodigues du Parnasse. J'ai grand'peur qu'il n'ait jamais fait que maudire, avec une certaine verve amere, ses enfants et ses petits enfants. . . . Verlaine et Mallarme, parus a un tel moment, apres tant de maitres, du vivant meme de Victor Hugo et de Baudelaire, et issus de ce groupe du Parnasse qui forme une sorte de grand poete a plusieurs tetes, durent prendre la suite du jeu et s'asseoir a la place meme des joueurs Ies plus fortunes. Us furent conduits, chacun selon sa nature, l'un a renouveler, l'autre a parfaire notre poesie anteneure. (Oeuvres I, pp. 712, 713)

The rules set down by Leconte de Lisle did not produce great poetry: "Mais Ieur systeme qui eut Ie merite de s'etre oppose a la negligence de la forme et du langage, si sensible chez tant de romantiques, Ies conduisait a une ngueur factice, a une recherche de l'effet et du beau vers, a un emploi de termes rares, de noms etrangers, de magnificences tout apparentes, qui offusquaient la poesie sous des ornements arbitrages et inanimes" (Oeuvres I, p. 697). They did, however, provide a point de repere for intelligent and innovative young poets who began their careers by assimilating them and adapting them to their own imaginative visions. Valery himself observed many of the precepts of Parnassiamsm—primacy given to rime rtche, for example—although he often referred to the poetry of Parnasse and especially the poetry of Leconte de Lisle with irony and condescension. In Passage de Verlaine he writes, for example: "En ce temps-la, Leconte de Lisle, tout vivant et venerable qu'il etait, etait deja pour un grand nombre une ombre vaine. Il etait, du moms, hors de cause." (Oeuvres I, p. 712)

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presented itself as the withered corpse of a former self ("quant a moi, c'est-a-dire au receuil ou herbier de choses sechees .. and he refused to grant it his paternity ("se relire sans ombre de tendresse, sans paternite"). But the critical reader who began irresistibly to rewrite these poems, gradually pu­rifying them of their most blatant "period" flavor, initiated a process whereby the poetry of his youth came back to life as it bore evidence of reflection upon its own genesis.

D'autres observations m'induisirent a repenser d'an-ciennes idees que je m'etais faites de l'art du poete; a Ies remettre au net; a Ies exterminer Ie plus souvent. Je trou-vais bientot un amusement a essayer de corriger quelques vers. . .. Il faut avouer qu'il n'est pas sans exemple qu'en effleurant ainsi, sans se laisser engager, Ies claviers de l'esprit, on en tire parfois des combinaisons tres heu-reuses. .. . C'etait jouer avec Ie feu. Mon divertissement me conduisait ou je ne pensais pas d'aller...." (pp. 1480-81)

As the last two cryptic sentences suggest, reflection on his own creative process inevitably led to a more profound understand­ing of the nature of writing itself, and this would be to "play with fire." The critical attention required to maintain this complex perspective of writer reading himself write produces a polyphonous and polyvalent text far more worthy of ad­miration than the well wrought poem which bears no witness to the dynamics of its own construction.

Mais toutes ces delicatesses ordonnees a la duree de l'edi-fice etaient peu de chose au prix de celles dont il usait, quand il elaborait Ies emotions et Ies vibrations de l'ame du futur contemplateur de son oeuvre. (Eupalinos, Oeuvres II, p. 86)

This metacritical dimension as an integral part of the poem's formal structure is what for Valery distinguishes his work from that of many of his Symbolist contemporaries and, as I have said in my introduction, is what constitutes his origi­nality. Again, in his reminiscences of his state of mind when

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he returned to writing poetry, he states, as if in anticipation of the type of criticism which T. S. Eliot would level against him:14

Je repondais en esprit a certains prejuges qui m'avaient choque autrefois. En ce temps-la, regnait une opinion, qui n'est peut-etre pas tout a fait sans substance . . . presque tous pensaient, quoique assez vaguement, que Ies analyses et Ie travail de l'intellect, Ies developpements de volonte et Ies precisions ou il engage la pensee ne s'ac-cordent pas avec je ne sais quelle naivete de source, quelle surabondance de puissance ou quelle grace de reverie que Ton veut trouver dans la poesie. . . . Je n'aimais pas cette opinion. . . . Je ne pouvais done souffrir (des 1892) que Ton opposat l'etat de poesie a Taction complete et sou-tenue de l'intellect." (Oeuvres I, pp. 1481-82)

There emerges through the process of revision which cul­minated in the Album de vers anciens a new understanding of the creative act as that which envelops but is greater than the past because it is structured in such a way as to thwart any totalizing reading. "Limitation consciente de mon acte est un nouvel acte qui enveloppe toutes Ies adaptations pos­sibles du premier" (Introduction a la methode de Leonard de Vinci, Oeuvres I, p. 1163). One senses the audacity of Valery's claim for authority here. Not only would he be stronger than his engendering predecessors, but he would escape any mod­ification by his successors ("toutes Ies adaptations possibles") by making of his writing a "Theatre pensif," a dramatic figural account of thought in the process of discovering its own lim­itations. "Limitation qu'on en fait depouille une oeuvre de l'imitable" (Oeuvres II, p. 563). The highest form of writing, for Valery, then, is one which resists intrusion from the out­side, because it includes its own critical questioning. It can only be read in the way Alain read Cbarmes—not to be in­terpreted or assimilated, but as the source of inspiration for another script, entirely different, and at the same time, com-

14 See p. 16 of Introduction.

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plementary to itself, a script in the margins of his own, so to speak.

In order to elaborate his theory of authentic influence, Va-Iery turns to the example of his most immediate predecessor. Mallarme's poetry is one which for him possesses this extreme independence of being, "un objet en quelque sorte absolu, du a un equilibre de forces intrinseques, soustrait par un prodige de combinaisons reciproques a ces vagues velleites de retouche et de changements que l'esprit pendant ses lectures α>ηςοϊί inconsciemment devant la plupart des textes" (Lettre sur Mal-lartne, Oeuvres I, p. 639). Unaffected by any outside reader, it produces in him, nevertheless, a profound transformational reaction generative of a new text, a reaction which Valery compares in the same essay on Mallarme to the refractive effect of a crystal on a ray of light. Whereas a non-crystalline or transparent text is one which allows the reader's eye to pass through it in a straight line, continuing as imitator the experience of the predecessor unchanged, a crystalline text causes, by the density and uniqueness of its structure, extreme deviation, a radical swerve in a new direction, resulting in another work of extreme originality:

L'eclat de ces systemes cristallins, si purs et comme ter-mines de toutes parts, me fascinait. Ils n'ont point la transparence du verre, sans doute; mais rompant en quelque sorte Ies habitudes de l'esprit sur leurs facettes et dans Ieur dense structure, ce qu'on nomme Ieur obscurite n'est, en verite, que Ieur refrtngetice. (p. 639)

The metaphor is the same one we have seen Valery use in Questions de poesie as his trope for that impenetrable and autonomous quality of language which poetry or figural dis­course represents. Thus Mallarme's work stood for Valery as the figure for language itself.

Valery credits few nineteenth-century French poets with the power of influence. He devotes major critical essays to only three of them: Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and Stephane

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Mallarme,15 and in all three of these essays he identifies the poet as an engendering force because of the importance at­tached to formal relationships rather than to thematic content. He entitles his essay on Hugo "Victor Hugo, createur par la forme"; he understands Baudelaire's originality in terms of the double perspective which structures his works; and he describes Mallarme's discourse as a type of metalanguage which seemed to successfully eliminate reference to anything beyond itself.

Il ne parlait jamais . . . de ses idees que par figures. L'enseignement explicite Iui repugnait etrangement. . . . La litterature ordinaire me semblait comparable a une arithmetique . . . celle qu'il concevait me paraissait an­alogue a une algebre, car elle supposait la volonte de mettre en evidence . . . les formes du langage. (Demiere visite a Mallarme, Oeuvres I, p. 631)16

But of these three poets, it is only Mallarme whom Valery acknowledges as having exerted a decisive refracting influence on his own work, causing him to break abruptly with all previous models and to have renewed faith in the value of his enterprise:

15 Judith Robinson in Rimbaud, Valery et I'tncoherence harmomque (Paris: Lettres modernes, 1979) has documented Valery's continuing admiration for Rimbaud's work throughout his life, even after all of the other "idols" had fallen by the wayside. It is curious that he never wrote an essay on Rimbaud. His answer to Paterne Berrichon, who asked him to present "Les Mains de Jeanne-Mane" to the public, is revelatory in this regard: "Ecnre sur Rimbaud me demanderait des annees de reflexion. Je l'ai bien vu par un essai que )'ai tente, sur Mallarme. J'ai fini par abandonner la partie. . . ." (Cited by Rob­inson, p. 16)

16 Valery uses the same analogy in Passage de Verlatne, Oeuvres I, p. 713:

Stephane Mallarme, genie essentiellement formel, s'elevant, peu a peu, a la conception abstraite de toutes les combinaisons de figures et de tours, s'est fait Ie premier ecrivain qui ait ose envisager Ie probleme litteraire dans son entiere universahte. Je dirai seulement qu'il a con^u comme algebre ce que tous les autres n'ont pense que dans la particularite de !'arithmetique. . . .

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A l'age encore assez tendre de vingt ans, et au point critique d'une etrange et profonde transformation intel-lectuelle, je subis Ie choc de l'oeuvre de Mallarme; je connus la surprise, Ie scandale intime instantane, et l'e-blouissement, et la rupture de mes attaches avec mes idoles de cet age. Je me sentis devenir comme fanatique; j'e-prouvai la progression foudroyante d'une conquete spi-rituelle decisive. (Lettr e sur . . . , p. 637 )

It is in the essays devoted to Mallarme that Valery addresses himself to the problem of influence most directly, proposing at times a vision of originality far more radical than the one suggested in the essays on either Hugo or Baudelaire. Even more extreme than his concept of redirection through refrac­tion rather than assimilation, are the numerous descriptions of Mallarme's work which suggest that it bears no traces of any antecedents at all, that it appeared to Valery almost as if it had sprung e x - n i h i l o out of the brain of its creator. 1 7

W hen Valery digresses to expand upon the phenomenon of influence in Lettre sur Ma l l a r m e ( " I I n'est pas de mot qui vienne plus aisement ni plus souvent sous la plume de la cri­tique que Ie mot d'influence"), he insists paradoxically upon both the necessity of a predecessor for any new form to be born ("Nous savons ... que cette activite derivee est essentielle a la production dans tous Ies genres . . . que toujours c e q u i se fai t repete c e qu i fu t f a i t , ou Ie refute..." ) and the invisibility of that predecessor-work wherever powerful influence has been exerted ("II arrive que l'oeuvre de l'un ôåòïÀíå dans l'etre de l'autre une valeur toute singuliere, y engendre des conse ­quences agissantes qu'il etait impossible de prevoir et qui se

17 Of "Un Coup de des," he says, for example:

. . . l a , s u r I e p a p i e r m e m e , j e n e s a i s q u e l l e s c i n t i l l a t i o n d e d e r m e r s a s t r e s tremblait infimment pure dans Ie meme vide interconscient ou, comme une matiere de nouvelle espece, distnbuee en amas, en trainees, en sy-stemes, coexistait la Parole!

Cette fixation sans exemple me petnfiait, L'ensemble me fascinait comme si un astensme nouveau dans Ie ciel se fut propose; comme si une con­stellation eut paru qui evit enfin sigmfie quelque chose. . . . (Oeuvres I, p. 624)

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f o n t ass e z so u v e n t impossi b l e s a dec e l e r. . . . Nous dis o n s qu ' u n au t e u r es t o riginal q u a n d no u s so m m e s da n s Pi g n o r a n c e de s tr a n s f o r m a t i o n s ca c h e e s qu i cha n g e r e n t Ies aut r e s en Iui . . .") (pp. 634-35). Her e , as ear l i e r in his de s c r iption of in­f l u e n c e th r o u g h th e optica l me t aphor of ref r a c t i o n or in his de s c r iption of Ala i n ' s co m m e n t a r y on C h a r m e s, V a l e r y posit s th e ext r e m e or i g i n a l i t y of both w o r k s. Withou t th e precu r s o r wo r k , th e r e wo u l d be no bir t h , ye t wh a t co n s t i t u t e s th e ori g ­i n a l i t y of th e eng e n d e r e d fo r m ca n n o t be tra c e d to its pro­g e n i t o r. 18 B u t un l i k e in the ref r a c t i o n mo d e l , wh e r e th e cry s ­t a l l i n e st r u c t u r e of th e proge n i t o r te x t re m a i n s in t a c t , he r e th e ori g i n a l i t y of th e you n g e r poet is att r i b u t e d to his power to rea d sel e c t i v e l y , to cho o s e in d i v i d u a l el e m e n t s fr o m th e pred­e c e s s o r wo r k whi c h he the n dev e l ops acc o r d i n g to his "m a-nie r e to u t e parti c u l i e r e." What the poet sel e c t s fr o m hi s lit ­e r a r y fa t h e r bec o m e s a vit a l co n s t i t u t i v e el e m e n t of a str u c t u r e of experie n c e fu n d a m e n t a l l y di f f e r e n t fr o m th a t of his pro­g e n i t o r :

Qu a n d un ouv r a g e , ou tou t e un e oeu v r e , ag i t su r que l q u '-un, non par tou t e s ses qu a l i t e s , ma i s par cer t a i n e ou cer-tai n e s d' e n t r e ell e s , c' e s t al o r s qu e Pin f l u e n c e prend ses va l e u r s Ies plus rem a r q u a b l e s. Le dev e l oppemen t separe d'u n e qu a l i t e de l' u n par tou t e la puiss a n c e de l' a u t r e manque rarement d'engendrer des effets d'extreme ori-ginalite. C'est ain s i qu e Mal l a r m e , de v e l oppant en soi que l q u e s un e s de s qu a l i t e s de s poete s ro m a n t i q u e s et de

18 Georges Pistorius has very ably identified the paradox at the heart of Valery's theory of influence:

Nous sommes amenes a decouvnr dans la conception Valeryenne d'm-fluence un duahsme etonnant, une ambiguite du double paradoxe. D'une part, Tecnvain Ie plus profondement influence pourrait etre Ie plus ori­ginal. Car 1'influence Ta onente vers la recherche de soi, Ta revele a Iui-meme. D'autre part, Tinfluence la plus stimulante est celle qui amene Tecrivain a repousser une influence. L'ecrivain se libere d'une influence par une autre. Il s'agit done d'une influence a rebours, d'une influence "negative," "Le Probleme d'Influence selon Paul Valery," Actes du IVe Congris de I'assoctatton tnternattonale de htterature comparee, rediges par Francois Jost. (Pans: Mouton & Co., 1966, p. 1038)

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Baudelaire, observant en eux ce qu'ils contenaient de plus exquisement accompli . . . a peu a peu deduit de cette obstination dans Ie choix, de cette rigueur dans !'exclu­sion, une maniere toute particuliere, et finalement une doctrine et des problemes tout nouveaux, prodigieuse-ment etrangers aux modes memes de sentir et de penser de ses peres et freres en poesie. . . . (p. 635)

Thus, in this digression on influence, before Valery swerves at the end to assert arbitrarily Mallarme's radical inaccessi­bility and uniqueness, he describes a mode of assimilation reminiscent of his own critical and recreative reading habits, suggesting thereby the possibility of a linear, historical en­gendering process by which strong poetic heirs inevitably ap­propriate, dismember, and reconstitute their predecessors. Here Valery's recognition of the constitutive force of the past, and especially of Mallarme's impact on his own work, combined with his craving for autonomy, produce a contradictory theory of influence which ends up rescuing only himself and Mal-larme from the forces of history. Baudelaire has been "sac­rificed" to Mallarme in much the same way that Romantic poetry was "sacrificed" to Baudelaire in Valery's description of Baudelaire's "originality." Valery's treatment of his two great predecessors, Baudelaire and Mallarme, in the revised poems in the Album is strikingly different and typifies the dilemma I have seen facing the critic throughout this study. Whereas Mallarme's work is conspicuously present through obvious borrowings from his lexicon and direct allusion, in­deed appears to be indispensable for Valery's definition of his own project, the phenomenology of Baudelaire's poetic uni­verse is conspicuously absent, except in an isolated poem ("Anne") significantly placed near the end of the collection. Yet, to borrow Valery's own metaphor, Baudelaire can be said to have been much more thoroughly "digested" than Mallarme, for, as we will see in Part II, certain key elements which reflect Valery's rejection of Mallarme's ideal of an orphic language and constitute his own "originality" are distinctive attributes of Baudelaire's own poetry. There is an irony from our perspective that the most important among these is the

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eruption onto the poetic stage of a critical first person who breaks the thralldom of the lyric "spell" often created in part by a masterful application of certain Mallarmean techniques.

THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINALITY: THE EXAMPLE OF BAUDELAIRE

Valery's unwillingness to recognize Baudelaire's formative role in the dialogue leading to his own generative exchange with Mallarme is particularly apparent in the strategies he uses to present Baudelaire as reader of Poe and Hugo in Situation de Baudelaire. When Valery published the essay in 1924 (it was delivered first as a lecture), the reputation of this poet whom he considered he had outgrown ("II me souvient comme je me suis presque detache de Hugo et de Baudelaire a dix-neuf ans, quand Ie sort sous Ies yeux me mit quelques fragments d'Herodiade" (Oeuvres I, p. 649) was at its peak. He begins his essay with this admission: "Baudelaire est au comble de la gloire." His influence, Valery tells us, is being felt beyond the frontiers of France and is far greater than that of any other French poet, living or dead: "elle s'impose comme la poesie meme de la modernite; elle engendre l'imitation, elle feconde de nombreux esprits" (Ibid., p. 598). Although the power of a work to generate other works is one of the true signs of greatness, in Valery's opinion, the rhetoric of these asser­tions—"gloire," "s'impose," "imitation"—evokes the possi­bility of a popularity too easily acquired. Unlike the fickle reading public, VaIery refuses to grant Baudelaire the kind of striking originality he confers on Mallarme. Stressing, as the title suggests, the importance of Baudelaire's historical con­text—the "circonstances exceptionnelles" which surrounded the genesis of his work—Valery undermines the inherent greatness of Baudelaire's work at various points throughout the essay:

Je puis done dire que s'il est, parmi nos poetes, des poetes plus grands et plus puissamment doues que Baudelaire, il n'en est point de plus important, (p. 598)

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Il etait ne sensuel et precis; il etait d'une sensibilite dont l'exigence Ie conduisait aux recherches Ies plus delicates de la forme; mais ces dons n'eussent fait de Iui qu'un emule de Gautier, sans doute, ou un excellent artiste du Parnasse, s'il n'eut, par la curiosite de son esprit, merite la chance de decouvrir dans Ies ouvrages d'Edgar Poe un nouveau monde intellectuel. (p. 599)

L'influence des Poemes Antiques et des Poemes Barbares a ete moins diverse et moins etendue. Il faut reconnaitre, cependant, que cette meme influence, si elle se fut exercee sur Baudelaire, l'eut peut-etre dissuade d'ecrire ou de con-server certains vers tres relaches qui se recontrent dans son livre. Sur Ies quatorze vers du sonnet Recueillement, .. . je m'etonnerai toujours d'en compter cinq ou six qui sont d'une incontestable faiblesse. (p. 610)

Valery attributes Baudelaire's achievement and success to the originality of other poets, Poe and Hugo in particular, by presenting him as an especially astute reader, who found in Poe principles by which he could define himself in opposition to the strong Romantic poets who dominated his time. Bau­delaire's modernity is a kind of counter-imitation,19 then, and his originality only an illusion; an accident of history rather than genius accounts for the phenomenon of his reputation:

P^ons-nous dans la situation d'un jeune homme qui arrive en 1870 a l'age d'ecrire. Il est nourri de ceux que son instinct Iui commande imperieusement d'abolir. . . .

19 An entry in one of the notebooks makes clear how devastating the judg­ment of "counter-imitation" was from Valery's point of view:

Ceux qui etudient 1'imitation doivent ne pas oublier la contre-imitation. La tendance: se distinguer de, "contraster avec" est une reaction qui doit se classer a cote de la tendance "faire comme."

Toutes Ies deux ont pour idem genus la tendance plus generate: Deduire sa pensee ou son acte de la pensee ou acte deja existant.

Je ferai ce que tu as fait. Je ferai ce que tu n'as pas fait. Je ferai Ie contraire de ce que tu as fait. Je ferai mieux que toi. Plus intense que toi—Je ferai quelque chose de plus.

Autant de transformees ou transcriptions. (1916, C. V, 882)

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Il s'agit de se distinguer a tout prix d'un ensemble de grands poetes exceptionnellement reunis par quelque ha-sard, dans la meme epoque, tous en pleine vigueur." (pp. 599-600)

Valery even goes so far as to say that the best way to under­stand Romanticism is to read Baudelaire's work, "qui est venu l'alterer, Iui apporter des corrections et des contradictions, et enfin se substituer a lui" (p. 601), and to remind us again, later in the essay, that it was through the poetic principles discovered in Poe that such a refined critical reading of Ro­manticism was possible at all. After setting forth at length the originality of Poe's precepts (at least three-quarters of this essay is devoted to an exposition of either Hugo's or Poe's greatness), Valery concludes: "Si nous regardons a present l'ensemble des Fleurs du mal, et si nous prenons soin de com­parer ce recueil aux ouvrages poetiques de la meme periode, nous ne serons pas etonnes de trouver l'oeuvre de Baudelaire remarquablement conforme aux preceptes de Poe, et par la remarquablement differente des productions romantiques" (p. 609). In a particularly striking subversion of Baudelaire, Va-Iery describes his encounter with Poe as an "echange de va-leurs," whereby Baudelaire acquires "tout un systeme de pen-sees neuves et profondes . . ." (p. 607) and Poe, through the agency of Baudelaire's translations and prefaces, "une etendue infinie." Thus, Valery answers the question he posed regarding Baudelaire's influence at the beginning of the essay, "Com­ment un etre si particulier . . . a-t-il pu engendrer un mouve-ment aussi etendu?" by substituting Poe for Baudelaire.

Not only does Valery dwell on the greatness of Baudelaire's own literary fathers to explain his "gloire," but even more devastatingly he accuses Baudelaire of consciously dissimu­lating his debt to them. Thus Valery would stand on the shoul­ders of his predecessor, seeing beyond him and around him, understanding him better than he understands himself. Valery reveals his intention to deny Baudelaire's originality at two particularly critical moments in the essay. In his assessment of Victor Hugo he implies that Baudelaire was intimidated by

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his invincible predecessor's genius and dared cultivate only what Hugo had left untouched:

Si l'on y mettait quelque malice et un peu plus d'inge-niosite qu'il ne convient, il ne serait que trop tentant de rapprocher la poesie de Victor Hugo de celle de Baude­laire, dans Ie dessein de faire paraitre celle-ci comme ex-actement complementaire de celle-la. Je n'y insiste pas. On voit assez que Baudelaire a recherche ce que Victor Hugo n'avait pas fait; qu'il s'abstient de tous Ies effets dans lesquels Victor Hugo etait invincible. . . . (p. 602)

When Valery points to Baudelaire's double plagiarism of Poe, he presents Baudelaire as not only secretly borrowing from Poe, but going to the devious extreme of giving the public the impression that Poe's insight was his special invention. Valery disingenuously credits Baudelaire with generosity toward his model at the very moment when he strips him of all literary and moral respectability:

Or Baudelaire, quoique illumine et possede par l'etude du Principe poetique,—ou, bien plutot par cela meme qu'il en etait illumine et possede,—n'a pas insere la tra­duction de cet essai dans Ies oeuvres memes d'Edgar Poe; mais il en a introduit la partie la plus interessante, a peine defiguree et Ies phrases interverties, dans la preface qu'il a placee en tete de sa traduction des Histoires extraor-dinaires. Le palgiat serait contestable si son auteur ne l'eut accuse lui-meme comme on va Ie voir: dans un article sur Theophile Gautier (recueilli dans L'Art romantique), il a reproduit tout Ie passage dont je parle, en Ie faisant preceder de ces lignes tres claires et tres surprenantes: "II est permis quelquefois, je presume, de se citer soi-meme pour eviter de se paraphraser. Je repeterai done...." Suit Ie passage emprunte. (pp. 608-09, my italics)

Although Valery ends the essay by suggesting that Baude­laire was the progenitor of all the great originals who fol­lowed—Verlaine, Mallarme, Rimbaud—he attributes the transmission of values present in Baudelaire's work to his

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heirs' astute critical reading of Les Fleurs du mal. Thus, "Tan-dis que Verlaine et Rimbaud ont continue Baudelaire dans l'ordre du sentiment et de la sensation, Mallarme l'a prolonge dans Ie domaine de la perfection et de la purete poetique" (p. 613). The mere fact that Baudelaire's work can be dismantled in this way—the Romantic part going to Verlaine and Rim­baud and the Poe part to Mallarme and of course to Valery (by extension)—suggests that it possesses none of the inner necessity which truly original poetry of the sort Valery attri­butes to Mallarme must have.

One cannot help wondering why Valery treats Baudelaire so ungenerously. The clue may be found in the rhetoric of the essay itself, where Valery, in a moment of intense, almost symbiotic identification, enters Baudelaire's mind and imputes to him a sentence which not only echoes his own opening words, "Baudelaire est au comble de la gloire," but dramat­ically concludes with the shocking phrase, "Done il est mor-tel":

Le romantisme est a son apogee, a-t-il pu se dire, done il est mortel; et il a pu considerer Ies dieux et Ies demi-dieux du moment, de cet oeil dont Talleyrand et Met-ternich, vers 1807, regardaient etrangement Ie maitre du monde. . . ." (p. 601)

The portrait of Baudelaire as a militantly critical reader is very like the one that Valery has used elsewhere to describe his own reading habits, but a curious consequence of Valery's military analogy to which he appears to be blind is the fact that if, in Valery's imaginative projection of Baudelaire's read­ing of Romanticism, Hugo is Napoleon, and Baudelaire only Talleyrand and Metternich together, then Valery becomes Tal­leyrand and Metternich, and Baudelaire Napoleon, in the pres­ent essay. However Valery arranges things, Baudelaire seems to rise out of the past to assert his supremacy.

An obvious, perhaps too obvious, cause of the ambivalence Valery seems to feel concerning Baudelaire in 1924 may be found in the poetry he himself wrote between 1887 and 1890, much of which was blatantly derivative of Baudelaire. We

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need only to look at the following two sonnets to see im­mediately the extent to which the young Valery's poetry could be dominated by the style of his great predecessor.

Pessimisme d'une heure

Il est une douleur, sans nom, sans but, sans cause, Que vient je ne sais ou, je ne sais trop pourquoi, Aux heures sans travail, sans desir et sans foi Ou Ie degout amer enfielle toute chose.

Rien ne nous fait penser, rien ne nous interesse, On a l'esprit fixe sur un maudit point noir, Tout est sombre: dedans, dehors, Ie Jour, Ie Soir C'est un effondrement dans un puits de tristesse.

C'est surtout vers la nuit, quand s'allume la lampe, Cet ennui fond sur nous, aussi prompt qu'un vautour; Le decouragement nous guette au coin du Jour Quand s'eleve du sol l'obscurite qui rampe.

Ce n'est pas celui-la qui mene a la riviere! C'est un mauvais moment a passer, voila tout; Il nous fait ressentir la joie, ce degout, Comme l'obscurite fait aimer la lumiere . . .

(1 8 8 7 )

S o l i tude

Loin du monde, je vis tout seul comme un ermite Enferme dans mon coeur mieux que dans un tombeau. Je raffine mon gout du Bizarre et du Beau, Dans la serenite d'un Reve sans limite.

Car mon esprit, avec un Art toujours nouveau, Sait s'illusionner—quand un desir l'irrite. L'hallucination merveilleuse l'habite, Et je jouis sans fin de mon propre Cerveau . . .

Je meprise Ies sens, Ies vices, et la Femme, Moi qui puis evoquer dans Ie fond de mon ame La Lumiere . . . Le Son, La Multiple Beaute!

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Moi qui puis combiner des Voluptes etranges Moi dont Ie reve peut fuir dans l'Immensite Plus haut que des Vautours, Ies Astres et Ies Anges!20

(1887)

Octave Nadal has credited Valery with writing pseudo- or anti-Baudelairean poems at this time, but he does not support his contention beyond pointing out the importance of light imagery, which he connects with Valery's cult of the intellect in opposition to Baudelaire's brooding affectivity and taste for the perverse.21 It can be argued, however, that there is no more intellectual, no more self-consciously ironic, poet than Baudelaire, and Valery was clearly aware of this in 1924 when he identified Baudelaire's originality with his acute critical powers.

Since Valery did not include any of the works written before December of 1890 in the Album, one is tempted to assume that he was anxious to suppress only Baudelaire's early influ­ence over him, whereas it was more likely Baudelaire's con­tinuing example that was in question. I see in these early poems little appreciation of the very qualities in Baudelaire, partic­ularly his refined use of irony and the tension between ab­straction and sensuousness, which will characterize Valery's own later work and which may account for his uneasiness

20 By 1889 poems imitating Baudelaire rather than Gautier or the Roman­tics become more frequent. See, for example, "Le Matin sur la ville," "Le Voyage," or "Le Saltimbanque" among unpublished works, Ms., B.N., dos­sier Vers anciens, f. 56, 85, 97.

21 Paul Valery-Gustave Fourment. Correspondance 1887-1933, introduc­tion, notes et documents par Octave Nadal (Pans: Gallimard, 1957), p. 226; a propos of "Pessimisme d'une heure":

On remarquera que Ies themes Baudelairiens de la solitude, du coeur desert, du tombeau, du reve infini, de la volupte, etc., ainsi que ceux de l'esthetique de la beaute "bizarre" et de 1'imagination creatnce propres a l'auteur des Fleurs du Mal sont refuses ou sont autrement onentes. Le genie Valeryen se defimt ici par opposition aux traits Ies plus essentiels du genie Baudelairien. L'evocation de la beaute "multiple," la "combi-naison" des voluptes, Ie reve situe plus haut que "les vautours, Ies astres et les anges," la "jouissance" du "cerveau" etc., designent de)a la lumiere intellectuelle saisie comme centre et fin. (p. 226)

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regarding Baudelaire's greatness in 1924. Despite the subver­sion on the level of image and theme of Baudelaire's splenetic and satanic vision, the opposing vision in these poems is al­ways effected in Baudelaire's own terms, as if the Chambre double structure were simply reversed, darkness and claus­trophobia giving way to light and expansion of the senses. In "Solitude" and "Pessimisme d'une heure," for example, the lyrical voice recognizes its own difference, Baudelaire reads Baudelaire backwards, so to speak; but the adolescent Valery handled this doubling of the Baudelairean consciousness with­out any of the complex irony of the great original. At this period in his life, Valery seemed to perceive in Baudelaire only the fashionably "decadent" characteristics of his poetry and was writing, in a sense, imitations of imitations.

It is significant that these poems drew from Valery's closest friend and confidant, Gustave Fourment, harsh criticism aimed specifically at the sensitive issue of Valery's lack of originality:

Mon cher Paul, tu vis d'une vie par trop factice. Ne te crois pas oblige d'emboiter Ie pas a Theophile Gautier et a Baudelaire. Le moins que tu pourrais y perdre c'est ton originalite. . . . N'oublions pas d'ailleurs que leurs sen­sations ont aussi peu de realite objective que Ies notres. . . . Enfin pouvons-nous representer leurs sensations? .. . tu es victime tres souvent de la piperie des mots. Pour moi je souffrirais beaucoup de voir se perdre Ie talent, dont je te crois fermement doue, dans une imitation es-clave. . . . (Sept. 12, 1889)22

And in response to another poem, "Elevation de la lune," (see Appendix):

Les metaphores du second quatrain ne sont pas, certes, nouvelles—Je me souviens d'avoir Iu dans Baudelaire (qui a associe, lui, Pemotion ressentie devant Ie soleil couchant par "un soir d'automne" a Pemotion eprouvee dans une eglise quand Ie pretre benit Ies fideles avec l'ostensoir):

22 Ibid., pp. 72-73.

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Void venir Ies temps ou vibrant sur la tige Chaque fleur s'evapore ainsi qu'un encensoir.

(Oct. 22, 1889)23

Valery was not unaffected by this criticism because in 1899 he sent to Fourment a kind of self-parody in the form of a Baudelairean prose poem, called Conte vraisemblable, whose epigraph, "Anywhere out of this world," signals Baudelaire's informing presence. In it Valery portrays a poet in the depths of depression, who has decided to kill himself because his poetry is hopelessly unoriginal and because he cannot partic­ipate directly in life; but although the poet's problem hu­morously echoes Fourment's criticism of himself, Valery's fic­tional persona looks very much like the stereotypical, melancholic Baudelaire that his poetic imitations set out to subvert. It is almost as if ridding himself of Baudelaire meant freeing himself of his dependence on the past, and on a vision mediated by other texts which prevent him from perceiving the world in a fresh light.

La douleur et la crainte planaient sur lui. . . . Puis Ie souci de la Femme Ie tourmentait cruellement, et puis surtout Ie desir de 1'art entrevu Ie rongeait comme un eternel cancer! . . . La femme il l'avait tantot consideree en debauche, tantot en mystique, tantot en esthete. Et son malheur voulait que jamais il n'avait trouve l'union entre la chair possedee et la chimere du moment.

Il n'avait oeuvre qu'avec la tete—de quoi faire un son­net. ... Il se tournait alors vers Ies combinaisons du style et Ies penibles enfantements des rimes. Et la, il etouffait plus qu'ailleurs.

Un ardent desir Ie poussait et, des nuits entieres, lui congestionnait Ie cerveau. Mais rien. Trouble par Ies mille et mille ecoles qui surgissaient, petri chaque jour par un different auteur, plus rien de lui ne semblait loger dans son esprit. . . .

L'ennui Ie devorait entre temps: L'Ennui, l'etat des

23 Ibid., p. 79.

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hommes, lorsqu'ils retombent au rang de la brute ances-trale. . . .24

The dilemma Valery was experiencing in 1889—that is, the sense of being imprisoned and rendered impotent by the power of other men's achievements ("petri chaque jour par un dif­ferent auteur")—is the one he projects onto Baudelaire in the 1924 essay, perhaps because Baudelaire was still his most oppressive predecessor in his mature years.

The historical situation Valery describes for Baudelaire in 1840 is uncannily similar to his own some fifty years later. If one were to substitute Mallarme for Poe and Baudelaire, and Symbolism for Hugo and Romanticism, one could call the essay, "Situation de Valery." Refined, critical, preoccupied by questions of form, Baudelaire, he claims, would have been little more than an imitator of Gautier and Parnasse, had he not encountered Poe. Valery could be describing the youthful self we see sketched in the autobiographical letter entitled "Moi" he sent to Pierre Louys:

Hugo fut detrone bientot par Gautier dont l'astre Iui-meme palit aux chauds rayons du Flaubert d'or et de pourpre.... Enfin Baudelaire Ie conquit! puis Ies Autres. Et il put s'accorder certain jour Ie merite d'avoir, lui, provincial parmi Ies provinciaux, decouvert et cheri quel-ques-uns des secrets poemes par qui s'impose la Gloire solitaire de Mallarme. (14 September, 1890)25

Another passage, published in "Propos me concernant" just before Valery's death, suggests that Mallarme's impact was closely associated with, indeed determined to some extent by, the hold which Baudelaire's mysteriously contradictory work seemed to still exert on Valery in 1891:

Puis-je faire comprendre en 1943 a quelques personnes beaucoup moins agees que moi, l'effet que pouvait pro-duire vers 1891 la rencontre brusque d'un certain jeune homme avec Ies vers de Mallarme? Il faut supposer ce

24 Ibid., pp. 219ff. 25 Lettres a quelques-uns, p. 21.

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jeune homme assez occupe de poesie et sensible surtout aux inventions de forme, a la diversite des solutions qu'admet un vers, ayant par consequent fort peu d'estime pour Lamartine ou pour Musset, ayant assez bien Iu quel-ques Parnassiens, et observant dans Baudelaire Ie melange plutot deconcertant d'une magie extraordinaire, rebelle a toute analyse, et de parties detestables, expressions vul-gaires et vers tres mauvais. J'insiste sur cette imperfection que je trouvais dans Baudelaire melee a une pleine puis­sance harmonique, car cette impression etait comme ex-pressement faite pour creer en moi Ie besoin, ou plutot la n0cessite de Mallarme.26

Rarely, however, does Valery refer to Baudelaire when he speaks of his models.27 In fact, bypassing Baudelaire, or per­haps, becoming Baudelaire, he claims himself the disciple of Poe. In the letter he sends to Karl Boes, director of the journal Courrier libre, to which he submits "Elevation de la lune" (the poem Fourment criticized as too Baudelairean), he evokes Poe: "Je suis partisan d'un poeme court et concentre, une breve evocation close par un vers sonore et plein. Je cheris, en poesie comme en prose, Ies theories si profondes et si per-fidement savantes d'Edgar Poe . . ." (1889).28 And again in his first letter to Mallarme, he introduces himself in the third person, as if he were Baudelaire, through the mediation of Poe:

Pour se faire en quelques mots connaitre, il doit affirmer qu'il prefere Ies poemes courts, concentres pour un eclat final, ou Ies rythmes sont comme Ies marches marmo-

26 Cited by J. Robinson in Rimbaud, Valery . . . , op.cit., p. 47. 27 Robinson cites one of these rare references to Baudelaire in an unedited

letter to Pierre Louys written around mid-June, 1891:

Je mepnse mon art comme d'une stupidite et d'une grossierete grave. L'eau qui tient au creux d'une main est parfaite. C'est pourquoi Ies Heredia, Leconte de Lisle, au fond m'mdifferent. Ce sont d'etonnants rhetonciens. Ils ne voient que l'une des colonnes du Temple. Hugo Iui-meme du reste. Baudelaire et Mallarmi sont possibles, et surtout et seul Poe! Et Rimbaud aussi—quel POETE! Le Bateau Ivref. (Ibid., p. 7.) 28 Lettres a quelques-uns, p. 9.

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reennes de l'autel que couronne Ie dernier vers! non qu'il puisse se vanter d'avoir realise cet ideal! Mais c'est qu'il est profondement penetre des doctrines savantes du grand Edgar Allan Poe—peut-etre Ie plus subtil artiste de ce siecle! Ce nom seul suffira a vous montrer de quelle sorte est sa Poetique. . . . (October 1890)29

At the end of Conte vraisemblable Valery's poetic persona seems finally to throw off the depressing influence of Bau­delaire entirely, because during the last day of his life he dis­covers the joys of the sensuous world and begins to write a new kind of poetry, "composes en dehors de toute ecole et de toute ambition . . . Ies meilleurs qu'il eut jamais ecrits." But with an ironical flourish which may reflect a moment of real insight, Valery ends the poem by depriving the new poet of any self-knowledge: "Alors se leurrant lui-meme, tres co-mique, mais tres humain, il se dit en rouvrant la porte: 'Je me

tuerai demain!' " It is as if each time Valery tries to discredit the Baudelairean vision, he is obliged to resort to imitations of Baudelaire's own strategies—in this case, problematical identification of narrator with central character and devas­tating use of irony at the end that requires the reader to ques­tion the intention behind all of the preceding tropes. Rather than choosing Baudelaire as the predecessor he would surpass, Valery seems to be unwillingly chosen by Baudelaire from behind, so to speak. Although he would like to see Baudelaire as an earlier self whom he has transcended, it is Baudelaire's ideal of the self-constitutive being, the dandy ("C'est avant tout Ie besoin ardent de se faire une originalite"),30 which provides a model for Valery's own need for autonomy.

Valery's treatment of "the greatest engenderer of modern poetry" is, then, fundamentally ambiguous, and its ambigu­ities can be most keenly perceived when one considers the curious position Baudelaire is granted in the Album de vers anciens. Despite the fact that much of Valery's early poetry

29 Ibid., pp. 28-29. 30 Charles Baudelaire. Oeuvres completes, ed. Le Dantec Coll. Pleiade (Paris:

Gallimard, 1954), p. 907.

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was clearly influenced by his predecessor, Baudelaire's pres­ence is felt only at the end of the collection in "Anne," orig­inally written in 1893 (soon after the crisis at Genes), pub­lished in La Plume in 1900, and substantially revised specifically for its place in the Album. "Anne" presents not a healthy engendering female form, as do the Symbolist or Parnassian poems which open the collection (the sleeping princess of "Au bois dormant" or Venus rising out of the sea in "Naissance de Venus," for example), but, on the contrary, a degraded reflection of the figures which dominate those opening works.31

Anne strikes one as a subversive imitation of the Baudelairean muse—an exhausted prostitute who will be summoned by an ironic dawn to begin a new day's work. What is more to the point, however, is that, like Conte vraisemblable, this parodic imitation of Baudelaire carries with it an implied critique of Valery's own work, and paired with "Air de Semiramis," brings the Album to an end on a distinctly self-problematizing note, worthy of Baudelaire's own greatest works.

MALLARME AND VALERY

Valery treats the predecessor whom he elects and then chal­lenges through his own poetic structures far more generously than he does Baudelaire, whose influence remains hidden and unacknowledged in his mature poetry. In the public essays written after Mallarme's death, Valery is unstinting in his praise, and even in his private manuscript notes, interviews, and Cahiers entries he consistently declares Mallarme's work to be the model against which he defines his own originality. This certainty of his difference from Mallarme, however, he experiences as a sign of his superior insight, even when Mal-

31 On the back of one of the last drafts of "Anne" (1918), where Valery is working out stanza 11, there is typed the first stanza of "Naissance de Venus." This juxtaposition makes the semantic echoings between the two poems seem consciously contrived. By 1918 Valery was beginning to consider the ordering of the poems for the Album as a unique and independent work. See Ms., B.N., dossier Album de vers anctens, f. 140.

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larme is alive, and he keeps it a well-guarded secret as if to preserve the older poet's feelings: "Je Paimais et je Ie plagais au-dessus de tous; mais j'avais renonce a adorer ce qu'il avait adore toute sa vie, et a quoi il l'avait toute offerte, et je ne me trouvais pas Ie coeur de Ie Iui faire entendre" (Oeuvres I, p. 631). In 1942, three years before his death, Valery reveals the sense of power and control he ultimately felt í is a vis his chosen predecessor's work, when he says he loved Mallarme "comme Ie tigre aime la gazelle."32 Not only inspiration but assimilation and transcendence are implied in the imagery he chose to commemorate Mallarme's death: "J'ai de ton pur esprit bu Ie feu Ie plus beau."33

For a fuller understanding of the emotional and intellectual complexity of Valery's bond to Mallarme, it is important to recognize that there were several distinct stages in their relationship34 which can be reviewed chronologically. In the late critical essays, Valery frequently alludes to the sense of disillusionment and skepticism he was feeling in the period

32 Cited by Lawler, Poet as Analyst, p. 125. 33 Ibtd., p. 131. Relying on Valery's own testimony, J. Lawler has sensitively

established Valery's preoccupation with his own originality wherever his great predecessor is concerned:

In his contact with Mallarme, the young Valery came to recognize more acutely than ever before his own identity. He made the discovery, he says, of "l'ultimum violent, ce dernere quoi il ne peut plus y avoir conscience": a focus of thought, a vital separateness, an ultimate vio­lence, an ego tpstsstmus, lay for him at the heart of this most ardent of encounters. He became capable of measuring his "difference pure. . . ." Mallarmd was the divine poison that induced the necessary reaction: "tant aime epie"; "aime, hai, cherche en moi pour trouver autre chose." This same thought will be put in many forms but nowhere more strikingly than in one notation pencilled on a small sheet of paper and collected with the pages we have been examining. It bears on the recto the indi­cation, "Pans Ie 9 novembre, 1906," together with some mathematical calculations. "Avoir connu Mallarme," he writes, "c'est l'honneur de mon hasard—de l'avoir combattu, Jacob de cet ange, c'est l'honneur de ma loi" (pp. 132-33). 34 See, for example, Carl B. Barbier, "Valery et Mallarme jusqu'en 1898,"

Colloque, op.ctt., or James Lawler, "Valery et Mallarme: Le Tigre et la gazelle," tbtd.

R E F L E C T I O N S O N W R I T I N G • 41

just prior to reading Mallarme for the first time: "Lorsque

j'ai commence de frequenter Mallarme en personne, la litte-

rature ne m'etait presque plus de rien . . . (p. 630) . A I'age

encore assez tendre de vingt ans, et au point critique d'une

etrange et profonde transformation intellectuelle, je subis le

choc de I'oeuvre de Mallarme . . . (p. 6 3 7 ) . "

If one pauses to consider the product of Valery's literary

activity between 1 8 8 7 and 1890 , one sees that the majority

of the poems written before '91 are mystical or neo-Catholic

in inspiration. (See Appendix for sample poems.) For the young

Valery, as for Pierre Louys and many other Decadents, Ca-

tholicism supplied the metaphysical language in which a new,

heightened dedication to art as an esoteric form could be

expressed: according to their view Beauty was the Divinity

and the poet her acolyte.^^ In an autobiographical letter to

" An entry in the journal mtime of Pierre Louys (Pans: Editions Montaigne, 1 9 2 9 ) shows how seriously these young poets understood their enterprise:

Grande-Chartreuse, 2 7 aout, 1 8 9 0 8 h. soir

On pourrait faire, sur le modele de I'Evangtle, de I'lmitation et des Exercices de Loyola, trois livres typiques.

Dans le premier, )e ferais vivre un Jesus (non pas le Jesus de Renan, mais le Jesus de Saint-Jean, Le Jesus-Dieu) qui serait a la fois pretre du Beau et incarnation de 1'Amour du Beau, partie integrante de la Beaute. Cet homme-Dieu viendrait sur ia terre pour racheter le monde de ses blasphemes antiesthetiques, pour dire aux hommes que Dieu a mis au coeur de ses elus le sentiment palpitant de I'emotion artistique vers un ideal qu'ils soup̂onnent sans le voir, et qu'il n'osaient encore appeler Dieu Bienheureux ceux qui admirent, car lis seront appeles les enfants de Dieu! Bienheureux ceux qui souffrent pour la beaute, car de leur religieuse douleur il naitra des torrents de joie! Bienheureux ceux qui sacrifient les realites palpables pour le fugitif et tremblant ideal, car lui seul subsiste dans la pourriture des choses et son etermte c'est le paradis pour les esthetes! Bienheureux ceux qui sont persecutes pour la beaute, car lis verront la beaute divine! . . .

Dans le second ouvrage, )e ferais vivre un rehgieux: un poete. Comme le rehgieux de I'lmitation, sa vie eut 6t€ brisee. Brisee par amour sans doute. Et il chercherait dans la contemplation le remede unique. . . . Et entre I'ldeal et lui, des colloques mystiques s'etabhraient. La Muse, in-carnation du Beau, ou de I'aspiration au Beau, lui dirait. . . .

Le troisieme serait plus pratique. Ce seraient des exercices spirituels

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Pierre Louys, who would soon persuade him to sign his poems "Paul Ambroise Valery" because "Ambroise" sounded "mer-veilleusement rougeatre et ecclesiastique,"36 Valery writes about himself:

Il adore cette religion qui fait de la beaute un de ses dogmes, et de l'art, Ie plus magnifique de ses apotres. Il adore surtout son catholicism a lui, un peu espagnol, beaucoup wagnerien et gothique. Quant a la croyance pure! Voici ce qu'il en pense. . . . "La plus grossiere des hypotheses est de croire que Dieu existe objectivement . . . Le culte que nous lui devons—c'est Ie respect que nous devons a nous-memes . . . la recherche d'un Mieux par notre force dans la direction de nos aptitudes. . . ." (14 septembre 1980)37

In 1889 Louys had almost persuaded Valery to publish a number of his religious poems under the title Chorus mysticus. At the last minute Valery backed out of the project because he had already begun seriously to question the metaphysics of transcendence underlying his friend's faith in the poet's function, but not before he had written a preface, which clearly reveals the aesthetic or secular nature of his particular form of mysticism:

La vie a travers un vitrail d'eglise, consideree; Ies natu-relles splendeurs des astres et des etres artificiellement assimilees a des ceremonies de culte, puis Ie plaisir indi-cible et quelque peu sacrilege de jouer avec Ies techniques

a l'effet d'augmenter chaque jour Ymtensite et la contmuite de l'emotion artistique.... Puis viendraient des Exercices, et des methodes d'examens generaux, fondes sur ce principe que la vie de l'homme doit etre consacree au Beau, et que toute pensee bourgeoise, tout desir grossier, toute ad­miration indigne, est un peche. (pp. 314-317)

In Existence du Symbolisme Valery recalls his own former mystical view of art: "Je Ie dis en connaissance de cause: nous avons eu, a cette epoque, la sensation qu'une maniere de religion eut pu naitre, dont l'emotion poetique eut ete l'essence" (p. 694).

36 Lettres a quelques-uns, p. 98. 37 Ibtd., p. 21.

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paroles du rite et Ies mots si delicieux qui designent Ies objets sacres m'ont amene a ces essais de poesie liturgique.

Et ici me trouveront Ies miens! 38

Because of the association of Symbolism with Catholic ritual and the basically dualistic vision of the world it represents, the rhetoric of the poems destined for the C h orus mysticus (see Appendix) is intensely dependent upon analogy, but the various analogical tropes—symbol, metaphor, simile, alle­gory—are not distinguished in any way as discrete structures. One can, at this point, consider them all as a group and conclude that symbol is the privileged trope of the contem­plated C h orus mysticus. Valery uses capitalization throughout these early works to underscore the hieratic value of poetic language, synonymous at this stage in his career with symbolic language. In "Mirabilia saecula" symbolism is even identified with the birth of Christianity in the figure of the bird, Divinity incarnate in the world:

Jusqu'a l'heure ou montant dans l'aube symbolique Le doux christianisme eploye dans Ies Cieux Surgit dans l'ombre immense, oiseau melancolique.

Often the title of the poem announces the central symbol, taken from Christian iconography, "L'Eglise," "Elevation de la lune," "Fleur mystique." In "L'Eglise" the church is the Symbol of symbols, Divinity enclosed in sensate form:

Parmi l'Immensite pesante du Saint lieu Dans l'ombre inexprimable, effrayante, doree, Solennelle, se sent la presence de Dieu Dans Ie recueillement de la chose adoree.

As we have seen earlier, Valery's friend, Gustave Fourment, who himself adhered to a Romantic vision of the sacred func­tion of poetry, was nevertheless highly critical of Valery's lack of originality in these early poems. He was particularly of­fended by the modish tone of the Decadents, the artificiality of their vision, its basic emptiness and its failure to reflect any

38 Cit e d b y Na d a l i n Correspondance, V a l e r y -Fo u r m e n t , p p . 2 18, 2 1 9 .

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awareness of that emptiness. He often charges Valery with slavish imitation of an already factitious style and insists that his friend will never be a great poet until his work is rooted in an authentically inward vision: "Si jamais tu entends la 'voix interieure,' alors tu auras moins de peine a nous reveler Ies choses nouvelles dont elle te remplira l'esprit . . . la cor-respondance sera etablie entre ta main et ton cerveau." 3 9 Over and over Fourment tells Valery that he is working within an exhausted convention, that his diction and imagery belong to other poets (Baudelaire, Vigny, Verhaeren, Verlaine, etc.), and that he must struggle harder to find his own voice. Ironically, the rupture comes in their friendship at the time when Valery begins to do just that, perhaps because Fourment was not prepared for the hermetic direction his friend's position re­garding the writing of poetry would take.

Valery discovered Mallarme, then, just as he was beginning to have grave doubts about the vocation which his early friend and mentor, Pierre Louys, liked to describe as the new priest­hood. Contrary to his contemporaries, Valery had become disillusioned with all forms of idealism. He no longer believed that poetry served the exalted function of transporting the reader to some higher level of spiritual reality; it was little more than a formal exercise which actually impeded the rig­orous functioning of the mind: "I I me semblait alors qu'il existat une sorte de contraste entre I'exercice de la litterature et la poursuite d'une certaine rigueur et d'une entiere sincerite de la pensee" (Oeuvres I, p. 630). By 18 90 Valery felt he had explored all of the avenues which his former "idols" (Heredia, Hugo, Verlaine, Baudelaire, etc.) held open to him and saw no point in writing poetry at all. 40

The revelation of Mallarme's radically innovative work de­layed for nearly two years the crisis which eventually took place in 18 9 2. As Valery put it, Mallarme seemed to supply

39 Ibtd., 1 2 September 18 8 9, p. 74. 40 C. Gordon MiUan has shown that Valery's crisis concerning his vocation

as a poet did not occur overnight. The letters he sent to Louys indicate that he was having serious doubts as early as July 18 90. "Valery et Pierre Louys," Colloque, op.ctt.

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an answer to the young poet who was looking for a cause and could find none in the "experience of life" (p. 676). "Ce qui ne paraissait que l'ornement de la vie en devenait l'objet essentiel (et meme l'excuse)" (p. 675). This writing, which appeared to be without model and whose beauty resided solely in the rigor of its organization, presented itself as a new Ideal, "une immense valeur tiree du neant" (p. 642). "Tout en Iui s'ordonnait a quelque fin secrete et si haute qu'elle transfor-mait, evaluait, abolissait ou transfigurait Ies choses comme une certitude ou une lumiere de l'ordre mystique Ie peut faire" (p. 680). Mallarme's work presented itself as an absolutely autonomous form of writing. Like an object in nature it seemed to evolve according to some inner necessity which made it impervious to apprehension from the outside:

Ces petites compositions merveilleusement achevees s'im-posaient comme des types de perfection, tant Ies liaisons des mots avec Ies mots, des vers avec Ies vers, des mouve-ments avec Ies rythmes etaient assurees, tant chacune d'elles donnait l'idee d'un objet en quelque sorte absolu, du a un equilibre de forces intrinseques, soustrait par un pro-dige de combinaisons reciproques a ces vagues velleites de retouche et de changements que Pesprit pendant Ies lectures congoit inconsciemment devant la plupart des textes. (p. 639)

This, then, is a poetry which cannot be imitated: obedient to its own laws, it eludes the critical reader who would relegate it to the pastness of history.

The terms by which he describes the extreme originality of Mallarme's poetry—its internal organicity, its resonant and sensuous interrelatedness, its Presence and its seeming free­dom from accident ("hasard")—are precisely those which he resorts to throughout his career to describe his own ideal of "pure poetry." What is more, this poetry of pure self-reference figured as dance in Calepin d'un poete, for example, would guarantee the "liberte," "purete," "singularite," and "uni-versalite" of the writer, indeed, its possibility was proof of his power to escape the tyranny of "ordinary" language:

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La danse n'a pas pour objet de me transporter d'ici la; ni Ie vers, ni Ie chant purs.

Mais ils sont pour me rendre plus present a moi-meme, plus entierement livre a moi-meme, depense devant moi inutilement, me succedant a moi-meme, et toutes choses et sensations n'ont plus d'autres valeur. Un mouvement particulier Ies fait comme libres; et infiniment mobiles, infiniment presentes, elles se pressent pour servir d'ali-ments a un feu. C'est pourquoi Ies metaphores, ces mouvements stationnaires! (p. 1449, my italics)

Non-linear, auto-referential, intransitive, it is free from the accidents of history because it obeys its own self-constitutive constraints. Throughout his life Valery will compare this kind of ideal figurative expression to dancing, as opposed to walk­ing toward a goal, to algebra as opposed to mathematics, and to a musicalized architectonic structure wherein the elements of the phenomenal world have been reorganized according to the "vouloir," "pouvoir," and "savoir" of the maker.

Valery claims that as time went by he found himself no longer seeking to understand this poetry, but simply remem­bering it as one would remember a powerfully perceived im­age—long sections of poems impressed themselves into his brain, and he could not forget them. The words linked them­selves inevitably and naturally to each other as parts of a breathing whole and in such a way as to resist dismember­ment. The abstract process by which poetry is produced re­sults, paradoxically, for Valery in a dramatically experienced physical presence, in Mallarme's own words, "un emploi a nu de la pensee." Through his brilliant manipulation of sound and syntax, Mallarme used writing to transport one beyond or before writing, back to a state when self and word are reunited in Voice:

Il arrivait que ce poete, Ie moins primitif des poetes, donnat, par Ie rapprochement insolite, etrangement chan-tant, et comme stupefiant des mots,—par Peclat musical du vers et sa plenitude singuliere, l'impression de ce qu'il y eut de plus puissant dans la poesie originelle: la formule

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING • 41

magique. U ne a n a l yse e x qu ise de son ar t a v a i t du le co n-duire a une do c tr i ne et a une sor te de sy n t hese de I ' i n-c a n t a t io n . ( p . 6 4 9 )

M o s t i m por t a n t l y V a ler y re co g n i ze d t h a t t he m ir a c le a n d her-o is m o f M a l l a r m e 's pro je c t resi de d in t he f a c t t h a t i t w a s c arr ie d ou t by t h is " l e as t pr i m i t i ve o f p oe t s " i n full re co g n i t io n o f t he ver y p i t f a l ls o f l a n gu a ge w h i c h V a ler y h i msel f h a d co m e to per ce i ve as i nsur moun t ab le . For t he f irst t i me i n h is li fe he de te c te d i n a no t her poe t 's wor k ev i de n ce o f a n a w a re ness o f t he proble ms w h i c h h a d led to h is o w n d ise n c h a n t me n t w i t h t he wr i t i n g o f poe tr y . " I I m 'o f fr a i t a co ns i derer une te te en l a quel le se resum a i t tou t ce qui m ' i n qu ie t a i t d a ns I 'or dre de l a l i t ter a ture, tou t ce qui m ' a t t i r a i t , tou t ce qui l a s au v a i t a mes y e u x " ( p . 6 4 2 ) . T h e au t hor of Les Mots anglais h a d no t h i n g w h a t soe ver in c o m m o n w i t h a poe t l i ke Verl a i ne. ' ' ^ T h is seemi n g l y m ir a culous tr a ns form a t io n of wri t i n g i n to voi ce, " c h a r m e , " h a d no t been a c h ie ve d t h roug h a dro i t embel l is h-me n t o n l yr i c a l co n ve n t io ns, but t h roug h a l i fe-lon g ref le c t ion o n t he sc ien t i f i c s tru c ture o f l a n gu a ge .

O n ne peut po i n t dou ter qu' i l n ' a i t r a ison ne sur leurs figures, e x p lore I 'esp a ce i n terieur oii ils p ar a issen t , t a n to t

In "Passage de Verlaine" Valery contrasts the two poets: Stephana Mallarme, genie essentiellement formel, s'elevant, peu a peu, a la conception abstraite de toutes les combinaisons de figures et de tours, s'est fait le premier ecrivam qui ait ose envisager le probltoe litteraire dans son entiere universalite . . . Verlaine,—mais c'est tout le contraire. Jamais contraste plus veritable. Son oeuvre ne vise pas a definir un autre monde plus pur et plus incorruptible que le notre et comme complet en lui-meme, mais elle admet dans la poesie toute la variete de I'ame telle quelle. Verlaine se propose aussi intime qu'il le puisse; il est plein d'lnegalites qui le font infiniment proche du lecteur. Son vers, libra et mobile entre les extremes du langage, ose descendre du ton le plus ddicatement musical jusqu'a la prose, parfois a la pire des proses, qu'il emprunte et qu'il epouse dehberement. Rien ne le distingue plus nette-ment de Mallarm̂, de qui le vers ne laisse jamais aucun doute sur sa quahte de vers. {Oeut/res I, pp. 713-14)

Ils furent conduits, chacun selon sa nature, I'un a renouveler, I'autre a parfaire notre poesie anterieure. {Ibid., p. 713)

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causes et tantot effets·, estime ce qu'on pourrait nommer leurs c harges poetiques; et que, par ce travail indefiniment pousse et precise, Ies mots ne se soient secretement, vir-tuellement ordonnes dans la puissance de son esprit, selon une Ioi mysterieuse de sa profonde sensibilite. (pp. 655-56)

Mallarme had given himself to the "true god of poetry"; all the rest were only idolaters (p. 620). In full consciousness of the arbitrary nature of language, where words which mean dark are full of light sounds ("nuit") and words which mean light are full of dark sounds ("jour"), 42 he had created a poetry which appeared to eliminate the irreconcilability of form and meaning, to transform the inevitable absence of writing into a living presence. In other words, Mallarme's great achieve­ment was that he seemed to have transformed language into something it is not. "Mallarme a compris Ie langage comme s'il l'eut invente" (p. 658). The metaphysics of the mystical Symbolists had become for Mallarme ("par une remarquable reaction de sa nature essentielle," p. 636) a metaphysics of writing which preserved the autonomy of the writer. Here at last was an idealism to which the austere and fiercely inde­pendent young Valery could, at least for a time, adhere.

Between December 1890 and January 1892 Valery expe­rienced a new surge of optimism and creative productiveness as he sought to apply certain of Mallarme's techniques ,to his own verse. During that year he wrote the first versions of his best early poetry, indeed, the only poetry which the forty-year-old critic would authorize to represent his former self in the first half of the Album de vers anciens: "Narcisse parle," November 1890; "Feerie," December 1890; "Orphee," March 1891; "Naissance de Venus," June 1981; "Helene," August

42 Mais, sur l'heure, tourne a de l'esthetique, mon sens regrette que Ie discours defaille a exprimer Ies objets par des touches y repondant en colons ou en allure, lesquelles existent dans l'instrument de la voix, parmi Ies langages et quelquefois chez un. A cote d'ombre, opaque, tinebres se fonce peu; quelle deception, devant la perversite conferant a jour comme a nuit, contradic-toirement, des timbres obscur ici, la clair. ("Crise de vers," Oeuvres, p. 364)

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1891; "La Fileuse," September 1891; "Episode," January 1892. Although the imaginative vision behind all of these poems is reminiscent of either Parnassianism or Symbolism, they all bear witness to a new preoccupation with the structural con­nectedness of imagery, rhyme, rhythm, and stanzaic form— in a word, with the internal necessity of the poem's formal elements that the narrative framework of the more fashionable mystical pieces had displaced from them as exclusively con­stitutive elements of the poem.

This period of intense creativity, inspired by Mallarme's example, lasted, however, for little more than a year. By the late spring and throughout the summer of 1892, Valery had reentered a period of severe self-questioning which ended in depression and his decision to abandon writing poetry alto­gether. Critics have been too content to assign the cause of his depression to his passionate attraction to a mysterious foreign woman, "Mme. R.," whom he had seen in the streets of Montpellier and who disappeared in the summer of 1892 before he ever found an opportunity to speak to her. To my knowledge, Valery has never explained in any detail the nature of this crisis or the precise reasons for his disenchantment with the ideal that Mallarme's example seemed to propose. In fact, his life-long reluctance to speak openly about the nature of his difference from Mallarme suggests that some­thing fundamental to his own poetic ideal had been placed into jeopardy by what he perceived as Mallarme's project. In the essays he says only that Mallarme had taken poetic lan­guage to the extreme limits of its possibilities and that there was nowhere else to go in this direction. It seems to me that the best evidence for understanding the change in his attitude toward Mallarme during this period comes from hints pro­vided by his private correspondence, from the few desultory poems written between 1892 and 1898, and, most reliably, from the features which distinguish the poetry Valery wrote after 1912.

One of the most interesting manifestations of Valery's grow­ing disenchantment with his newly discovered idol appears in

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the letters written during the crisis years to his friend, Four-ment, who had been hurt and estranged by the importance Mallarme had come to assume in Valery's life. Until his en­counter with Mallarme, Fourment had been Valery's ideal reader, their friendship was for him a true meeting of the minds. But when Valery discovered Mallarme's poetry and through it began to question the value of his earlier efforts (which Fourment had already severely criticized as superfi­cially conceived), Fourment did not respond in the manner Valery had hoped. The letters bear witness to the breakdown of this old friendship in a figurative language which indicates that, for Valery, the secret interlocutor may not have been Fourment at all, but Mallarme himself.

The changing implications of the Narcissus imagery in these letters reveal a connection between the breakdown in Valery's friendship with Fourment and his skepticism concerning Mal­larme's poetic ideal of an orphic language. During his mystical phase and throughout '91, the letter is figured as holding two faces, that of the writer and that of the reader, refleaed lov­ingly in its surface. These are two brother faces, separate, but in harmony with one another. Their harmonious inter-sub-jective relationship suggests that writing can serve as an ad­equate means for communicating shared experience, that feel­ing, thought, and word are united in the text. Despite the mounting friction in the letters to Fourment throughout '91, the Narcissus image of brother-selves is called upon whenever Valery wishes to remind Fourment of their earlier harmony:

Si je ne veux pas aimer Ies etreintes voisines, j'adore Ies lointaines, puisque plus beaux sont nos fantomes que nous-memes. Le mien hantait tes lignes, qui semblaient baisser des paupieres, lentement—et j'ai eu la sensation toujours chere, d'un miroir d'ame que tu, cher ami, in-clinais vers moi. . . . Il est bon d'errer . . . ou l'Autre devine sous Ies paroles obscures l'accompagnement de la Verite.43

4 3 Correspondance, op.cit., p. 121.

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This is the language of the "transparency of the heart" that Valery uses to describe his unspoken spiritual rapport with Mallarme during his visits to Valvins, for example, and it suggests the Symbolist vision of friendship which he poeticizes in "Le Bois amical," written in January of '92, and included at the beginning of the Album.44 Eight months later, however, a few weeks before the famous crisis of the "Nuit d'orage de Genes," during which Valery decided to "abandonner Ies !doles pour se consacrer a l'etude des sciences exactes,"45 he adopts a pastiche of Mallarme's style in a letter to Fourment to un­derscore what he now understands as the dreadful obscurity of writing. In the particularly cruel letter of 23 September 1892 he revises the Narcissus myth in such a way as to suggest the radical solitude of the writer's state. The "watery" text he is writing (watery from Fourment's sentimental tears of regret, no doubt) is no longer a reflecting surface, but one covered with "ratures," like his parodic recreation of the Mal-larmean vision that proclaims its own refusal to signify. In the first paragraph he spurns the temptation to wallow or drown in nostalgic reminiscence ("Non! L'apparition d'une telle vie, hier notre, ne serait qu'oiseux malaise"), preferring to accept the vacuity of the present.

Si j'obeis a une invite de phrases nulles, mouillees, si je veux nous plaindre et mettre en parole ici la possibilite de s'attendrir, d'etre une heure a ta gauche dans l'air trop lumineux...—non! L'apparition d'une telle vie, hier notre, ne serait qu'oiseux malaise. . . .46

Then, as if to test the possibility of a purely figurative form of communion with Fourment, Valery introduces a kind of poetic inner-text into his letter whose subject is the mysterious "la," the unknown woman of Montpellier, with whom he had fallen in love the previous summer, and whom he refers to as "L'objet, Ie signe et Ie sceau de ces variations," as if this

44 The same vision is discredited later in the Album in "Valvins," the poem whi<;h most specifically alludes to Mallarme.

45 Cited by Nadal in Correspondance, op.cit., p. 30. 46 Ibid., p. 124.

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woman were, like Mallarme's text, a figure for poetic language itself. He has seen, not her directly, but her "ombrelle qui d'une clarte diminuee bien connue me la demontre," the sign of her presence, a language, like that of Mallarme's "Nenu­phar blanc,"47 mysteriously self-referential, obscure, remote, but promising through symbolic figuration a superior reality somewhere in its depths, a truth independent of themselves, present through writing, and in which they can meet.

We have no record of Fourment's answer to this letter, but it must have chided Valery for the implausibility of his vision, for it provokes Valery to write the "letter left in the drawer," the text "non lu," in which he describes the breakdown of their friendship again in terms of the Narcissus myth. Four-ment can no longer read Valery's text appropriately; Valery cannot see or hear himself as ideal interlocutor in Fourment's answer. Letter, Poem, Idea, Mirror, Woman—all are perfectly vacant, signs of signs with no truth at their center: "II y a la un vide dont j'ai horreur" (letter not sent, October 1892).48

The letter Valery does send on 9 October 1892 announces the final disappearance of both the Poet and that possibility of ideal otherness projected out of his imagination in the form of the mysterious Mme. R., referred to as "L'Autre." "Une longue lettre pour toi demeure en mon tiroir . . . fanee. L'e-tonnement qui l'inspira fut inutile: elle aussi . . . Ies deux morts valables de ces jours derniers, Ie Poete et l'Indefinissable celebrite qui disparurent. . . ." In the final paragraph of this letter, which he signs "Adieu," Valery describes in detail the

47 In Mallarme's prose poem, "Le Nenuphar blanc," the suitor leaves the lady's "pare" without ever speaking to her, so as not to destroy the ideal of love he brought with him. Instead, he carries off a white water lily, symbol of that ideal:

. . . l'un de ces magiques nenuphars clos qui y surgissent tout a coup, enveloppant de Ieur creuse blancheur un nen, fait de songes intacts, du bonheur qui n'aura pas lieu et de mon souffle ici retenu dans la peur d'une apparition, partir avec: tacitement, en deramant peu a peu sans du heurt bnser 1'iUusion ni que Ie clapotis de la bulle visible d'ecume enroulee a ma fuite ne jette aux pieds survenus de personne la ressem-blance transparente du rapt de mon ideale fleur. . . . (Oeuvres, p. 286) 48 Correspondance, p. 127.

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baroque frame of a mirror reminiscent of a Mallarmean in­terior.49 It is an antique frame which the craftsman has shaped into twisted, unnatural forms suggestive of a jarring mixture of the Narcissus landscape of the Symbolist vision and the neo-Hellenic site of Parnassian poetry. In other words, instead of a valid new poetics, it represents a mocking simulacrum of the familiar details of his abandoned poetic past. The mirror is all frame and no reflecting surface:

Hier, dans un palais un miroir ancien, haut comme trois hommes dont l'aquarium saumatre et d'une lucidite vieil-Iie s'entourait d'ors tres considerables, compliques,—en­core semes de flaques profondes. L'or jouait en des reliefs totaux, des branches molles, des tiges impossibles, une vaste coquille sous la voussure de laquelle posaient Ies mains d'enfants, grands comme des femmes vraies, sou-tiens de la splendeur. 50

The metaphysical justification Valery had once seen for Mal­larme's hermetic new language has disappeared, leaving only the diminished brilliance of its formal play. The loss of the dream of an orphic language capable of abolishing the op­positions which make adequate understanding impossible confirms Valery's distrust of all future readers, whom he refers to now as "Phomme du hasard," man enslaved to the acci­dents of history and of language it was Mallarme's gageur to overcome. The face that gazes back at him from the text is not familiar; it does not return a smile, but a grimace—"ecrire pour celui-la, Iui donner des idees me repugne. Lui en prendre est revoltant" (August, 1902). 51

1892, then, was the year which witnessed a momentous change in Valery's perception of his master's enterprise. Dur-

49 The mirror imagery in the final tercet of Mallarme's "Ses purs ongles tres haut...," for example, or the opening lines of the Ouverture Ancienne d'Herodiade: "Abolie, et son aile affreuse dans Ies larmes / Du bassin, aboli, qui mire Ies alarmes / Des ors nus fustigeant l'espace cramoisi, /." (Oeuvres, p. 41)

50 Correspondance, p. 128. 51 Ibid., p. 167.

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ing that year the poems he writes in imitation of Mallarme's style are scarce and of interest mainly for the self-awareness they reveal.52 As Valery wrote to Thibaudet in 1912, "mes derniers vers, du Mallarme tres inferieur, appartiennent a cette gymnastique."53 By "gymnastique" Valery means writing as a form of mental exercise without commitment to any spiritual vision.

One of the most revelatory of these is the prose poem Purs drames (see Appendix), written sometime after his last letter to Fourment, in which Valery depicts himself "comme un fou dans un lieu sans echo ou il se sent familier et tout seul," and which he describes in an unpublished manuscript note as the most significant of his literary achievements of 1892.54 Purs drames poeticizes, partially in the form of amusing pastiche, the drama of Valery's break with Mallarme and Symbolism to pursue the solitary line of his own thought as it curves and spirals and turns back upon itself in the act of writing. The title is a pun meaning both "pure," in the sense of ideal, untouched by the Fall, and "nothing but," as in "nothing but silly, exaggerated stories, 'purs drames.' " Like Mallarme's Prose pour des Esseintes (see Appendix), Valery's "drame" evokes the liturgical mystery of creation, an evocation of the Edenic site, but viewed from the distance of an ironic con­sciousness reminiscent of Baudelaire's finest poetry. Both the myth of purity behind Symbolist idealism and its ironic sub­version by a superior if alienated level of insight are rejected in favor of the "Drame pur d'une ligne . . . la plus sure de toutes Ies choses . . . eprise, diverse, monotone,—mince et

52 See, for example, these verses written in 1892 for Mme. R:

Plongerai-je l'eclair secret dedans? que n'ai-je Reve de lourds baisers—marchant dans cette neige Dont Ie vent d'or m'aere allegeant mon Ete De blanc crepe et touchant de bulles ma peau d'ombre Par cet intime jeu de s'y etre jete? O mon front vois de l'onde accourir Ie pur nombre!

Cited by Nadal in C orrespond a n ce, p. 233. 5 3 Lettres a quelques-uns, p. 97. 54 See, C orrespond a n ce, p. 236. For a study of the dramatic development

of this poem, see Ursula Franklin, T he Rhetoric of Va lery's Prose "Aubades" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), pp. 10-19.

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noire," which ends the poem, as the poet attains the freedom of solitary thought.

The vision of the Edenic site, which recalls Mallarme's "sol des cent iris . . . site," in Prose, is the wakeful extension of an erotic dream composed of Mallarme's favorite symbols: "Ecumes," "aventureuses nues qu'effleure une plume" . . . "roseaux" . . . "astres" . . . "calices" . . . "pierreries .. . tiges longues d'herbe. . . ." As the World turns over in its sleep, the Poet awakens, but he is a self-deluding poet. Unlike Des­cartes' cogito, who "se fait autre, comme Ie dormeur de qui Ie brusque mouvement issu de son reve, altere, transcende ce reve, et Ie transforme en reve qualifie comme tel" ( Oeuvres I, p. 791), this Poet with a willfully blinded eye contemplates "ces beaux debris" of what appears to be a ruined Symbolist garden, glimmering with precious gems and liturgical flow­ers—"Oeil, dont la vertu d'enfance serait ephemere, s'il ne ruisselait chaque aurore sur son miroir a cause de quelque souriant mensonge, une eau discrete de larme." He tries to prolong the illusion in an even more heavily eroticized vision than the night dream, "Abusons notre heure de ces precieux Etres...." His second, consciously evoked daydream includes, not "la douce figure humaine" suggestive of Narcissus in the night dream, but "un simple couple, inapergu dont l'un fuit l'autre feminin," recalling Mallarme's "(Nous fumes deux, je Ie maintiens)" of Prose. Mallarme's hyperbolic garden, where

Toute fleur s'etalait plus large Sans que nous en devisions.

Telles, immenses, que chacune Ordinairement se para D'un lucide contour lacune Qui des jardins la separa.

Gloire du long desir, Idees Tout en moi s'exaltait de voir La famille des iridees Surgir a ce nouveau devoir. . ..

and his hyperbolic claim for poetry to be the site where nature is dissolved into the pure Idea of itself, are the source, then,

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of the illusion. But the Mallarmean Poet and the narrator of Purs drames are quite separate. The narrator describes the Poet's act as "Ancienne vanite! que de ranimer Ie spectacle angelique et maintenant maudit ou ces nudites se jouaient de vivre." The articulation of the Idea into Form ("Tout, au monde, existe pour aboutir a un livre," Mallarme)55 brings with it the inevitable corruption of both by the very instrument of their transformation. "On dirait que Ie jardin tremblant s'envole. . . . Toutes ces images sont corrompues encore par la certitude de leurs elements."

Between 1892 and 1898 Valery's "Mallarmean" poetry— Purs drames, "Vue," "Intermede," or "Valvins," for exam­ple—begins to look more like pastiche than creative imita­tion.56 Barbier has even brought to light the fragment of a heavily parodic little drama written by Valery and Andre Fon-tainas as a joke in 1896. Maeterlinck and Mallarme are the principal figurants. I quote it here because it reveals a facet of the Mallarme-Valery relationship which has been generally neglected by Valery criticism:

Feerie, drame en deux actes

Acte I

scene premiere

La scene se passe dans Ie bar a 1'angle de la Rue de Rome et du Boulevard St. Michel

De nos jours costumes de l'epoque Maeterlinck, Mallarme

Maeterlinck: Les humbles grace a moi trouverent Ieur tresor

modique:

55 Oeuvres, p. 378. 56 Lawler considers "Vue" an improving imitation of Mallarme, more "sup­

ple" in its use of analogy than many of Mallarme's poems. "On ne saurait toutefois en conclure a une imitation complaisante. Vue montre une volonte d'annexion ou Ie poete parvient a definir un monde de lumiere, de vapeurs, Il se laisse guider par la seule analogie alors que chez Mallarme l'analogie est d'abord fonction d'un dispositif logique. Il en resulte, dans Ies symetnes formelles, un bonheur plastique qui est bien de Valery et non d'un autre." ("Valery et Mallarme," op.cit., p. 89.)

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M(allarme) Ah! il s'est tu si tot Ie septuor Et ma voile a Valvins aux souteneurs des rives Montre l'espoir d'azur aux corolles furtives O toi qui d'Emerson immerges la clarte Contre moi Ies beautes de J'interne Beaute(.)

M(aeterlinck) Maxtre de Melisande, helas! et de Maleine Moutons dont Ies vents nous vinrent tondre la laine Moi Maeterlinck languissamment venu de Gand Au fond d'un complet pale et chausse d'un seul gant Triste comme Mochel et gai comme Bonnieres Et comme de Souza depourvu de crinieres Moi Maeterlinck, je porte erige comme un Iys Un exemplaire unique et pur de Novalis

M(allarme) Delicieusement nu l'aveugle unanime Et Ie monde nul de Lazarre de Nime Lui manque. J'aime mieux mon George(s) Rodenback ou J. MacNeil Whistler rue au 108 du Bac(.)

Exeunt Flourish

Camille Mauclair57

Mallarme's unexpected death in 1898, however, put an abrupt end to all such light-hearted irreverence. It was for Valery one of the most painful personal losses he would ever suffer: "J'ai perdu l'homme que j'aimais Ie plus au monde. ..." "Depuis ce jour, il est certains sujets de reflexion que je n'ai veritablement jamais plus consideres. J'avais longuement reve d'en entretenir Mallarme; son ravissement brusque Ies a comme sacres et interdits pour toujours a mon attention" (p. 620). After 1898 he would dedicate himself in numerous prose essays and prefaces to memorializing Mallarme's spiritual guidance and unique contribution to French letters. James

57 Barbier, "Valery et Mallarme," op.cit. The false signature, "Camille Mauclair" is part of the joke, since, according to Barbier, Valery could not stand Mauclair, whom he had recently met at one of the gatherings Rue de Rome and whom he found pushy and ridiculous.

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Lawler sees in this lifelong effort by Valery a reciprocal ex­change of influence very like the one evoked by the second epigraph to this chapter: "De meme que Baudelaire Ie fit pour Edgar Poe, Valery et Mallarme echangent des valeurs': Ie pre­mier, dans un sens tres reel influence son predecesseur, Ie cree pour Ie public comme Ie second l'avait d'abord secretement cree."58

In none of these essays written after Mallarme's death does VaIery ever suggest the inadequacy of his predecessor's ex­ample, but in the Preface for the 1931 Gallimard edition of Mallarme's Poesies, there is a revelatory moment of silence which may help to guide our effort to understand the younger poet's retreat from the master. At the very point in his essay where he is describing Mallarme as the poet who most suc­cessfully managed to sever poetic "meaning" from ordinary "meaning," Valery begins a sentence which he does not finish. Like the letter to Fourment left in the drawer, it is a sentence which implies the impossibility of a poetry free of reference, and the conspicuous gap which it leaves in an otherwise sty­listically smooth text, is eloquent witness to the importance to Valery of what has not been said:

Personne, chez Ies modernes, n'avait, a l'egal de ce poete, ose diviser a ce point l'efficace de la parole de la facilite de comprehension. Personne n'avait distingue si con-sciemment Ies deux effets de l'expression par Ie langage: transmettre un fait,—produire une emotion. La poesie est un compromis, ou une certaine proportion de ces deux fonctions. . . .

Nul ne s'etait risque a representer Ie mystere de toute chose par Ie mystere du langage. (p. 650)

It will be the last words of the last paragraph of the last essay Valery wrote on Mallarme in 1944, words borrowed from Mallarme's own Un Coup de des . . . , which proclaim the futility of the master's Cratylian project:

58 Lawler, "Valery et Mallarme," p. 98.

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Il demontra par d'etonnantes reussites que la poesie doit donner des valeurs equivalentes aux significations, aux sonorites, aux physionomies memes des mots, qui heurtes ou fondus avec art, composent des vers d'un eclat, d'une plenitude, d'une resonance inouis. Les rimes, Ies allite­rations, d'une part; Ies figures, tropes, metaphores, de l'autre, ne sont plus ici des details et ornements du dis-cours, qui peuvent se supprimer: ce sont des proprietes substantielles de l'ouvrage: Ie "fond" n'est plus cause de la forme: il en est l'un des effets. Chaque vers devient une entite, qui a ses raisons physiques d'existence. Il est une decouverte, une sorte de "verite" intrinseque arra-chee au hasard. Quant au monde, l'ensemble du reel n'a d'autre excuse d'etre que d'offrir au poete de jouer contre Iui une partie sublime, perdue d'avance. (pp. 709-10)

Valery's own poetic project will be not so much a negation of Mallarme's as it will be a laying bare of the shared knowl­edge which ultimately led Mallarme himself to proclaim his own failure: UN COUP DE DES JAMAIS N'ABOLIRA LE HASARD. Rather than its denial, through the construction of a delusive incantatory verse, Valery will make the truth of the "compromis"—the mutual contamination of form and meaning, body and mind, world and self—the subject of his poem's "story." One might say that the real originality of Valery's poetry in an age when radical originality is being affirmed is that it recognizes the inevitable loss of autonomy which a genuinely creative use of language requires. His own theoretical ideal of pure poetry, a language like Dance, Al­gebra, or Architecture, free of reference beyond itself, will be shown to be unattainable by the very mechanisms necessary for its articulation into form.

VALERY'S ORIGINALITY

The most obvious change in the poetry Valery writes from 1891 on is the increased importance he accords the natural

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world through imagery, diction, and phonetic effects. This emphasis on natural forms reverses the direction of Mal-larme's imagery, which characteristically struggles to free itself of its rootedness in material existence, and reflects Valery's acceptance of the seduction-toward-the world inherent in both thought and language. Edmund Wilson was ïçÝ of the first to note the tension between the sensuous and the abstract in Valery's work, a tension which he interpreted as a sign of an irresolvable conflict that Valery considered fundamental to the human condition:

If one were to read only "M. Teste" . . . or if one were to read only Valery's prose, one might take him for one of the dryest and one of the most relentlessly abstract of minds. . . . Yet there has perhaps never been a poet who enjoyed the sensuous world with more gusto than Valery or who more solidly bodied it forth. In the reproduction, in beautiful verses, of shapes, sounds, effects of light and shadow, substances of fruit or flesh, Valery has never been surpassed ... Valery's poetry is then always shifting back and forth between this palpable and visible world and a realm of intellectual abstraction. And the contrast between them, the conflict implied between the absolute laws of the mind and the limiting contingencies of life, opposites impossible to dissociate from one another, is, as I say, the real subject of his poems.59

Wilson has sensitively and incisively identified here the issue most central to Valery's work. This fundamental mind/body, meaning/form polarity is the subject of Valery's greatest po­etry and of his most eloquent meditations on the nature of the work of art.

The value Valery always attached to the natural world is apparent in his earliest correspondence, the imagery of which often conflicts with the anti-naturalism of his Decadent stance.60

59 Axel's Castle, pp. 72-75. 60 In August of 1890 he described to Pierre Louys a day spent at the shore:

J'ai couru a l'eau fremissante, cherchant un peu de la sensation des oiseaux dans la libre nage. Mon corps me semblait un peu affranchi de

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING • 41

In a letter where he speaks admiringly of Huysman's A Re-

bours, for example, he focuses on the evocation of the missing

ocean when he describes Des Esseintes' famous dining

room/ship's cabin rather than on the superior value of her-

meticism implied by its designer's artifice, and he includes in

this letter a highly sensuous poem, "Luxurieuse au bain," of

a woman plunging into the sea/ ̂ Whereas Mallarme's human

la pesanteur, et mon esprit, lui-meme gnse de sel, semblait delivre de la raison, cette pesanteur de I'Esprit. Tellement que (heureuse folie!) je hurlais, a chaque fois qu'une crete saphiree et claire m'elevait, les rutilants vers de S. Merrill dans la Chevauchee des Walkyrte$\ Les lames scan-daient le poeme! (Lettres a quelques-uns, p. 15)

A few days later he wrote again to Louys, beginning his letter with a de-scription of the late summer landscape, but he suddenly stops to deny natural beauty m favor of an otherworldly Symbohst dreamscape:

Que vous dire, mon cher ami, sinon que I'exquis automne lentement passe au blond venitien la chevelure emeraude des branches. Et meme pourquoi ce soir sur ce feuillet detache vais-je ecrire des choses pour vous, )e ne saurai I'exphquer . . . tout cela, ce sont des pensers certams, terrestres, et trop significatifs. Divaguons un peu sous la lampe, et que rien de reel, de limite ne vienne nous troubler. . . .

Je songe, en cette heure mdecise et molle, qu'il est bon que rien ne soit stable et vrai; des fantomes me plaisent, et tout ce qui n'est pas vision, mirage en un vieux miroir, reflet de lune dans I'eau ne saurait m'attirer et me retenir. . . .

. . . Je songe que la vie est une chose ridicule. . . . {Ibtd., p. 17)

" Luxurteuse au bam L'eau se trouble—amoureusement—de Roses vagues Riantes parmi la mousse et le marbre pur. Car une chair, illuminant I'humide azur Vient d'y plonger, avec des ronds d'heureuses vagues! . . .

. . . O baigneuse! . . . de ton rire c'est le secret! . . . Aux caresses de l'eau, tes murs desirs s'apaisent Tu cheris la clarte fraiche et ces fleurs qui baisent Tes seins de perle, tes bras clairs, ton corps nacre.

Et tu te pames dans les leurs! Dedaigneuse Des amantes et des jeunes gens! O baigneuse! Toi, qui, dans la piscine, attends I'heure ou soudain

Les buchers s'allument, rouges, sur le ciel vide Ta nudite s'enflamme et tu nages splendide Dans la riche lumiere impudique du bain! . . .

23 luillet 1890

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subject is typically evoked through symbols representing its absence—bed, lute, fan, curtain, window—Valery's subjects, in the poems from 1891 on, are frequently situated outdoors, surrounded and even touched by elements of the natural world— air, sunlight, tides, bird song, tree branch, rose. Indeed, they accede to consciousness and creative life from contact with this world. 62

"Narcisse parle" is a case in point. In it Valery uses Mal-larme's own poetic vocabulary from Herodtade ("Que je de­plore ton eclat fatal et pur") in order to lament the destruction of the natural self by the reflective consciousness. The body/mind opposition is maintained in an uneasy union until the end, when the embrace of the illusory, reflected self by Narcisse causes a splitting to take place. At the moment the embracing self drowns, a new, faun-like Narcissus is liberated to pipe a seductive tune to the wood nymphs who surround him.

Tiens ce baiser qui brise un calme d'eau fatal! L'espoir seul peut suffire a rompre ce cristal. La ride me ravisse au souffle qui m'exile Et que mon souffle anime une flute gracile Dont Ie joueur leger me serait indulgent! . . .

Valery seems to be saying that not only does Mallarme's po­etry of pure reflection lead to the extinction of the poetic voice altogether, but for a new voice to be born, this thralldom with an illusory brother/self that pretends to perfect unity of form

62 In tracing the development of Valery's early poetry between 1890 and 1900—that is, the versions before they were specifically revised for their position in the Album—Charles Whiting has noted a marked progression toward a sensuous contact with the world and a growing preoccupation with the body and its relationship to the intellect:

A travers des etudes separees de 19 poemes nous montrerons, en effet, comment la technique de Valery a progresse dans ces premiers poemes de la presentation d'un reve irreel et faiblement realise jusqu'a un contact sensuel, pourtant abstrait, avec Ie monde... nous decouvrons aussi dans ces premiers ouvrages du poete une preoccupation croissante pour la vie du corps, une sensualite charnelle mais raffinee, des paralleles entre Ie developpement du corps et celui de 1'intellect qui annoncent plus que Ies images Ies themes memes de La Jeune Parque. (Valery, jeune poete, p. 3)

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and meaning must be broken. It is not surprising that Mal-larme's most sensuous poem, "L'Apres-midi d'un faune," the poem which objectifies the mind/body polarity in the form of the two nymphs whom the Faun tries unsuccessfully to hold together, will be the intertext most insistently present in the poems of the Album de vers anciens.

The voyage which would eventually lead Valery back to the writing of what Edmund Wilson called the most sensuous and the most abstract poetry in the French language, begins, how­ever, in a highly cerebral, authority-obsessed fashion. From 1893 on, Valery turns his back on all forms of neo-platonic idealism to dedicate himself to the "exact sciences," to redis­cover the world of physical evidence (a favorite Valeryan word, and one he came to value during his twenty-odd years of scientific reading), as it is recorded and articulated by the cogito.

Valery looks to the study of laws governing the physical universe in his search for the stability he had lost during the night of the storm at Genes ("tous ces beaux debris d'une verite tot disparue par la foudre," Purs drames). During the '90's, when he wrote the letter to Fourment referred to as "arithmatica universalis," La Soiree avec M. Teste, and the Introduction a la methode de Leonard de Vinci, he seems to see no limitations to the mind's power to understand and control existence. As P. E. Sutcliffe puts it, in 1895 "Valery ne desesperait pas de trouver une caracteristique universelle . . . il croyait en la possibilite d'unifier Ie reel d'apres un ensemble de relations designables." 63

The Preface Valery wrote to Martin Lamm's Swedenborg, published in 1936, defines very clearly the objection he felt

6 3 La Pensee de Paul Valery (Paris: Nizet, 1955), p. 55. For an account of Valery's scientific readings during these critical years, see Claude Valery, "Lectures scientifiques anglo-saxonnes de Valery," Colloque, op.cit. Christine Crow's studies of the influence of natural philosophy on Valery are invaluable for the scholar seeking a more thorough understanding of this aspect of Valery's thought. See Paul Valery, Consciousness and Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) and Paul Valery and Maxwell's Demon: Natural Order and Human Possibility (Hull: University of Hull, 1972).

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to mystical philosophies in terms of the priority he grants the rational self and the value he accords scientific evidence: "L'evidence est, en somme, une reaction de notre esprit dans laquelle nous nous reconnaissons, tandis que la certitude my­stique est de la nature de l'impression d'existence indepen-dante de nous, que nous donnent communement Ies objets et Ies corps sensibles, qui s'imposent a nous en tant qu'ils nous sont etrangers" ( Oeuvres I, p. 873). Mysticism (like derivative writing or uncritical reading) allows the invasion of the Self by Another: "L'evenement mystique ou spirituel par excel­lence est !'introduction ou !'intervention presumee dans Ie groupe des attributions d'un Moi5 de quasi phenomenes, de puissances impulsives, de jugements, etc. que Ie Moi ne re-connait pas pour siens, qu'il ne peut attributer qu'a un Autre, Ie domaine indivisible du Meme" (ibid., p. 875). Descartes is the philosopher Valery would always admire—not, as one might expect, because of his contributions to scientific knowl­edge or even because of his great Method, but because for Descartes the Self is the origin and the field of all his reasoning: ". . . a Ulm . . . s'est precipitee dans sa pensee la resolution de se prendre soi-meme pour source et pour arbitre de toute valeur en matiere de connaissance." (Ibid., p. 813) 6 4

By the late '90's, however, Valery's discovery of the laws of relativity encouraged him to abandon all notions of Whole­ness and Origin, whether they be located in the Mind or the World." In a letter to Gide of 1899, for example, he speaks

64 Judith Robinson in "Valery, Pascal et la censure de la metaphysique," Colloque . . . , op.cit. points out that Valery was tormented by the same questions that tormented Pascal, especially in his youth. She cites from an unpublished notebook written when he was very young: "Tout dans la nature peut se passer de l'homme, tandis que l'homme ne peut pas se passer de la nature," p. 201. In answer, he turns to control by the intellect of these truths of man's nature and rejects Pascal in favor of Descartes. To the image of man's misery, he opposes "l'image rassurante de la liberte et de la volonte cartesienne," p. 187. She cites Valery: "Descartes vise/songe/a la puissance— Pascal a l'impuissance de la pensee." (C. X, p. 350)

65 See Au Sujet d' Eureka, Oeuvres I, pp. 863-64:

Quant a l'idee d'un commencement,—j'entends d'un commencement absolu,—elle est necessairement un mythe. Tout commencement est co­incidence; il nous faudrait concevoir ici je ne sais quel contact entre Ie

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING • 41

of Nietzsche with a mixture of approval for the contradictory

nature of his rhetoric and of condescension for his deification

of the all-constitutive subject:

Quant a Nietzsche, diable! II me semble . . . que tu te

presses un peu de I'unifier. Pour moi, il est avant tout

contradictoire. . . . Le plus amusant chez lui, c'est I'air

convaincu et la preoccupation ethique—chose qui me fait

toujours ngoler—car en somme c'est une affaire de cui-

sine. II veut travailler dans la morale, et il ne voit pas que

le fond moderne de cela, c'est I'indifference bien presen-

tee. D'ailleurs, as-tu remarque le true merveilleux que

constitue le Superuomo} Cela permet a la fois d'etre opti-

miste et pessimiste, d'ou pages diverses, etc., d'etre ro-

mantique et classique, etc., ad libitum. . . . Maintenant,

je lui pardonne beaucoup car il est pour "un peu plus de

conscience," marotte ancienne de moi.®^ {Oeuvres I, p.

1760)

tout et le nen. En essayant d'y penser on trouve que tout commencement est consequence,—tout commencement acheve quelque chose.

Mais il nous faut prmcipalement I'ldee de ce Tout que nous appelons umvers, et que nous desirons de voir commencer. Avant meme que la question de son ongme nous mquiete, voyons si cette notion, qui semble s'lmposer a notre pensee, qui lui semble si simple et si inevitable, ne va pas se decomposer sous notre regard.

Nous pensons obscurement que le Tout est quelque chose, et imaginant quelque chose, nous I'appelons le Tout. Nous croyons que ce Tout a commence comme chaque chose commence, et que ce commencement de I'ensemble, qui dut etre bien plus etrange et plus solennel que celui des parties, doit encore etre infiniment plus important a connaitre. Nous constituons une idole de totalite, et une idole de son origine, et nous ne pouvons nous empecher de conclure a la realite d'un certain corps de la nature, dont I'umte reponde a la notre meme, de laquelle nous nous sentons assures.

Telle est la forme primitive, et comme enfantine, de notre idee de I'univers.

II faut y regarder de plus pres, et se demander si cette notion tres naturelle, c'est-a-dire tres impure, peut figurer dans un raisonnement non illusoire.

^ For an excellent study of connections between Nietzsche's and Valery's thought, see Edouard Gaede, Nietzsche et Valery, essat sur la comedte de I'espnt (Pans: Gallimard, 1962). According to Gaede, Valery read Nietzsche

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Judith Robinson has identified in her study of Valery's note­books during this period affinities between Valery's thought and that of the logical positivists—Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, for example—whom he would not read until some thirty-five years later. Like them, he redefines philosophy as an activity rather than as a system. The thinking man's role is not to explain the universe, but to record its shifting observable prop­erties with as much precision as possible.67 Reality is poly­valent because everything depends upon the point of view of the observer; at the same time, the configuration of the sub­ject's thought depends upon his ever-changing place in time and space, "une configuration mobile d'etats energetiques qui ne cessent de se transformer dans l'espace et Ie temps."68

In many of his essays on poetic process, Valery apparently saw no contradiction in adjusting his particular brand of Cartesian, subject-centered idealism to the discoveries of the new physics. A relativistic concept of the world suited a psyche obsessed with freedom and autonomy far better than did the mystical correspondant vision of the Romantics and post-Romantics. The subject is now left adrift in space and, like a dancer, dependent upon the prodigious effort of his mind to bring a constantly transforming order to a constantly changing universe. In a sense one might say that the Valeryan subjec­tivity is accorded even greater primacy than that of his Ro­mantic or Symbolist predecessors because it is no longer an extension of a higher, ideal Logos, but, as in the example of Mallarme, a solitary presence dependent only upon its unique

during the '90's in avant-garde journals and between 1898 and 1909 Nietzsche's translator, Henn Albert, who was a good friend of Valery's, sent him the translations into French for the complete works as soon as they came out. In the Notice for the publication of his four letters to Henri Albert in 1927, Valery writes: "II (Nietzsche) me plaisait aussi par Ie vertige intellectuel de l'exces de conscience et de relations pressenties, par certains passages a la ltmite, par la presence d'une volonte supeneure intervenant pour se creer Ies obstacles et Ies exigences sans lesquels la pensee ne salt que se fuir. . . ." Cited by Gaede, p. 453.

67 L'Analyse de I'esprtt dans Ies 'Cahters' de Valery (Paris: Libraine Jose Corti, 1963), p. 45.

68 Ibtd., p. 94.

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powers of seeing and abstraction to hold back or suspend the inevitable return to formlessness which governs the natural world. Not only does the observer's ability to abstract reverse the law of entropy, according to Valery, but the mind becomes increasingly stronger through the exercise of abstraction. "La nature pensante est une sorte de revoke contre la nature phy­sique."69 Whereas Baudelaire experienced enclosure within his own mind as a kind of nightmare, Valery exults in this iso­lation as a source of freedom and creative energy, and in all of his meditations on the power of the creative agent seems to forget his insight into the independent power of language to which that agent is forced, at times, to submit. Through an intense effort of will, Valery imagines the eyes, or mind, of the wakeful observer becoming the sphere of the creation:

Mes yeux entrainent ma vision de place en place, et trou-vent des affections de toute part. Ma vision excite la mobilite de mes yeux a l'agrandir, a l'elargir, a la creuser sans cesse. I l n 'est pas de mouvement de ces yeux qu i . . . n'engendre des effets colores; et par Ie groupe de ces mouvements qui s'enchainent entre eux, qui se prolon-gent. . . . Je suis comme enferme dans ma propriete de percevotr. Toute la diversite de mes vues se compose dans I'unite de ma conscience motrice. (Au sujet d'Eureka, Oeuvres I, p. 864, my italics)70

Thus, although Valery recognizes man's temporal condition and his inevitable biological need to return periodically to a state of formlessness (often figured as a sleeping woman, se­ductively fused with the natural world), he places priority in the wakeful, observing, synthesizing self and does not seem to grant that this wakeful self is as prey to the determining structures of language as the sleeping self is to suppressed memories from the past. Contrary to his Romantic and Sym­bolist predecessors, or to his Surrealist contemporaries, he sees

69 See Robinson's discussion of entropy, ibid., pp. 66-68. 70 For a sensitive study of the theme of perception in Valery and Mallarme,

see Ludmilla M. Wills, Le Regard contemplatif chez Valery et Mallarme (Amsterdam: Rodopi NV, 1974).

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no connection between the dream and the way our conscious mind perceives the "real" world; indeed, he never tires of stressing the unreliable nature of the dreaming or unconscious self as a source of perception, and this in the very terms ("fond," "abime") which he uses elsewhere to describe the treachery of language:

Pourquoi veut-on que Ie fond . . . de nous-memes . . . que nous trouvons en nous par d'etranges accidents . . . soit plus important a observer . . . que la figure de ce monde? . . . Cet abime ou s'aventure Ie plus inconstant, Ie plus credule de nos sens, ne serait-il pas au contraire Ie lieu et Ie produit de nos impressions Ies plus vaines, Ies plus brutes . . . etant celles dont Ies appareils sont confus et Ie plus eloignes de la precision et de la coor­dination qui se trouvent dans Ies autres, desquels ce que nous appelons Ie Monde Exterieur est Ie chef-d'oeuvre? ( Oeuvres II, p. 1305)

In this same essay on the visual arts, where language, sig­nificantly is not at stake, Valery claims that those who see the world through their deepest, most interiorized selves are pris­oners of illusions: "II ne peut qu'il ne voie ce a quoi il songe, et songe ce qu'il voit" (p. 1304), whereas "godless mystics" like Berthe Morisot, who experience each instant as new, those whose seeing is not unconsciously obscured by habit, pastness, otherness of any kind, those, we must assume he means, who do not perceive through language, are those, paradoxically, most capable of the kind of abstraction which "control" over language requires:

Berthe Morisot vivait dans ses grands yeux dont !'atten­tion extraordinaire a Ieur fonction, a Ieur acte continuel Iui donnait cet air etranger, separe . . . eloigne par pre­sence excessive. Rien ne donne cet air absent et distinct du monde comme de voir Ie present tour pur. Rien, peut-etre, de plus abstrait que ce qui est. (p. 1304)

On the other hand, in his essay on Corot, Valery recognizes that all artists paint or compose through language: "lis se

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tiennent, en verite, devant Ieur mirage de toile, des discours infinis, meles de lyrisme et de crudites,—toute une litterature refractee, refoulee, parfois recuite, qui, vers Ie soir, fait ex­plosion en 'mots' remarquablement justes . . ." (p. 1308). Those, such as Delacroix, Wagner, or Baudelaire, who achieve the most violent and seemingly direct representation of the physical world are also by far the most self-consciously critical and intellectual:

J'observe ici que Ies artistes qui ont cherche a obtenir de leurs moyens à action la plus energique sur Ies sens, qui ont use de l'intensite, des contrastes, des resonances . . . furent aussi Ies plus "intellectuels," Ies plus raisonneurs, Ies plus entetes d'esthetique . . . ils recherchent dans une meditation abstraite Ies recettes qui Ieur permettront d'agir a coup sur l'etre nerveux et psychique—Ieur sujet. (p. 130 9 )

Even in Valery's two most extended meditations on the nature of language, seen as divided against itself and contam­inated with impurities from past usage, Questions de poesie and Poesie et pensee abstraite, he nevertheless, as in the essays on the visual arts, proposes an artistic ideal similar to Mal-larme's of the reconciliation of form and meaning through the poet's god-like powers of invention.

Dreams ("l'univers poetique presente de grandes analogies avec ce que nous pouvons supposer de l'univers du reve," p. 1321 ), like natural objects—tree, fruit, sea shell—all of which evolve according to laws of inner necessity, may serve as models for the poetic text—"Au Platane," "Les Grenades," "L'Homme et la Coquille"—but, for Valery, the poem is always superior to those models because it is a conscious invention repre­senting the inventor's powers of abstraction. It is worth noting that the terms by which he establishes the contrast between natural objects and man-made constructions are uncannily reminiscent of the ideal informing Baudelaire's "Paradis ar-tificiels" or poems such as "Reve parisien," where geometric regularity replaces organic growth, but these commentaries

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bear none of the traces of his predecessor's irony concerning the doomed nature of this ideal:

Si la nature pousse une plante, elle l'eleve insensiblement, la deplie et l'etale, comme par une suite d'etats d'equi-libre, de sorte qu'a chaque instant l'age de la plante, sa masse, sa surface de feuillage decoupe, et Ies conditions physiques de son milieu soient dans une relation indivi­sible, dont la figure de cette plante est comme !'expression mysterieusement rigoureuse.

Mais tout autre est l'oeuvre de l'homme . . . il exerce ses forces sur une matiere etrangere, il distingue ses actes de Ieur support materiel, il en a conscience distincte; il peut done Ies concevoir et Ies combiner avant qu'il Ies execute. . . .

Operant ainsi sur Ies etres et sur Ies objets, sur Ies evenements et sur Ies motifs que Ie monde et la nature Iui offrent, il en abstrait enfin ces symboles de son action dans lesquels son pouvoir de comprehension et son pou-voir constructeur se combinent, et qui se nomment: la Ligne, la Surface, Ie Nombre, I'Ordre, la Forme, Ie Rytbme . . . et Ie reste.

Mais il s'oppose done bien nettement a la Nature par cette puissance d'abstraction et de composition, car la Nature n'abstrait ni ne compose; elle ne s'arrete point ni ne se reflechit; elle se developpe sans retour. (Oeuvres I I, pp. 1300-01) 7 1

As we have seen, it was the evidence of this power of ab­straction that Valery most admired in Mallarme's work. But

71 For a thorough exploration and analysis of Valery's understanding of the relationship of consciousness to nature, see Crow, Paul Valery, Con­sciousness and Nature, op.ctt. For other insightful studies of this subject, see Walter Ince, "Etre, Connaitre et Mysticisme du Reel selon Valery," Entretiens sur Paul Valery ( Paris: Mouton, 196 8 ), pp. 203-222 ; Pierre Laurette, Le ThemedeVarbrechezPaul Valery (Pans: Klincksieck, 1967); and L.J. Austin, "The Negative Plane Tree," L'Esprit createur, IV, (1964), pp. 3-10. Works by Valery in which natural and human composition are compared are: "L'Homme et la Coquille" (Oeuvres I, pp. 886-902 ) and Eupalmos ou Var-chitecte (Oeuvres II, pp. 79-148).

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w h e r e a s in Malla r m e ' s po e t r y th e spe a k i n g su b j e c t i v i t y di s ­a p p e a r s be h i n d th e ab s t r a c t i o n it enu n c i a t e s ("la dis p a r i t i o n el o c u t o i r e du poe t e"), and the rea d e r fi n d s hi m s e l f in a ver b a l se t t i n g de p r i v e d of all ref e r e n c e to its own gen e s i s , in Valer y ' s po e t r y , as in Baude l a i r e ' s , th e obs e r v i n g co n s c i o u s n e s s in s i s t ­e n t l y ma k e s its e l f fe l t th r o u g h a rhe t o r i c of in t e r r o g a t i o n , ex c l a m a t i o n , an d com m a n d as it art i c u l a t e s th e iso l a t e d el e ­m e n t s of se n s u o u s re a l i t y in t o th e shi f t i n g fo r m s of it s ow n co n s t r u c t i o n . 7 2 Rather th a n a sym b o l i c ob j e c t or run e po i n t i n g to a sec o n d or d e r of re a l i t y , th e poe m is con c e i v e d of as the fie l d of pla y fo r a con s t i t u t i v e ag e n t si t u a t e d in the na t u r a l wo r l d . The poe t is no lon g e r a see r , bu t a mak e r :

Je don n a i s a la vol o n t e et aux cal c u l s de Yagent u n e im p o r t a n c e qu e je re t i r a i s a Vouvrage. . . . Cette pen s e e at r o c e , et for t dan g e r e u s e po u r Ies Lettr e s (m a i s su r Ia-q u e l l e je n' a i jam a i s va r i e ) s' u n i s s a i t et s'o p p o s a i t cu -r i e u s e m e n t a mon ad m i r a t i o n po u r un hom m e qu i n' a l -l a i t , en sui v a n t la sie n n e , a rie n de moi n s qu ' a div i n i s e r la cho s e ec r i t e . (Lettre sur Mallarme, Oeuvres I, p. 641 )

One mig h t co m p a r e an ach i e v e d Valer y po e m to an imp r e s ­s i o n i s t ca n v a s or rat h e r a ser i e s of ca n v a s s e s li k e Monet ' s wa t e r lil i e s or the Cathe d r a l at Rouen , wh e r e we are awa r e , as we loo k at the pai n t i n g , of a per c e i v i n g co n s c i o u s n e s s co m ­p o s i n g ac c o r d i n g to the cha n g e s im p o s e d on him by his te m ­p o r a l co n d i t i o n . In Valer y ' s ve r s e we red i s c o v e r th e imm e d i -

7 2 Malla r m e , Oeuvres, p . 3 7 2 . Chri s t i n e Crow a n d J a m e s Lawl e r a r t i c u l a t e d t h i s d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n t h e t w o p o e t s v e r y i n c i s i v e l y d u r i n g a d i s c u s s i o n a t t h e Vale r y Coll o q u i u m i n Edin b u r g h , op.ctt., p . Ill :

Crow : Selo n Vale r y l u i - m e m e , t a n d i s q u e MalIar m d e s s a y a i t d e f a i r e p a r l e r Ia vo i x d u l a n g a g e , l u i , Vale r y , e s s a y a i t d e f a i r e p a r l e r Ie l a n g a g e d e l a v o i x . . . .

Lawl e r : Nous a v o n s d ' u n c o t e u n p o e t e q u i a be s o i n d ' u n s y s t e m e f e r m e , q u i d o n n e 1 ' i n i t i a t i v e a u x m o t s . . . , et o n n ' a b e s o i n d ' a u c u n a r t i s t e . . . po u r n o t r e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n d u p o e m e . . . . Chez Vale r y p a r c o n t r e o n t r o u v e l a r e f e r e n c e c o n s t a n t a u n Moi pu r ! Cest Ie Moi qu i c e n t r e Ie p o e m e , q u i l u i d o n n e s a j u s t i f i c a t i o n , s a p o r t e e .

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ate, tangible, discontinuous world of the senses. If his poetic vocabulary is generalized—sea, shore, sun, bird, tree, fruit— it nevertheless evokes the poet's origins in the Mediterranean world and the field of his empirical gaze.73 The poet does not use poetic language to describe what the eye records, but to provide a new structure which vivifies through figuration the disparate elements of sensuous reality in a form accessible to the intellect. In other words, the Valeryan word would not establish any direct, causal link between physical and poetic realities, but through its context within the poem acquire a relational connection to the ever-shifting perception of the thing-in-the-world.74

There is probably no poet in the French language, including Mallarme, who sought greater control over the relational pos­sibilities of the word than Valery. In speaking of his theoretical pieces, Pierre Guiraud writes: "Son oeuvre en prose est Ie traite de versification Ie plus complet et Ie plus original de notre langue; un inventaire de tous Ies moyens du vers."75 Valery's conservative interest in prosodic form can be understood as another sign of his urge to master the perversely independent nature of language. Yet the thoroughness he brought to the study of his medium produced a poetry far more striking for

73 In his excellent study of Valery's style and poetic techniques, Pierre Guiraud has compared Mallarme's and Valery's lexicons, noticing that, their appearance of similarity is deceptive since Valery consistently arranges the context of the word so as to give it a more positive, sensuous connotation. Langage et verstficatton d'apres I'oeuvre de Paul Valery. (Pans: Klincksieck, 1953, pp. 167-71.)

74 Wallace Stevens understood the relationship of poetic language to reality in much the same terms:

The eye does not beget in resemblance. It sees. But the mind begets in resemblance.

Thus poetry becomes and is a transcendent analogue composed of the particulars of reality, created by the poet's sense of the world, that is to say, his attitude, as he intervenes and interposes the appearances of that sense. (The Necessary Angel; Essays on Reality and the Imagination [New York: Vintage Books, 1942], p. 130.)

75 Langage et verstficatton . . . , p. 217.

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the complexity of the form/meaning relationship than the one described by the theoretician of "pure poetry."

Whenever Valery speaks about the structures of language rather than about the creative process generally, he seems to modify considerably his claims for the power of the creative agent and even to recognize the control which language exerts over every one of our so-called "natural" experiences of the world. Thus, it is not surprising that the voice of the articu­lating agency which gives Valery's poetry its distinctive char­acter has an ambiguous function within his achieved verse. At the very moment it reminds us of the poet's power to create a "musicalized" poetry, free of reference, it breaks the "spell" and brings us back to the "non-poetic" world of critical com­mentary. Thus, one might say that the treatment of structure and figuration in Valery's poetic work tells us more about his concept of poetry than any one of his theoretical essays. The ultimate Valeryan poem is one which not only evokes the musicalized garden in which nature and mind, form and mean­ing, presence and absence are reunited, but also one which introduces a third dimension which places that fragile har­mony into question. The Narcissus who speaks breaks the charm of the Narcissus mirrored in the water as he comments upon the doomed beauty of the mythic couple.

VALERY'S FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Michel Breal's Essai de Semantique (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie., 189 7 ), which Valery read and reviewed in 1898, must have confirmed views he had regarding the critical link be­tween structures of thought and structures of grammar and was doubtless an enabling factor in his effort to find ways to translate his de-mystified view of the poet's product into poetic forms consistent with that view. 7 6 As early as 1893 or 1894,

76 For a detailed exposition of Valery's views on language, see Jiirgen Schmidt-Radefeldt, Paul Valery linguiste dans Ies "Cahiers" (Paris: Klincksieck, 1970) and "Valery et Ies sciences du langage," Bulletin d'etudes valeryennes, No. 8, Jan. 1976. Schmidt-Radefeldt is convinced that Breal's book had a decisive

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Valery had written the "Letter on Lord Kelvin," in which he stated the fundamental importance of the analogyzing process to both thought and its expression:

L'esprit tel a done la propriete de former des sortes de tnecattismes dont Ie nom vague et commun est 'analogie'. J'ajoute, pour etre un peu plus personnellement en peril, que Ie degre de cette faculte depend du nombre (combi-natoire) de relations dans Ie cerveau (anastomoses, pro-longements cellulaires) et entraine des questions de vi-tesse, de mouvement... et de tout. (Oeuvres II, p. 1435)

In an insight that looks forward to modern revolutionary linguistic theories, Breal proposes that the structure of lan­guage reflects the structure of the mind. He analyzes semantics, the science of significations, in terms of the only true causes, which are "!'intelligence et la volonte humaine." 7 7 In his re­view of Breal's book for the Mercure de France, Valery begins with this assertion: "Toutes Ies transformations que Ie langage peut subir doivent laisser invariables un certain nombre de proprietes . . . ce residu contiendrait Ies relations fondamen-tales du langage avec ce qu'on nomme, par hypothese, l'es­prit." 78

According to Breal, the most fundamental of these "rela­tions" is the analogizing power inherent in the human mind which enables the child to make himself understood, even when he happens to create a new word. There is, then, no original moment when voice coincides with experience as Mal-

influence on Valery's thought concerning language. "La theorie du langage de Valery tente de saisir ces fonctions diverses de fagon integrate en consi-derant Ie langage essentiellement dans son caractere fonctionnel en tant qu'acte et action. Cela implique qu'il faut toujours tenir compte du contexte de Pemploi." BEV, p. 27. See also Bertil Malmberg, "Paul Valery et Ies signes," in Signes et symboles: Ies bases du langage humain. Paris: Editions A. & J. Picard, 1977.

77 Essai de semantique, p. 7. 78 "Methodes," Le Mercure de France, Tome XXV, janvier-mars, 1898, p.

254. Valery's admiration for Breal's work is based, to a large extent, on the importance it accords inventiveness, on the insights it provides the poet re­garding the complexities of his tool, language.

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larme's "primitive" and "incantatory" verse or Valery's con­cept of pure poetry might seem to claim. Analogy must be regarded as the primordial condition of all language and it perforce depends upon reference to past usage for compre­hension. The speaking subject, says Breal, is "condemned" to figural expression, condemned, in a sense, to saying the un-sayable. Valery sees in this truth about language the very source of its generative potential:

Les langues indo-europeennes sont condamnees au Ian-gage figure. Elles ne peuvent pas plus y echapper que l'homme, selon Ie proverbe arabe, ne saurait sauter hors de son ombre. La structure de la phrase Ies y oblige: elle est une tentation perpetuelle a animer ce qui n'a pas de vie, a changer en actes ce qui est un simple etat.79

In ordinary language, however, metaphors grow pale as men become accustomed to them; for Breal literary language, through its self-conscious manipulation of tropes, is clearly a safeguard against this deadening effect.80 Breal's work suggested to Va-Iery that certain laws governing the dynamic development of language and which perforce usurp the authority of the speaker can be made to contribute to the production of significance in a poetic text: the law of "repartition," for example, which states that, when two words possess the same meaning, man will assign different values to them; the law of "irradiation," which states that when the ending of a word is placed on another word it inevitably carries with it part of the signifi­cance of the original word; or the laws of syntax, word group­ings linked to each other in a phrase "possessing its center, its lateral parts, and its dependents," which cause individual words to lose a full independent signification of their own. Valery wondered if the intentional exploitation of these laws might result in a kind of meta-language which would serve

79 Breal, Essai. . . , p. 4. 80 See Michel Le Guern's discussion of the effacement of metaphor through

usage in Semantique de la metaphore et de la metonymie (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1973), pp. 44-45.

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as a bridge between the autonomous nature of writing and the functioning of his own mind.

Il fait tout ce qu'il peut pour se comprendre—Iui qui se parle, avant tout, quand il parle. Il a, toujours, a con-struire avec des materiaux inflexibles . . . un ensemble qui Iui redonne la mulitplicite et Ies valeurs ... universels de sa pensee. Il faut qu'il puisse restituer cette pensee en disposant selon des regies, des ettments etrangers a elle.Si

Like the conventions of prosody and genre that Valery insists on retaining, the inflexible parts of language assure one against chaos, but the figures they create could be said to form their own tower of Babel.82 They both inhibit the writer's freedom and, at the same time, demonstrate a certain mastery by pro­viding him with the building blocks for his unique construc­tions of the mind.

Valery's willingness to work within many of the constraints of traditional lyric forms is accompanied, then, by his deter­mination to achieve originality in his adaptations of those constraints. He would metaphorize the world as if for the first time. He was very apprehensive for his own verse of the "dead­ening"-effect which BreaI sees occurring in ordinary language through the repetition of figurative expressions. His awareness of the perversely dependent relationship a writer has to his language explains in part why one can detect in his mature poetry a puzzling ambivalence regarding the use of figural language and of metaphor in particular. This ambivalence is particularly obvious in the poems included in the Album de vers anciens, which was conceived, after all, as a collection written against the nineteenth century, and against a naive poetic self who had allowed other voices to speak through him and for him. In many of these poems ("La Fileuse," "Naissance de Venus," and "Anne" are striking in this regard) there is a strong critical discrediting of metaphor whenever it carries echoes of other literary texts. These metaphors are

81 Valery, Mercure de France, p. 258. 82 Valery will poeticize this notion in "Air de Semiramis."

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often subverted by irony or the use of a distinctly non-literary or "naturalized" diction and syntax in surrounding lines. Inev­itably, however, these seemingly "tropeless" moments, puri­fied of literary referent, 8 3 are followed by a strikingly new use of metaphor which makes us "see" the figurative power of language as a presence in its own right.

One highly self-conscious and playful treatment of meta­phor appears at the end of "Au Platane," where the plane tree is perceived as an especially splendid horse ("par l'etincelle-ment de sa tete superbe") at the very moment it is given voice to refuse its figuration as horse:

Je t'ai choisi, puissant personnage d'un pare, Ivre de ton tangage,

Puisque Ie ciel t'exerce, et te presse, ό grand arc, De Iui rendre un langage!

O qu'amoureusement des Dryades rival, Le seul poete puisse

Flatter ton corps poli comme il fait du Cheval L'ambitieuse cuisse! . . .

— Non, dit l'arbre, Il dit: NON! par l'etincellement De sa tete superbe,

Que la tempete traite universellement Comme elle fait une herbe! 84

The powerlessness of the great tree when whipped by the storm is nothing compared to its powerlessness in the face of Pascal's, La Fontaine's or Valery's own figurative language which can simultaneously make it seem both more (horse) and less (grass) than what it "really" is.

In his remarks concerning figural representation Valery does

8 3 In Poesie et pensee abstraite Valery compares his task to that of a surgeon: "En toute question, et avant tout examen sur Ie fond, je regarde au langage; j'ai coutume de proceder a Ia mode des chirugiens qui purifient d'abord leurs mains et preparent Ieur champ operatoire. Cest ce que j'appelle Ie nettoyage de la situation verbale." Oeuvres I, p. 1316.

84 For analysis of this poem, see Austin, "The Negative Plane Tree . . . ," op.cit.

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not stop with a mere description of the general nature of poetic language, but proceeds to investigate the structure of individ­ual tropes and even to challenge the primacy granted certain of these tropes by his predecessors. Since Valery understands linguistic relationships as reflecting mental states, for him the structure of the figure chosen to render experience has phil­osophical implications—that is to say, the structure of the figure reflects the writer's imaginative stance vis a vis reality.

Even before reading Breal's Essai de semantique, Valery had begun to analyze ways of perceiving the world in terms of figural structures and to assign to them corresponding tropes. In the "arithmetica universalis" letter of 4 January 1893, for example, he wrote to Fourment:

Nous ne pensons pas tout a la fois, nous sommes done obliges d'analyser la connaissance en une succession d'etats. ... Groupes d'etats purement successifs ... entre lesquels on aura d'autres relations, telles que celles-ci: A et B etant Ies deux etats, si A est donne, B est donne [metonym?]. Cette expression se complique si on subdivise chaque etat en 2 portions . . . l'une dite purement mentale, l'autre sensationnelle—physique [symbol?]. On aura aussi des cas ou A et B etant encore Ies etats, B contient une portion de A plus autre chose, etc. [metaphor?].85

Although he understands metaphor as a sub-category of sym­bol, since all languages are, by their arbitrary structure sym­bolic, Valery sees metaphor as a rational reordering of that irrational structure:

A etant produit, B se produit mais on ne retrouve rien de A dans B. Ce sont tous Ies symboles, Ies langages en general, qui sont constitues par des sensations... accolees a des idees arbitrairement. . . . A etant donne, on peut toujours construire B avec: ainsi une sensation non re-gardee comme symbole est-elle suivie d'idees, images, etc.

85 Correspondance, pp. 148-49.

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Ce premier terme contiendra toujours A partiellement. Exemple: toutes Ies metaphores. 8 6

Valery's reason for preferring metaphor over symbol in his later poetry, made clear in this passage, is not only a sign of his rejection of the metaphysical vision behind Symbolist art, but also a confirmation of the illusion of power the human mind experiences in deriving temporary order from disorder— a notion central to his mature theory of poetic creation. For him, metaphors rely for their impact on conceptually per­ceived relationships. To begin "Le Cimetiere marin," for ex­ample, by referring to the ocean as "Ce toit tranquille," invites the reader to think of the ocean as a structure containing life, invisible at the moment, but potentially present and gazed at from above with a sense of peace and satisfaction by the speaker. The poet has asked the reader to follow him in a complex articulating process. "Toit tranquille" can have sig­nificance only in relationship to a context of perception from above, that of a sea-gazer. Symbols, on the other hand, assert without articulation. The Iys Thuriferaires of "Elevation de la lune," or the Vierge byzantine of "L'Eglise," require the reader's passive acquiescence in their figural value. The sym­bol, then, despite its arbitrary nature acts as if sign and referent were the same thing. Metaphor, on the other hand, while recognizing that "Les signes du langage sont absolument dis-tinctes de Ieur sens," produces a new system of semantic re­lationships which proclaims the power of the maker to sub­stitute one type of necessity for another.

Valery's mature poetry—La Jeune Parque and "Le Cime-tiere marin" are prime examples—is produced by a complex interplay of various modes of figuration, but metaphor is the principal trope by which he creates a textual dynamism that realizes his ideal of the unfinished poem. His metaphors are not totalizing, as is frequently the case in Baudelaire, but accumulative, and because of their diachronic dimension whereby a retroactive accretion of "meanings" occurs, they successfully escape any possibility of what Breal called the

86 Ibid., p p . 1 4 9 - 5 0 .

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deadening effect caused by exact duplication. Valery thus ex­ploits the laws of "repartition" and "irradiation" that Breal identified as governing the growth of language for his own poetic ends. Jean Levaillant sees this textual strategy as the result of a conscious exploitation of Valery's perception of the arbitrary structure of language:

Autant qu'une identification provisoire, toute image chez Valery contient un battement, une vibration, une oscil­lation de l'etre entre l'esprit et Ie corps, l'individu et Ie monde, Ie present et Ie lointain, Ie fini et l'indefini, une recharge mutuelle, un depassement reciproque du signi-fiant et du signifie qui ne cesse jamais. Toute image de Valery comporte un element de reflexion qui ne se resout pas, une connaissance inachevee: la poesie devient une actualisation de l'esprit en etat de quete. Ainsi, la forme Valeryenne aux structures si parfaitement ordonnees dans Ie detail meme, et paraissant definir l'homogeneite de la conscience et du monde avec une telle surete que chaque element abstrait d'image fournit, par une manoeuvre du langage, sa preuve concrete, cette forme contient cepen-dant un reste. . . .87

It may be useful to pause at this point for a specific example of the way Valery translates the semantic structure of meta­phor composed of tenor and vehicle into a textual dynamics which points to the fundamental illogic of figuration. We can again use the opening lines of "Le Cimetiere marin" as the case in point:

Ce toit tranquille, ou marchent des colombes, Entre Ies pins palpite, entre Ies tombes; Midi Ie juste y compose de feux La mer, la mer, toujours recommencee! O recompense apres une pensee Qu'un long regard sur Ie calme des dieux!

87 Introduction, p. 1 to Hartmut Kohler's Poesie et profondeur semantique dans 'La Jeune Parque' de Paul Valery (Nancy-Saint-Nicolas-De-Port, Im-primerie V. Idoux, 1965).

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Quel pur travail de fins eclairs consume Maint diamant d'imperceptible ecume, Et quelle paix semble se concevoir! Quand sur l'abime un soleil se repose, Ouvrages purs d'une eternelle cause, Le Temps scintille et Ie Songe est savoir.

So far all of the "poetic" oppositions ( Mer/feux or dia­mant/ecume, for example) can be adequately explained ac­cording to a fairly rigorous conceptualizing logic. The calm noon sea dotted with sailboats is figured as the flat roof of a temple with doves walking on it, and the play of light from the sun on the glittering foam produces the effect of fire and diamonds. In stanza three, the poem's reassuring figurative "stability" is summed up by what seems to be a logical, new totalizing metaphor, "Stable tresor, temple simple a Minerve."

Stable tresor, temple simple a Minerve, Masse de calme, et visible reserve, Eau soucilleuse, Oeil qui gardes en toi Tant de sommeil sous un voile de flamme, O mon silence! . . . Edifice dans l'ame, Mais comble d'or aux mille tuiles, Toit!

Temple du Temps, qu'un seul soupir resume. . . .

The sea as temple is both an outside form giving the appear­ance of stability and an inside meaning holding sacred treas­ure, a perfect unified whole, "Masse de calme." In a partic­ularly daring display of his power to order through language, the speaker even uses oxymoron, the trope of discontinuity and instability, to affirm that order: "Masse de calme, et vi­sible reserve." But it is at this Icarian moment that the poem's "order" seems to dissolve. Both the mind (sun) and the world (sea), without which figuration cannot be produced, are sub­ject to change from forces beyond their control. In the last lines of the poem the speaker explicitly explodes his opening metaphor, as if he were controlling the poem's figurative logic by acknowledging those forces ("Rompez, vagues! Rompez d'eaux rejouies/Ce toit tranquille ou picoraient des foes!"),

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but the process of transmutation has already begun from the moment the first words of the poem are uttered. As we have already seen, our initial impression of "Ce toit tranquille" as metaphor was in some sense false, since, like "Stable tresor," it constitutes only part of a larger whole, serving ultimately as synechdoche for the grandly capitalized "Temple du Temps." The tenor of the apparent metaphor has been displaced from sea to self by the sudden transformation of the water from flat, opaque surface to a mirror in which the agent of figuration or the "sea-gazer" sees his own eye: "Eau sourcilleuse, oeil qui gardes. . . ." What is more, this transformation has oc­curred, not through the poem's conceptual logic, but through the sounds and ordering of the words themselves. It is the contamination of meaning by syntax (use of apposition) and sound in " Eau sourcilleuse," O mon silence" and "toi," "Toit," which produces a problematical pronoun structure (Je = water; Toi = water) that undermines the logic we had originally constructed (Sun as lucidity or Mind operating on Water) in order to "make sense" of the initial figures. The structure of the metaphor as figure of substitution is further exploded in stanzas four and five, where the mind, offering itself to the world for the sake of figuration, is perceived as a sacrifice, "offrande supreme," in which the speaker contemplates his death "futur fumee" instead of the foam on the waves. At this point in the poem, the tenor is no longer double, but triple—sea, self, graveyard, causing a whole new metaphoric field of play among the three parts of the tenor itself. Thus the utterly illogical jump from sea figured as "Toit tranquille" in stanza one to "Chienne splendide" in stanza fourteen or "chlamyde trouee" in stanza 23 can be effected without turn­ing the poem into utter nonsense. This is an example of what I explained earlier as Valery's perception that certain inflexible parts of language may assure against chaos, but that the figures they create can be said to form their own tower of Babel.88

88 For particularly useful and sensitive studies of the textual dynamism of Valery's verse, see Guiraud, Langage et Versification . . . , op.cit., Kohler, Poesie et profondeur . . . , op.cit., and Geoffrey Hartman's analysis of "La

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Understanding that there is no possibility of adequate iden­tification between word and referent, Valery raises words from their treacherous condition of potential signifiers to the level of pure ornamentation. They are as irresponsible to meaning in the ordinary sense as the foam on the waves in "Le Ci-metiere marin," the wine poured into the ocean in "Le Vin perdu," or the gauzy belt fluttering in the breeze of "La Cein-ture." In Poesie et pensee abstraite he uses striking figurative language which denies its own reliability to warn us against the danger of depending upon the word's stability, especially where poetic language ("qu'il ne s'amuse pas a danser") is concerned:

Chaque mot, chacun des mots qui nous permettent de franchir si rapidement l'espace d'une pensee, et de suivre Timpulsion de l'idee qui se construit elle-meme son expression, me semble une de ces planches legeres que Ton jette sur un fosse, ou sur une crevasse de montagne, et qui supportent Ie passage de l'homme en vif mouve-ment. Mais qu'il passe sans peser, qu'il passe sans s'ar-reter—et surtout, qu'il ne s'amuse pas a danser sur la mince planche pour eprouver sa risistancel . . . Le pont fragile aussitot bascule ou se rompt, et tout s'en va dans Ies profondeurs." ( Oeuvres I, pp. 1317-18, my italics)

Through his imaginative use of metaphor to create an end­lessly reverberative, unfinished text, Valery presents himself as the chronicler of the natural history of his imagination and appears unusually content to write poetry without the illusory satisfaction of a transcendental trope crf Nature. On the 29 of August, 1900, he writes to Gide:

Mon but etant purement linguistique, representatif et consistent a chercher une figure commode de la connais-sance, parmi une infinite d'autres egalement possibles. ... Cest curieux qu'on ne trouve chez aucun philosophe

Dormeuse" in T he Unmediated Vision: an Interp retation of Wordswort h , Hop kins, Rilke and Valery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954).

108 · REFLECTIONS ON WRITING

de metier la preoccupation d'etablir aussi rigoureusement que possible la correspondance des mots et phrases a des faits interieurs.89

It is clear that when Valery returned to the writing of poetry in 1912, poetic structures were no longer to him a matter of fashion or mere evidence of the maker's control of his craft, but objectifications or translations of mental states. Because of the importance he accords the thinking process as opposed to any particular stage in that process and because of his purely relativistic understanding of the nature of truth, Valery does not adhere to a hierarchy of tropes as the Romantics and Symbolists seemed to do, but imagines a hypothetical figure which subsumes them all. As he states in Au sujet d ' Eureka:

Il s'agirait maintenant de concevoir et de construire au-tour d'un germe reel une figure qui satisfasse a deux ex­igences essentielles: l'une, qui est de tout admettre, d'etre capable du tout, et de nous representer ce tout; l'autre, qui est de pouvoir servir notre intelligence, se preter a nos raisonnements, et nous rendre un peu mieux instruits de notre condition, un peu plus possesseurs de nous-memes. ( Oeuvres I, p. 866)

This ideal figure of figures representative of his mature poetry turns out to be the controlling critical voice whose presence subsumes all figured moments and binds them into the mean­ingful configuration which is the endlessly self-questioning poem, coordinating them in such a way as to specify the drama by which thinking is translated into poetic form. As in each movement of the dance, each stanza or image pattern defines the space around it in a unique formation, but each movement also serves as a transition to the next, "l'acte pur des meta­morphoses" ( Oeuvres II, p. 165). In speaking of the difficulty he experienced in writing La Jeune Parque, Valery stresses the particular value he attaches to transitions: "Les 'passages' m'ont donne beaucoup de mal; mais ces difficultes me con-

89 Gide-Valery, Correspondance, p. 370.

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING · 109

traignaient a decouvrir et a noter quantite de problemes precis du fonctionnement de mon esprit, et c'est la, au fond, ce qui m'importait. Rien, d'ailleurs, ne m'interesse plus dans Ies arts que ces transitions ou je vois ce qu'il y de plus delicat et de plus savant a accomplir ... " (Oeuvres I, p. 1473, my italics). A kind of negative coherence is established by the voice of the questioning, exclaiming, commanding speaker—"Qui pleure la . . ." "Quels secrets dans son coeur brule . . "Que tu brilles enfin terme pur de ma course. . . ." "Envolez-vous, pages tout eblouies!"—as it winds its way through a labyrin-thian image pattern representing objectifications of its own powers of abstraction. The life of the poem depends upon the vigor with which that critical consciousness makes itself felt as a linking, unifying agent: "actes purs de la pensee, par lesquels, devant elle-meme, elle se change et se transforme en elle-meme. Elle extrait enfin de ses tenebres Ie jeu entier de ses operations" ( Eupalinos, Oeuvres II, p. 111).90 Above all, creative thinking and writing stand against resistance: Soc­rates in L'Ame et la danse saying it means nothing when he talks to Phaedrus, the idealist; everything when he talks to Eryximachus, the stylist.

The ultimate form, then, is not simply the sum of the sep­arate figures, but their ongoing "athletic" articulation and can thus be compared to a swimmer or a dancer:

L'objet ideal de ma vie pensee me parut etre de ressentir son acte et son effort propres jusqu'a reconnaitre Ies con­ditions invisibles et Ies bornes de son pouvoir; de quoi je

90 For this reason there is a great deal more experimentation with stanzaic form in Valery's later verse than in the early poetry. In speaking of the difficulties of finding a means of articulating a poetic unity that does not rely on the linear unity of prose, he writes:

Il existe cependant un moyen de resoudre sans des peines infinies ce probleme de la composition, si subtil et si difficile a enoncer que nombre de grands poetes semblent ne pas en avoir eu conscience: I'emploi de strophes, mais de strophes qui s'enchainent et puissent donner l'impres-sion d'une suite de magiques transformations de la meme substance emotive. (Cited by Walzer, La Poesie . . . op.cit., p. 241)

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me faisais l'image d'un nageur, qui, detache de tout solide, et delie dans Ie plein de l'eau, acquiert au sein de l'absence d'obstacles Ie sentiment de ses formes de puissance et de leurs limites, depuis Ie noeud de ses forces distinctes ju-squ'aux extremes de Ieur extension. ( Oeuvres I, p. 1477)

Cette femme qui etait la est devoree de figures innom-brables. . . . Ce corps, dans ses eclats de vigueur, me propose une extreme pensee. . . . ( L 'Ame et la danse, Oeuvres II, p. 172)

The moment the object of the speaker's gaze is named— pla-tane, abeille, ceinture, grenade, palme, etc.—it gives way to a representation of all of its possible relationships and in so doing acquires a human dimension as the structure of the observing consciousness controls its figuration. Valery viewed any adherence to the specificity or individuality of an object as a form of fetishism reflecting the mind's enslavement by the senses.91 Whereas Stevens values the still-life as a "sur­prising theatre" in which to exhibit the power of the maker, Valery found it the most trivial form of painting, and lamented the lost art of fresco painting, which required a larger, spec­tacular scope and a certain degree of improvisation on the part of the artist. Valery's most achieved poetic form has a spatial and theatrical dimension which individual metaphors

91 Introduction a la methode de Leonard de Vtnci, Oeuvres I, pp. 1170-71:

Telle, dans l'agrandissement de "ce qui est donne," expire 1'ivresse de ces choses particulieres, desquelles il n'y a pas de science. En Ies regardant longuement, si l'on y pense, elles se changent; et si l'on n'y pense pas, on se prend dans une torpeur qui tient et consiste comme un reve tran-quille, ïý l'on fixe hypnotiquement 1'angle d'un meuble, l'ombre d'une feuille, pour s'eveiller des qu'on Ies voit. Certains hommes ressentent, avec une delicatesse speciale, la volupte de Ytndwtdualtti des objets. Ils preferent avec d£lices, dans une chose, cette qualite d'etre unique—qu'elles ont toutes. Cunosite qui trouve son expression ultime dans la fiction et Ies arts du theatre et qu'on a nommee, a cette extremite, la faculte d'identification. Rien n'est plus deliberement absurde a la description que cette temente d'une personne se declarant qu'elle est un ob)et de­termine et qu'elle en ressent Ies impressions—cet objet fut-il materiel!

REFLECTIONS ON WRITING · 111

do not. Architecture is the model Valery turns to throughout his life to represent ideal figural form:

L'edifice architectural interprete l'espace et conduit a des hypotheses sur nature, d'une maniere toute particuliere, car il est a la fois un equilibre de materiaux par rapport a la gravitation, un ensemble statique visible, et, dans chacun de ces materiaux, un autre equilibre, moleculaire et mal connu. (Oeuvres I, p. 1190)

"Le Cimetiere marin," "Au Platane," even a short poem like "La Ceinture," are lyrical dramas orchestrated or choreo­graphed or engineered by a Master for whom the art of tran­sition and connection testify to the mind's power to transform contingency into necessity. "Cette ceinture vagabonde / Fait dans Ie souffle aerien / Fremir Ie supreme lien / De mon silence avec ce monde. . . ."

I view the Album de vers anciens as one of Valery's most fully achieved and supreme efforts of transition, a dramatic interlude between La Jeune Parque and Charmes, which fig­uratively explores the nature of creative transition itself. As in the long meditation upon the past in the "Le Cimetiere marin," which begins:

Les morts caches sont bien dans cette terre Qui Ies rechauffe et seche Ieur mystere Midi la-haut, Midi sans mouvement En soi se pense et convient a soi-meme. . . . Tete complete et parfait diademe, Je suis en toi Ie secret changement. . . .

Valery turns back in the Album to his own beginnings, rooted as they were in an ancestral past which had to be overcome if he was to find his own voice. Behind each poem or face or figure in this record of an evolving consciousness is a poetic father's face, an inherited state of mind, which the mature poet will appropriate and reorder as an event in a larger fresco dramatizing the crisis which eventually led him to redefine the nature of poetry and of his own "experience of life." The Album is in effect no less than the drama of Valery's trans-

112 · REFLECTIONS ON WRITING

formation into himself, and its individual works—"actes purs de la pensee, par lesquels, devant elle-meme elle se change et se transforme en elle-meme"—can be properly understood only with a sense of their transitional function within the collection as a whole.

PART TWO

THE TRANSFORMATIVE

DRAMA OF THE

"ALBUM DE VERS

ANCIENS"

"LA FILEUSE"

The introductory poem to the Album de vers anciens, "La Fileuse," dramatizes more powerfully than any other in the collection Valery's complex critical engagement with his past. Very self-consciously a threshold text, it presents a female spinner, seated before a window opening onto a garden. Set­ting, hour, and state of mind are all characterized by a dy­namics of passage. As the sun goes down, the spinner falls asleep, and the garden, which has been the source of her inspiration, appears to burn in the twilight glow—"le dernier arbre brule"—almost as if the poet were ridding himself of a vision at the very moment that he sees it most brilliantly.

La Fileuse

Assise, la fileuse au bleu de la croisee Ou Ie jardin melodieux se dodeline; Le rouet ancien qui ronfle Pa grisee.

Lasse, ayant bu l'azur, de filer la caline Chevelure, a ses doigts si faibles evasive, Elle songe, et sa tete petite s'incline.

Un arbuste et Pair pur font une source vive Qui, suspendue au jour, delicieuse arrose De ses pertes de fleurs Ie jardin de Poisive.

Une tige, ou Ie vent vagabond se repose, Courbe Ie salut vain de sa grace etoilee, Dediant magnifique, au vieux rouet, sa rose.

Mais la dormeuse file une laine isolee; Mysterieusement Pombre frele se tresse Au fil de ses doigts longs et qui dorment, filee.

Le songe se devide avec une paresse Angelique, et sans cesse, au doux fuseau credule, La chevelure ondule au gre de la caresse . . .

1 1 6 · T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I V E D R A M A

Derriere tant de fleurs, l'azur se dissimule, Fileuse de feuillage et de lumiere ceinte: Tout Ie del vert se meurt. Le dernier arbre brule.

Ta soeur, la grande rose ou sourit une sainte, Parfume ton front vague au vent de son haleine Innocente, et tu crois languir. . . . Tu es eteinte

Au bleu de la croisee ou tu filais la laine.

There is a clear temporal progression in the narration of this poem, which runs counter to the Symbolist ideal of ar­rested time represented by the sleeping spinner. The thema-tized subjectivity moves from a state of drowsiness to deep sleep as a blue sky disappears to be replaced by the burning glow of sunset. The lyrical speaker who is observing the scene registers a sense of crisis regarding this passage: "Tout Ie ciel vert se meurt. Le dernier arbre brule I . . . I Innocente, et tu crois languir. . . . Tu es eteinte." This is no small loss, since the crucial relationship of human consciousness to the natural world has been the subject of poetic discourse ever since the late eighteenth century. The changes in the conception of that relationship may even motivate the distinctions literary his­torians and poets themselves make between the schools—Ro­manticism, Parnassianism, Symbolism, and Naturalism in par­ticular—which dominate the nineteenth century. One thing all of the practitioners of these schools have in common, how­ever, is their preoccupation with the role of poetic language in mediating between man and his natural origins. It is clear that the spinner of Valery's poem represents an imaginative stance which negates both consciousness and nature, reflection and duration, and thus calls into question in the most fun­damental way possible the validity of continuing the discourse at all, at least in a lyric mode. It is fruitful, then, for an understanding of Valery's position to look behind "La Fi-leuse," so to speak, at the tradition which motivates the apoc­alyptic dimension of this liminary work.

Several nineteenth-century predecessor texts supply "La Fi-leuse," originally written in 1891, with its particular trans-

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA • 117

formative dimension. In 1 8 9 0 Henri de Regnier, whose Sym-

bolist poetry the young Valery admired,^ published a collection

of verse, Poetries anctens et romanesques, ̂ the title of which

is echoed in Valery's own title. The introductory poem to this

work, "Prelude," (see Appendix) is a lyrical address spoken

by Hercules to his muse, Omphale, as he pauses during the

• To Pierre Louys, who had sent Valery some poems by Regnier m the fall of 1890, the mneteen-year-old poet replies admiringly:

Et merci une fois de plus pour les morceaux de Regnier, Darzens et Mikhael. . . . C'est Regnier que je prefere. Le fragment est sans doute emprunte a quelque poeme legendaire et vague. (Dire que je n'ai rien lu de lui a part quelques fragments!) II est plem de je ne sais quoi d'anglats et de moyen age}... Parlez-moi de I'homme si vous I'approchez? {Lettres a quelques-uns, pp. 33-34)

For Valery Regnier always represented a consciousness at home in the past, one which struggled to define itself, not against its predecessors, but as the fulfillment of their promise. But, whereas in 1890 Valery considers Regnier's work a model for imitation, ten years later he speaks of Regnier as a poet who has chosen a direction very different from his own. After reading Ctte-des-eaux in 1902, Valery begins a letter to Regnier himself by complimenting the older poet for his eclecttasm. The famihar military rhetoric Valery so often uses when referring to influence from the past suggests his private disdain for any such achievement:

Je ne sais comment il vous quitte, ni les pensees ou vous conduit ce rare sentiment de posseder toutes les formes de I'appareil htteraire. Mais, capable d'enchainer dans un seul volume la totalite des voix les plus belles du dernier siecle, je serais content a votre place, d'avoir reduit tant de rivalites a mon usage et conjugue les maitres ennemis. . . . Je ne vois pas de maniere plus elegante que la votre de confondre ces bizarres adversaires anterieurs. Alors ce ne sont plus que des prophetes.

In deceptively self-deprecatory imagery which m fact asserts his own au-tonomy and independence from the past, Valery concludes his letter by dis-tinguishing the direction of his work from that of the senior, Symbohst poet:

De ma barque petite et qui tourne eternellement sur son ancre, je me moque des courants. J'admire seulement les navires. Je regarde s'emou-voir la belle Cue-des-eaux, je sais ou elle va.

Elle va rejoindre d'autres flutes et d'autres fregates, ses amees, qui gagnerent surement d'excellents ports. (Ibtd., pp. 65-66)

At this stage m Valery's career Regnier's work seems to represent for him nothing more than a quaint museum piece.

2 Included in Voemes 1887-1892 (Pans: Mercure de France, 1913).

118 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

ordeal assigned to him by the gods. Like Valery's poem, it is written in terza rima with the conventional single last line, appearing to drop from the body of the work like the spun thread which drops from the wheel of the spinner. The open­ing stanza of Valery's poem is an aggressive appropriation and rewriting of Regnier's first stanza:

Je t'ai laissee en l'ombre d'or du vieux Palais Ou Ie chanvre roui pend a la poutre rude, Assise comme un songe a l'atre ou tu filais,

literally taking up the poetic subject where Regnier left her, seated in the shadows of the palace, to place her in the light of an open window, "assise, la fileuse au bleu de la croisee." But whereas Regnier's spinner is relegated to the past at the outset in order to endow her with the mediating value of a muse inspiring Hercules' present lyrical voice, Valery brings her to life in the present, in front of our eyes, so to speak, in order to put her to sleep, or rather to death, once and for all at the end of his poem with a powerful closural repetition of the first line offered now in the past tense:3

Innocente, et tu crois languir. . . . Tu es eteinte Au bleu de la croisee ou tu filais la laine.

In other words, Valery would take over his predecessor in order to close him off firmly from all future transformations. The closural line of Regnier's poem, "Laisse Ie bucher d'or fumer au ciel sacre!" functions quite differently. As it signals the end of his poem by breaking the pattern of the terza rima and by repeating the word "or" of the first line, it transforms the image of golden twilight into a powerful symbol of Her­cules' future apotheosis, which he has entrusted to the spirit of a muse imperatively brought out of the shadows for that purpose:

3 Barbara Herrnstein Smith points out that terminal repetition of an initial element with some slight modification always has a powerful closural effect. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 53-54.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 119

Sois son ame eternelle, ü son ame ephemere Toi qu'a survivre belle a force son espoir,

Et si son coeur, helas, mordu par la chimere Durant Ie dur travail de ton nom illustre Elude sa tristesse en quelque cendre amere,

Laisse Ie bucher d'or fumer au del sacre!

He has led her away from her interiorized hearth ("atre") in the first stanza to build an open funeral pyre ("bucher") to the gods in the last. Thus, rather than historicizing the sym­bolic vision for the reader with the last line, as Valery does, Regnier endows it with dynamic transcendent potential.

In Regnier's poem the natural world scarcely exists except as a metaphor for death and transfiguration. Value is placed uniquely in Hercules' mythic or otherworldly calling, and the source of his inspiration is not a fleshly woman, but an He-rodiade-like muse who seems to require his sacrifice for her authentication. Any hint of carnal attraction between Her­cules and Omphale is denied at the outset.4 The hero is con­spicuously alone, in a state of suspended animation, acting out his death in various scenes until finally he sees himself transformed into the sacred flame of the funeral pyre. Throughout the poem, then, Death is understood as symbolic or spiritual transfiguration. The body becomes "Songe," "ombre," "cendre," or "bucher d'or." The subjectivity is freed from the dross of existence and acquires a reality Hercules' physical and natural self have disguised.

So powerful is Omphale's presence as spiritual guide in Regnier's poem that Hercules can imagine the day when he will return to the palace, bearing the trophies of his acts, and exchange identities with her by dressing her in his lion skin

4 The description of the stillness of the wheel embodying the blending of male and female principles suggests the cessation of any physical relationship in the second line of the first stanza: "Ïû Ie chanvre roui pend a la poutre rude." The sexual connotations of the arrested wheel, as we will see, are much more powerfully evoked in Victor Hugo's "Rouet d'Omphale": "Sur Ie rouet, ou pend un fil souple et lie."

1 2 0 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

so that he can take on her role as spinner. It is at this point that Valery picks up Regnier's poem, so to speak, to assert his own continuing control over the twisting thread, for at the moment Hercules seems to acquiesce to his role as spinner, in Regnier's text, he is overwhelmed by a vision of his own impending death and ends his tribute to Omphale, as we have seen, by placing his salvation in her hands with the imperative to build a symbolic pyre. Valery, on the contrary, does not return the thread to the mediating figure, but places it in the hands of the masculine speaker, who uses it to cut off the life of the disembodied symbolic muse.

Regnier's Symbolist poem was itself a reinterpretation of Victor Hugo's great and imposing Romantic model, "Le Rouet d'Omphale" (see Appendix), and with an irony directed at both predecessor works Valery wastes no time signaling his awareness of Regnier's effort to rewrite Hugo's text. The cen­tral-most lines of Hugo's twenty-four line poem read:

Les laines de Milet peintes de pourpre et d'or Emplissent un panier pres du rouet qui dort.

Hugo's sleeping wheel is snoring in Valery's poem, and its snore has intoxicated the spinner of symbolic gardens: "Le rouet ancien qui ronfle l'a grisee." It is as if Valery had rec­ognized already in mid-1891 that despite the Symbolist poets' claims to be anti-Romantic, Symbolism was only a belated and delusive form of Romantic idealism.

At first reading the Hugo and Regnier poems appear to have very little in common besides the informing myth. In Hugo's poem subjectivity is not privileged directly through the voice of the lyric speaker, but indirectly through the cre­ative artifacts which bear its traces. Whereas Regnier excludes any reference to sexuality in "Prelude," Hugo's "Rouet d'Om­phale" stresses the erotic attraction of male and female prin­ciples responsible for those figurative traces. The wheel ap­pears objectified on an empty stage, waiting for the absent dramatis personnae to set it into motion. It possesses all of the attributes of the male-female polarity which motivate the poem's suppressed mythic event:

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 1 21

Il est dans l'atrium, Ie beau rouet d'ivoire, La roue agile est blanche et la quenouille est noire, Il est dans Tatrium sur un riche tapis.

The gaze of the speaker focuses on the scene of the rape of Europa carved into the plinth, and the lingering description inevitably recalls the absent protagonists, Omphale and Her­cules, who have withdrawn somewhere into the depths of the palace.

Un ouvrier d'Egine a sculpte sur la plinthe Europe, dont un dieu n'ecoute pas la plainte, Le taureau blanc l'emporte. Europe, sans espoir, Crie, et, baissant Ies yeux, s'epouvante de voir L'Ocean monstrueux qui baise ses pieds roses.

But if the Romantic poem insists upon the carnal origin of artistic creation, that awareness is charged with guilt, as if the motivation behind the work of art imposes upon it a moral or metaphysical dimension more significant than the work as such. To remain on the level of a sensuous appreciation of the experience would be a betrayal of some higher calling. The single humiliated eye into which are collected the gazes of all of the conquered monsters wandering in the penumbra of the wheel is the eye through which the lyric speaker, the reader, and Hercules all view the poetic scene.

Et tous, sans approcher, rodant d'un air terrible, Sur Ie rouet ou pend un fil souple et lie Fixent de loin dans l'ombre un oeil humilie.

Thus, despite the shift in focus in the Romantic and Symbolist works, both seem to be motivated by an ideology which posits two orders of reality, one the sensuous and physical, related to poetry and art as a craft, the other, spiritual and mythic, related to poetry as a new theology. By 190 0 Valery's allusion to these predecessor poems signals his placing particular value in the former and implies that he viewed the saintly aura that the nineteenth century accorded the artist as a delusion with

122 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

drastic implications: "Fileuse de feuillage et de lumiere ceinte / Tout Ie ciel vert se meurt. Le dernier arbre brule."

Leo Spitzer has proposed two other sources for Valery's poem: "Sainte," by Mallarme (see Appendix) and "La Fi­leuse" by Heredia (see Appendix), a poem left out of Les Trophees, but published in La Revue des deux mondes in 1905.5 Spitzer bases his claims for the Mallarme poem on the designation of the female figure as Christian saint, on her position at the window, and on her withdrawal from the world of material reality into silent interiority:

La Sainte de Mallarme ne fait pas de musique ni ne prie: elle est la musicienne du silence, musicienne de la vie interieure, elle n'a plus besoin des instruments qui tom-bent en ruine L'inspiration poetique est pour Ie poeta vates un etat de saintete, degage de tout travail materiel. . . . La mort de la Sainte est impliquee: elle est "pale," et Ies choses materielles autour d'elle se decomposent. La poesie est une Passion ou plutot, la passion est Ie symbole de l'activite interieure de l'artiste. (p. 314, p. 135)

Spitzer considers Valery's "Fileuse" a neo-Symbolist poem, which rejects the concept of the poet as maker, and advocates, like Mallarme's work—or Regnier's and Hugo's—a mystical poetics based on divine inspiration:

La creation de l'oeuvre d'art—c'est bien Ie sujet mallar-meen par excellence dont notre poesie est Ie symbole— se fait miraculeusement, sans conscience de la part de l'artiste .. . theorie irrationaliste de la creation artistique que Ie Valery de La Jeune Parque doit releguer dans un Album de vers anciens: puisqu'il est aujourd'hui devenu l'ennemi jure de la poetique " 'romantique,' a base d'in-conscient," . . . (p. 320)

Not only does Spitzer propose a vision of poetic creation which Valery would never have attributed to Mallarme, but

5 "La Genese d'une poesie de Paul Valery," Renaissance, Vol. 2-3, 1944, 1945, pp. 311-321.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 123

he does not include in his analysis the critical intervention by the lyrical speaker that occurs at the end of "La Fileuse" and results, as we will see, in the discrediting of a metaphysical aesthetics.

More to the point, it would seem to me, is the ambiguous presence of Mallarme's "Les Fenetres" (see Appendix) in Va-lery's opening poem, where the speaker compares his own quest for the Absolute to a dying man's craving for the sun in terms which clearly acknowledge Mallarme's troubled filial relationship to Baudelaire. For both poets art is a form of mysticism—a medium of transcendence—"Que la vitre soit Part, soit la mysticite," and for both the artistic vision is a projection of an interiorized, symbolic landscape. In the first five stanzas the Baudelairean figure is compared to a sick man, who drags himself from his bed to place his mouth, hungry for an idealized nature, against a window pane: "Et la bouche, fievreuse et d'azur bleu vorace." What he sees makes him drunk, "Ivre, il vit . . ." and the drunkenness produces an ecstatic vision reminiscent of the one produced by the stroking of the woman's musky hair in Baudelaire's "La Chevelure":

Son oeil, a l'horizon de lumiere gorge

Voit des galeres d'or, belles comme des cygnes, Sur un fleuve de pourpre et de parfums dormir En bezant Peclair fauve et riche de leurs lignes, Dans un grand nonchaloir charge de souvenir!

("Les Fenetres")

O toison, moutonnant jusque sur Pencolure! O boucles! O parfum charge de nonchaloir!

Tu contiens, mer d'ebene, un eblouissant reve De voiles, de rameurs, de flammes et de mats:

Un port retentissant ou mon ame peut boire A grands flots Ie parfum, Ie son et la couleur; Ou les vaisseaux, glissant dans Por et dans la moire,

124 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

Ouvrent leurs vastes bras pour embrasser la gloire D'un ciel pur ou fremit Teternelle chaleur.

("La Chevelure")

In the last five stanzas the Mallarmean poet flees the natural world to seek rebirth through art in the same way the Bau-delairean poet sought rebirth through eroticized memories.

Ainsi, pris du degofit de l'homme a Pame dure

Je fuis et je m'accroche a toutes Ies croisees D'ou l'on tourne l'epaule a la vie, et, beni, Dans Ieur verre, lave d'eternelles rosees, Que dore Ie matin chaste de l'lnfini

Je me mire et me vois ange! . . .

Picking up many of the key motifs of Mallarme's and Bau­delaire's poems but intensely condensing them—"au bleu de la croisee," "ayant bu I'azur," "grisee," "Chevelure," "rose-sainte-soeur" ("rosee," "me mire," "ange")—Valery begins the Album by acknowledging all of his most important pred­ecessors. He thus subversively asserts their communality and, at the end of the poem, denies them the originality and in­dependent status he appears to accord them in his prose essays by putting them all to rest simultaneously with his closural lock: ". . . tu es eteinte / Au bleu de la croisee ou tu filais la laine."

The Heredia poem, which Valery could not have known in 1891, but which nevertheless would have served as an im­portant predecessor model when he set about organizing his collection after 1912, presents a point of view opposed to that of any metaphysical ideology. Like his Parnassian predeces­sors, Heredia represents the poet as wakeful artisan.

Elle est morte Platthis, morte la bonne vieille Qui, tout Ie long des jours anciens et des nouveaux, A file, devide, roule Ies echeveaux De la laine blanche dont debordait sa corbeille.

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Si parfois s'inclinait la tete qui sommeille, Les doigts de la fileuse actifs et sans rivaux D'un geste inconscient poursuivaient leurs travaux: Seule la Mort a pu mettre un terme a sa veille. . . .

The spinner is proud of her craft, which seems to be self-justifying ("D'un geste inconscient poursuivaient leurs tra­vaux") in that it does not depend upon her function as me­diator between two orders of reality. The fact that her move­ments are unconscious is not meant to propose a vatic vision, but to suggest that poetic value is the result of mastery of the techniques of one's craft. This Parnassian view is one with which Valery is sympathetic and is stressed in his revised version of "La Fileuse" by the doubling of subjectivities into sleeping and wakeful figures in the last two stanzas. The ten poems that follow "La Fileuse" in the Album juxtapose Sym­bolist and Parnassian attitudes in such a way as to suggest that the tension or conflict between these two stances is, in part, responsible for producing the dynamic new dialectical approach on which Valery bases his own authority and au­tonomy.

Placing the 1920 version of Valery's "Fileuse" against the revisions he made of the 1891 drafts also reveals, I believe, the autobiographical dimension of the Album, felt through its mediating intertexts. The reason Valery gives in Fragments des memoires d'un poeme for revising his early work for pub­lication provides a starting point for a reading of this intro­ductory poem. In 1920 he would propose a theory of poetic genesis based on the will and the intellect in the place of one based on intuition and inspiration located in the unconscious:

Je repondais en esprit a certains prejuges qui m'avaient choque autrefois. En ce temps-la, regnait une opinion, . . . que Ies analyses et Ie travail de l'intellect, Ies devel-oppements de volonte et Ies precisions ou il engage la pensee ne s'accordent pas avec je ne sais quelle naivete de source, quelle surabondance de puissance ou quelle grace de reverie que l'on veut trouver dans la poesie. ... Je n'aimais pas cet opinion. . . . J'avais fui l'etat ingenu

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de poesie, et j'avais energiquement developpe en moi ce qui,... est Ie plus oppose a !'existence et aux productions de cet etat. . . . (Oeuvres I, pp. 1481-82; 1488)

The earliest fragment, which predates the text published in La Conque of Sept. 1891, was sent to Pierre Louys and clearly allies itself with the neo-Christian poems Valery considered including in the Chorus mysticus.

Et la dormeuse file une laine isolee: Mysterieusement l'ombre prise se tresse, Au fil de ses doigts longs et qui dorment, filee.

Le songe se devide avec une paresse Angelique, et sans cesse au fuseau doux d'ebene La chevelure ondule au gre de la caresse.

Mais Ies charmantes fleurs qui rougissent, a peine, Figures et regards de filles couronnees, Parfument l'enfant vague au vent de Ieur haleine

Car c'est l'Antique Heden des premieres journees, Roses des beaux soirs, dont Ies pretres se souviennent Ivres lis traverses de calmes hymenees! . . .

Mais la Morte se croit la fileuse ancienne.6

Just as in "Elevation de la lune" ("L'ombre venait, Ies fleurs s'ouvraient, revait mon Ame."), the descent of night and dream bring an apparition of Divinity ("l'Antique Heden") and the experience of spiritual communion. The place of spiritual in­sight is in the dreaming soul and not in any rational principle. This connection will be much more clearly developed in the June 1891 version sent to Gide (pp. 127-28), where "Elle," "Songe," "Angelique" are all placed in first positions and hence capitalized, giving them hieratic status. In the Louys version, the garden in which the dreaming subjectivity is placed is specifically identified as "Antique Heden des premieres jour­nees," the site of original plenitude and harmony. With the articulation of this vision, the spinner is named La Morte in

6 See Walzer, La Poesie . . . , p. 74.

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the final line, justifying Spitzer's comparison of Valery's "Fi-leuse" to Mallarme's "Sainte": "La Poesie est une Passion ou plutot, la passion est Ie symbole de l'activite interieure de l'artiste." In fact, Valery expresses this Mallarmean view of poetry as a form of transfiguring self-sacrifice in a letter he wrote to Gide in April of 1891: "Je suis de ceux pour qui Ie livre est saint. On en fait UN, qui est Ie bon et Ie seul de son etre, et 1'on disparait."7 The spinner is a vatic being whose purpose is fulfilled once the symbolic vision has been achieved.

In the version Valery sent to Gide in June 1891, and in the version he published in La Conque in September 1891, es­sentially the same "Symbolist" drama takes place, but purified of the erotic imagery that found its way into the earliest frag­ment and was typical of Louys' own verse of the period.

Version sent to Gide, 15 June 1891.

La Fileuse

Lilia . . . Neque nent.

Assise la fileuse au bleu de la croisee Sur Ie Jardin melodieux qui dodeline; Le rouet ancien qui ronfle, l'a grisee.

Lasse aupres de l'azur de filer l'agneline Chevelure, a ses doigts faciles qui s'irise, Elle songe; et sa tete petite s'incline . . .

Plus pur est Ie Jardin maintenant sous la brise De plus jeunes parfums Ie pre chaste s'arrose Et des fleurs vastes ont apparu par surprise.

Une tige lente, ou Ie vent etranger se pose, Courbe Ie vain salut de sa grace etoilee Dediant, magnifique, au vieux rouet, sa Rose.

Et la dormeuse file une laine isolee. Mysterieusement l'ombre frele se tresse Au fil de ses doigts longs et qui dorment, filee.

7 Gide-Valery, Correspondance, pp. 79-80.

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Le Songe se devide avec une paresse Angelique, et, sur Ie fuseau de nacre douce, La chevelure ondule au gre de la caresse.

Version published in La Conque, Sept. 1891.

La Fileuse

Lilia . . . Neque nent.

Assise la fileuse au bleu de la croisee Ou Ie Jardin melodieux se dodeline; Le rouet ancien qui ronfle l'a grisee.

Lasse, ayant bu l'azur, de filer l'agneline Chevelure, a ses doigts si faibles evasive, Elle songe, et sa tete petite s'incline . . .

L'ame des fleurs parait plus vaste et primitive; De plus jeunes parfums Ie val chaste s'arrose, Et des Iys ont pali Ie Jardin de l'oisive.

Une tige, ou Ie vent vagabond se repose Courbe Ie salut vain de sa grace etoilee Dediant, magnifique, au vieux rouet, sa rose.

Mais la fileuse file une laine isolee; Mysterieusement l'ombre frele se tresse, Au fil de ses doigts longs et qui dorment, filee.

Le songe se devide avec une paresse Angelique, et sans cesse au fuseau doux, credule La chevelure ondule au gre de la caresse . . .

N'es-tu morte naive au bord du crepuscule? Naive de jadis, et de lumiere ceinte; Derriere tant de fleurs l'azur se dissimule! . . .

Ta soeur, la grande rose ou sourit une sainte Parfume ton front vague au vent de son haleine, Innocente qui crois languir dans l'heure eteinte

Au bleu de la croisee ou tu filais la laine!8

8 See Walzer, La Poesie . . . , p p . 7 2 - 7 4 .

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The addition of the Biblical epigraph (Matthew VI, 28)— "Considerate lilia agri quomodo crescunt; non laborant, ne-que nent" ("Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin")—establishes, as Spitzer points out, the saintly otherworldly vocation of the sleeping spinner. The spinner who does not spin and the "lilia . . . neque nent" are analogous, functioning according to some divinely inspired inner necessity over which they have no con­trol. The ideal, symbolic dimension of the dreamed vision is signaled in both versions by the capitalized "Jardin" and ex­plicitly described in the third stanzas (which seem to mater­ialize out of the three dots ending stanza two and following the downward motion of the head) as "Purer," "vaster," or "more primitive" than the natural garden:

Plus pur est Ie Jardin maintenant sous la brise (Gide)

L'ame des fleurs parait plus vaste et primitive (La Con-que)

What is most striking about both versions, however, and what distinguishes Valery's voice from that of most of his Symbolist predecessors, is the naturalization of the imagery despite its symbolic significance. In a sense, the poem's formal and thematic dimensions are already in conflict in 1891. Un­like Regnier's shadowy Omphale or Mallarme's Sainte, Va­lery's spinner is very much a corporeal presence ("Assise, la fileuse") and a sentient being susceptible to the demands of her body as well as to those of her soul ("et sa tete petite s'incline"). The familiar diction of the first stanza ("dodeline," "ronfle," "grisee") places her in the world of physical reality and makes her a touching figure vulnerable to time and some­what less than heroic. This naturalization process that char­acterizes, as I have proposed earlier, one of the most important aspects of Valery's originality,9 is felt even more strongly in the Conque version of September than in the Gide version of June 1891. And with this increased naturalization, there in­trudes a certain ambiguity that prepares for the ultimate mise

9 See pp. 83 ff. of Part I .

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en question of the Symbolist vision in the 1900 and 1920 versions. By changing the preposition in the first stanza from "Sur Ie Jardin" to "ou Ie Jardin," Valery dramatically frames his sleepy spinner seated on the threshold of two separate realities and hence prepares for the rift (rather than the ideal merging that will occur in the Album poem), despite the fact that the third stanza, describing the transformation of the natural world into its ideal form, still refuses the truth of any unbridgeable gap between real and ideal in 1891. Stanza two of the Conque version develops fully the metaphor of drunk­enness implied by "grisee." "Lasse aupres de l'azur . . ." becomes "Lasse, ayant bu l'azur, de filer..." and "Chevelure, a ses doigts faciles qui s'irise" becomes "chevelure, a ses doigts si faibles evasive." Although the theme of drink as a source of inspiration is a favorite Romantic topos, suggesting that the drinker is carried beyond herself to another, superior level of reality, Valery's use of the image here stresses the physical rather than the metaphysical effects of the act. These changes introduce all of the themes—loss of control, vulnerability, blindness—which will authorize the ultimate subversion of the mystical vision in the Album poem. The use of "oisive" at the end of stanza three and the shift from "est" to "parait" in that stanza so crucial to the authority of the Symbolist vision, remind us of the natural origin of the dream, suscep­tible to time even as the mystical vision is still given primacy. The shift from "Rose" to "rose" in stanza four removes us from the Idea of rose to the specific flower, from the dream-scape to the "real" or natural source which the subject was contemplating before she fell asleep, "au bleu de la croisee." In having "real" nature pay tribute to the wheel which will transfigure it, Valery seems to locate the vitality of the poem in sensuous experience rather than in its idealized abstraction, thus reversing the priorities of Symbolist aesthetics. The change from "vent etranger" to "vent vagabond" in the first line of the same stanza creates an alliterative effect that further heightens our awareness of the natural world. The seemingly minor change in syntax in stanza five from "Et la dormeuse . . ." to "Mais la fileuse . . ." contributes another element of

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instability to the poem's ideological structure. As F. Laurent has pointed out, this use of an adversative preposition shocks because none of the preceding lines prepares the reader for a structure based on logic.10 It also causes a negative conno­tation to be attached to "isolee," giving it the significance of "cut off" and thus suggesting that the spun thread does not provide a meaningful connection between the natural world and the dream world, despite, or perhaps because of the am­biguous shadow weaving itself into the wool.

The transformation in stanza six from "Angelique, et, sur Ie fuseau de nacre douce," to

Angelique, et sans cesse au fuseau doux, credule La chevelure ondule au gre de la caresse . . .

exemplifies the techniques of musical composition towards which Valery's later verse moves. The heightened alliteration and non-linear syntax tend to isolate us within the universe of language rather than to direct us toward a system of mean­ing beyond itself. Thus the example of the garden is translated into material rather than spiritual terms. The addition of the next seven lines forcefully continues the disturbing effects that provide the poem with its subversive sub-structure. The use of the interrogative, the analogy of sleep with death, the rep­etition of "naive," the disturbing syntax of line 20, the startled assertion of the disappearance of "azur," all break the spell of the musicalized garden / world / poem of the preceding stanza—as if this evocation were now gone, and we are thrown into a present from which not only the Symbolist vision (cf. stanza 3) but the lyrical voice itself has rfetreated.

All of the changes Valery made in 1900 for the Poetes d'Aujourd'hui anthology edited by Van Bever and Leautaud strengthen and confirm the direction of the subversions begun in the Conque version of 1891. Aside from making some minor alterations in punctuation and changing the first line of stanza seven from "Tu es morte naive au bord du crepus-

10 "Interpretation d'un poeme de Valery, 'La Fileuse.' " Les Etudes clas-siques, Tome XXVI, no. 3, juillet 1958, p. 275.

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cule," to "Derriere tant de fleurs, l'azur se dissimule," Valery will keep the 1900 version for the introductory position in the Album of 1920. The most dramatic revisions in 1900 are, in my opinion, the shift of "Jardin" to lower case; the radical rewriting of the third stanza which, in the Gide and the Con-que versions, asserts the superiority of the dream garden over the natural garden; the change from "Angeline" to "caline" to describe the "chevelure" in stanza two; and the strength­ening of the structures of rupture in the final two stanzas. Apart from these changes, the rest of the poem, stanzas 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and the single last line, is virtually identical to the 1891 version published in La Conque, yet the changes are significant enough to require a reinterpretation of the poem.11

11 Among Valery's unpublished manuscripts there is a sonnet, "Attente," probably written in 1891, which bears striking similarities to both "La Fi-leuse" and "Au bois dormant." A woman sits on the threshold of a tomb at sunset and weeps as the world around her is extinguished, but as she sinks fully into a dream state, her eyes are filled with a mystical vision suggesting the transcendence of death. "La Fileuse" and "Attente" share a common lexicon: "seuil," "eteintes," "bagues," "songe," "Morte," "l'heure," etc., as well as the broken rhythm of lines nine and twelve of the tercets. "Attente," like the 1891 version of "La Fileuse," clearly belongs to Valery's Symbolist phase, however, as there is no subversion of the sleeping figure by the lyric speaker, and the death of the natural world is associated with religious trans­figuration.

"Attente"

Pudique et longue, en robe close, sur Ie seuil D'un sepulchre, elle pleure Ies heures eteintes. Les pures larmes d'or tombent mortes et saintes De ses grands yeux fermes sur ses bagues de deuil.

Taciturne, parmi Ies fideles, . . . Elle ecoute l'ombre . . . Ie vol est enchante Ou de vagues pieds nus marchent avec bonte; Parfois descendre elle songe de freles ailes.

Les pas se taisent. Tout s'apaise obscurement. La fiamme des flambeaux bleuit dans l'air dormant, Mais l'or des larmes sonne immense sur Ies pierres . . .

L'heure est morte. Le soir immobile est aux cieux. Alors, pour l'ombre emplir de songe des grands yeux, Elle ouvre mysterieusement ses paupieres.

(Ms., B.N., Vers anctens, vol. II, f. 2)

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"LA FILEUSE," 1920

Two important dramatic events occur in "La Fileuse," one on the level of theme and the other on the level of form; the second challenges the primacy of the first. The thematic event can be translated into the following literal paraphrase: a woman spinner seated at her wheel in front of a garden has grown drowsy from her task and falls asleep as the wool continues to pass through her fingers. She no longer sees with her natural eye what transpires as the sun goes down over the garden. The daytime vision has been internalized ("bleu" becomes "azur bu") and is being reproduced without her rational con­trol as "songe" (1. 16) into the spun thread. Her story is told by the lyrical speaker in the third person for the first six stanzas, but in the last two stanzas, where a conversion occurs which seems to question the value of the preceding account, there is a dramatic shift from third to second person when the speaker addresses the spinner as "tu," and a simultaneous shift in verb tenses from present to past. With these formal changes the wakeful speaker-maker usurps the authority which the sleeping spinner-visionary has lost and pronounces her once and for all a relic of the past.

Placed as it was directly under the title of the collection as a whole, "ancien" made to modify "rouet" in the first stanza invites a metaphoric reading of the spinner as an earlier poetic self and the product of her wheel as the poetry produced by that earlier self. The lyrical speaker stands as intimate witness of the drama described above, like a dreamer awake inside the dream, watching close up an event that he experiences as happening to himself—he sees the garden, feels the breeze, knows the thread between his fingers at the same moment that the garden blurs, the wind passes unfelt, and the wheel escapes the control of the spinner's fingers. Thus, throughout the poem—and I believe this is one of the most striking and original characteristics of Valery's mature poetry—two levels of experience which are at odds with each other operate simul­taneously: one metaphoric and the other naturalistic.

This spinner, unlike Regnier's or Hugo's, is described in

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such a way as to make her seem poignantly present through­out, a figure vulnerable to mutability, and, while awake, to the sensuous touch of the physical world. Except for "croisee" in the first line, which signals the Symbolist vision to be rein­terpreted, the diction in the first stanza is conspicuously non-literary and highly onomotopoetic: "se dodeline," "ronfle," "grisee." Throughout the poem techniques such as alliteration (lines 3, 10, 14, 20, 23, especially), enjambement (lines 4, 8, 16, 23), and rhythmic shift (lines 6, 8 12, 15, 21) suggest a powerful symbiotic relationship between speaker and the sub­ject of his poem. In the first two stanzas this subject is the spinner as she dozes off; in stanzas three and four, it is the garden no longer seen by the spinner; and in five and six, it is the spinning process and specifically the wool as it is trans­formed into thread.

The crucial change from "Jardin" to "jardin" and the dis­crediting of the ideal site in stanza three announce that the Symbolist's dualistic concept of nature has been abandoned. The spinner who does not spin, but dreams, is identified with colorless, Symbolic Biblical lilies ("lilia neque nent"), not the blooded rose which summons her throughout the poem. Sleep and drunkenness, favored Romantic states suggesting height­ened imaginative powers, are associated by Valery with blind­ness and loss in the "Fileuse" of 1920. In stanza one, "se dodeline" effectively translates the confusion which results in apocalyptic loss. "Dodeline" is normally used to describe the swaying or nodding movement of a head ("dodeliner de la tete"), so that "le jardin se dodeline" projects the drowsy gazer onto the garden and confirms the identification of self/nature characteristic of a correspondent vision. As the spinner falls asleep, the garden appears to nod. We are, in a sense, then, at the beginning of the poem, perceiving the world through her closing eyes. Lyrical speaker and thematized subjectivity are as close as they will ever be at this point. The use of personification to translate the identification of the self with the garden in stanza one is repeated in stanza two to translate the relationship of the spinner to the wool, figured as "cheve-lure," but the change from "angeline" to "caline" suggests a

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distancing of speaker from spinner. The change is not only one away from esoteric Latinate diction borrowed from the Symbolist lexicon toward the more intimate, everyday vocab­ulary which characterizes the ideolect of this poem, but a shift from a purely descriptive adjective to an evaluative judgment, which both intensifies the personification and challenges the identification it seeks to establish. As the hair-like wool coaxes and caresses her asleep, it seems to take on a life of its own. Indeed, in the next line, it will be called "evasive" and rimed with "vive" in the following stanza. Thus, at the same time that an identification has been established among spinner, nature, wheel (through "ronfle"), and wool, a division or split seems to be occurring through the spinning process, thema-tized in stanza two as a split within the subjectivity in the poem. The spinner is "oisive"; the wool as an extension of her dreaming self is "caline" and "evasive." The thread that emerges from this process will indeed have a life of its own, rewoven by the twentieth-century speaker into a form alien to that of its originator.

By the second stanza, then, two structures have become apparent. The dominant one is a structure of merging, union, harmony symbolized by the timeless Edenic site of the Sym­bolist vision, "L'Antique Heden des premieres journees" of the Louys fragment—a vision which proposes that poetic lan­guage return us to a center, an origin, a truth of truths. This is the azure world that the spinner has internalized, become drunk on, and now dreams about. The secondary, subversive structure is one of separation, splitting, doubling, in which truth is mobile—a question of relationships, of contact, a thread constantly displaced and recovered. By ending the sec­ond stanza with three dots and describing the dream garden as "Plus pur" or "plus vaste et primitive," in the following stanza, the '91 versions ensure the primacy of the structure of merging. By ending the second stanza with a full stop and turning in stanza three to the natural garden abandoned by the sleeping spinner rather than to the idealized site, the Album version ensures the primacy of the structure of separation and relationship. In the revised third stanza the principal poetic

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or rhetorical effect is provided by syntax rather than by per­sonification. Its unconventional order discretely dissimulates the poem's critical undercutting of the Symbolist vision. Re­constructing the normal subject-verb-object order of the de­pendent clause reveals that the weaver has been relegated to a kind of absence or non-functional presence, and that the garden (like Valery's ideal of the self-generative work) is fer­tilizing itself, enacting its natural cycle of death and regen­eration, a potential source of inspiration ("source vive" as opposed to "azur," which puts to sleep), unseen and unfelt by the sleeping subjectivity. "Delicieuse," "Pertes de fleurs," "oisive," all underscore the value of what is being lost. The flower's example is wasted on the human subject. Stanza four leaves the spinner out entirely. Separation between subjectivity and Nature is complete at this point. Nature offers herself as example ("grace etoilee") in vain, and is privileged by the lyrical speaker over the sleeping spinner in line 12, with its broken, tripartite alexandrin, and the commanding power ac­corded the long word "magnifique." The subject is the first word of the stanza, "Une tige," and the object, the last word, "sa rose," one a source of the other. With the elimination of the idealized site the change from "ancien rouet" of stanza one to "vieux rouet" in four has a powerfully demythologizing effect. The hieratic value of the Symbolist wheel has been lost, along with the capitalized garden.

Midway through the poem there is a shift in focus from Spinner/Garden (1-2/3-4) to the spinning process (5-6), and this shift is introduced by the adversative preposition "Mais," designating the critical authority of the lyrical speaker over the spinner. The shadow weaving itself into the thread in all of the versions is linked to nightfall and the unconscious dreaming self, and ultimately to death. Both the Louys frag­ment ("Mais la Morte se croit la fileuse ancienne") and the Conque version ("N'es-tu morte naive au bord du crepus-cule") explicitly identify unconscious inspiration as a form of metaphoric death, but we know from other poems of this period that in 1891 death is understood as spiritual transfig­uration—the saintly sacrifice required of the poet for the sym-

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bolic event to occur. In "Elevation de la lune," for example, the coming of night ("L'ombre venait, Ies fleurs s'ouvraient, revait mon Ame") causes stars to appear in the sky as funeral candles. The subjectivity prays, and with the prayer Divinity manifests itself "Hostie immense et blonde . . . se detachant du monde," proposing a Symbolist vision of the poet's calling as a kind of Passion.12 In the 1920 version Night falls on the

12 There is a draft of "La Fileuse" among the manuscripts at the Bibho-theque nationale which was probably written in 1894, that is after the crisis of '92, and which contains all of the crucial changes that appear in the 1900 poem: "jardin" in lower case, rewriting of stanza three, and rhythmic breaks in stanzas seven and eight. In fact, the use of the reflexive second person pronoun in the penultimate line would suggest an even more drastic under­cutting of the Symbolist vision than appears in the final version:

Assise la fileuse au bleu de la croisee Oii Ie jardin melodieux se dodeline. Le rouet ancien qui ronfle l'a gnsee.

Lasse, ayant bu l'azur, de filer l'angeline Chevelure, a ses doigts si faibles evasive, EUe songe, et sa tete petite s'incline. . . .

Un arbuste et Pair pur font une source vive, En tremblant d'odeurs qui tombent, il arrose De ses pertes de fleurs, Ie jardin de l'oisive.

Une tige, ïý Ie vent vagabond se repose Courbe Ie salut vain de sa grace etoilee Dediant magmfique, au vieux rouet, sa rose.

Car la dormeuse file une lame isolee Mysteneusement l'ombre frele se tresse Au fil de ses doigts longs et qui dorment, filee.

Le songe se devide avec une paresse Angehque, et sans cesse au fuseau doux, credule La chevelure ondule au gre de la caresse. . . .

N'es-tu morte, naive au bord du crepuscule? Naive, de feuillage et de lumiere ceinte; Tout Ie ciel vert revient. Le dernier arbre brule.

Ta soeur, la grande rose ou sount une sainte Parfume ton front vague au vent de son haleine Innocente, et tu crois languid Tu t'es eteinte,

Au bleu de la croisee ou tu filais la laine. (Ms., B.N., Vers anctens, II, f. 25)

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Symbolic garden and on the poem, representing an aesthetics of transcendence at the end of the sixth stanza. A striking new voice and a new ethics impose themselves on the poem when the speaker addresses the spinner directly as "tu," paradox­ically bringing her to life in his poem at the moment he pro­nounces her dead in hers. This resurrection can be effected only by a wakeful, ironical, self-conscious spinner—the speaker of this poem. In line 20 the spinner of symbolic poetry is figured haloed by the events she no longer sees—"fileuse de feuillage et de lumiere ceinte." Her sainthood has been achieved at too great a cost. The exquisite choice of the simple adjectives "vert" and "dernier" of line 21 tells us that. The voice of the speaker is clearly not identified with the dead spinner because he sees what she does not, he knows what she does not, and he announces the end of the natural world in the painfully ruptured, apocalyptic last line of stanza seven: "Tout Ie ciel vert se meurt. Le dernier arbre brule." We are far from viewing the descent of night as a benediction. The burning of the last tree is felt as the cruelest of losses after the magnificent evo­cation in stanza four of "Tige" (delicate extension of "ar-buste," stanza 3) dedicating its single rose to the wheel which should translate it into poetic life. Stanza eight bears out the finality of the separation between self and world by extin­guishing the spinner and relegating her memory once and for all to the past, "Au bleu de la croisee ou tu filais la laine"— to an Album de vers anciens.

Stanzas seven and eight are striking for their syntax of rup­ture. The substructure of divisiveness which was secondary at the beginning of the poem dominates the end. The soothing, caressing, musicalized harmonies of the Symbolist poem are cut through by a critical, wakeful voice, the voice of a maker of poems, an agent who controls rather than lets himself be controlled by his intuitive self, on which a mystical aesthetics relies.

But the extinction of the spinner and the demystification of the lyric vocabulary does not yet announce in this liminary work the futility of the lyric enterprise in general. Rupture with the past and with Romantic idealism in particular opens

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the way for a new, self-justifying present. Thus Valery's con­cept of a dualistic time: "un temps de la matiere imaginaire; un temps des formes," underlies the poem's structure.13 We do, in a sense, recover the "jardin melodieux" lost to the spinner. Indeed, the relational play between presence and ab­sence is the warp and woof of the finished work.

The fabric of "La Fileuse" is a delicate criss-crossing of images and sounds. The fifth stanza completes the image of the "fileuse" begun in the first stanza, the sixth takes up the

La Fileuse

Lilia . neque nent. SAME

fileuse

cheveh

arbtts s

ch :veH

8

Assise, la fileuse au bleu de la croisee Ou Ie jardin melodieux se dodeline; Le rouet ancien qui ronfle la grisee.

Lasse, ayant bu l'azur, de filer la caline Chevelure, a ses doigts si faibles evasive, Elle songe, et sa tete petite s'incline.

Un arbuste et Pair pur font une source vive Qui, suspendue au jour, delicieuse arrose De ses pertes de fleurs Ie jardin de l'oisive.

Une tige, ou Ie vent vagabond se repose, Courbe Ie salut vain de sa grace etoilee, Dediant magnifique, au vieux rouet, sa rose.

Mais Ie dormeuse file une laine isolee; Mysterieusement l'ombre frele se tresse Au fit de ses doigts longs et qui dorment, filee.

Le songe se divide avec une paresse Angelique, et sans cesse, au doux fuseau credule, La chevelure ondule au gre de la caresse . . .

Derriere tant de fleurs, l'azur se dissimule, Fileuse de feuillage et de lumiere ceinte: Tout Ie ciel vert se meurt. Le dernier arbre brule.

Ta soeur, la grande rose ou sourit une sainte, Parfume ton front vague au vent de son haleine Innocente, et tu crois languir . . . Tu es eteinte

Au bleu de la croisee ou tu filais la laine.

OPPOSITES

fileuse

nzur bu

nature

dormeuse

songe

dissimule

13 Note to La Jeune Parque, See p. 13 of Introduction.

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"chevelure" of the second, the seventh returns to the "arbuste" become "arbre" of the third, and the eighth to the "rose" of the fourth. The antithetical relationship of the "fileuse" to the "jardin" of the middle stanzas (4-5) is overcome by their common fate at the end: "le dernier arbre brfile . . . Tu es eteinte." The movement from the two outside stanzas, one and eight, inward to stanzas four and five consists of a play of contrasts between self and outside world: "fileuse"—"rose" (stanzas 1-8); "azur bu"—"azur (qui) se dissimule" (stanzas 2-7); movement of nature—movement of dream (stanzas 3-6); and finally like one and eight, stanzas four and five jux­tapose "rose"—"fileuse" (stanzas 4-5), one next to the other on the threshold of union.

Thus the experience of absence is woven into the finished cloth, a poem made of present music. The prose poem serving as epilogue to the Album translates the formal triumph of "La Fileuse" into a new vision in which the self is recreated by the language of its own election:

. . . N u l h a s a r d , m a i s u n e c h a n c e e x t r a o r d i n a i r e s e f o r t i f i e . Je trouve sans effort Ie langage de ce bonheur, et je pense par artifice, une pensee toute certaine, merveilleusement prevoyante,—aux lacunes calculees, sans tenebres invo-lontaires, dont Ie mouvement me commande et la quantite me comble: une pensee singulierement achevee.

Instead of beginning his collection with a traditional "Au Lecteur" or a dedicatory text offering his work to future poets, like Mallarme's "Salut," for example, Valery thematizes ded­ication in "La Fileuse" as a purely personal exchange between self and world ("Dediant magnifique, au vieux rouet, sa rose") and inscribes himself as a reader at the end, a reader defined by the writing he has just written/read: "Je m'abandonne a l'adorable allure: lire, vivre ou menent Ies mots. Leur appa­rition est ecrite." The reader looking out of the text has the face of his own writing, "Mu par l'ecriture fatale," not the alien face of the appropriating enemy whom Valery feared: "II me deplait d'imaginer, au travers de la page que je lis, quelque visage enflamme ou ricanant, sur lequel se peint Tin-

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tention de me faire aimer ce que je hais ou hair ce que j'aime." (Oeuvres I, pp. 1471-72)

"HELENE"

If the poem that opens the Album burns away the Romantic and Symbolist illusions that inspired Valery's early poetry, the next six poems14 question the ambiguous attraction both Par­nassian and Symbolist stances held for Valery during these formative years:

Je sens que Ie parnassien qui a d'abord ete Moi se dissout et s'evapore. . . . Il me semble que ce n'est plus l'heure des vers sonores et exacts, cercles de rimes lourdes et rares comme des pierres! Peut-etre faut-il ecrire des choses vaporeuses, fines et legeres comme des fumees violettes et qui font songer a tout, et qui ne disent rien precisement et qui ont des ailes. . . ." (Letter to Albert Dugrip, Nov., 1890)15

The titles—"Helene," "Naissance de Venus," "Au bois dor­mant," "Feerie," "Le Bois amical" (and "Orphee," "Meme Feerie," "Cesar," "Les Vaines danseuses," poems added to later editions)—and the use of the sonnet form clearly locate these opening poems in the literary historical context of the late nineteenth century and give the collection, at this point, a distinctly period tone. The first two sonnets, "Helene," and "Naissance de Venus," which follow the introductory poem in the 1920 publication, suggest a Parnassian stance. In De­cember of 1890 Valery wrote a letter to Pierre Louys, editor of La Conque, that playfully announces "Helene":

J'ai envie de faire un sonnet a Heredia dont Ie sujet serait celui-ci: Retour des conquistadors de la vraie Poesie, on

14 I would like to remind the reader that, aside from "Meme Feerie" and "Profusion du soir," I am treating only the poems which appeared in the 1920 edition of the Album. Thus I will not discuss "Orphee," "Cesar," or "Les Vaines danseuses" here.

15 Lettres a quelques-uns, p. 40.

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entend sur la mer Ies clairons victorieux, void Ies galeres dont Ies voiles se detachent sur Ie soleil couchant, voici a la proue Ie vainqueur J. M. de H. dont Ie nom sonore terminerait glorieusement la piece rimant avec irradia ou incendia.16

ÇÝÉÝçâ

Azur! c'est moi. . . . Je viens des grottes de la mort Entendre l'onde se rompre aux degres sonores, Et je revois Ies galeres dans Ies aurores Ressusciter de l'ombre au fil des rames d'or.

Mes solitaires mains appellent Ies monarques Dont la barbe de sel amusait mes doigts purs; Je pleurals. Ils chantaient leurs triomphes obscurs Et Ies golfes enfuis aux poupes de leurs barques.

J'entends Ies conques profondes et Ies clairons Militaires rythmer Ie vol des avirons; Le chant clair des rameurs enchaine Ie tumulte,

Et Ies Dieux, a la proue hero'ique exaltes Dans Ieur sourire antique et que Pecume insulte, Tendent vers moi leurs bras indulgents et sculptes.

Although Helen of Troy was a subject treated by Symbolist poets and painters—Samain, Laforgue, and Regnier all wrote Helen poems which they dedicated to Mallarme, and Gustave Moreau's Helen painting was described and extolled by Huys-mans both in L'Art modeme in 1893 and again in A Reboursi7— Valery has rejected the Symbolist treatment of the figure as a siren-like femme fatale standing in the midst of smouldering ruins, in favor of a neo-Hellenistic vision associated with the poetry of Leconte de Lisle, Louis Menard, Frangois Coppee or Heredia. Reversing the drama of "La Fileuse," Valery fig­ures Helen as sensient Beauty emerging from a site of darkness

14 Ibid., p. 42. For a study of Heredia's importance to the young Valery, see Walter N. Ince, "Valery et Heredia," Colloque Paul Valery . . . , op.cit.

17 See P. L. Mathieu. Gustave Moreau (Phaidon: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 144.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 143

and interiority synonymous with a state of non-being ("grottes de la mort") into the light of phenomenal reality.

"Helene" is not, however, a slavish imitation but rather an improving reinterpretation of the Parnassian aesthetic. In his Preface to Les Poemes antiques in 185218 Leconte de Lisle defined the Parnassian credo in opposition to the effusive sen­timentality and glorification of subjective feeling characteristic of the Romantic lyric, which he blames for the destruction of an immediate and vital connection with the external world experienced by the poets of antiquity. He advocates a return to the study of ancient civilizations for a rediscovery of man's spiritual origins and a new appreciation of the sensuous forms of physical reality. There were, however, certain inconsis­tencies in Leconte de Lisle's assertions regarding his ideolog­ical opposition to Romanticism that Valery seems to have perceived and incorporated into his "Parnassian" pieces in the Album. While Leconte de Lisle, like his predecessor Gautier, rejects the utilitarian view of the poet as social reformer in favor of an art for art's sake credo, he seems at the same time to be echoing the Romantic belief in the poet as spiritual leader by insisting upon the destructive effects of time in his definition of the beautiful ideal. The Parnassians' advocacy of the priv­ileged ethos of ancient civilizations and the choice of historical subjects for the thematic focus of their poetry suggest a related conception of poetry not antagonistic to the Romantic view of creation as an instrument for historical change. Valery's powerfully condensed version of the Helen myth discredits any vision of historical determinism that inconsistently ob­viates a Utopian future or an idyllic past at the same time that it extols the beauty of plastic form.

It was the means by which poetic leadership was to be exercised that distinguished Parnassianism from Romanticism and that impressed Valery, who conceived of the poet as maker rather than as seer or spiritual guide. Leconte de Lisle insists that the poet must become impersonal and through rigorous

18 Leconte de Lisle. Oeuvres de Leconte de Lisle, ed., Pich, 4 vol. (Paris: Belles lettres, 1977-78), vol. 1, Poemes antiques.

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technical reforms purify his work of emotional effusions which obscure the essential harmony of the natural world. Echoing Gautier, he claims that the poet should be felt only as an impassive, constitutive force, a self-effacing will-to-form man­ifest in the control he exercises over his medium. The poet is conceived of as a "conquistador," standing aloof from his subject, but controlling, indeed overcoming, its temporal pas­sage, under his craftsman's iron hand. Yet, although the Par­nassians consistently advocate the effacement of the enunci­ating subjectivity, like the Romantics, their poetry relies heavily on dramatic event and descriptive diction. In other words, their insistence on the importance of form over content is really the content of their poetry. This failure to actualize their theoretical claims through formal innovation may account for Valery's somewhat condescending tone whenever he discusses Leconte de Lisle or Parnassianism, and for the tremendous appeal of Mallarme's verse, which seemed to achieve what the Parnassians only talked about, and which stood as the first real formal alternative to the poetry of Romanticism.

It seems to me that at least two precursor texts, Leconte de Lisle's "Helene" from Poemes antiques and Heredia's "La Conque" from Les Trophees,19 help to elucidate the generative tensions that contributed to Valery's own Helen text. Leconte de Lisle's 1,000-line poem provides the dramatic setting and the narrative events that Valery drastically condenses into a fourteen-line sonnet. Valery's original title, "Helene, la reine triste," signals even more clearly Leconte de Lisle's poem, which begins with Helen standing on the shore sadly waiting for the return of her Monarch-husband's warships and filled with premonitions of some God-ordained disaster:

La tristesse inquiete et sombre ou je me vois Ne s'est point dissipee aux accents de ta voix; Et du jour ou voguant vers la divine Krete Atride m'a quittee, une terreur secrete,

19Jose-Maria Heredia, Les Trophies (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, n.d.), p. 149.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 145

Un noir pressentiment envoye par Ies Dieux Habite en mon esprit tout plein de ses adieux.

The Chorus of Women reassure her in terms which are echoed in Valery's first tercet:

J'entends Ies conques profondes et Ies clairons Militaires rythmer Ie vol des avirons; Le chant clair des rameurs enchaine Ie tumulte,

(Valery) Deja sur la mer vaste une propice haleine Des bondissantes nefs gonfle la voile pleine, Et Ies rameurs courbes sur Ies forts avirons D'une male sueur baignent a flots leurs fronts.

(Leconte de Lisle)

Her fears are realized in the unexpected form of the beautiful Paris, who has been sent by Venus to carry her off to Troy. Despite her passionate attraction to Paris, she at first resists him, and his fleet begins to leave the Greek shores to return to Troy. Helen, finally yields to the decree of Venus, sending her royal singer, Demodoce, to call Paris back: "Va, Demo-doce, cours! De tes longues clameurs / Emplis Ies bords du fleuve. Arrete sa trireme." As Paris commands his sailors to turn the ship around, "Viensi mes forts compagnons, a la fuite animes, / Poussent des cris joyeux, des avirons armes," Helen cries out joyously, "Les Dieux m'ont entendu." Valery bril­liantly evokes this moment of the God-ordained meeting of the lovers in the final tercet of his sonnet:

Et les Dieux, a la proue heroi'que exaltes Dans Ieur sourire antique et que l'ecume insulte, Tendent vers moi leurs bras indulgents et sculptes.

Leconte de Lisle's poem ends with the Chorus predicting the immanent return of Menelaus' avenging fleet and Helen's pun­ishment. Thus the narrative progresses through four separate evocations of monarchs' arrivals on the shores of Greece: the first is the triumphant return of Menelaus wished for by Helen; the second, the unexpected arrival of Paris sent by the Gods;

146 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

the third, the return of Pans summoned by Helen; and the fourth, the return of Menelaus after Helen has left, predicted by the Chorus—this is the arrival which will mark the begin­ning of the Trojan War.

Valery does away with the linearity of Leconte de Lisle's account, conflating all conquering male figures into "les mo-narques" and presenting them four times, in each stanza of the sonnet, but as one mythopoetic moment. The entire epic of the Trojan War is present in Helen's consciousness simul­taneously, or, one might say, in the word "Helene," simul­taneously. As Helen is reborn in Valery's poem out of the darkness of the past, the vessels of the Parnassian conquis­tadors are born with her, "ressusciter de l'ombre au fil des rames d'or," as if to say that perceiver and perceived are reciprocal and synonymous. In the closing tercet Helen sees the monarchs as mirror reflections of herself, extending their arms toward her as she extended hers at the beginning of the poem to evoke their presence: "mes solitaires mains appellent les monarques" (1.5). . . . "Et les Dieux . . . tendent vers moi leurs bras indulgents et sculptes." Thus, through the use of specular imagery, Valery locks the poem on itself as an in­transitive and self-reflecting structure. Although the conquer­ing male figures have the power to bring lyrical order out of potential chaos—"Le chant clair des rameurs enchaine Ie tu-multe"—they are, in Valery's poem, unlike in Leconte de Lis­le's, seduced by, indeed, constituted by, the figure of formal Beauty that they would control. Valery lends his voice to Helen, figure of ideal self-constitutive Form, immune now from the moralizing, historically determined referent of Le-conte de Lisle's Chorus as if he would liberate the Parnassian credo of art for art's sake from its Romantic origins and write the poem Leconte de Lisle should have written.

If somewhat more subtly than Leconte de Lisle's "Helene," Heredia's "La Conque" also suggests itself as an interpretant20

text through line 11 of the first tercet: 201 have borrowed Michael Riffaterre's adaptation of C S Peirce's term

in The Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington and London Indiana University Press, 1978), ρ 81 "I shall distinguish between lexematic and textual in

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La Conque

Par quels froids Oceans, depuis combien d'hivers, —Qui Ie saura jamais, Conque frele et nacree!— La houle, Ies courants et Ies raz de maree T'ont-ils roulee au creux de leurs abimes verts?

Aujourd'hui, sous Ie del, loin des reflux amers, Tu t'es fait un doux lit de l'arene doree. Mais ton espoir est vain. Longue et desesperee, En toi gemit toujours la grande voix des mers.

Mon ame est devenue une prison sonore; Et comme en tes replis pleure et soupire encore La plainte du refrain de I'ancienne clameur;

Ainsi du plus profond de ce coeur trop plein d'Elle, Sourde, lente, insensible et pourtant eternelle, Gronde en moi l'orageuse et lointaine rumeur.

(my italics)

Besides echoing numerous key words, "profond / profonde," "Conque / conques," "sonore / sonores," "pleure / pleurals," "doree / d'or," Valery converts the analogy upon which He-redia's poem is built through the use of simile—"conque" as "ame" as poem—into a dynamic figural presence, thus en­dowing with formal reality Heredia's conventionalized met-apoetic theme. Helen comes to life as the poem's voice, as­suming the role assigned by Heredia to the emblematic shell in the first tercet. By releasing the reader from the conceptual reference demanded by simile, Valery makes his poem para­doxically more alive or "lifelike"—we experience Helen's vi­sion as if we were "there." Just as he purified his "Helene" of Leconte de Lisle's Romantic narrative structure, he rids his reworking of Heredia's text of its markedly Romantic imagery

terpretants. The Jatter are mediating texts, either quoted in the poem or alluded to: they themselves contain a model of the equivalences and trans-ferrals from one code to the other, and they lay down the rule of the poem's idiolect, guaranteeing, with the authority a normative grammar, a tradition, or a convention would have, the semiotic practice peculiar to the poem."

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which proposes a mystical origin for the creative act—the storm-tossed boat, the conch, or the aeolian harp (translated here by soul as "prison sonore"). Like a boat, Heredia's shell is washed upon the shore by Romantic winds, so to speak, winds which symbolize, as Northrop Frye has suggested, the cosmic power to which the Romantic poet attributes his cre­ative energy.21

The Romantic poet is a part of a total process, engaged with and united to a creative power greater than his own because it includes his own. This creative power has re­lation to him which we may call, adapting a term of Blake's, his vehicular form . . . sometimes the greater power of this vehicular form is a rushing wind . .. some­times it is a boat driven by a breeze or current. . . .

Valery's Helen figure, or rather the poem's voice, relies not on any otherworldly power, but on her own natural senses— hearing, seeing, touching—to recover the rhythmic and so­norous presence of the past. The chaotic sea of history and chance is converted in both sonnets to a musicalized poetic order: "prison sonore," "la plainte du refrain de l'ancienne clameur" (Heredia), "je viens . . . entendre l'onde se rompre aux degres sonores," "le chant clair . . . enchaine Ie tumulte" (Valery), but whereas Heredia depends upon the conceptual­izing powers of his reader to effect that conversion through comparison, Valery achieves his conversion through repetition and parallel structuring of imagery, ridding his text of purely functional signal words ("ainsi," "comme") in order to create his relational model. To speak poetically is to act, not to be acted upon: "Tout langage dit je suis acte de quelqu'un, avant de signaler autre chose" (1944, C. XXVIII, p. 916).

Taken individually, "Helene" stands as a critical revision of an early phase in Valery's poetic career,22 but considered

21 "The Drunken Boat: The Revolutionary Element in Romanticism," The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and Society (Ithaca: Cornell Uni­versity Press, 1970), p. 209.

22 In 1889, for example, Valery did write a Romantic version of the storm-tossed boat poem, complete with an explicit analogy, "ainsi mon ame . . ."

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within the collection as a whole, it begins a process by which a new, larger, as yet undefined, poetic figuration starts to take shape. The first line in which we hear Helen's voice announce her return from the dead, where the last line of "La Fileuse" had left her, and welcome the day called "azur," which the spinner had drunk and converted into dream, suggests that "Helene" can be read not as a discontinuous entity, but as a permutation of the preceding poem. Their juxtaposition be­gins the cycle of sleep and wakefulness which becomes a dom­inant figural pattern throughout the collection, and which is ultimately shown to reflect the nature of the creative process itself.23

"NAISSANCE DE VENUS"

Like "Helene," "Naissance de Venus" adopts a Parnassian stance, focusing not on the sleep-dream polarity associated

It is structured very much like Heredia's "La Conque":

Le Navtre

Ayant des mers fendu cent ans Ie bleu miroir, —L'impassible miroir aux vagues musicales,— Le Vaisseau, vieux coureur d'innombrables escales, Revient dormir au Port dont il partit, un Soir.

Parfum d'un mort chen que garde son tiroir, L'odeur des flots enfuis hante Ies sombres cales. Le sucre, Ie tabac, Ies houles tropicales Impregnent Ie ponton silencieux et noir.

. . . Revenant de l'Amour lointain—ainsi mon Ame Conserve la senteur des reves d'autrefois, Et ne peut oublier une certaine V o t x,

Et ne peut oublier un certain nom de femme . . . Mais quel Havtre a-t-il sur l'Ocean laisse Sa trace—et sa Memoire a travers Ie Passe? . . .

( Oeuvres I, p. 1593) 23 Critics have noted the similarity between "Helene" and the beginning

of La Jeurte Parque, where the female figure emerges from the cave-like obscurity of sleep to listen to the sea-sounds of her own interionty. Florence de Lussy's di scovery of the first line of La Jeune Parque, "Qui pleure la, sinon Ie vent simple, a cette heure," on a page marked "Helene" in one of Valery's

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with Symbolism, but on awakened perception and an impulse toward fusion with the natural world.

Naissance de Venus

De sa profonde mere, encor froide et fumante, Voici qu'au seuil battu de tempetes, la chair Amerement vomie au soleil par la mer, Se delivre des diamants de la tourmente.

Son sourire se forme, et suit sur ses bras blancs Qu'eplore l'orient d'une epaule meurtrie, De l'humide Thetis la pure pierrerie, Et sa tresse se fraye un frisson sur ses flancs.

Le frais gravier, qu'arrose et fuit sa course agile, Croule, creuse rumeur de soif, et Ie facile Sable a bu Ies baisers de ses bonds puerils;

Mais de mille regards ou perfides ou vagues, Son oeil mobile mele aux eclairs de perils L'eau riante, et la danse infidele des vagues.

Here the same drama of the emergence of form out of depth and disorder suggested in the first line of "Helene" occurs in the opening stanza, but far more dramatically, almost as an original cosmological upheaval, and is elaborated throughout the rest of the poem. "Naissance de Venus" is related to "Helene" from a mythic perspective as well, since it figures the birth of the goddess who decrees Helen's destiny and represents the archetypal Beautiful Form of which Helen is only a semi-divine manifestation. The following lines from Leconte de Lisle's "Helene," are echoed in Valery's birth of Venus poem:

Deesse, qui naquis de l'ecume des mers, Dont Ie rire brillant tarit Ies pleurs amers,

early notebooks, helps to support such a comparison. See La Genese de "La Jeune Par que," p. 15. But more significant for this study is the fact that "Helene" is placed in a position to introduce the wake-sleep cycle of human creativity already dramatized by the 1917 poetic monologue.

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Moreover, the words "regards perfides," "perils," "infideles" in the final tercet seem to evoke the many incidents of the perfidy which placed Helen on stage with the monarchs of ancient history and motivated the events behind de Lisle's work.

"Naissance de Venus" is, however, only superficially a Par­nassian poem. More importantly it reflects the same impulse toward self-definition and self-modification thematized in "Helene" through the use of specular imagery. The revisions Valery made of the original version, "Celle qui sort de l'onde," for publication in the Album, reveal perhaps more clearly than those of any other poem in the collection the importance he came to attach to the dynamics of figuration over the special value of any single trope:

Celle qui sort de l'onde

La voici! fleur antique et d'ecume fumante, La nymphe magnifique et joyeuse, la chair Que parfume 1'esprit vagabond de la mer, Celle qu'une eau legere encore diamante!

Elle apparait! Dans Ie frisson de ses bras blancs Les seins tremblent, mouilles a leurs pointes fleuries D'oceaniques et d'humides pierreries. Des larmes de soleil ruissellent sur ses flancs!

Les graviers d'or, qu'arrose sa marche gracile, Croulent sous ses pieds fins, et la greve facile Garde Ies frais baisers de ses pas enfantins.

Et Ie golfe a laisse dans ses yeux fous et vagues Ou Iuit Ie souvenir des gouffres argentins L'eau riante et la danse infidele des vagues.

In this early version (December 1890)24 poetic form is rep­resented by a symbolic figure resurrected ready-made from an established literary code. She is given to us complete at the

24 Published in the Bulletin de I'association generale des etudiants de Mont-p e l l i e r . See Walzer, La P o esi e . . . , o p . cit . , p. 77.

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outset as goddess-priestess in a perfumed, jeweled hieratic state—"La void!"—and there exists no tension, on a thematic or a lexical level, between herself and the elements out of which she is born. The first stanza presents her as a static, emblematized figure by piling up a series of substantives with highly conventionalized modifiers. Without introducing any complexities or contradictions, the second stanza simply de­scribes her in greater detail, using the same imagery carried over from the first: "fleur antique" has "seins ... a ... pointes fleuries," and "qu'une eau . . . diamante . . ." becomes "hu-mides pierreries." In the tercets where the focus shifts to the world into which Venus is born, the jewel imagery is simply transferred by association to shore and water—"graviers d'or" and "gouffres argentine." Although lexical energy moves from substantives to verbs after the first stanza, the syntax relies for the most part on a linear, transitive progression throughout the poem and hence does not make itself felt as figuration. The poem comes much more alive, however, in the sestet, significant sections of which Valery kept unchanged for the final version. In the first tercet, for example, dramatic tension is introduced by the reversal of subject/object agencies: Venus acts on nature rather than nature's acting on her as in the octet and the final tercet, but the action is in no way threat­ening or problematical, as it becomes in the Album version. The use of a feminine noun, "la greve," supports personifi­cation of the shore as a maternal figure upon which the child-goddess leaves her footprints like kisses. The sea of the literary past, out of which this 1890 Venus is born, provides her with the ornamental language ("diamante") that identifies her as Beautiful, Symbolic Form,25 and the shore of the future as­similates her traces lovingly. As we will see, a very different

25 Jewel imagery appears everywhere in Symbolist poetry. The following stanza from Henri de Regnier's "Le Songe de la foret," Poemes, op.ctt., p. 97, makes the equation, lyric voice / symbolic object / jewel, perfectly clear:

Le bois clair se gemma de voix de pierreries, De voix de diamants, de voix de rubis, de voix de saphir, Et Ie chant s'exhala plus riche a se fleunr Et l'Oiseau semblait crier des pierreries.

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conception of origin and influence is suggested in the Album version. A certain problematic has already been introduced however, in the final tercet of the original, with the conspic­uous intrusion of moral vocabulary—"fous," "riante," "in-fidele"—into a poem which thus far has referred strictly to a physical domain. Valery will keep the striking final line of this version entirely intact for his Album piece, the line which, as we have seen, glances back at "Helene" and provides the poem and the collection generally with its dialectical or relational dimension. But whereas in the original version the moral vo­cabulary can be understood in terms of the same Symbolist code which provided the jewel imagery—the muse as priestess or femme fatale—in the final version it contributes to the internal dynamics from which the poem derives its poetic life.

Valery began working intensely on the revisions of "Celle qui sort de l'onde" around 1915, just as he was completing La Jeune Parque, and all of the revisions demonstrate an urge to energize the static description of the original poem. The final version as it appears in the 1920 Album is a masterpiece of condensation and elegant phrasing compared to these some­what awkward first drafts, but they are all clearly influenced by Mallarme's example. The following are early revised ver­sions of the octet:

De sa mere profonde avec un cri fumante Sur Ie seuil qui se brise amerement, la chair Se delivre vomie au soleil par la mer Route qu'une eau legere encore diamante!

A la terre elle tend la soif sur ses bras blancs D'oceaniques et d'humides pierreries Qu'eplore l'orient des epaules meurtries Et sa tresse se fraye un frisson sur ses flancs.

De sa mere profonde avec un cri fumante Sur Ie seuil qui se brise amerement, la chair Herissee et vomie au soleil par la mer Brille, qu'une eau legere encore diamante!

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A la terre elle tend Ie poids de ses bras blancs Un orient se pose aux epaules meurtries D'oceaniques et d'humides pierreries, Une tresse se fraye un frisson sur ses flancs.26

Rather than a finished form, Valery presents the drama of the birth of form, emphasizing through the multiplication of verbs, increased alliteration, a more complex syntax, and the use of substantives connoting the tormented nature of such a coming into being. Thus the poem inevitably acquires a metapoetic dimension.

The Album version achieves poetic effect, then, not through a unified painterly description relying on a conventionalized image of Aphrodite emerging from the sea, but through an architectonic system of relational oppositions sustained on all levels of linguistic significance within the text: "un equilibre de forces intrinseques, soustrait par un prodige de combinai-sons redproques" ( Oeuvres I, p. 639). As in "La Fileuse" the poem's dramatic tension springs from the opposition between separation and merging expressed by the principal verbs of the first and last stanzas: "se delivre" and "mele." The Valery of 1915 conceived of origin, or originality, as painful rupture with the past and its eventual critical restitution. The poem begins with an adverbial phrase denoting separation to de­scribe the birth of form: "De sa profonde mere ...." Similar directional phrases, rather than substantives, dominate the entire first stanza: "au seuil," "au soleil," "des diamants de la tourmente"; and substantives point, not to Venus in her entirety, but to the metonymic elements from which she is formed. The conventional metaphor for origin, so cliched as to lose its tropic force—"mere" / "mer"—is further subverted by the repetition of its sound in "amerement," causing the phonological system to dominate through paronomasia and even to repress the metaphoric or conceptual level. The main verb of the original version, "Void," appears in the second line to point, not to a finished form ("la Voici!"), but to the

26 Ms., B.N., Album de vers anciens, f. 31, f. 32.

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drama of a verbal event: "Void que . . . la chair se delivre." This new, crude birth ("chair") refuses its literary heritage ("delivre") to be self-constitutive ("se forme"). The jewel im­agery taken from the Symbolist code and highlighted in "Celle qui sort de Ponde" is what this dynamic new poetry would shed—"se delivre des diamants de la tourmente."

The second stanza translates the torment of separation, the-matized in the first stanza, into grammatical figuration. The powerfully alliterative first and fourth lines, in which the sub­ject defines itself through reflexive verbs, are presented as clearly parallel structures, containing within them a dependent clause whose convulsive syntax, high-blown diction—"eplore," "orient," "Thetis"—and metaphoric figuration—"pier-rerie"—evoke the Symbolist code to be overthrown. Signifi­cance is derived not from what the poem says, but from how it is said—it results in stanzas one and two from the tension between a baroque, ornamental style, which depends upon inverted syntax, distinctly literary diction, and metaphoric figuration, and a naturalistic style, which depends upon a linear syntax, less distinctly literary lexicon, and mimetic al­literation.

In the sestet the lexicon reminiscent of the Symbolist code disappears in favor of the "new" naturalistic code. Rather than by an emblematic picture, Venus or Beautiful Form is represented by the sound of her "course" as it moves across the sand. The negative force of words related to her past— "vomie," "tourmente," "meurtrie," "eplore"—is reversed in the tercets—"a bu," "riante," "facile," "baisers," "puerils"— as the sea of the past which originally cast her out becomes part of her being in the final tercet.27 "Perfides," "riantes,"

27 One is tempted to see here an example of what Harold Bloom describes as "antithetical restitution," representative of the final stage of his revisionary process which he calls "Apophrades, or the return of the dead."

I take the word from the Athenian dismal or unlucky days upon which the dead returned to reinhabit the houses in which they had lived. The later poet, in his own final phase, already burdened by an imaginative solitude that is almost a solipsism, holds his own poem so open again to the precursor's work that at first we might believe the wheel has come

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"infideles," which now modify both the sea and Venus, in­troduce depth and reflectiveness into the poeticized subjectiv­ity as aspects of a perceiving awareness.28 The plurality of "mille regards," followed by "son oeil mobile," which spe­cifically identifies the eye with the poetic subject, creates a specular situation whereby eye and water reflect each other. This reciprocity is echoed in the final rime—"vagues / vagues." The sand on which this new Venus runs thirstily drinks her imprints, and the inspiration derived from this fresh draught results in the dramatic sonnet turn signaled, as in "La Fileuse," by the adversative "Mais," announcing the "mille regards" of the questioning, recreative reader. With the lyrical speaker we peer into the eye of the form he has projected, like Nar­cissus into the Fountain, and see there a reflection of our own transformative consciousness. The sea rises up in playful mockery as a new flurry of figuration—sound patterns and synecdoche ("eclairs de perils"), personification and metaphor ("l'eau riante . . . la danse infidele des vagues").

The overthrow of the Symbolist code by a more naturalistic code in "Naissance de Venus" does not, then, imply Valery's preference for a poetry of description. Although he seeks to rid his language of literary reference, to propose nature rather than antecedent texts as the origin and inspiration for the work of art, he understands that without the transformative action of abstract thought, nature per se is nothing more than a chaos of forms. True poetic language is always figurative,

full circle, and that we are back in the later poet's flooded apprenticeship, before his strength began to assert itself in the revisionary ratios. But the poem is now held open to the precursor, where once it w as open, and the uncanny effect is that the new poem's achievement makes it seem to us, not as though the precursor were writing it, but as though the later poet himself had written the precursor's characteristic work. ( T he Anxiety of In fluence, pp. 15-16) 28 Charles Whiting points out this effect in his analysis of "Celle qui sort

de l'onde": "Au terme du poeme, la nymphe atteint Ie point Ie plus avance de son evolution, ses yeux traduisent a la fois l'eveil de l'espnt et des emo­tions—joyeux et fous, lis s'emparent avidement du monde neuf qui Ies en-toure, soudain vagues, lis trahissent par Ieur mystere un moment de reflexion naissante." V alery, jeune poete, p. 71.

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never descriptive, even in its seemingly tropeless moments. The sea of origin in stanza one is reflected in the perfidious eye of the awakened consciousness in stanza four. Ideal met-aphoric language must cast off the deadening effects of earlier expressions in order to reveal the generative power of the mind on nature more effectively.

"FEERIE"

In contrast to "Helene" and "Naissance de Venus," "Feerie," "Au bois dormant," and "Le Bois amical" evoke a neo-Sym-bolist aesthetic privileging inwardness, dissolution of plastic form, and transcendent, mystical ideology. In these poems the movement we saw in the pseudo-Parnassian works from un­consciousness, associated with death or disorder, to con­sciousness associated with life and order, is reversed. In "Feerie" the human form is called "Ombre" and the landscape around her is figured as a vague extension of her being: "La Iune mince verse . . . une jupe de tissu." In "Au bois dormant" the fictional subjectivity is a sleeping princess who emits "une parole obscure" and, like the spinner in "La Fileuse," sees and hears nothing of the events transpiring in the forest around her; and in "Le Bois amical," where the speaker recounts an ecstatic experience of love, the double subjectivity, wandering amid "fleurs obscurs" is named "morts" at the moment of mystical revelation. But the contrast in thematic content be­tween the "Parnassian" and "Symbolist" poems of the Album creates only an illusion of difference. The critical revisions and/or the ordering of the collection by the mature Valery reveal a familiar tendency to undermine the reliability of the earlier borrowed vision and to replace it with a relational structure which then proceeds to undermine its own stability. This is particularly obvious in "Feerie."

The original version29 of "Feerie" was entitled "Blanc" and

29 See Walzer, La Poesie. . . , pp. 79-80. For a detailed comparison of the versions of the four "Feeries" see Henry Grubbs, "Nuit magique de Paul Valery," Revue d' His t oire litteraire de la France, vol. 60, avril-juin, 1960,

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published in I ' Ermitage in December of 1890. It seems to represent the vision opposed to Parnassianism Valery de­scribed in the letter to Albert Dugrip of November 1890 cited earlier:

Je sens que Ie parnassien qui a d'abord ete Moi se dissout et s'evapore. . . . Peut-etre faut-il ecrire des choses va-poreuses, fines et legeres comme des fumees violettes et qui font songer a tout. . . .30

Blanc

A A. Dugrip

La Iune mince verse une lueur sacree Comme une jupe d'un tissu d'argent leger Sur Ies degres d'ivoire ou va l'Enfant songer, Chair de perle que moule une gaze nacree.

Sur Ies cygnes dolents qui frolent Ies roseaux —Galeres blanches et carenes lumineuses— Elle effeuille des Iys et des roses neigeuses Et Ies petales font des cercles sur Ies eaux.

Puis—pensive—la fille aux chimeres subtiles Voit se tordre Ies flots comme de blancs reptiles A ses pieds fins chausses d'hermine et de cristal;

La Mer confuse de fleurs pudiques l'encense Car elle enchante de sa voix, frele metal, La Nuit lactee et douce, et Ie pale silence.

(L'Ermitage, December 1890)

In his revisions for publication in the Album, Valery, on the one hand, improves upon the Symbolist effects in the octet and, on the other, rewrites the sestet in such a way as to place the validity of the vision just evoked dramatically into ques­tion. By splitting the poem in half thematically, Valery divides the lyric voice against itself, so to speak:

pp. 199-212, and for a sensitive reading of the published version, Grubbs, Paul Valery, pp. 48-52.

30 Lettres a quelques-uns, p. 40.

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Fierie

La Iune mince verse une lueur sacree, Toute une jupe d'un tissu d'argent leger, Sur Ies bases de marbre ou vient l'Ombre songer Que suit d'un char de perle une gaze nacree.

Pour Ies cygnes soyeux qui frolent Ies roseaux De carenes de plume a demi lumineuse, Elle effeuille infinie une rose neigeuse Dont Ies petales font des cercles sur Ies eaux. . . .

Est-ce vivre? . . . O desert de volupte pamee Ou meurt Ie battement faible de l'eau lamee, Usant Ie seuil secret des echos de cristal. . . .

La chair confuse des molles roses commence A fremir, si d'un cri Ie diamant fatal Fele d'un fil de jour toute la fable immense.

All of the revisions for the octet improve on the original Symbolist version of the familiar moon-drenched dreamscape by increasing its suggestiveness and making a literalizing read­ing more difficult. Particularly effective are the shift from sim­ile to metaphor in line two, the change from "Enfant" to "Ombre" in line three, and the introduction of a dynamic new metaphor in line four to replace simple apposition. Through this last change "Feerie" condenses into a figure of a figure the message implied by the allegorical narrative in the tercets of "Blanc." In the early version, the dreaming muse casts petals from symbolic flowers ("lys," "roses") into the water, and the miracle of transfiguration occurs. Her dreams, "chi-meres subtiles," are transformed into a version of the monster reminiscent of the divine figures of otherworldly origin who appear out of the sea at the feet of virgins (Europa, Proserpine, for example) so as to carry them away to some higher destiny. At the moment of transfiguration her song is heard, a song that controls and orders and eternalizes the miraculous mo­ment. The poet identifies with the feminine persona in the first two lines of the final tercet by giving her a voice: "car elle enchante de sa voix."

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In "Feerie," as I have said, Valery concentrates the meta-poetical drama of "Blanc" into the first quatrain—a change in the poetic landscape from its figuration in line two as the raiment of the dreaming subjectivity into a vehicular form ("char de perle") sets into motion a plurality of metaphoric possibilities, whose relationship on a conceptual level is blurred by the increased complexity of the syntax and the hypnotic sound patterning. Again, in stanza two, through flowing syn­tactic connections metaphoric effect is much more subtly and masterfully treated than in the original, where dashes are somewhat crudely used in the place of "comme" to create the swan boat analogy. Musicalized effects are intensified through heightened alliteration and assonance ("cygnes soyeux," "plume . . . lumineuse," "effeuille infinie"), and literalizing reference is obscured by the change in the object of "effeuille" from "des Iys et des roses neigeuses" to the single, but infinite white rose. The miraculous singularity of the rose places into sharper relief the series of plurals in the final line than did the original and thus underscores the symbolic potential of the dreamer's act.

In the sestet of the final version, however, the speaker, rather than elaborating upon the transformative possibilities of the symbolic landscape, breaks the spell to suggest the doomed and even inauthentic nature of this experience ("est-ce vivre?"). Nostalgia is expressed for a fading and sterile vision, echo of an echo of an echo—"O desert de volupte pamee / Ou meurt Ie battement faible de l'eau lamee / Usant Ie seuil secret des echos de cristal." The interrogative gaze of the speaker dis­turbs the image in the water ("La chair confuse des molles roses commence / a fremir ..The lucidity of reason which asks the fatal question is analogous to the break of day and the destruction of the lunar vision (". .. Ie diamant fatal / fele . . . la fable immense").

"MEME FEERIE"

In the 1926 Stols edition of the Album, Valery placed yet another version of the same poem, "Meme Feerie," immedi-

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ately after "Feerie." Rather than continue the critical discred­iting of the Symbolist vision effected in "Feerie," however, this new version, written sometime after 1922, curiously enough, reaffirms it:

Meme Feerie

La Iune mince verse une lueur sacree, Comme une jupe d'un tissu d'argent leger, Sur Ies masses de marbre ou marche et croit songer Quelque vierge de perle et de gaze nacree.

Pour Ies cygnes soyeux qui frolent Ies roseaux De carenes de plume a demi lumineuse, Sa main cueille et dispense une rose neigeuse Dont Ies petales font des cercles sur Ies eaux.

Delicieux desert, solitude pamee, Quand Ie remous de l'eau par la Iune lamee Compte eternellement ses echos de cristal,

Quel coeur pourrait souffrir l'inexorable charme De la nuit eclatante au firmament fatal, Sans tirer de soi-meme un cri pur comme une arme?

Here the dreaming subjectivity is returned to a central position similar to the one she occupied in "Blanc," and her mystical act of casting petals into the water is rewarded in the sestet by a form of rhetorical interrogation, which seems to affirm rather than to deny the validity of her act. The question the speaker asks ("Quel coeur pourrait souffrir . . .") anticipates the reader's acquiescence, and the cry which issues forth at the end is one of ecstatic capitulation—"Un cri pur"—which blends with the whiteness or purity of the vision.

But whatever "charme" the Symbolist vision exerts over the speaker in "Meme Feerie" is inevitably belied by the poem's title and position in the collection. To write two versions of the same poem—one subverting and the other affirming a Symbolist aesthetic—is to substitute virtuosity for ideology and hence to understand the writing of poetry in purely formal terms. The presence of two "Feeries" lends to the collection as a whole the characteristics of a journal, or notebook, whose

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continuity is that of the poet's intensely self-critical stance, his fascination with the mind's potential.31 The tnise en abyme effect produced by the specular imagery of "Helene" and "Naissance de Venus" is achieved here by the repetition of the same poem, having as its source a yet earlier version of itself and translates into a formal structure Valery's view of poetry as an endlessly self-interrogating process.

. . . Peut-etre serait-il interessant de faire une fois une oeuvre qui montrerait a chacun de ses noeuds [La Jeune Parque}] la diversite qui s'y peut presenter a l'esprit, et parmi laquelle il choisit la suite unique qui sera donnee dans Ie texte. Ce serait la substituer a l'illusion d'une determination unique et imitratrice du reel, celle du pos-sible-a-chaque-instant, qui me semble plus veritable. Il m'est arrive de publier des textes differents de memes poemes [Feerte, Meme Feerte?]: il en fut meme de con-tradictoires, et Ton n'a pas manque de me critiquer a ce

311 am reminded, by contrast, of the second poem in the section entitled "Lunes" of Paul Verlaine's Parallelement, Oeuvres poetiques (Paris: Gamier, 1969), pp. 463-64, where the poet seems to comment on the charm exerted by his own lyric power to reproduce itself:

II

A la maniere de Paul Verlaine

C'est a cause du clair de la Iune Que j'assume ce masque nocturne Et de Saturne penchant son urne Et de ces lunes l'une apres l'une.

Des romances sans paroles ont, D'un accord discord ensemble et frais, Agace ce coeur fadasse expres O Ie son, Ie frisson qu'elles ont!

Il n'est pas que vous n'ayez fait grace A quelqu'un qui vous jetait l'offense: Or, moi, je pardonne a mon enfance Revenant fardee et non sans grace.

Je pardonne a ce mensonge-la En faveur en somme du plaisir Tres banal drolement qu'un loisir Douloureux un peu m'inocula!

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sujet. Mais personne ne m'a dit pourquoi j'aurais du m'abstenir de ces variations. (Fragments des memoires d'un poetne, Oeuvres I, p. 1467, my parentheses)

"AU BOIS DORMANT"

Like "Meme Feerie," "Au bois dormant" strikes one as an exercise in the writing of Symbolist-type verse.

Au bois dormant

La Princesse, dans un palais de rose pure, Sous Ies murmures, sous la mobile ombre dort, Et de corail ebauche une parole obscure Quand Ies oiseaux perdus mordent ses bagues d'or.

Elle n'ecoute ni Ies gouttes, dans leurs chutes, Tinter d'un siecle vide au lointain Ie tresor, Ni, sur la foret vague, un vent fondu de flutes Dechirer la rumeur d'une phrase de cor.

Laisse, longue, l'echo rendormir la diane, O toujours plus egale a la molle liane Qui se balance et bat tes yeux ensevelis.

Si proche de ta joue et si lente la rose Ne va pas dissiper ce delice de plis Secretement sensible au rayon qui s'y pose.

It is a variation on "La Fileuse," but here, as James Lawler has pointed out, the temporal and narrative development of the opening poem has been arrested by the use of the sonnet form and the "pattern of positive statement followed by ne­gation," which structures both quatrains and tercets.32 The speaker gazes as if enthralled and immobilized by the magical princess of Symbolist poetry, but, unlike his Symbolist fathers, he is drawn to the sensuous beauty of her exterior form—

32 The Poet as Analyst, p. 154.

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"delices de plis"—rather than to the mystical profundity of her dream world. The changes Valery inscribed into the tercets make this shift in focus from inside to outside particularly clear. In the version published in La Conque in November 1891, the speaker interrupts his description of the sleeping beauty to implore her to pursue her idyllic dreams, suggesting thereby her entry into some kind of superior realm of per­ception:

O belle! suis en paix la nonchalante idylle Elle est si tendre 1'ombre a ton sommeil tranquille Qui baigne de parfums Ies yeux ensevelis:

Et, songe, bienheureuse, en tes paupieres closes Princesse pale dont Ies reves sont jolis A l'eternel dormir sous Ies gestes des Roses!33

In the final version he would have her sleep so as not to disturb the blending of her sensient and corporeal form with the nat­ural world ("la diane / O toujours plus egale a la molle liane"; ". . . delice de plis / Secretement sensible au rayon qui s'y pose"). The same movement away from a privileged interiority toward an appreciation of plastic form structures Valery's most perfected mature version of this theme in "La Dor-meuse," first published in L'Amour de I'art in 1920 and later in Cbarmes:

La Dormeuse

a Lucien Fabre

Quels secrets dans son coeur brule ma jeune amie, Ame par Ie doux masque aspirant une fleur? De quels vains aliments sa naive chaleur Fait ce rayonnement d'une femme endormie?

Souffle, songes, silence, invincible accalmie, Tu triomphes, ü paix plus puissante qu'un pleur, Quand de ce plein sommeil l'onde grave et Pampleur Conspirent sur Ie sein d'une telle ennemie.

3 3 See Oeuvres I, p. 1546.

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Dormeuse, amas dore d'ombres et d'abandons, Ton repos redoutable est charge de tels dons, O biche avec langueur longue aupres d'une grappe,

Que malgre l'ame absente, occupee aux enfers, Ta forme au ventre pur qu'un bras fluide drape, Veille; ta forme veille, et mes yeux sont ouverts.

Here metaphoric figuration—"O biche avec langueur longue aupres d'une grappe"—is associated with the descent inward by the sleeper's "ame" toward "vains aliments" and "en­fers"—and is presented as a seductive temptation which the lyrical speaker unambiguously rejects in the final tercet in favor of reflexive exchange.

The complexity of Valery's transvaluative rewriting of the earliest version of "Au bois dormant," which he disowned within a few days of its publication in a letter to Gide, 3 4 can be more fully appreciated if one reads it through Henri de Regnier's sleeping beauty poem, "Motifs de legende et de melancolie" (see Appendix), which appeared with "Prelude" in Poemes anciens et romanesques of 1890. 3 5 The speaker of Regnier's long, eleven-part poem identifies himself with the Prince Charming who once upon a time was responsible for Beauty's magical transfiguration.

La voix du vieil amour qui riait a l'aurore Sanglote dans Ie soir et suffoque et larmoie, Et la fontaine pleure en la foret sonore Encore des echos de notre antique joie. (p. 63)

Elle a dormi selon Ies vieilles destinees Qui la voulaient soumise au gre de ma victoire.

34 G i d e -Valer y , Correspondence, p . 135:

Lou y s m' e c r i t qu ' i l m' a ec r i t po u r so n ti r o i r . Tu com p r e n d s la fo r m u l e . J' a i en v i e de Tinsu l t e r un pe u , d' a u t a n t qu ' i l in s e r e da n s La Conque u n so n n e t id i o t qu e je Iui la i s s a i ma l a d r o i t e m e n t . Si tu Ie vo i s bi e n t o t , je t' e n la i s s e Ie so i n . Ah! si j' a v a i s eu Ie te m p s de Ie la c e r e r ! . . . (7 nov e m b e r , 1891) 35 Poemes, p p . 53-77.

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Pour railler par echos la clarte de ses rires Sourdirent des douceurs de flute et de fontaines: De glorifiantes et laudatrices Lyres Chanterent par dela Ies arbres de la plaine. (p. 64)

For that former self (as for Valery's early imitation of that former self), Beauty was the medium for the realization of a correspondent vision. Residing within her sleeping form, wait­ing to be embraced by the prince, is the old Eden, or a familiar, Baudelairean forest of symbols:

A travers ses cheveux epars dans Ie soleil, J'ai vu monter des forets hautes et des terres Ou passait dans Ie soir violet et vermeil La harde des Desirs cabres en Sagittaires,

A travers l'odeur chaude dont sa chair endort, J'ai vu des ciels clairs ou grimpaient des fleurs etranges A vaincre d'un parfum la folle et vieille Mort Titubant du vin bu de ses tristes vendanges.

La rumeur des grands flots aux caps des peninsules

Fut au rythme de ses seins, et des crepuscules Stellerent vaguement ses yeux larges et beaux, (p. 65)

Regnier's speaker now laments the impossibility of any such mystical encounter. The sea-wind has ripped the sails of the hero's ship, and the unicorn waits in vain to see "l'annoncia-teur vol blanchir l'aurore morne." "Plus n'a souci, Nul, de dissoudre un sortilege." The Princess dies and the miraculous beast disappears into the forest. Throughout Regnier's poem artificial objects, "cor," and "glaive" for the Prince and "joy-aux" or "robes d'or ouvre de rosaces de soie" for the Princess, are signs of divine destiny and orphic powers. The word "cor," even as it appears in Licorae, is always linked to the arrival of the Prince and the hope for the miraculous transfiguration.36

3 6 See for example:

Dormez, Princesses au manoir, nul cor, ό Mortes, N'eveillera vos reves et nul glaive clair

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Natural forces, on the other hand, which are the constants of Valery's late poetry—the wind, sea, and birds in particular— are charged with a negative value and announce the end of the transcendent vision, as they do throughout Mallarme's work as well:

La mer deferle et pleure au long des greves pales Et Ie rire des flots aux dents des rocs eclate.

Les oiseaux de passage ont vole nos paroles Qui parfumaient Ie soir ainsi que Ies fleurs pales, Les infideles sont partis, nous n'irons plus, Ies folles!

(p. 60)

At the end of the poem large birds of prey compared to sea waves search for the dead princess whose jeweled fingers will give her away, making her vulnerable to the destructive pow­ers of time. Regnier's poem thus asserts and laments the end of the Symbolist dream on a note of despair and proposes nothing but his lament as a kind of elegy to replace it:

Le flot de la Mer n'a plus d'ecume, Les roses s'ouvrent comme des levres mortes Sans espoir de quelque Avril posthume Ou refleurir encor Ies vitres et Ies portes Du palais perdu parmi la brume.

Flot sans ecume et crepuscule aux ailes lasses Dont l'ombre est legere aux greves d'ombre Et flute suraigue a 1'angle des terrasses, Dont l'ombre deborde aux jardins d'ombre Ou Ies clefs sont aux serrures des portes basses, (p. 75)

Ne heurtera de son pommeau vos hautes portes Ou Ie beryl magique incruste son eclair, (p. 54)

or

Loin des glaciers et des neiges roses que boise La verdure des pins ou gronde comme un cor L'echo du marteau lourd des Nains qui, forgeurs d'or, Faionnent Ie hanap ou Ton boit la cervoise. (p. 57)

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Valery's Conque version of "Au bois dormant" already contains a revisionist reading of Regnier's text signaled in the first quatrain by his linking of dream words, nibbling birds, and jeweled fingers—"Elle dit, en revant, des paroles ob­scures/Et Ies oiseaux perdus mordent ses bagues d'or." In Regnier's poem the birds first steal "nos paroles / Qui par-fument / Ie soir ..."—and at the end, as birds of prey, prepare to swoop toward the dead Princess's glistening rings. But Va­lery's 1891 version simply rejects Regnier's pessimism to re­affirm the dreamer's orphic potential. The hermetic obscurity of her words and her golden rings are divine attributes con­firming her power as symbolic form.

The Album version, on the other hand, tropes Regnier in order to swerve toward a new vision. The change in syntax from "Et Ies oiseaux . . ." to "Quand Ies oiseaux . . ." in line four, for example, shifts the locus of inspiration from inside the dreamer to nature. It is the touch of the birds which causes the dreamer to speak. In this naturalizing version "Obscur" no longer implies hermetic truth, but simply incoherence be­cause the Princess is semi-conscious. At the same time that he improves upon Symbolist techniques by using a precious and highly metaphoric diction which thwarts a literalizing read­ing—"de corail" instead of "Elle dit," for example—he ques­tions the mystical correspondent ideology informing the Sym­bolist poetics by proposing the empirical and perceptual origins (touch of bird) of poetic creation. Stanza two of the revised version is dense with the key words of Regnier's Symbolist text: "tinter," "tresor," "foret," "vague," "vent," "dechirer," "rumeur," "cor," and, as Lawler has pointed out in his anal­ysis of Valery's sonnet, "the image of contained violence" in lines 7-8 "lacerates the somnolence" of the earlier version and "imposes new immediacy." 37 Regnier's text is permitted to impose itself as a trope within Valery's sonnet, then, so as to be denied its generative force as a poetics. The sound of Re­gnier's "cor" announcing the magical awakening is negated by more natural sounds—the wind bearing notes of the pas­toral flute. Flute notes are heard throughout the Album, al-

3' The Poet as Analyst, p. 154.

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ways as signals of some form of renewal and change. (See "Narcisse parle" and "Episode," for example.) Stanza two is undecipherable without Regnier's text, and yet with it a cer­tain kind of sense-making is denied. In the place of narrative development Valery creates an intertextual echo chamber, a resonant and reflexive form translated phonically by internal rime, assonance, and alliteration. The sleeping figure is no longer a vessel for an otherworldly truth, but a lush, corporeal presence which stirs under the reader's gaze, "secretement sensible au rayon qui s'y pose."

In the sestet there is a shift in the relationship of the speaker to his subject. Whereas in the octet he describes her consis­tently in the third person, in the sestet he moves back and forth between third and second person address—"la diane," but "tes yeux" in the first tercet, and "ta joue," but "delice de plis" in the second tercet, as if she were double, absence and presence, object of the poet's image-making gaze and subjectivity coming to life and responding under that gaze. The lyrical speaker is drawn closer and closer to the seductive form as the poem develops until in the first tercet, his desire is voiced: "Laisse longue... O ... tes yeux," in the command, the expletive, and the second person address. In the final tercet he bends over her like a bird or rose or "rayon," holding back the mystical kiss of the old legend, so as not to disturb the image in the water, so as not to "dissiper Ie delice de plis." In the revised version, then, the Narcissus model imposes itself once again on the early text. Not surprisingly, "Au bois dor­mant" will find itself echoed or mirrored in "Narcisse parle," "Qui se mire dans Ie miroir au bois dormant," 38 continuing the familiar tnise en abyme effect we have noted in all of the poems in the Album thus far.

"BAIGNEE"

Over and over, Valery's improving reinterpretations produce alluring structures within which is inscribed the figure of his

38 Oeuvres I , p. 83.

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own divided and self-questioning consciousness. As I have suggested earlier, Parnassianism, associated with exteriority and plastic form, and Symbolism, associated with profundity and mystical idealism, as two opposing imaginative stances, not only recall the literary climate of the past and its consti­tutive influence on Valery's early work, but seem to stand for a tension inherent in both language and human consciousness, and hence, even more fundamentally, in the workings of the creative process. The wakeful, questioning, form-conscious mind is tied to and, to some degree, determined by the un­conscious, memory-determined, "sleeping" self whom it would reject. The mind's inescapable reliance on the very thing it would deny is analogous to the way in which the ordering maker is bound to an earlier experience of reality and to the way in which literary language, to be fully appreciated, relies on its past expressions and on conceptual reference for the negativising drama of its conversion to self-referentiality. While Valery seems to acknowledge the importance of this paradox in his treatment of all of the Album poems, "Baignee" and "Un Feu distinct . . . ," in their contrasts, illustrate the way his engagement with it could lead to the kind of formal ex­perimentation which would produce the complex structures of some of the poems of C harmes.

"Baignee" is the only poem written during the crisis months of 1892 that Valery included in the Album. "Un Feu distinct ..." is a much later work. Its earliest version, in the Cahiers of 1897, is, in fact, subsequent to Valery's renunciation of the writing of poetry, and it was later substantially revised for its central position in the Album of 1920. Nevertheless, both poems take as their subject the problematical interdependence of the divided self, and in both the lyric speaker projects himself as listener ("oreille") within the figural drama.39 Thus the Narcissus construct of the destabilized self seeing itself see ("Je me voyais me voir"), which becomes Valery's model for

39 For a study of Valery as fictional reader projected within his own text, see Ursula Franklin, "Valery's Reader: 'L'Amateur de poemes," The Cen­tennial Review, vol. XXII, 1978, pp. 389-99.

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the creative stance in "Narcisse parle," infolds the model of Echo, hearing herself hear.

Baignee

Un fruit de chair se baigne en quelque jeune vasque, (Azur dans Ies jardins tremblants) mais hors de l'eau, Isolant la torsade aux puissances de casque, Luit Ie chef d'or que tranche a la nuque un tombeau.

Eclose la beaute par la rose et l'epingle! Du miroir meme issue ou trempent ses bijoux, Bizarres feux brises dont Ie bouquet dur cingle L'oreille abandonnee aux mots nus des flots doux.

Un bras vague inonde dans Ie neant limpide Pour une ombre de fleur a cueillir vainement S'effile, ondule, dort par Ie delice vide,

Si l'autre, courbe pur sous Ie beau firmament, Parmi la chevelure immense qu'il humecte, Capture dans l'or simple un vol ivre d'insecte.

"Baignee" seems to be one of Valery's finest efforts to write a poem in which the union of irreconcilable opposites pro­duces a fragile new model for the beautiful ideal. Because of the speaker's disorienting shift of perspective away from that of objective spectator in stanza one to that of participant in stanza two, it is difficult if not impossible to sum up the movement of the poem's conceptual draqia according to any linear, temporal line, as we were able to do in "La Fileuse." In this condensed sonnet form "le temps de la matiere" and "le temps de la narration" are so intimately connected that one gains the impression of arrested time. In the first stanza the speaker seems to stand apart from a scene unfolding before his eyes to contemplate the entire body of the bather. Except for her golden head, she is submerged in the water, which appears to cut her body off at the neck. In stanza two the speaker is much closer, looking down at the dazzling reflection of the bather's earring in the water, much as the bather herself might do, and in the tercets the speaker stands back again to

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contemplate the figure as a whole, one arm under the water, the other poised above her head to seize a flying insect. By the end of the poem, then, the bather seems to have moved, or at least offered more of herself to view. On the other hand, one senses that this impression of movement may be only an illusion, due to the reflective exchange which takes place in stanza two, causing a heightening of perception in the speaker-observer. The bather may have always been there to be seen in such exquisite detail. In any case, the opposing movements of merging and separation which structure "La Fileuse" and are emblematized by the figure of the bather herself have been conflated within the speaker's perspective by the end of the poem.

Although the phonic structure of stanza one establishes a subde system of unifying relationships between words ("hors," "torsade," "chef d'or," for example), the story it proposes through imagery, theme, and syntax, contrary to that of the rest of the poem, is one of definitive and violent separation.

Here the female form in the fountain appears to the spec­tator/speaker, to be cut in half by the edge of the basin ("que tranche a la nuque un tombeau"). The part that rises above the water—her head and one arm—is associated as it will be throughout the poem with light ("luit," 1. 4; "l'or," 1. 14), clarity of line ("courbe pur," 1. 12), sculpted ornamental form ("la torsade aux puissances de casque," 1. 3), precious artifice ("l'epingle," 1. 5 and "bijoux," 1. 6) and rationally controlled action ("capture," 1. 14). The headless body that can be seen under the water is associated with nature ("un fruit de chair," 1. 1; "une ombre de fleur," 1. 10; "mots nus des flots doux," 1. 8), letting go ("un bras vague . . . s'effile, ondule, dort," 1. 11), and loss of self ("l'oreille abandonne," 1. 8; "neant limpide," 1. 9; "delice vide," 1. 11). The drastic severing of body and mind figured by the guillotine metaphor in the first quatrain evokes, then, the "event" for which Mallarme's oeuvre stood, a poetry divorced of substance, a resonant absence. Herodiade's rejection of the dialogue with the nurse, who tries to stroke and perfume her hair to prepare her for her role as seductress, in favor of the inner dialogue and the sterility of

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 173

pure self-reflection, or the flight of Saint John's head as it leaves his body in the "Cantique de Saint Jean" (see Appen­dix), are meant to be triumphant moments in Mallarme's work. In the "Cantique...," for example, the poetic epiphany occurs in the split second when the still blooded head voices its oneness with the arched and incandescent course of the sun, symbol of pure lucidity:

Et ma tete surgie Solitaire vigie Dans Ies vols triomphaux

De cette faux

Comme rupture franche Plutot refoule ou tranche Les anciens desaccords

Avec Ie corps

The late change Valery made in the fourth line of the first quatrain of "Baignee," from "La tete d'or scintille aux calmes du tombeau" ( La Syrinx, aout 1892) to "Luit Ie chef d'or que tranche a la nuque un tombeau," not only makes Mallarme's presence unmistakably clear, but underscores the irreconcil­ability of Mallarme's vision with Valery's own willingness to recognize the determining role of the natural world in poetic creation. Again, in the first quatrain, where the body and head are seen by the speaker to be violently and definitively severed, Valery signals Mallarme's figural presence in his treatment of the hair/head motif as "chef d'or" ("la Chevelure vol d'une flamme") (see Appendix) or "casque" ("casque de guerrier" in "Victorieusement fui. . ." [see Appendix], for example, or the many metallicized hair images in Herodiade). But Valery uses the remainder of his sonnet to reverse the movement of the imagery of his predecessor's poems in such a way as sig­nificantly to change the connotations of the borrowed lan­guage. In "La Chevelure vol d'une flamme" Mallarme trans­forms the natural hair ("chevelure") associated with the temporal event of the setting sun, through a process of self-reflection ("!'ignition du feu toujours interieur . . . ," "Dans

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Ie joyau de l'oeil veridique. . . .") into a self-illuminating and self-consuming torch ("une joyeuse et tutelaire torche"). In "Victorieusement fui . . . ," as in Herodiade, he transforms the seductive hair, evoked in terms meant to recall Baudelaire's highly erotic tresses as "son caresse nonchaloir," into the de-sexualized "casque guerrier d'imperatrice enfant" of the final tercet. Valery's "Baignee," on the other hand, while picking up Mallarme's lexicon, moves from head as mineralized "casque" in the first quatrain to a sumptuous "chevelure im­mense qu'il humecte" in the last tercet.

After the first quatrain "Baignee" works to overcome the mind / body split demanded by Mallarme's hyperbolic trope of severing. Valery's treatment of the mirror and jewel imagery in the second quatrain, rather than underscoring the separa­tion, prepares for the reintegration of the two parts of the bather which will take place in the tercets. Again we see here a reversal of Mallarme's treatment of these images in Hero­diade, where the mirror functions to isolate the reflexive sub­ject from the world, or, in the second quatrain of "La Cheve­lure vol d'une flamme," where the sun's fire is internalized through the jewel-like eye, "Dans Ie joyau de l'oeil veridique ou rieur." Thus, although Mallarme's presence as craftsman of crystalline structures is felt in the imagery, the complex syntax, and the phonic effects of this stanza, it is as a presence denied. From the first moment of the second quatrain, au­thority is removed from the water as agent of separation ("iso-lant," "tranche") to be given to the speaker, who imperatively commands, "Eclose la beaute . . . ," as he becomes a partic­ipant in the birth of beautiful form. Phonetically, "Eclose" offers itself as an echo or mirror-image of "isolant," and this powerful verbal form begins a chain of echoes, ï ("beaute") ï ("rose") that closes the stanza on itself, iiAux mots nus des flots doux" as a mirroring, self-reflective object. What the speaker-become-bather looking into the water sees within this echo chamber is the reflection of her own rose-earring, one which sets off a kind of miniature pyrotechnics, "bizarres feux brises," where plosives and images of fragmentation constitute a new kind of beauty released into the apparently closed form

T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I V E D R A M A · 1 75

of the stanza. In other words, the mirror-poem gives birth to an inner vision which refuses closure, and the ear dialogues with the eye as it listens to the "natural sounds" ("mots nus des flots doux") which reflection upon artifice has produced.

Together the tercets, linked by the temporal and/or causa­tive "si" represent the "picture" of stanza one, as a divided body whose disjoined parts are complementary rather than starkly antithetical. One arm searches the water's depths blindly for an absent "flower," and, as it does so, undergoes a series of movements which make the water seem not a tomb, but a generative source ("s'effile, ondule, dort . . ."); the other, poised above the water, asserts its powers to stop nature's meaningless flight, and as it does so, the dripping fingers point back to the water, origin of its sensient life. The water moistens the golden hair so that its mineralized appearance is dissolved and brought closer to the "fruit de chair" of the immersed body of stanza one. With the repetition of the word "or" the entire first stanza is to some extent recuperated from its iso­lation. The speaker has again withdrawn from the bather to regain his objective perspective, and now, even while wit­nessing the body pursuing its blind course, he can relish the sensuous quality of its movements and maintain the integra­tion, momentarily achieved, through the power of his poetic voice. The important constitutive role played by the lyric speaker in "Baignee" can be felt in the way the figure of the bather comes alive in the course of the poem, even threatening, at the end, to break out of the frame imposed upon her by the sonnet form.

"UN FEU DISTINCT . . ."

Because of the unusual importance it accords perception and commentary by the lyric speaker, "Un Feu distinct. . ." pro­duces a very different overall effect from "Baignee," and far more seriously undermines the principle of organicity at stake in the earlier poem's treatment of the body as a model for artistic form.

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Un Feu distinct. . .

Un feu distinct m'habite, et je vois froidement La violente vie illuminee entiere. . . . Je ne puis plus aimer seulement qu'en dormant Ses actes gracieux melanges de lumiere.

Mes jours viennent la nuit me rendre des regards, Apres Ie premier temps de sommeil malheureux; Quand Ie malheur lui-meme est dans Ie noir epars lis reviennent me vivre et me donner des yeux.

Que si Ieur joie eclate, un echo qui m'eveille N'a rejete qu'un mort sur ma rive de chair, Et mon rire etranger suspend a mon oreille,

Comme a la vide conque un murmure de mer, Le doute,—sur Ie bord d'un.e extreme merveille, Si je suis, si je fus, si je dors ou je veille?

Here there are one, not two human subjects. The speaker contemplates himself as dreamer, as if the head of the bather were endowed with the power to observe and to question the part of her being submerged in the water. Thus the poem can never achieve the illusion of oneness which the poet-as-sculp-tor of "Baignee" projected, but is condemned by its self-in-terrogatory structure to never ending. Not only does the in­sistent intrusion of the wakeful subject undermine the concept of poem-as-dream-object whose mysterious order contains some meaningful truth, but by having the lyric speaker voice the experience of dualism directly, "Un Feu distinct . . ." brings to narrative life the volume as a whole, releasing "Baignee" from its isolation within the collection as a separate lyric work manifesting the possibility of self-referentiality in poetry. At its center, then, the 1920 Album takes on the dimension of "un theatre pensif" as the lyrical speaker becomes the pro­tagonist of his own creation. In no other poem in the collection does Valery assume his role of critic and commentator more openly than in this almost didactically self-interrogating piece. The narrative intrusion by no means represents a relapse or

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 177

flaw in Valery's collection, however. As is frequently the case in Baudelaire's poetry, it is rather a sign of his superior insight into the delusory nature of a poetry which would deny the impossibility of a perfect alliance between form and content. Like "Meme Feerie" it is one of those moments which cause the Album to acquire something of the character of the Ca-hiers.

The nostaligic and sentimental "nous" of "Le Bois amical" (which directly preceded "Un Feu distinct . . ." in the 1920 publication) prepares us to some extent for the speaker's erup­tion onto the poetic stage, but "Un Feu distinct..." is different from "Le Bois amical" and all of the preceding poems of the Album in that, although it employs certain formal devices typical of Baroque poetry, it does not allude to any immediate literary predecessor for its effects. The "Je" is not a familiar persona, as in "Le Bois amical," which is very much a Sym­bolist genre piece;40 we tend to hear this poem differently, as if it were the voice of the poet himself, writing now, in the

40 See, for example, the opening poem of Pierre Louys' Poesies (Paris: Les Editions G. Cres et Cie., 1927):

A Paul Ambroise Valery

Je vous prendrai la main dans Ie silence, diacre, Et nous marcherons deux par des chemins etroits. J'aurai Ie tournesol rayonnant dans Ies doigts; Vous porterez Ie Iys comme un vase de nacre.

Nous irons, moi vers Chypre et vous vers Saint Jean d'Acre, Toucher Ie grand Symbole ou voir la Sainte Croix Chevaliers ignorants de valncre pour Ies rois Mais sujets du bleu reve et du vain simulacre.

Vous me laisserez fuir a l'ile des iris Adorer et baiser, malgre la bacchanale, Des traces de pieds nus ou fut errer Kypris;

Or dans la nuit mystique et sanctosepulcrale Vous verrez Ies Trois Clous sur l'autel, et nos yeux Mieux que nos freles doigts s'uniront sur Ies dieux.

Valery grouped "Le Bois amical" with several other poems written to friends in the 1890's in a cover entitled "Quelques amis." All of them evoke an ecstatic vision of friendship as the merging of kindred souls. See Ms., B.N., Vers anciens, II, f. 47.

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present tense of these pages, caught in an ongoing dialogue with himself. Rather than standing as a reminder of a nine-teenth-century predecessor work, the poem becomes a nexus ("un noeud," Oeuvres I, p. 1467) in which the other poems in the volume find themselves echoed and questioned. The speaker is again figured here as a "Bouche/Oreille" and the dream or imaginative reality as a seductive kind of blindness which threatens his authority: "Et mon rire etranger suspend a mon oreille, /. . . / Le doute,—sur Ie bord d'une extreme merveille, / Si je suis, si je fus...." Without speech, the bather or the dreamer are figures of perfect self-sufficiency, but the gift of language initiates a process of displacement which pro­jects the self into perpetual flight, a "possible-a-chaque-in-stant" (Oeuvres I, p. 1467).

By choosing fire as the essential constituent of human con­sciousness, Valery significantly recalls the theme of the apoc­alypse announced by the speaker at the end of "La Fileuse." In literary language, the word "feu" is condemned to ambi­guity. Thus in the quatrains fire is connected to both passion and lucidity as if the subjectivity were self-consuming. The poem as a whole is characterized by opposition, paradox, and discontinuity. The fire which inhabits the speaker permits him to see coldly; day can be seen only at night; life in the octet appears as death in the sestet, where water imagery replaces fire imagery, hearing replaces seeing, and solitude the illusion of love.

The function of "Un Feu distinct . . ." as a poem which articulates or links other poems within the collection is even more obvious when one compares it to an unfinished 1897 version.

Je endors (sic) davantage et descends plus encore Dans Ie meilleur du fond de la nuit qui ignore Et je baise ma fin et nous nous ressemblons

La chair et Ies plaisirs qui dans mes doigts se touchent Meurent de la meme ombre ou s'eteignit ma bouche D'ou part Ie gout immense et les. . . .41

41 See Whiting, Valery, jeune poete, p. 139. In "Valery's 'Un Feu distinct,' " opxit., Lawler has brought to light an unpublished manuscript of the poem

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This version is not structured around a dynamics of opposi­tion. It progresses like the story within "La Fileuse," in a linear direction from wakefulness to deep sleep and immersion in an erotic dream culminating in metaphoric death, but this speaker maintains no critical distance from the drama occur­ring within him. The speaker's loss of control is reflected in the monotonous accumulation of events in the narrative through simple connectives or repetition: "lis reviennent... me tendre des regards / lis reviennent briller...; j'endors ... et descends plus encore /. . . Et je baise ma fin et nous nous ressemblons.

The final version, on the contrary, derives its energy from the opposition between octet and sestet. Only in deepest sleep does the speaker experience himself as an integral being, we learn in the second quatrain ("Mes jours viennent la nuit me rendre des regards. . . . lis reviennent me vivre et me donner des yeux"). But the sleeper is awakened by the naive laughter he emits when union is experienced in the dream, and what he discovers is not evidence of the generative power promised by the erotic dream, but death, emptiness, and doubt regarding the very status of his own voice. Contrary to the vision-pro­ducing earring of "Baignee," the bauble this speaker has hang­ing from his ear ("Et mon rire etranger suspend a mon oreille, /. . . Le doute. . . .") is ironic laughter. In a startling reversal of a favored Symbolist figure, he concretizes his abstract dis­covery by comparing his ear to a conch, always in Valery a figure for the poem itself,42 but an empty conch which holds

that would suggest that Valery was early elaborating two very different ver­sions of the same text. In one there is no break between the quatrains and the tercets, but rather a continuous descent into a death-like sleep similar to Anne's at the end of the Album. In the other the subject is awakened abruptly in the tercets by his own laughter. Valery's choice of the second version for a pivotal position within the Album would tend to support my thesis that the works are arranged to illustrate formally the dilemma that haunted his early years.

42 "Comme on dit: un 'Sonnet,' une 'Ode,' une 'Sonate' ou une 'Fugue,' pour designer des formes bien definies, ainsi dit-on: une 'Conque,' un 'Casque,' un 'rocher,' un 'Haliotis,' une 'Porcelaine,' qui sont noms de coquilles; et Ies uns et Ies autres mots donnent a songer d'une action qui vise a la grace et qui s'acheve heureusement." (Oeuvres 1, p. 893)

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within it only the murmurings of its own self-questioning. Midway through the collection, "Un Feu distinct. . ." places a certain kind of comforting, totalizing lyrical expression in jeopardy and foreshadows the more darkly problematical note on which the Album will finally come to a close.

Although the first drafts of "Un Feu distinct . . ." were written as late as 1897, Valery may have decided to place it before "Narcisse parle," "Episode," "Vue," and "Valvins," the poems representing stages in his "Mallarme" phase, in order to register the doubts which had already begun to assail him in 1890, before his new idol had rekindled his interest in an art which the example of his Symbolist and Parnassian predecessors had been unable to sustain. Its position in the Album would thus strengthen the autobiographical dimension of the collection. It is both (a drama of self-love and self-doubt, a looking back and a looking ahead), and thus serves as a fitting prelude to the elaborate treatment of the theme of self-discovery through contemplation of one's former image in "Narcisse parle."

"NARCISSE PARLE"

From the very beginning of this study I have called upon the Narcissus myth to illustrate various aspects of Valery's thought concerning the genesis of the Album de vers anciens because he used it himself, either explicitly or implicitly, as a point of reference throughout his long career. What is more, the many recreations of the myth—the two versions of "Narcisse parle" (La Conque, 1891 and the Album, 1920), "Fragments de Narcisse" (Charmes, 1922), "Etudes pour Narcisse (1927), the Narcissus of Paraboles (1935), Le Cantate de Narcisse (1939), and L'Ange (1945)—testify to the central importance of the Narcissus model during every stage of Valery's devel­opment and deserve to be studied as such in a separate work.

One is reminded too of Pierre Louys's journal, La Conque, in which Valery published many of his early poems.

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Valery himself recognized the centrality of this myth to his thought in the dedicatory preface to Julien Monod for the Etudes pour Narcisse, an anthology comprised of the first two versions of "Narcisse parle" and "Fragments de Narcisse":

Mon intention fut, il y a quelques annees, de publier un recueil de mes divers Narcisse, et d'en faire un livre aussi beau par la forme et par la substance que ce miserable adolescent croyait de l'etre. J'aurais ecrit pour cet ouvrage une ou diverses pages ou j'aurais explique ma metaphy-sique de ce my the; je veux dire quelque idee abstraite que j'en ai, qui ne parait point dans ces vers et n'y peut pa-raitre, et qui m'est venue en Ies faisant.

Mais l'achevement du troisieme de ces poemes etait suppose par ce dessein. . . .43

Not only does Narcissus bent over his image in the water suggest Valery's attitude during the writing of the Album as he sought to grasp and control the poetic figures of an earlier self, but it serves as a model for the perverse nature of fig­urative language itself. Narcissus is always both voice and image. Yet each part of his double nature resists, even chal­lenges, the reality of the other. The voicing of desire for union with the image (the poet's dream of creating a symbolic lan­guage in which sound and meaning, "forme et fond," would be one) causes the image to undulate in the water, reminding the speaker that the body he sees mirrored there is only an illusion. Yet without this illusion of the presence of a sensual, natural self, there would be no desire, no voice, and no poem. Silence or a poetry recognizing its own dilemma are the only alternatives. In 1920 Valery / Narcisse chooses to speak.

The epigraph—Narcissae placandis manibus—and the con­ventionalized Symbolist apostrophe to his brother selves—"O freres, tristes lys!"—identical in both the 1891 and the 1920 versions, must have acquired for the mature writer a personal note of deep-felt nostalgia, for they recall the years when the young poet ("ce miserable adolescent") still believed in an

43 Paris: Editions des Cahiers libres, 1927.

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ideal of spiritual communion to be realized through writing. Fourment (as we have seen from the crucial role of the Nar­cissus image in the correspondence), Gide, and Louys were all among those "brother" selves. The Latin epigraph is taken from an inscription carved on a tombstone thought to be that of the daughter of the English poet Young, in a corner of the Botanical garden at Montpellier, where Gide and Valery had experienced a particularly intense moment of spiritual one­ness. By placing it at the head of his poem in 1891, the young poet may have been secretly acknowledging the tribute Gide had paid a few months earlier to their friendship by dedicating his Traite de Narcisse to Valery. The epigraph would have been a way of secretly inscribing himself into a society of poetic brothers. As we know from the Gide-Valery corre­spondence, the poem was originally written upon the request of Louys and expressly for the first issue of his Symbolist journal La Conque. In a lecture delivered in 1941 on the "Narcisse" poems, Valery insists upon the autobiographical dimension of "Narcisse parle" ("Ce theme de Narcisse que j'ai choisi, est une sorte d'auto-biographie poetique qui de-mande quelques petites explications et indications"), and im­plies that he had agreed to submit the poem for publication in Louys's journal, in part because it was to be read by only a small group of initiates, "destinee a quelques amateurs seule-ment, tiree a un nombre restreint d'exemplaires (une centaine environ)" (Oeuvres I, p. 1557). He goes on to recall the acute dismay he experienced upon reading a laudatory review of the poem in the popular journal Journal des debats. Valery's 1941 account of his feeling in 1891 is born out in a letter to Gide, written the 15th of February 1891, in which he describes the repugnance he felt upon discovering that his work had been made public. He comments with particular disdain upon the critic's misinterpretation of the literary influences (Ovid and Verlaine) which lay behind his work (ibid., p. 1560).

Valery's obvious disingenuousness regarding his poetic sources, at least as far as Ovid is concerned, is beside the point here. What is striking is that the events surrounding the genesis and publication of "Narcisse parle"—his reluctance to publish

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 183

it, his concern about being read—as well as the poem's the­matic and formal enactment of the "repliement d'une pensee sur elle-meme," are uncannily paradigmatic of the attitudes and events connected with the genesis and the publication of the Album de vers anciens as I have tried to set them forth in Part One. What Valery does tell us concerning the choice of "Narcisse parle" for the Album is that it represented for him the most achieved example of his Symbolist phase:

. . . A cinquante ans de distance, ce premier Narcisse me parait aujourd'hui un specimen de ce que j'aurais pro-bablement fait en matiere de poesie si j'avais continue a la pratiquer au lieu de m'en ecarter et de poursuivre dans de toutes autres voies la formation de mon esprit. Ce poeme demeure pour moi un premier etat caracteristique de mon ideal et de mes moyens de ce temps-la.44

Yet an analysis of the poem will show that the revised 1920 version represents a significant departure from the poem writ­ten in the early '90's, and a serious questioning of the Sym­bolist ideal of a perfectly self-referential language.

Valery's claim to Gide that he dashed off his Narcisse in a few days in order to give it to Louys is obviously false. To judge from the unpublished manuscripts of the poem, there was much experimentation before the Conque version ap­peared.45 Two of the very first sketches of the poem written several months before the published version reveal the tension which always existed for Valery between a poetry of self-reflection and the neo-Hellenic ideal of sensuous communion with nature. The first, prose version, is a tribute to the figure of ideal Beauty seen as an androgynous self-contained form,

44 Quoted from the lecture Valery delivered in Marseille in 1941, where he spoke of the circumstances surrounding the creation of his various Nar­cissus poems. See "Sur Ies 'Narcisse,' " in Paul Valery vivant (Marseille: Cahiers du sud, 1946), p. 287.

45 Among the unpublished manuscripts of the poem there is even one which presents itself as a musical score, "Narcisse, symphonie pastorale dans Ie style classique," in which the dramatic movements are accompanied by their corresponding tempo: allegro, scherzo, largo, etc.

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a figure which by that time had become a constant of Decadent and Symbolist iconography:

Je voudrais m'enlacer et sous ces myrtes aimer ma beaute fatale! Car je suis Ie supreme adolescent. J'unis en ma chair Ies graces des vierges aux pures formes des jeunes hommes! Je suis ce qui n'existe pas! et c'est pourquoi je m'aime. L'heure bleuit cependant. . . .

Je suis la splendeur des deux sexes fondus et magnifies en un enquis et vague charme comme Ie crepuscule, je suis l'insaisissable Crepuscule de la Beaute! Le mysterieux doute, l'equivoque amoureuse et divine!

L'heure bleuit. Voici la Nuit qui descend des collines comme une vierge!

O miroir, ï saphir! que je contemple encore une nudite dans ta gemme, delicieuse! Silence! avant que la derniere lueur n'ait disparu et que l'ombre grandissante ne m'ait ravi, moi cher Narcisse, ü fantome, laisse-moi tendre mes levres vers Ies tiennes et que Ies tenebres maintenant em-portent Ies baisers de Narcisse.46

The second, on the contrary, evokes the alienating regret of the lyric experience of leaving the natural world of multifar­ious forms to seek this kind of lapidary self-containment:

O freres! tristes lis palissants au soleil. Ou sont Ies roses d'or qui tremblaient dans ces palmes? Et Ies flutes et Ies filles et Ie sommeil? Et vous ü nymphes!, nymphes! nymphes aux pieds calmes! Adieu! lyres sur l'herbe et rires envoles Qui charmaient la candeur des heures anciennes, Je cherche Ies bois bleus et Ies lis isoles, Loin des cercles de danse et des musiciennes Et tout mon souvenir miserable se forme Et Ies flutes s'en vont et Ies nymphes s'en vont Aupres du saphir funeste des fontaines Je viens au pur silence offrir mes larmes vaines! Que je deplore ton eclat fatal et pur

4 6 Ms., B.N., Carton des Narcisses, f. 4.

T H E T R AN S F O R M A T I V E D R A M A · 1 8 5

Source magique a mes larmes predestinee Ou puiserent mes yeux dans un mortel azur Mon image de fleurs humides couronnee. 4 7

The apostrophe to the gem-like, mirror-self is replaced here by a prolonged, loosely constructed, highly affective ubi sunt passage, followed by the quatrain which will begin the earliest sonnet version sent to Louys in September of 1890, a version which anticipates the tribute to the anti-naturalist, Symbolist ideal of the poem ultimately published in La Conque.

Que je deplore ton eclat fatal et pur! Source magique, a mes larmes predestinee, Ou puiserent mes yeux dans un mortel azur Mon Image de fleurs funestes couronnee!

Car, je m'aime! . . . ü reflet ironique de Moi! O mes baisers! lances a la calme fontaine, Et vous, roses! que vers ma vision lointaine Epand sur l'eau ma main suave, avec effroi.

Cher Narcissus! tes levres ont soif de tes levres! Et mes regards, dans ce cristal echangent leurs fievres! Faut-il ma vie a ton amour, ü spectre cher? . . .

Toi, ma splendeur, incline-toi vers Pamethyste De ce miroir dont m'attire la lueur triste Ainsi qu'un blanc vase harmonieux, ü ma chair! . . .

(Oeuvres I, 155 5 - 5 6 )

The influence of Mallarme's practical example and poetic ideal is unmistakable in the beautifully wrought Conque ver ­sion, which Valery claimed he "dashed off" for publication in March 1891.

Narcisse parle

Narcissae placandis manibus

O freres, tristes lys, je languis de beaute Pour m'etre desire dans votre nudite

47 Ibid., f. 8.

1 86 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

Et, vers vous, Nymphes! nymphes, nymphes des fontaines Je viens au pur silence offrir mes larmes vaines Car Ies hymnes du soleil s'en vont! . . .

c'est Ie soir. J'entends Ies herbes d'or grandir dans l'ombre sainte Et la Iune perfide eleve son miroir Si la fontaine claire est par la nuit eteinte! Ainsi, dans ces roseaux harmonieux, jete Je languis, ü saphir, par ma triste beaute, Saphir antique et fontaine magicienne Ou j'oubliai Ie rire de l'heure ancienne!

Que je deplore ton eclat fatal et pur, Source funeste a mes larmes predestinee, Ou puiserent mes yeux dans un mortel azur Mon image de fleurs humides couronnee . . . Helas, l'lmage est douce et Ies pleurs eternels! . . . A travers ces bois bleus et ces Iys fraternels Une lumiere ondule encor, pale amethyste Assez pour deviner la-bas Ie Fiance Dans ton miroir dont m'attire la lueur triste, Pale amethyste! ü miroir du songe insense! Voici dans l'eau ma chair de Iune et de rosee Dont bleuit la fontaine ironique et rusee; Voici mes bras d'argent dont Ies gestes sont purs. . . . Mes lentes mains dans l'or adorable se lassent D'appeler ce captif que Ies feuilles enlacent, Et je clame aux echos Ie nom des dieux obscurs!

Adieu! reflet perdu sous l'onde calme et close, Narcisse, l'heure ultime est un tendre parfum Au coeur suave. Effeuille aux manes du defunt Sur ce glauque tombeau la funerale rose.

Sois, ma levre, la rose effeuillant son baiser Pour que Ie spectre dorme en son reve apaise, Car la Nuit parle a demi-voix seule et lointaine Aux calices pleins d'ombre pale et si legers, Mais la Iune s'amuse aux myrtes allonges.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 18 7

Je t'adore, sous ces myrtes, ü l'incertaine! Chair pour la solitude eclose tristement Qui se mire dans Ie miroir au bois dormant, O chair d'adolescent et de princesse douce! L'heure menteuse est molle au reve sur la mousse Et la delice obscure emplit Ie bois profond. Adieu! Narcisse, encor! Voici Ie Crepuscule. La flute sur l'azur enseveli module Des regrets de troupeaux sonores qui s'en vont!... Sur la levre de gemme en l'eau morte, ü pieuse Beaute pareille au soir, Beaute silencieuse, Tiens ce baiser nocturne et tendrement fatal, Caresse dont l'espoir ondule ce crystal!

Emporte la dans l'ombre, ü ma chair exilee Et puis, verse pour la lune, flute isolee,

Verse des pleurs lointains en des umes d'argent.

(Fragment)

La Conque, 15 Mars, 1891

From the outset Valery's awareness of the insurmountable odds of the Mallarmean "gageur" is inscribed into the disciple-poet's version of the Narcissus myth, for, unlike Ovid's or Gide's Narcissus, Valery's does not discover his image in the fountain for the first time. The poem begins with a past tense, indicating his return to a thralldom which changes in time periodically efface. There is, then, no original "poetic" mo­ment, but one always mediated by a past figuration of the same event. The ubi sunt passage of the September 1890 ver­sion, expressing nostalgia for an easy rapport with the natural world, has been masterfully condensed here into a brief note of regret for the loss of that pre-reflective state: "Saphir an­tique et fontaine magicienne / Ou j'oubliai Ie rire de l'heure ancienne," in terms which suggest the mythic nature of such a concept. Narcissus is condemned to worship or yearn for his delusory, Pan-like image of unity with that world, "Mon image de fleurs humides couronnee," but in so doing repeat-

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edly recognizes the lying nature of the figure-in-the-water which holds the unspoken truth of the death of the natural self under its illusion of presence: "La Iune perfide eleve son miroir," "ton eclat f a t a l et pur," "source funeste a mes larmes pre-destinee," "o miroir du songe i nsense," "fontaine irot t i que et rusee," "g l auque tom beau," "eau m orte." Yet in 1891 no alternative stance is proposed by Valery. The poem concludes with the sacrificial kiss lovingly bestowed on the beautiful image and with the wish that some distant pastoral flute as­sociated with natural man celebrate the necessity and inevi­tability of his sacrifice to the reflective ideal:

Sur la levre de gemme en l'eau morte, ü pieuse Beaute pareille au soir, Beaute silencieuse, Tiens ce baiser nocturne et tendrement fatal, Caresse dont l'espoir ondule ce crystal!

Emporte-Ia dans l'ombre, ü ma chair exilee Et puis, verse pour la lune, flute isolee,

Verse des pleurs lointains en des urnes d'argent.

Thus, while recognizing the beautiful lie of the Mallarmean ideal proposed by Herodiade, "Que je deplore ton eclat fatal et pur / Source funeste a mes larmes predestinee," Valery seems still caught in the dream of acquiring autonomy through a poetry of perfectly controlled figuration. It is, however, sig­nificant that from the beginning Valery did not choose Mal-larme's symbol of the mirror to represent poetic writing, but water which only appears to be a mirror, and his preference for the Narcissus model, where the hero's punishment for so much self-love is to be ultimately effaced and turned into a mute symbolic flower, subtly challenges the exalted nature of Mallarme's example. Water as figurative text is a constantly changing medium which has depths ("fond") as well as surface ("forme"). To be in love with the illusion of permanence and control which beautiful form proposes is to lose oneself to the treachery of those depths. As we have seen in Part One, it is his awareness of the significance of this treachery which

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 189

will cause Valery to break with Mallarme and to inscribe the drama of that break into his later work.

In the Album version of "Narcisse parle," Narcissus will call the image of beautiful form, not "chair d'adolescent et de princesse douce," but "Delicieux demon, desirable et glace." To devote oneself to a poetry purified of all reference to any­thing beyond itself is to sacrifice oneself to a seductive but dead dream. Valery will rewrite "Narcisse parle" for the Al­bum in such a way as to suggest both a tribute to and a swerve away from Mallarme's example:

Narcisse parle

Narcissae placandis manibus

O freres! tristes lys, je languis de beaute Pour m'etre desire dans votre nudite, Et vers vous, Nymphe, Nymphe, ό Nymphe des fontaines, Je viens au pur silence offrir mes larmes vaines.

Un grand calme m'ecoute, ou j'ecoute l'espoir. La voix des sources change et me parle du soir; J'entends l'herbe d'argent grandir dans l'ombre sainte, Et la Iune perfide eleve son miroir Jusque dans Ies secrets de la fontaine eteinte.

Et moi! de tout mon coeur dans ces roseaux jete, Je languis, ό saphir, par ma triste beaute! Je ne sais plus aimer que l'eau magicienne Ou j'oubliai Ie rire et la rose ancienne.

Que je deplore ton eclat fatal et pur, Si mollement de moi fontaine environnee, Ou puiserent mes yeux dans un mortel azur Mon image de fleurs humides couronnee!

Helas! L'image est vaine et Ies pleurs eternels! A travers Ies bois bleus et Ies bras fraternels, Une tendre lueur d'heure ambigue existe, Et d'un reste du jour me forme un fiance Nu, sur la place pale ou m'attire l'eau triste . . . Delicieux demon, desirable et glace!

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Void dans l'eau ma chair de Iune et de rosee, O forme obeissante a mes yeux opposee! Voici mes bras d'argent dont Ies gestes sont purs! . . . Mes lentes mains dans l'or adorable se lassent D'appeler ce captif que Ies feuilles enlacent, Et je crie aux echos Ies noms des dieux obscurs! . . .

Adieu, reflet perdu sur l'onde calme et close, Narcisse . . . ce nom meme est un tendre parfum Au coeur suave. Effeuille aux manes du defunt Sur ce vide tombeau la funerale rose.

Sois, ma levre, la rose effeuillant Ie baiser Qui fasse un spectre cher lentement s'apaiser, Car la nuit parle a demi-voix, proche et lointaine, Aux calices pleins d'ombre et de sommeils legers, Mais la Iune s'amuse aux myrtes allonges.

Je t'adore, sous ces myrtes, ü Pincertaine Chair pour la solitude eclose tristement Qui se mire dans Ie miroir au bois dormant. Je me delie en vain de ta presence douce, L'heure menteuse est molle aux membres sur la mousse Et d'un sombre delice enfle Ie vent profond.

Adieu, Narcisse . . . Meurs! Voici Ie crepuscule. Au soupir de mon coeur mon apparence ondule, La flute, par l'azur enseveli module Des regrets de troupeaux sonores qui s'en vont. Mais sur Ie froid mortel ou l'etoile s'allume, Avant qu'un lent tombeau ne se forme de brume, Tiens ce baiser qui brise un calme d'eau fatal! L'espoir seul peut suffire a rompre ce cristal. La ride me ravisse au souffle qui m'exile Et que mon souffle anime une flute gracile Dont Ie joueur leger me serait indulgent! . . .

Evanouissez-vous, divinite troublee! Et, toi, verse a la lune, humble flute isolee, Une diversite de nos larmes d'argent.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 191

Valery's revision of "Narcisse parle" represents a revalor­ization of the repressed "naturalistic" impulse of certain of the early drafts; it could be described as a densely wrought orchestration of the two polarities fundamental to the Va-leryan consciousness and understood now as inextricably in­tertwined. The figure in the water is less gem-like than human, a figure, like "la fileuse," susceptible to the vicissitudes of the temporal flow in which it appears. Words suggesting the un­predictability of the water are more frequent and act as in­dications that time is passing in the very course of our reading about this moment of time arrested. "Une tendre lueur d'heure ambigue existe, / Et d'un reste du jour me forme un fiance" replaces "Une lumiere ondule encor, pale amethyste / Assez pour devenir la-bas Ie Fiance"; "Avant qu'un lent tombeau ne se forme de brume," is added just before the kiss is be­stowed at the end; and "ondule" is added to the "Crepus-cule/module" rime of the final "adieu." By singularizing and capitalizing "Nymphe," and adding the apostrophe in line three, there is an immediate conflation of World, Text, and Self rather than the more gradual advance to the fountain through female pagan deities representing natural forces. This conflation does away with the polarization of natural versus reflective selves which characterizes the tripartite drama of the Conque version, where Narcissus is first depicted moving through nature at twilight, attracted by the vague memory of a beautiful image, next ecstatically rediscovering the reflected self, italicized as "le Fiance," and, finally, in stanzas five to the end, bidding a long adieu to the beautiful, androgynous form which has now replaced nature and usurped all poetic value. The removal of line five, "Car Ies hymnes du soleil s'en vont!... Cest Ie soir..." in the 1920 version signals Valery's desire to rid the poem of any clear-cut narrative progression away from nature toward an idealistic position. From the beginning the self is experienced as simultaneously natural and reflective, body and mind, presence and absence; indeed, it is the illusion of oneness with nature, "Mon image de fleurs humides couronnee," which seems to lend the reflected self its particular appeal, and certain lines which Valery substi-

192 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

tuted in the Album version effectively stress the speaker's de­sire for that kind of sensuous reciprocity: the use of chiasmus in line five, "Un grand calme m'ecoute ou j'ecoute l'espoir"; the reversal of subject and object in lines four and five, "Je viens au pur silence . . . / Un grand calme m'ecoute . . the use of riming sounds at the beginning and end of line six, "La voix des sources change et me parle du soir"; the figuration of the "moi" at the center of the fountain and its placement as stressed word at the midpoint of line fifteen, "Si mollement de moi fontaine environnee," are a few examples. At first Narcissus even imagines himself silent, listening to the voice of nature rather than to his own lament: "La voix des sources change et me parle du soir." Yet as he "speaks" his silence, and simultaneously hears nature growing, he has recourse to a figure, "herbe d'argent," which denies the very principle of organic development that he is claiming to admire. In 1920 the poem's language is shown to be more clearly in conflict with itself. Not only do form and meaning stand in opposition to each other, but forms of reciprocity (chiasmus, parallel structuring, phonetic mimesis) conflict with forms of rupture (apostrophe, imperatives, broken stanzaic forms, irony and structuring through repetition in difference). The voice which names desire—NARCISSE—troubles the image in the water, and, as Valery shows in the revised ending, this disturbance creates a new voice which saves him from drowning in the false stability of the image: "La ride me ravisse au souffle qui m'exile / Et que mon souffle anime une flute gracile." The new Valeryan poem is a poem divided against itself; it is at once the voicing of the desire for reintegration through language and the simultaneous recognition that the very act of voicing produces the loss of immediacy ("funerale rose") it would represent.

Valery's peculiar treatment of Echo, the character associ­ated with the Narcissus myth in whom, as her name indicates, being and voice are synonymous, intensifies the dialogical na­ture of the form / meaning relationship in the poem. She is the nymph who, condemned by Juno to repeat the end of other people's phrases, fell in love with Narcissus and was

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 193

rejected by him out of pride and love for his own purity ("O Freres! tristes lys, je languis de beaute/Pour m'etre desire dans votre nudite"), but in Valery's poem Echo never appears as a distinct character. The poem begins with Narcissus' rec­ollection of his Herodiade-Iike refusal of sexual communion with another, suggesting that this desire for purity and au­tonomy was at once the source of his particular beauty and the cause of his particular punishment. He is condemned now to waste away as body, to die of languor, as he contemplates his own beautiful form. Returning to the fountain in the poem's present, he calls out "Nymphe, Nymphe, O Nymphe des fon-taines," as if desirous of making contact with some female principle outside himself, only to be caught once again in the love relationship with himself. Thus Echo is evoked in line three to be immediately confused with Narcissus' own image in the fountain. At the same time, by having Narcissus repeat his call for the nymph, Valery brings her identity as voice alive through Narcissus' own speech. Even more subtly, one may hear the very first words of the poem, "tristes lys, je Ianguis" as involuntary repetitions of the last sounds of Narcissus' own name, isse. Thus Narcissus as Echo is both absence and pres­ence, unconscious and consciousness, idea and body, from the outset. The only other very muted reference to Echo occurs in line twenty-nine, "Je crie aux echos Ies noms des dieux obscurs!...," where she is not a proper name, but a reminder of the speaker's impotence to make any meaningful connec­tion with his figure in the water. 48

48 In his study of Ovid's narrative, John Brenkman has pointed out the "displaced parallelism" in the account of the Narcissus and Echo stones. Because of his pride, Narcissus is condemned to fall in love with his own image and little by little waste away until he is dead, whereupon he is trans­formed into a flower. Echo is condemned to repeat what others say and slowly wastes away out of unrequited love until her body is gone and only her voice remains. "Each character is pushed toward death when desire is not reciprocated by another, a displaced parallelism in that for Echo the other is another like herself, while for Narcissus the other is his mirror image" (p. 297). Echo is condemned to verbal repetition, Narcissus to visual repetition, but whereas Narcissus perishes as a consciousness, with the death of his body, Echo "survives as a consciousness and a voice." "Narcissus in the text,"

194 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

The poem's voice bears out, then, the beauty and futility of a poetics based on the adequate identity of form and mean­ing or speaker and text. Structures of continuity are undercut by structures of discontinuity; every effort to fill the gap caused by the thin sheet of water between voice and image risks destroying the mirage of sameness which constitutes the cou­ple's particular beauty.

Valery translates the dialogic nature of the poem's "story" into the relationship of the poem's internal harmonics, based on the principle of repetition in difference, with the poem's figurative structure. The ï of Echo and the ar . . . cisse of Narc/sse sounded in the opening line, "O . . . tristes Iys . . . languis... beaute," and repeated with variation in line eleven, for example, "Je languis, O saphir, par ma triste beaute," constitute a major motif of the poem's "musical" score. Yet the "O" as the figure of apostrophe, suggesting alienation from the site of original unity, stands in an ironic relationship to the ï of the poem's purely phonic organization. Just as certain sounds are orchestrated to produce an effect of internal unity, every major word in the poem is repeated or repeated and modified to produce a poem which sounds self-generating. Yet certain word-groupings which contribute to the poem's phonic unity, when looked at separately, as semantic units, create an ironic counterpoint to their impact as pure sound. The grouping soir, voix, miroir, moi, void, toi is a case in point. An even more subtle play on the ironic relationship of sound to meaning occurs in the important line added to the end of the poem to signal Valery's departure from his earlier stance, "La ride me ravisse au souffle qui m'exile," where the sounds seem to struggle toward forming an anagram of the hero's name at the moment of his disappearance.

By conflating Narcissus and Echo, Valery is not only ac ­knowledging the inherently dialogic nature of language, but also recognizing in this central poem of a collection dedicated

Georgia Revtew, 30.3, 1976, pp. 293-327. By conflating Echo and Narcissus within the lyric speaker, Valery internalizes and transcends his predecessor's account.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 195

to the transfiguration of the past, the impossibility of radical originality. The poet is Narcissus-speaking-like-Echo, Ovid's "nymphe a la voix sonore, qui ne sait ni repondre par Ie silence a qui Iui parle, ni prendre elle-meme la parole la premiere."49

Valery's "Narcisse" gathers into itself a chorus of voices from the past; principle amongst these are Ovid (Valery's denial of any such influence to the contrary) and Mallarme.

He recalls Ovid's description of the site of Narcissus' thrall-dom, with its stress on the absence of natural man at the beginning and end of his poem:

"II etait une source limpide aux eaux brillantes et argen-tees, que ni Ies bergers, ni Ies chevres qu'ils paissent sur la montagne, ni nul autre betail n'avait jamais approchee, que n'avait troublee nul oiseau, nulle bete sauvage, nul rameau tombe d'un arbre." (Ovid)

"J'entends l'herbe d'argent grandir. . . ." (1. 7)

"La flute, par l'azur enseveli module Des regrets de troupeaux sonores qui s'en vont." (11. 47-48)

Following Ovid's account, where Echo repeats Narcissus' last word of farewell as his image fades from view, Valery struc­tures the second half of his poem around the repetition of "Adieu." Most importantly, Valery seems to heed Ovid's ad­vice to Narcissus with the revised ending of his poem: "Cre-dule enfant, a quoi bon ces vains efforts pour saisir une fugitive apparence? L'objet de ton desir n'existe pas! . . . Detourne-toi, et tu Ie feras disparaitre . . . si tu avais Ie courage de partir!"

Valery indicates Mallarme's presence with obvious lexical borrowings and allusions to two of his most important poems, Herodiade and L'Apres-midi d'un faune. As in Herodiade, the moment of self-reflection takes place at sunset, and Mal-

49 Les Metamorphoses, traduction Joseph Chanonard (Paris: Garnier-Flam-marion, 1966). See pp. 98-103 for Narcissus myth.

196 • THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

larme's poetic evocation of the site supplies Valery with the

principal images of his poem:

La Nourrice: . . . Veau reflete I'abandon

De I'automne eteignant en elle son Brandon

Ombre magtaenne aux symboliques charmes!

Herodiade: Je m'arrete revant aux extls, et j'effeuille

Comme pres d'un bassm dont le jet d'eau

m'accueille;

Les pales lys qui sont en mot . .

6 mtrotrl

Eau frotde par I'ennui dans ton cadre gelee Que de fois et pendant des hemes, desolee Des songes et cherchant mes souvenirs qui sont Comme des feutlles sous ta glace au trou profonde, Je m'apparus en tot comme une ombre lointame Mais, horreur! des soirs dans ta severe fontame, J'ai de mon reve epars connu la nudtW

Et tout, autour de moi, vit dans I'ldolatne

D'un miroir qui reflete en son calme dormant

Herodiade au clair regard de diamant. . . .

Yet, Valery's Narcissus has as many characteristics of Mal-

larme's sensual faun as he does of the sterile Herodiade; the

nymphes, the lilies, and the flute, for example, are dominant

motifs in both poems.^°

Valery's monologue is an artful melding of these two poems,

and hence, a subtle questioning of them both. If, at the be-

ginning Narcissus has rejected the world of "flutes, filles, et

sommeil,"^' in favor of self-reflection, he does so with none

of the chilling pride and certainty of her tightness of Hero-

Barbier compares lines 1 2 of "Narcisse " to lines 35-37 of "L'Apres-midi " , lines 38,44,51 of "Narcisse " to lines 75 and 110 of "L'Apres midi " , and line 45 of "Narcisse " to lines 16,43, and 47 of "L'Apres midi " "Valery et Mallarme ," op at, p 59

See early draft, p 184

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 197

diade. The image which he seeks, in fact, as I have said earlier, is one wedded with nature ("Mon image de fleurs humides couronnee!" "ce captif que Ies feuilles enlacent"), the sensual water nymph within the self, released briefly and objectified at that hour of the day between wake and sleep when the self becomes aware of its doubleness. All of his effort is toward the acceptance of the mind/body polarity rather than toward its negation in favor of the reflected self. Like L'Apres-midi d'utt faune (see Appendix), "Narcisse parle" is a prolonged, eroticized meditation upon that doubleness, but whereas Mal-larme treats his faun's need for self-delusion with irony and humor, Valery allows his Narcissus to recognize the illusory nature of his desire and to consciously transform his lament into music directed away from himself. Whereas Mallarme's poem is violently erotic, discontinuous, hyperbolic, Valery's is delicately sensual, fuguesque, gracefully attenuated. At the end of L'Apres-midi . . . after a final moment of grandiose self-delusion, "Je tiens la reine!", the Faun abandons language altogether to slip back into the drunken sleep ("Non, mais l'ame / De paroles vacante et ce corps alourdi / Tard succom-bent au fier silence de midi.") which will begin the dream again. At the end of "Narcisse parle," the voicing of nostalgia for oneness through apostrophe is transformed into a series of imperatives which suggest the emergence of a controlling consciousness. The lament over the lost ideal ("Larmes vaines") takes the form of a new music, "Larmes d'argent" which leads us out of the self-absorption of one poem, "Narcisse parle" and into the next, "Episode," away from poetry as closed or fixed form toward poetry as an ongoing series of transfor­mations which comment on themselves.

"EPISODE"

The recognition in the opening poems, through the use of such techniques as mise en abyme that the poetic self is caught within a system of staggered mirrors, is affirmed on a hori-

198 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

zontal plane in the second half of the Album by the use of repetition and echoing among the poems within the collection. Indeed, Valery chooses a specular moment to actualize this technique in line 40 of "Narcisse parle," where he recalls "Au bois dormant:" "Qui se mire dans Ie miroir au bois dormant." At the same time there is a much higher degree of experi­mentation with form in the second half of the Album than in the first, suggesting Valery's urge to give lyric life to his dis­coveries concerning the epistemological process. The poem as fragment rather than as closed form is conspicuously intro­duced with "Episode" (originally entitled "Fragment") and "Profusion du soir," subtitled "Poeme abandonne," "Anne" and "Air de Semiramis," both of which were presented as "inacheves" or "abandonnes" in the editor's note of the 1920 edition. Different types of figuration seem to be privileged in each poem—metonymic figuration in "Episode," metaphoric figuration in "Ete," grammmatical figuration in "Vue," for example—the stanzaic variation introduced into "Narcisse parle" begins to lend the collection an important graphic di­mension; themes and motifs are picked up and transformed from one poem to the next as if caught in an echo chamber, "une resonance a n'en plus finir" of relational possibilities.

The notes of the flute which end "Narcisse parle" lead the lyrical voice away from the emptiness of pure self-reflection back into the world of the natural self in "Episode," where the flute is heard piping seductively in the background as a nymph warms herself in the sun:

Episode

Un soir favorise de colombes sublimes, La pucelle doucement se peigne au soleil. Aux nenuphars de l'onde elle donne un orteil Ultime, et pour tiedir ses froides mains errantes Parfois trempe au couchant leurs roses transparentes. Tantot, si d'une ondee innocente, sa peau Frissonne, c'est Ie dire absurde d'un pipeau, Flute dont Ie coupable aux dents de pierrerie Tire un futile vent d'ombre et de reverie

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 199

Par l'occulte baiser qu'il risque sous Ies fleurs. Mais presque indifferente aux feintes de ces pleurs, Ni se divinisant par aucune parole De rose, elle demele une lourde aureole; Et tirant de sa nuque un plaisir qui la tord, Ses poings delicieux pressent la touffe d'or Dont la lumiere coule entre ses doigts limpides! . . . Une feuille meurt sur ses epaules humides, Une goutte tombe de la flute sur l'eau, Et Ie pied pur s'epeure comme un bel oiseau Ivre d'ombre. . . .

"Episode" begins a new movement in the Album, one in­cluding "Vue," "Valvins," "Ete," and, when it was added in 1926, "Profusion du soir," all of which focus on the drama of exchange between a sentient being and emanations from the natural world and underscore in various ways the tem­porality of man's condition. Several of these poems, "Ete," "Valvins," and "Profusion du soir," were written after Valery had "abandoned" his old idols, sometime between 1895 and 1899, during the period in his life when he was turning his attention to the laws governing the physical universe.

The titles indicate a shift away from the human subject as the central focus of the poem ("La Fileuse," "Helene," "Ve­nus," etc.) to the temporal theatre within which that subject acquires poetic life. In "Episode," the nymph's responsive and fertile body touched by water, sun, and flute notes ("sa peau frissonne") replaces as scriptural surface the deceptive water-tomb of self-reflection in "Narcisse parle":

Adieu, Narcisse . . . Meurs! Voici Ie crepuscule. Au soupir de mon coeur mon apparence ondule. . . .

The predominance of metonymy seems particularly appro­priate for the moment in the collection when Valery begins to move away from a vertical or inter-textual to a horizontal or intra-textual system of allusion. The tendency toward nat­uralization occuring in "Narcisse parle" with the word "rose," for example, as it moves from symbol ("rose ancienne," 1. 13)

200 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

to metaphor ("funerale rose," 1. 33) to metaphor/metonym ("sois, ma levre, la rose effeuillant Ie baiser," 1. 35) is fully realized in "Episode,"52 where the nymph's fingers are called "roses transparentes." After the poetic moment has been an­nounced with the traditional sign of grace, "Un soir favorise de colombes sublimes," the poem begins to obey the logic of cause and effect. The words governing the drama of exchange are chosen for their causal, conceptual value as connectives as well as for their figurative force as metonyms. "Onde" and "ondee" are the most immediately perceivable part of the ocean and the part which washes onto the shore; "Orteil" possesses the quality of finitude and extension of the foot touching the water; the fingers are called "roses transpa­rentes" because they are infused with the rosey reflection of the sun as they dip into the water. The qualities of color and light present in the world at a particular moment are trans­ferred to the human subject through touch ("trempe"). Every event is qualified and modified, "Parfois," "Tantot," "si." . . . We learn that it is the simultaneity of two events—the touch of water and the sound of the flute which makes her shiver— and thus we are prepared logically for the final metaphor, "une goutte tombe de la flute sur l'eau," through the media­tion of the human subject.

It is at this moment of reciprocity between the responsive feeling self and nature that Valery once again playfully intro­duces Mallarme—not as a model through whom he rewrites his own text, but as a sly figurant in a drama of Valery's own making. Although lines two-three ("Aux nenuphars de l'onde elle donne une orteil / Ultime, et . . .") formally signal Mal-

52 All revisions of "Episode" stress this tendency. Compare, for example, the final version of lines 11-16 with the same lines from "Fragment" of 1892:

Mais, toute indifferente a ces doux jeux de pleurs Ni se divinisant par aucune parole De rose, la beaute jouant de l'aureole Mire, dans Ie lointain de son oeil vierge, un or D'eparse chevelure ou fuit la myrrhe encor: De la lumiere vue entre ses doigts limpides!

Whiting, Valery, jeune poete, p. 81.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 201

larme's presence, the poem shifts immediately to a more literal, prosaic diction and to a system of imagery which pronounces itself resolutely non-symbolic:

Mais presque indifferente aux feintes de ces pleurs, Ni se divinisant par aucune parole De rose, elle demele une lourde aureole. . . .

The elaborately developed hair seme of lines 13-16 alludes to and affirms Valery's own reversal of Mallarme's treatment of hair imagery in "Baignee" by refusing the significance of the hair as halo ("lourde aureole") or sign of an otherworldly calling to liquify it and bring it back to earth:

Ses poings delicieux pressent la touffe d'or Dont la lumiere coule entre ses doigts limpides!

Both "Episode" and "Baignee" end with a powerful move­ment of attraction between a fully awakened female subjec­tivity and the drunken flight of an animal. The constitutive force which both of these female figures acquire at the end of the poems in which they figure is indicated by the word "Cap­ture" in "Baignee" and by the change from "roses transpa-rentes" to "poings" to describe the nymph's hands in "Epi­sode." Mallarme as idealist is refused admission to the Valeryan garden, but his presence is nevertheless represented by the invisible piper who motivates the nymph's awakening. He-rodiade, who is associated with the rejected ideal in "Narcisse parle" ("Que je deplore ton eclat fatal et pur," "Evanouissez-vous, divinite troublee!"), has been replaced by the lascivious Faun, whom Mallarme uncharacteristically permits to yield to the demands of his body, abandoning for the duration of a dream the sacrificial "gageur," of the Mallarmean enterprise, the "blaspheme" which requires denial of the natural world:

De paroles vacantes et ce corps alourdi Tard succombent au fier silence de midi: Sans plus il faut dormir en l'oubli du blaspheme, Sur Ie sable altere gisant et comme j'aime Ouvrir ma bouche a l'astre efficace des vins!

202 • THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

Couple, adieu, je vais voir I'ombre que tu devins.

("L'Apres-midi d'un Faune")

In "Episode" the words "fr issonne," "le coupable aux dents

de pierreries," "p ipeau," "occulte baiser," "etouffe d 'o r , " " le

pied pur s'epeure," and "ivre d 'ombre," are clear allusions to

the events and diction of "L'Apres-midi d'un faune.

Mallarme's poem begins with the Faun's awakening from

an erotic dream (or perhaps from a flight of fancy induced by

his own piping) in which he has tried to ravish two nymphs

at once—one rosey, warm, and yielding, the other blue-eyed,

cold, and wary. He finds on his chest a bite mark attesting

either to the reality of the vision or to his election by the gods:

Autre que ce doux rien par leur levre ebruite, Le baiser, qui tout bas des perfides assure,

" See Mallarme, Oeuvres-.

Et le splendide bain de cheveux disparait Dans les clartes et les frissons, 6 pterrertesl (p. 52) "Et qu'au prelude lent ou naissent les pipeaux Ce vol de qfgnes, non! de naiades se sauve Ou plonge. . . ." (p. 51)

Autre que ce doux rien par leur levre ebruite, Le baiser, qui tout bas des perfides assure, Men sein, vierge de preuve, atteste une morsure Mystmeuse, due i quelque auguste dent-, Mais, bast! arcane tel elut pour confident Le jonc vaste et jumeau dont sous I'azur on joue: (p. 51)

Mon crime, c'est d'avoir, gai de vaincre ces peurs Traitresses, divise la touffe echevelee De baisers que les dieux gardaient si bien melee: (p. 52)

Car, ^ peine j'allais cacher un rire ardent Sous les replis heureux d'une seule . . .

Que de mes bras, defaits par de vagues trepas, Cette prate, ^ jamais ingrate se deltvre

Sans plus il faut dormir en I'oubli du blaspheme, Sur le sable altere gisant et comme j'aime Ouvrtr ma bouche a I'astre efficace des vins\ Couple, adieu; je vais voir I'ombre que tu devins. (p. 53)

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 203

Mon sein, vierge de preuve, atteste une morsure Mysterieuse, due a quelque auguste dent. . . .

The Faun recreates the vision of arousal, ravishment, sepa­ration, and flight until finally hyperbolically satisfied ("Etna! . . . Je tiens la reine"), he sinks back into drunken sleep to begin the dream again. Valery chooses Mallarme's own trope of election—"occulte baiser" ("arcane tel elut")—to announce Mallarme's election of himself, Valery, as his heir; and he recreates the story of his election—arousal, ravishment, sep­aration, and flight—through the brief lyrical drama of "Epi­sode." "Et qu'au prelude lent ou naissent Ies pipeaux / Ce vol de cygnes, non! de naiades se sauve / Ou plonge. . . ." The flute notes piped by the Mallarmean faun touch the Valeryan nymph like a kiss and make her shiver, but, unlike Herodiade or the blue-eyed nymph of Mallarme's poem, who bites and flees, this nymph is infused with desire. She refuses any mys­tical significance to the event, unknots the "too-heavy" halo of her hair, and twists with pleasure as she feels the warmth of the sunlight it holds flow through her fingers. In their con­tiguity the falling hair, falling leaf, and the flute-note falling like a drop of water onto her shoulder all suggest forms of sexual abandonment. The music of his flute made of "ombre et reverie" snares the shy bird at the end, "un bel oiseau ivre d'ombre," despite her impulse to escape.54 Valery thus permits the Faun to succeed in the seduction, which Mallarme had

54 In 1912 Valery sketched a free verse composition to Mallarme in his notebook in which Mallarme's voice is figured as bird-song and flute. It was later published in The Virgmta Quarterly Revtew, Winter 1939 as "Psaume sur une voix: a propos de Stephane Mallarme:

A demt votx, D'une voix douce et faible disant de grandes choses; D'importantes, d'etonnantes, de profondes et justes choses, D'une voix douce et faible. La menace du tonnerre, la presence d'absolus Dans une voix de rouge-gorge. Dans Ie detail fin d'une flute, et la dehcatesse du son pur. .. .

Cited by Lawler in The Poet as Analyst., pp. 128-29.

204 • THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

refused him, rewriting Mallarme's poem, accordmg to its own

thematized wish.^^

Valery's muse, then, is a vessel in which elements of the

" Besides adapting Mallarme's eclogue as part of its dramatic event, "Episode" constitutes a revisionist reading of another "source"—"La Source" by Le-conte de Lisle from his Poentes antiques-.

Une eau vive etmcelle en la foret muette, Derobee aux ardeurs du )our;

Et le roseau s'y ploie, et fleurissent autour L'hyacinthe et la violette.

Ni les chevres paissant les cytises amers Aux pentes des proches colhnes,

Ni les pasteurs chantant sur les flutes divines, N'ont trouble la source aux flots clairs.

Les noirs chenes, aimes des abeilles fideles, En ce beau lieu versent la paix,

Et les ramiers, blottis dans le feuillage epais, Ont ploye leur col sous leurs ailes.

Les grands cerfs indolents, par les halhers mousseux, Hument les tardives ros&s;

Sous le dais lumineux des feuilles reposees Dorment les Sylvams paresseux.

Et la blanche Nais dans la source sacree Mollement ferme ses beaux yeux;

Elle songe, endormie; un rire harmonieux Flotte sur sa bouche pourpree.

Nul oeil etincelant d'un amoureux d&ir N'a vu sous ces voiles hmpides

La Nymphe au corps de neige, aux longs cheveux fluides, Sur le sable argente dormir.

Et nul n'a contemple la joue adolescente, L'lvoire du col, ou I'eclat

Du jeune sein, I'epaule au contour dehcat, Les bras blancs, la levre innocente.

Mais I'Aigipan lascif, sur le prochain rameau, Entre'ouvre la feuillee epaisse

Et voit, tout enlace d'une humide caresse, Ce corps souple briller sous I'eau.

Aussitdt il rit d'aise en sa joie inhumaine; Son rire emeut le frais reduit;

Et la vierge s'eveille, et, palissant au bruit, Disparait comme une ombre vame.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 205

natural world meet—water, light, heat. They awaken her to the creative principle and ultimately lead her back to the world of darkness and death ("une feuille meurt," "ivre d'ombre"). This is the cycle, represented by the pattern of dream and wakefulness developed throughout the Album or by the two halves of the figure in "Baignee," to which Valery discovered early in his career that his consciousness was bound. Echo begins to play an increasingly important role in Valery's ver­sion of the Narcissus myth. Rather than a sign of entropy or of the using up of creative energy, however, repetition in varia­tion represents for Valery the power of consciousness to con­trol the complex process of growth and decay through the invention of increasingly complex systems of relationships.56

"VUE"

Valery grants the predecessor whom he has elected a far more obvious place in the Album than any other single poet, and

Telle que la Naiade, en ce bois ecarte, Dormant sous l'onde diaphane,

Fuis toujours l'oeil impur et la main de profane, Lumiere de l'ame, ü Beaute!

The dramatic setting for both poems is the same: a nymph partially im­mersed in water is being observed by a lascivious faun; she takes flight and disappears the instant she becomes aware of his presence. But whereas Leconte de Lisle's figure for Beauty remains pure and untouched by the profane gaze (she is asleep while she is gazed upon by the satyr), Valery's is infused with desire and her flight is a sign of her responsiveness to that seductive presence. The notion of pure source implied by the title, dramatic event, and timeless setting of Leconte de Lisle's poem is, then, clearly subverted in Valery's version. His emphasis on temporality and mutability ("Episode," "Un soir favonse . . . ," "Parfois," "tantot . . . ," poem as fragment) and the natu­ralization of the female figure further distinguish Valery's relativistic and materialist point of view from that of any form of nineteenth-century idealism. Jacques Dernda meditates on the question of "source" in "Les Sources de Valery* Qual, Quelle," Modern Language Notes, May 1972, vol. 87, no. 4, special issue, "Paul Valery," pp. 563-99: "On n'ecoutera done pas la source elle-meme pour savoir ce qu'elle est ou ce qu'elle veut dire: plutot les tours, allegories, figures, metaphores, comme on voudra, dans lesquels on l'a de-tournee, pour la perdre ou pour la retrouver. . . ." (p. 570)

56 See Christine Crow, Paul Valery, Consciousness and Nature, p. 226.

206 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

he pays homage to him in a variety of ways. "Episode," "Vue," and "Valvins" are all poems to Mallarme. If in "Episode" Valery cunningly invites a figure from Mallarme's own cre­ation to motivate the actions of his muse, in "Vue," he im­presses Mallarme's unmistakable scriptural image onto the page, recreating for the reader his own astonishment when he first saw the manuscript of "Un Coup de des . . "II me sembla de voir la figure d'une pensee, pour la premiere fois placee dans notre espace . . ." (Oeuvres I, p. 624).

Vue

Si la plage penche, si L'ombre sur l'oeil s'use et pleure Si l'azur est larme, ainsi Au sel des dents pure affleure

La vierge fumee ou l'air Que berce en soi puis expire Vers l'eau debout d'une mer Assoupie en son empire

Celle qui sans Ies ou'ir Si la levre au vent remue Se joue a evanouir Mille mots vains ou se mue

Sous l'humide eclair de dents Le tres doux feu du dedans.57

57 This is the only manuscript version between 1912 and 1920, but there is a much earlier sketch found among the poems copied by Valery for Andre Gide in 1892:

Si la plage penche si L'ombre de l'oeil nu se pleure Si l'azur est larme! ainsi Au sel pur des dents affleure

La vierge fumee en l'air Que berce en soi puis expire Vers l'eau debout d'une mer Innovant la meme soupire

Celle qui sans Ies ou'ir Si la levre au vent remue

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 207

"Vue" quite simply looks as if it might have been written by Mallarme himself. He particularly liked the miniature form of the seven-syllable English sonnet, using it for many of his Vers de circonstances or for the series of "Petit Air" poems written in the mid '90's. One sonnet written in this form and published in Le Figaro in 1895 ("Vue" first appeared in the Centaure in 1896) bears striking thematic as well as visual affinities with "Vue." Charles Mauron has described it as "un conseil donne a un debutant, un 'art poetique' sur un ton badin. Qu'est-ce que la poesie? Une bouffee de fumee en quoi Pame se retire tout entiere."58

Toute Pame resumee Quand lente nous Pexpirons Dans plusieurs ronds de fumee Abolis en autres ronds

Atteste quelque cigare Brulant savamment pour peu Que la cendre se separe De son clair baiser de feu

Ainsi Ie choeur des romances A la levre vole-t-il Exclus-en si tu commences Le reel parce que vil

Le sens trop precis rature Ta vague litterature.59

As in "Episode," however, Valery restores the physical pres­ence expelled from Mallarme's "art poetique" to a central position. Out of the "vierge fumee" of the speaker's breath

Se joue a evanouir Mille mots nus ou se mue

Le feu tres doux du dedans Sous l'humide eclair de dents.

58 Mallarme, Oeuvres, p. 1497. 59 Ibid., p. 73. Barbier suggests "A la nue accablante tu . . ." as another

Mallarmean source for this poem, "Valery et Mallarme," op.cit.·, Lawler proposes "Petit Air" of 1894, "Valery et Mallarme: 'Le Tigre . . . " p. 89.

208 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

there materializes the familiar figure of a female form on the shore ("Celle") filled with the warmth of interiority ("le tres doux feu du dedans"). The exchange of breath between Mas­ter and disciple creates a new poetic life which both pays homage to and challenges the source of inspiration. One is reminded of Valery's commemorative words at the time of Mallarme's death two years after he wrote "Vue": "J'ai de ton pur esprit bu Ie feu Ie plus beau."60

As the title indicates, this is a poem about seeing. It identifies an experience of perception susceptible to time (thing seen, "vue," in the past tense) with both the poem's thematized seascape and the linguistic presence inscribed before the read­er's eyes, une vue. As the shortest poem in the collection and the only English sonnet, "Vue" forms a distinct graphic entity on the page.61 The striking use of the visual repetition of "si" at the beginning and the end of lines one and three serves to frustrate any narrative reading based on logic which the con­ditional structure at first proposes. The parallelism of short, long, short, long lines in stanzas one and three is balanced by the sequence of short, long, long, short in stanza two, so that the central lines, six and seven, echo or visually rhyme with the closural couplet. These are the lines which suggest, in opposition to Mallarme's poem, birth, presence, fullness. The use of exact spelling for all of the end rhymes except five and seven, thirteen and fourteen, further encourages a visual iden­tification between stanzas one and three and stanza two and the final couplet.

The cause and effect structure of "Episode" appears at first to continue in "Vue" with the opening conditional sequence, but it is immediately frustrated by the Mallarmean treatment of syntax. It is not surprising that syntactic figuration would dominate in a poem recognizing Mallarme's influence, since Valery considered experimentation with syntax Mallarme's

60 Cited by Lawler in The Poet as Analyst, p. 131. 61 The poem which follows "Vue" in the Album, "Valvins," was originally

written as an English sonnet (La Coupe, 1898, see Whiting, Valery, ;eune poete, p. 99) and was changed to a Petrarchan sonnet for its publication in the Album, thus setting off "Vue" more distinctly.

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most important innovation. Valery was particularly interested in his concerted use of symmetry, which Mallarme described in "Propos sur la poesie" as creating "les identites secretes par un deux a deux qui ronge et use les objets au nom d'une centrale purete."62 "Vue" is structured around such eroding symmetries, which leave at the center that purity, "vierge fu­mee ou Pair," from which, nevertheless, a new form is born.

The syntax is arranged in such a way as to give the impres­sion that there are two constitutive agents—the breath of the lyrical speaker ("la vierge fumee ou l'air"), whose perspective in the pitching boat structures the scene of the first stanza ("si la plage penche ...") and a female figure, "Celle," who takes in that breath, cradles it, and then breathes it out ("Que berce en soi puis expire") and whose perspective structures the sec­ond stanza ("Vers l'eau debout d'une mer"). One is tempted to put Mallarme at the helm of the ship, since it is clearly a Mallarmean syntax which radicalizes our vision, and to assign to the female principle the identity of the familiar Valeryan muse whose development from sleep to wakefulness we have been charting. But here, as in "Episode" there is an exchange of powers. The muse who receives the kiss of election is filled with new life that challenges the dream of abstraction her absent elector represents. The threatening "dents de pierrerie" associated with Mallarme's Faun in "Episode" are now at­tributes of both breathing subjectivities ("Au sel des dents ..." 1. 4; "Sous l'humide eclair de dents," 1. 13). They vanish ("Se joue a evanouir / Mille mots vains") at the end of the poem into the warm center at the origin of all creation which transforms the word into an echo of itself ("Le tres doux feu du dedans"). The drama of generative exchange between Va-Iery and his adored predecessor results, not in the "ronds de fumee / Abolis en autres ronds," but in the voicing of sensuous presence. Valery allows Mallarme's seductive music to elicit from him the briefest, most obscure, and most precious tribute in the Album, yet within this concentrated poem are gathered the central motifs of a distinctly Valeryan universe: "ombre,"

62 Cited by Lawler, The Poet as Analyst, p. 135.

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"pleure," "larme," "affleure," "l'eau," "levre," "vent," "hu-mide," "eclair," "feu," which identify "Vue" as a scene within the drama of his own "theatre pensif."63

"VALVINS"

The title "Valvins" of the last of the three poems in the "Mal­larme" series is taken from the name of Mallarme's summer house, where Valery spent many hours of quiet exchange with the older poet in the little skiff on the Seine or walking in the woods.64 James Lawler has written movingly of the profound importance that Mallarme's friendship had for Valery and has documented Valvin's particular significance as a place of com­munal reflection:

Yet one of the constant notes of the whole correspond­ence is the image of Valvins as some kind of idyllic escape. ". . . Le fantastique de Valvins s'accroit demesurement dans mon esprit,—au moindre remous d'air suppliant Ies fenetres du bureau . . ." (2 June 1897).

"Je me rappelle que dans Ie noir bout du chemin jusqu'a la gare, . . . toutes Ies impressions du moment, ciel com-plet, etre avec vous, et la barre du Lendemain,—se mou-raient, autour d'une subite et unique envie de travail in-fini, la tout de suite, imprevoyante, comme fait d'ailleurs la reflexion elle-meme."

Again: "Valvins! cependant. Et ce n'est pas un coin de terre

que j'appelle ainsi. C'est la tete fraiche, Ie corps disparu

63 Lawler sees more than a docile imitation of Mallarme in "Vue": "On ne saurait toutefois en conclure a une imitation complaisante. "Vue" montre une volonte d'annexion ou Ie poete parvient a definir un monde de lumiere, de vapeurs. 11 se laisse guider par la seule analogie alors que chez Mallarme l'analogie est d'abord fonction d'un dispositif logique. Il en resulte, dans Ies symetries formelles, un bonheur plastique qui est bien de Valery et non d'un autre." "Valery et Mallarme: Ie tigre . . . ," p. 89.

64 See Henri Mondor, Vie de Mallarme (Paris: Gallimard, 1946), pp. 763-64.

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ou delicieux Ic travail veritable, improductif, foudroy-ant—enfin la rencontre que je serais sur de faire, au coin du bois, de vous" (24 April 1898).65

Commissioned by Albert Mockel in 1897 to be included in an album of twenty-three poems especially for Mallarme, "Valvins" was first published in La Coupe in February of 1898, just seven months before Mallarme's unexpected death in the fall of that year. It was at Valvins that Valery saw Mallarme for the last time on July 14, 1898. During this particularly eventful visit Mallarme took Valery into his study and showed him the manuscript of "Un Coup de des," his supreme experiment in giving visual representation to the fig­urative nature of language. Valery describes the setting of this moment with words found echoed in the poem:

. . . il me conduisit a son "cabinet de travail." Quatre pas de long, deux de large; la fenetre ouverte a la Seine et a la foret au travers d'un feuillage tout dechire de lumiere, et Ies moindres fremissements de la riviere eblouissante faiblement redits par Ies murs. . . .

Nul encore n'avait entrepris, ni reve d'entreprendre, de donner a la figure d'un texte une signification et une action comparables a celles du texte meme. . . . J'etais aupres de cette personne. Rien ne me disait que je ne la reverrais jamais plus. . . . Tout etait calme et sur . . . Mais cependant que Mallarme me parlait, Ie doigt sur la page, il me souvient que ma pensee se mit a rever de ce moment meme. Elle y donnait distraitement une valeur comme absolue. Je songeais, pres de Iui vivant, a son destin comme acheve. (Oeuvres I, pp. 631-32)

Within this natural setting of reciprocal exchange, Mallarme introduces Valery into the deeper, interior space of his "ca­binet de travail," and there he shows him yet another space which he has invented, the space of writing, into which the man, Mallarme, seems to disappear, transformed into the im­personal self of the Poet. By 1897, however, Valery had ceased

65 The Poet as Analyst, pp. 120-21.

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to believe in the metaphysics behind Mallarme's grand enter­prise. Yet for the duration of this final visit, Mallarme's ex­ample had once again proposed itself as a new religion: "Je perdais Ie sentiment de la difference de l'etre et du non-etre. La musique parfois nous impose cette impression, qui est au dela de toutes Ies autres. La poesie, pensais-je, n'est-elle point aiissi Ie jeu supreme de la transmutation des idees?" (ibid., p. 633.)

With the death of his beloved master, Valery returns to the skepticism which had begun secretly to alienate him from Mallarme and his Symbolist contemporaries. Before describ­ing the seemingly miraculous moment at "Valvins," he begins the same essay with the admission: "Je m'etais fait de son esprit une profonde compagnie, et j'esperais qu'en depit de la difference de nos ages et de l'ecart immense de nos merites Ie jour viendrait que je ne craindrais pas de Iui proposer mes difficultes et mes vues particulieres" (p. 630). It seems to me that "Valvins" contains that confession so long withheld and is particularly suited for its position in the Album de vers anciens, where it brings to a close the series acknowledging Mallarme's importance in Valery's poeticized autobiography. The poem proposes itself as both a personal locus amoenus and an in memoriam piece:

Valvins

Si tu veux denouer la foret qui t'aere Heureuse, tu te fonds aux feuilles, si tu es Dans la fluide yole a jamais litteraire, Trainant quelques soleils ardemment situes

Aux blancheurs de son flanc que la Seine caresse Emue, ou pressentant Papres-midi chante, Selon que Ie grand bois trempe une longue tresse, Et melange ta voile au meilleur de l'ete.

Mais toujours pres de toi que Ie silence livre Aux cris multiplies de tout Ie brut azur, L'ombre de quelque page eparse d'aucun livre

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Tremble, reflet de voile vagabonde sur La poudreuse peau de la riviere verte Parmi Ie long regard de la Seine entr'ouverte.

Certain aspects of "Valvins" encourage one to read it syn-chronically, in relation to the poems which surround it, as well as diachronically, in terms of Valery's relationship to his great predecessor. The first quatrain, for example, echoes the twice repeated "si" construction which introduced "Vue," and which helped to give that poem its particularly Mallar-mean tone. This time, however, syntactic figuration is deflated in such a way as to continue the development that occurs in the second half of "Vue" away from a Mallarmean poetics of abstraction. Valery makes a pretense of beginning to write the abstract poem called "Si tu" that Mallarme admitted he had always intended to write66—the ideal poem proposed in "Toute l'ame resume ..." which would silence the referential clamor of words:

Exclus-en si tu commences Le reel parce que vil Le sens trop precis rature Ta vague litterature

and which may be alluded to in the first stanza of "Vue":

Celle qui sans Ies ou'ir Si la levre au vent remue Se joue a evanouir Mille mots vains ou se mue. . . .

The typically Mallarmean play on words framing the first line ("Si tu . . . t'aere" [taire]) signals Valery's awareness of his predecessor's sublime intention, but in a language so volup­tuous that we are seduced by the form which incarnates that ideal. "Si tu..." is not a silencing of reference through abstract parts of speech, but a voicing of vibrant sexual presence: "Si tu veux. . . ." The enigmatic female figure who received the breath of the speaker in "Vue" is filled with new poetic life,

66 Recorded by CiaudeI in his "Notes sur Mallarme," ibid., p. 121.

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"la possibilite feminine" of Mallarme's own "Le Nenuphar blanc."67 Indeed, at first Valery seems to present himself as the suitor from Mallarme's poem, but instead of stopping short of seeing or speaking to the woman,68 in order to keep the "idea" of her intact, Valery's speaker addresses her with the conventional "tu" of lyric poetry. She comes to life as poeticized body within a complex system of imagery identi­fying her with the boat in which she sits ("la fluide yole," "son flanc"), the water in which the boat floats ("La Seine entr'ouverte"), the reflection of the forest trapped in the water ("la poudreuse peau de la riviere verte"), and ultimately the Valeryan poem or book in which all of these are subsumed ("feuilles" . . . "entr'ouverte").

Thus Valery presents the landscape of Valvins at the be­ginning and end of his poem ("Si tu veux denouer Ie foret. . . tu te fonds aux feuilles," 11. 1-2; "Parmi Ie long regard de la Seine entr'ouverte," 1. 14) as an immense and provocative female book in which various seductions are offered by the lyrical speaker. The "si" construction of the octet identifies what transpires as a hypothetical situation, a voluptuous fan­tasy in which the speaker places a feminized companion-self to whom he playfully pays homage with tokens from Mal­larme's poetic vocabulary: "t'aere," "yole," "Emue," "selon que," "ardemment." He evokes for her the possibility of merg­ing with nature by yielding to the pages of this hypothetical poem of immediacy through which she glides. Male and fe­male principles combine in a multitude of sensual situations.

47 Mallarme, Oeuvres, pp. 283-86. 68 Barbara Johnson provides a concise summary of the prose poem's non-

"plot": "The poem tells the story of nothing happening between a man in a rowboat and an unknown woman who may or may not be standing on the bank. The rower, whose boat has run into a tuft of reeds at the edge of the lady's property, hears an imperceptible noise, perhaps of footsteps, and ducks down deeper into his boat, all the while evoking to himself the flowing skirts of feminine possibility. After a pause during which he does not determine whether or not anyone is actually present, he turns the boat around and, imagining himself carrying off a white waterlily, quietly rows away." The Critical Difference; Essays itt the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading (Bal­timore-London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), p. 13.

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In line one the speaker imagines the woman unknotting the hair of the forest, thus recalling the movement of the nymph in "Episode" (1. 13) after she hears the seductive flute notes of the Faun, or perhaps, even more subtly, recalling the erotic entanglement of the two nymphs which excited Valery's Faun to recreate the dream through the flute music. After this first yielding to the female forest, the site is liquified and the woman placed in a boat pursued by ardent suitors (1. 4). While the sides of the boat, personified as "son flanc" are caressed by the feminine water, she begins to have a fantasy of her own: "Pressentant l'apres-midi chante," that is, she has a presen­timent of the genesis of "L'Apres-midi d'un faune," the poem motivating "Episode" and the imagery of the octet of "Val-vins." As the dream begins to form, a lock of hair falls from the trees into the water, and the woman's veil is snatched away by the wind into the "best" of summer, suggesting her poetic transformation into "L'enfant ravie" of "Ete," the next poem in the Album. Thus the fantasy offered to Mallarme in the octet is that of a blending of imaginations; but the dream of perfect reciprocity is left suspended, the second "si" con­struction ambiguously resolved. Instead of reading the "Si tu veux . . ." as a suitor's proposition, we are forced to return to line two and read it as the condition of the "tu's" solitary position in the boat: "Si tu veux ... Si tu es, tu te fonds.. . ."

The voluptuous fantasy of the octet, presented as possibility left unfulfilled, is deflated in the sestet, which abandons the conditional to evoke the "reality" of the situation: "Mais toujours pres de toi. . . ." Between the speaker and the com­panion self is another book, the "aucun livre" of the Mallar-mean enterprise, which like one of the symbolic waterlilies of Mallarme's "Nenuphar blanc," "enveloppant de Ieur creuse blancheur un rien, fait de songes intacts, du bonheur qui n'aura pas lieu et de mon souffle ici retenu dans la peur d'une ap­parition," refuses to admit the natural world in which it is held. The book's presence produces a series of negativizing effects which cancel the promise of exchange held forth in the octet. The female figure awakened by the speaker in the octet is now cold, indifferent, cut off by her private meditations.

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Mallarme's book requires the abolition of the self who wrote it, and it seeks to leave no trace of its own genesis behind. "Tel, sache, entre Ies accessoires humains, il a lieu tout seul: fait, etait."69 In the sestet the shadow of the scattered page of the impersonal Book replaces the intimate presence of the woman in the skiff. The song of the birds ("L'apres-midi chante") inspires not the sensuous dream-poem about the Faun, but a vision reminiscent of "L'Azur" or "Herodiade," ex­pressing revulsion toward the natural world ("Aux cris mul­tiplies de tout Ie brut azur"). Indeed, the opening stanza of Mallarme's "L'Azur" (see Appendix), where the poet stares impotently in a desert landscape at an "ironic" blue sky fig­ured as an indolent seductress, is a negative reflection of Va­lery's opening fantasy:

De l'eternel azur la sereine ironie Accable, belle indolemment comme Ies fleurs, Le poete impuissant qui maudit son genie A travers un desert sterile de Douleurs.70

For Mallarme there is a fundamental antagonism between the activity of consciousness and the demands of the natural world. Thus the Mallarmean book detaches itself from Valery's po­etic vessel, taking the companion with it. The speaker of "Val-vins" sees them in the final stanza as sail/veil, at some distance ("reflet de voile vagabonde") beyond his own boat, which remains immersed in the natural elements. The book intro­duced between the speaker and his companion thus not only divides them but also mediates the naive dream of immediacy in the octet. The naturalistic lexicon representative of Valery's mature verse, "t'aere," "feuilles," "ete," suffers an ironic dou­bling through this intervention. We must read Valery's poem through Mallarme and thus as a cynical demystification of its own pretentions for originality and freshness, a "yole a jamais litteraire."

And yet, Valery's poem acknowledging the disturbing effect

69 Mallarme, Oeuvres, p. 372. 70 Ibid., p. 37.

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of Mallarme's vision on his own work proposes a revitalized poetic landscape within which to experience that condition of belatedness ("pressentant l'apres-midi chante"). James Lawler persuasively argues for the particular force of Valery's origi­nality in "Valvins,"

. . . despite its theme and isolated traits of diction and form, the sonnet is Valery's own, possessing a sensuous-ness and plasticity that are unmistakable. It. . . [moves] with a full breadth of summer warmth, the commitment of mind and senses, the greenness of forest and river, a confident gravity of tone. Mallarme's letter of thanks on receiving the poem pointed to a quality he knew to be wholly distinct from his own: "Tant de vous ce sonnet, Valery, emu et riche abstraitement."71 (my italics)

By seizing on the word, "emue," to return it to its sender, masculinized, Mallarme seems to acknowledge his former dis­ciple's frustrated dream of communion, his recognition of their shared vision, and his concealed confession regarding the different direction of their creative projects.

"ETE"

Valery picks up the word "ete" from the octet of "Valvins" for the title of his next poem, an ode to summer, as if to refuse both the valorization of absence (that which has been, "a ete") implicit in the Mallarmean vision and the belatedness of his own historical situation. But the ambiguity of the title remains, nonetheless, carrying with it the shadow of anteriority intro­duced by Mallarme's book in the sestet of "Valvins." That shadow, as literary referdnt in general, will impose itself more and more forcefully as the Album draws to a close and ac­counts in part, at least, for the pessimistic note sounded to­ward the end of the collection.

71 The Poet as Analyst, pp. 123-24.

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Ete

a Francis Viele-Griffin

Ete, roche d'air pur, et toi, ardente ruche, O mer! Eparpillee en mille mouches sur Les touffes d'une chair fraiche comme une cruche, Et jusque dans la bouche ou bourdonne l'azur;

Et toi, maison brulante, Espace, cher Espace Tranquille, ou l'arbre fume et perd quelques oiseaux, Ou creve infiniment la rumeur de la masse De la mer, de la marche et des troupes des eaux,

Tonnes d'odeurs, grands ronds par Ies races heureuses Sur Ie golfe qui mange et qui monte au soleil, Nids purs, ecluses d'herbe, ombres des vagues creuses, Bercez l'enfant ravie en un poreux sommeil!

Dont Ies jambes (mais l'une est fraiche et se denoue De la plus rose), Ies epaules, Ie sein dur, Le bras qui se melange a l'ecumeuse joue Brillent abandonnes autour du vase obscur

Ou filtrent Ies grands bruits pleins de betes puisees Dans Ies cages de feuille et Ies mailles de mer Par Ies moulins marins et Ies huttes rosees Du jour . . . Toute la peau dore Ies treilles d'air.72

The dedication to Viele-Griffin, translator of Walt Whit­man, defender of "le vers libre," and advocate of a poetry of immediacy, supports the view that "Ete" represents a rejection of the poetics of Mallarme and a new optimism regarding the power of lyrical language to renew itself. It is not surprising that Valery should identify his own claim for renewal with Viele-Griffin since in certain respects their poetic careers fol­lowed a similar course. Viele-Griffin belonged to the gener­ation of Valery's most immediate poetic predecessors (Henri de Regnier, Jean Moreas, Gustave Kahn), who were the doc-

72 An early version, very close to this one, was published with "Vue" in the first volume of Le Centaure in 1896. See Oeuvres I, p. 1564.

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trinaire founders of Symbolism as a school during the 1880's. Both Viele-Griffin and Valery began their careers by writing mystical, neo-Christian poetry typical of the younger gener­ation of Symbolists, but by 1886 Viele-Griffin had begun to question the Christian path of renunciation in favor of a po­etry celebrating the joy of life. The poem introducing the section entitled "Heure mystique" of Cueille d'avriF3 (see Ap­pendix), for example, begins with the transfiguration of rose imagery we have seen take place in Valery's own early verse:

Les roses du chemin evoquent d'autres roses; L'avril imperieux evoque un autre amour; Cet avenir, joyeux espoir, que tu proposes, Rappelle du passe l'ombre d'un autre jour; Les roses du chemin evoquent d'autres roses.

The poet renounces with a sense of foreboding and guilt the mystical rose of Christianity for the natural rose of spring:

O Doux mort, ü fievreux enfant, mort de l'ivresse Que donne aux coeurs choisis Ie Vin sanglant; et nous, Malgre qu'au carrefour de tous chemins se dresse La croix prestigieuse et qu'on baise a genoux, Nous avons prefere la Vie a cette ivresse.

Viele-Griffin's poetry written during the '90's was different from that of his contemporaries, in that it rejected the her-meticism and renunciation of the self characteristic of Sym­bolist poetics and chose to celebrate instead the overwhelming force and attraction of the natural world. Reinhard Kuhn, whose study of Viele-Griffin is significantly entitled The Re­turn to Reality, and who places as an epigraph to his book "Le vent se level . . . Il faut tenter de vivre!" from Valery's "Le Cimetiere marin," stresses Viele-Griffin's fundamental op­position to the poetics of Mallarme, despite his public repu­tation for being one of Mallarme's most devoted followers.74

Although Viele-Griffin's correspondence and published work

73 Francis Viele-Griffin, Poemes et Poesies (Paris: Societe du Mercure de France, 1917), pp. 91-100.

74 (Paris: Librairie Minard, 1962), pp. 118, ff.

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are filled with genuine admiration and respect for the man, there is a striking absence of any commentary on Mallarme's poetry or aesthetic theory. In fact, Kuhn has uncovered con­vincing evidence of Viele-Griffin's hostility to Mallarme's imaginative stance. A copy of an adaptation of Poe which Mallarme had given to Viele-Griffin, for example, is "covered from the first page to the last with angry corrections and an accusing marginal commentary,"75 and the "envoi," of Viele-Griffin's dramatic poem Aticaeus, published in 1888, includes a clear repudiation of Mallarme's orphic enterprise in figu­rative language borrowed from Mallarme's own "L'Apres-midi d'un faune":

Tu Ie sais, elle est vaine et futile, mon coeur, Cette Oeuvre, gerbe vide et grappe sans liqueur; Et Ie sang s'est fige dans la coupe d'or claire Ou nous trempions la laine en la pourpre; et salaire De ces heures, voici rire un echo moqueur.76

In a letter to Jean Thorel written in 1891, Viele-Griffin ex­presses the same feeling of ambiguity regarding the man and the poet that Valery would reveal more covertly in his own published essays after Mallarme's death. "Ne me parlez pas de Mallarme—Vous savez que si j'ai de la sympathie pour cet homme charmant, sa litterature m'irrite au point que je crierais tout haut s'il n'etait pas sa propre victime" (ibid.). By the end of his life Viele-Griffin openly discredits the function of the symbol as he considered it had been understood by Mallarme and his own contemporaries. In a speech honoring Verhaeren he redefines the concept of pure poetry as a poetry of im­mediacy and sensuous evocation of the physical world:

Ne s'apersoit-on pas qu'en contraste du mystique qui s'essore au septieme ciel, et nous en revient charge de visions indicibles, Ie Poete Pur, au rhythme de son pas sur la route, du balance de ces [sic] bras, du souffle de ses poumons, des battements de son coeur, n'idealise que

75 Ibid., p. 123. 76 Cited by Kuhn, p. 128.

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la realite, ne transfigure que visions de ses yeux, ne su-blimise que Ies donnees de ces cinq sens, ne transpose en ses poemes—comme Ie Dieu qui, lui-meme, Ie crea du limon de la terre—ne transpose que cette matiere mater-nelle en qui son sort d'homme a fondu son humanite. En ce sens, oui, Verhaeren fut materialiste, au titre meme de grand poete.77

Viele-Griffin's terms are very similar to those Valery used in a review of Huysman's novels for the Mercure de France in 1898 to define the poet in contrast to the mystic:

La difference est done considerable du mystique et du poete; et bien qu'il soit elegant de confondre leurs gestes, bien que toutes Ies evasions spirituelles soient soeurs, il faut considerer que si Ie mystique concentre son acte d'a-doration, Ie poete, au contraire, se dilate dans sa com­munion avec la vie, et tend a faire partager, a autrui, sa ferveur.78

"Ete," originally published in Le Centaure in 1896 and not substantially revised for its position in the Album of 1920, begins by paying tribute to Viele-Griffin's somewhat naive materialistic vision and then, through the introduction of lit­erary allusions, subtly calls it into question, thus continuing the Valeryan dialectic with the nineteenth century represented by the collection as a whole in a typically self-problematizing manner.

"Ete" is the first poem in the Album to make the elemental power of nature the central thematic referent. In all of the preceding poems nature provides the setting within which a drama of self-discovery occurs, and, although we become in­directly aware through imagery and diction that this event depends in an essential way on man's connection to the natural world rather than on some metaphysical reality, the drama

77 Cited by Kuhn, pp. 137-38 from "Discourse," reprinted in the Mercure de France, vol. CVII, no. 400, February 16, 1914, pp. 674 ff.

78 "Durtal," Le Mercure de France, tome XXV, no. 99, Mars 1898, pp. 780-90.

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of self-discovery is, nevertheless, the central event. Even in "La Fileuse," where the setting of the sun and the extinction of consciousness are coincident, the natural event is perceived as a metaphor for, rather than a cause of, the death of con­sciousness. Indeed the overpowering force accorded Nature in "Ete" lends it a decidedly threatening dimension absent thus far in the Album and underscores the frailty of the human form. The intersubjective drama between critical speaker and thematized subjectivity central to the regenerative substruc­ture of "La Fileuse" is relegated to one stanza, almost as an erotic digression, while the principal cosmic event unfolds around it. Nature is figured as the larger theatre ("Maison") within which the subject is held, and it is appealed to by the speaker as the force which governs the subject's life. The hu­man presence, on the other hand, is figured as utterly passive, a thing ("cruche") which nature enters, animates with poetic voice ("Jusque dans la bouche ou bourdonne Tazur"), and then abandons ("jambes," "epaules," "sein," "bras" ... "bril-Ient abandonnes").

In the first three stanzas the speaker addresses nature: "Ete .. . O mer .. . cher Espace ... tonnes d'odeurs ... Nids .. ." in a tone of exalted admiration, entrusting to its revivifying powers the sleeping body of the instinctual self. The imme­diacy of these powers is translated formally in the first two stanzas by exaggerated phonological and rhythmic effects. Even metaphoric figuration acquires a transmutational force through alliteration and assonance: "roche," "ruche," "mouches" (11. 102) for nature; "touffes," "cruche," "bouche" (11. 2-3) or "chair," "fralche," "cruche" (1. 3) for the subjec­tivity in stanza one. In keeping with the importance Viele-Griffin attached to rhythm and alliteration over rime in his theories on the "vers libre," the alternating masculine, femi­nine end-rimes in stanza one blend as variations of each others' sounds (rys, syr, krys, azyr), and are repeated internally throughout the stanza: "Pur," "une," "jusque...." Each line has a dominant consonantal pattern: 1. 1: t, r; 1. 2: r, m; 1. 3: f, k; 1. 4: d, b. In stanza two, where there is a shift in referent from "Mer" to "espace," there is a corresponding shift in the

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dominant vowel pattern from è ("air," "mer," "chair," "fraiche") and e ("Ete," "et," "Eparpillee," "Et") to a ("toi," "Espace," "espace," "arbre," "oiseaux," "la," "la masse," "la," "la marche") and a ("brulante," "Tranquille").

The tone of panegyric, the blending of form and reference through sound effects, and the metaphoric figuration of nature as origin of life ("ruche," "nids,") in the first three stanzas all suggest Valery's identification with Viele-Griffin's pantheistic ideal, but the nature evoked in "Ete" possesses a violent, destructive potential ("Ou creve infiniment la rumeur de la masse / De la mer, de la marche et des troupes des eaux, / Tonnes d'odeurs . . .") which undermines any such naive vision. One senses this violence particularly through Valery's transfor­mation of the conventional "moutons de la mer" trope into "troupe des eaux," suggesting the aggressive advance of an army. The introduction of literary reference in "Ete" further undermines the concept of poetry as a force analogous to that of nature and casts a shadow over the brilliance of Valery's poetic landscape. For the first time voices from the past seem to serve not as sources for creative transformation, but as subversive agents that call into question the validity of Valery's own powers of lyric renewal, and, although these voices re­main submerged in "Ete," their presence becomes increasingly obvious in the following two poems.

In the last line of stanza three, the expression "enfant ravie" brings to mind earlier nineteenth-century poems which the-matize the yearning by a naive consciousness for purification or poetic rebirth through a return to nature. Baudelaire's "Le Voyage," for example, which can be read as an allegory of the development of a poetic imagination, begins with an ac­count by a disillusioned speaker of that immature stage in the poet's career when, disenchanted with his past, he still believes in the uniqueness of his future discoveries. The child-poet imagines he will return from Eldorado with accounts as mar­velous and strange as the objects brought back from the Orient or from the New World by Renaissance explorers. "Le Vo­yage" begins with an ironic evocation of this first, naive stage

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in the voyage of discovery in terms which are echoed in Va-lery's ode:

Pour Yenfant, amoureux de cartes et d'estampes, L'univers est egal a son vaste appetit. Ah! que Ie monde est grand a la clarte des lampes! Aux yeux du souvenir que Ie monde est petit!

Un matin nous partons, Ie cerveau plein de flamme, Le coeur gros de rancune et de desirs amers, Et nous allons, suivant Ie rythme de la lame, Bezant notre infini sur Ie fini des mers:

(•op.cit., p. 198, my italics)79

Even more immediately, Valery's "enfant ravie" suggests the already legendary figure of the child-poet, Rimbaud, who, before abandoning the poetic enterprise completely, sought in "Le Bateau ivre" (see Appendix) to authenticate the claim for uniqueness which Baudelaire had opened to question in "Le Voyage." At first refusing the ironic doubling of speaker and poetic subject characteristic of Baudelaire's verse, Rim­baud's speaker assumes the persona of the poetic vessel as it recounts how it once cut itself off from the past, willfully deafening itself to the disenchantment of its great predecessor in order to enter the elemental forces of nature directly.

Dans Ies clapotements furieux des marees, Moi, l'autre hiver, plus sourd que Ies cerveaux d'enfants, Je courus! . . .

Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures, L'eau verte penetra ma coque de sapin Et des taches de vin bleus et des vomissures Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin.

Et des lors, je me suis baigne dans Ie Poeme De la Mer, infuse d'astres, et lactescent,

79 Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes, p. 198.

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Devorant Ies azurs verts; ou flottaison bleme Et ravie, un noye pensif parfois descend;

(my italics)80

Of course, failure and disillusionment are already implicit in the use of the preterit and the intrusion of the drowned figure, which gains in metaphoric importance as Rimbaud's poem progresses. "Le Bateau ivre" ends, in fact, with an even more dramatic deflation of the dream for radical renewal than does "Le Voyage." The vessel seems to run aground under the weight or cargo of its own imagery, and the speaker abandons the persona of the vessel to admit his yearning for the familiar structures of the past within which the child-self can safely, but sadly fantasize his quest for uniqueness and autonomy:

Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre a cinquante lieues Le rut des Behemots et Ies Maelstroms epais, Fileur eternel des immobilites bleues, Je regrette l'Europe aux anciens parapets!

Si je desire une eau d'Europe, c'est la flache Noire et froide ou vers Ie crepuscule embaume Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses, lache Un bateau frele comme un papillon de mai.

From stanza three on, then, Valery's poem, which begins as an ode to nature, loses the force of its claim for immediacy through subtle allusion to a literary topos already exhausted by the great originals of the nineteenth century.81 He signals

80 Arthur Rimbaud, Oeuvres (Paris: Gamier freres, 1960), pp. 128-29. 81 In a sense, the development of Valery's critical appreciation of Rimbaud

parallels his own growing disillusionment with the lyric enterprise itself. In August of 1891 Valery writes to Gide:

Je suis ivre de la beaute des choses de la mer et je m'efforce d'en saisir l'ame aventureuse et triomphale... Relisez 1'admirable Bateau ivre pour comprendre. Cette poesie est etonnante, veridique et un peu folle—comme la boussole.

He then quotes several stanzas from "Le Bateau ivre," including the one cited above, underlining the last two lines, "Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses, lache / Un bateau frele comme un papillon de mai" (Correspondance, p. 116).

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his awareness of the seductive appeal of the delusive dream by presenting the child-self as a passive, female body, rather than the active male agent of Rimbaud's and Baudelaire's texts. Appetite for absorption is attributed through metaphor to a voracious nature ("Sur Ie golfe qui mange...") and hence indirectly and ironically to the speaker rather than to a newly awakened questing spirit as in the predecessor works. In stanza four the speaker, in an attitude which foreshadows that of the speaker gazing at the exhausted prostitute in "Anne," pauses to contemplate in detail ("jambes," "epaules," "sein dur," "bras," "joue") the body which lies abandoned by the tides in the primal ooze as if inviting a sexual encounter. The voyeuristic parenthesis in which he describes the erotic un­folding of her legs recalls the female figures of "Episode" and "Valvins" and brings to mind the place which this poem holds within Valery's own ironic and self-reflexive literary context,

In September of 1891 he expresses his frustration over having nothing new to say after Poe, Mallarme, and Rimbaud, hinting, nevertheless, that they were somehow deluded: ". . . j'ai Iu Ies plus merveilleux, Poe, Rimbaud, Mallarme, analyse, l^las, leurs moyens, et toujours j'ai rencontre Ies plus belles illusions, a Ieur point de genese et d'enfantement. Ou trouverai-)e une magie plus neuve? Un secret d'etre et de creer qui me surprenne?" (Ibid., p. 126.) By August of 1893 he turns away from literature toward science for a true appreciation of the natural world: "Et si je te disais que j'admire—en litterateur—des pages de geometres, que nul, ni Rimbaud, ni . . . la realite ne m'a donne la vue, la deglutition de la mer—comme d'ouvnr un Laplace au hasard, I'autre jour, a la page des flux et des marees" (ibid., p. 186). By July 1908 he seems to have rejected his youthful enthusiasm for Rimbaud entirely. In speaking of a dinner with Degas, he writes to Gide:

A l'un de ces repas, nous parhons litterature. Il ignorait Rimbaud. Je me suis amuse a Iui dire quelques vers du Bateau tvre. Sa mine etait une mixture comique (et voulue) de desespoir et de blague.

Mais moi! Figure-toi, mon vieux, qu'a mesure que je debitais mon Bateau, )e trouvais cela de plus en plus mgaud. Et pas moi,—Ie bateau! Je n'avais pas revu ni remache ces vers depuis des ans et des ans. Le voila qui reparait a l'entree du port de l'espnt et je Ie trouve ... inutile." (Ibid., p. 417)

Judith Robinson shows in her careful documentation of Valery's unpublished manuscripts that this rejection was only temporary. After his own return to poetry, Valery would once again speak admiringly of Rimbaud. See Rimbaud, ValSry et "l'incoherence harmontque," op.cit.

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as well as suggesting the awakening of desire and the posses­sion by the senses that motivate every creative act.82

In the final stanza of "Ete" Valery alludes much more di­rectly to Rimbaud's "Le Bateau ivre," this time evoking not the promise of discovery, but the imagery of submerged mon­strosity and entrapment which brings Rimbaud's voyage of discovery to an end:

J'ai vu fermenter Ies marais enormes, nasses Ou pourrit dans Ies joncs tout un Leviathan!

Or moi, bateau perdu sous Ies cheveux des anses, Jete par l'ouragan dans l'ether sans oiseau,

Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre a cinquante lieues Le rut des Behemots et Ies Maelstroms epais, Fileur eternel des immobilites bleues, Je regrette 1'Europe aux anciens parapets!83

82 In "Anne," the poem which immediately followed "Ete," in the 1920 edition of the Album, Valery develops the negative implications of this theme much more fully, figuring the sleeping woman as an exhausted prostitute, her body a seductive reef upon which her lovers are destroyed:

A peine effleurent-ils de doigts errants ta vie, Tout Ieur sang Ies accable aussi lourd que la mer, Et quelque violence aux abimes ravie Jette ces blancs nageurs sur tes roches de chair . . .

See my discussion pp. 240 ff. 83 Other commentators have identified Rimbaud's "Bateau ivre" as the

literary reference behind this stanza. Charles Whiting's comparison of the two texts is particularly to the point:

. . . ce que 'Ete' doit surtout a Rimbaud c'est Ie contact si etroit et si intense avec Ie monde. . . . Mais 1'enfant Rimbaud fait un voyage, une odyssee inouie qui dure dix jours et qui Ie porte vers d'incroyables Flo-rides . . . Valery reste sur Ie littoral mediterraneen. Les grands voyages sont absents de sa poesie. Le bateau ivre s'en va dans la tempete et rencontre clairs, trombes, ecroulements d'eaux. La scene marine chez Valery est toujours familiere, peu extraordinaire. Rimbaud creve Ies limites du vocabulaire poetique. . . . Valery, de son cote, limite son vocabulaire, elimine Ies mots voyants. Rimbaud embrasse la folie, un debordement visionnaire que Valery ne se permet jamais. Il ne veut pas

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Thus literary reference is not thrown off or overcome in "Ete," but rather encoded toward the end of the collection in such a way as to suggest that there remains nothing more to say, that Western poetry, at least, is caught in an endless repetition of itself stating its own failure to be original.

"PROFUSION DU SOIR"

In the 1920 edition of the Album, "Ete" concluded the group­ing of "nature" poems begun by "Episode" and was followed somewhat abruptly by "Anne." This poem, set in a prostitute's bedroom, strenuously questions the hope for lyric renewal tentatively posed by all the preceding works. Valery must have been aware of the awkwardness of the transition, because in the Stols edition of 1926 he inserted between "Ete" and "Anne" "Profusion du soir, poeme abandonne," which he had re­worked, as he told J. P. Monod, "pour corser YAlbum de vers anciens."84 "Profusion du soir," one of Valery's greatest works, presents a spectacular staging of the drama of exchange be­tween nature and consciousness elaborated as a series of in­dividual scenes from "Episode" to "Ete."85 Through his pains­taking study of the many unpublished manuscripts of the poem, James Lawler has discovered that, although the poem may have been begun as early as 1898 and then abandoned, it was "reworked and, to all intents and purposes, composed for the first time in the years subsequent to the major poetic works of Valery's maturity."86 From 1926 on "Profusion du soir" appears in all of the editions of the Album without variation.

'perdre son esprit' que ce soit par un contact avec Ie monde reel, par la musique, par la lecture, ou meme par la sensualite. . . . Deja dans 'Ete' Ies I^hemots et Ies Leviathans sont devenus de simples "betes de la mer." (Valery, jeune poete, pp. 107-108) 84 Cited by Lawler, The Poet as Analyst, pp. 75-76. 85 It is not surprising that Paul Claudel was one of the first to recognize

this poem's greatness. In the 1942 edition of the Album, Valery dedicated it to Claudel in appreciation of his praise.

86See Lawler, The Poet as Analyst, p. 75. Lawler's discoveries regarding the dates of composition of "Profusion du soir" are ground-breaking in that

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 229

Profusion du soir,

Poeme Abandonne . . .

Du Soleil soutenant la puissante paresse Qui plane et s'abandonne a l'oeil contemplateur, Regard! . . . Je bois Ie vin celeste, et je caresse Le grain mysterieux de l'extreme hauteur.

Je porte au sein brulant ma lucide tendresse, Je joue avec Ies feux de l'antique inventeur; Mais Ie dieu par degres qui se desinteresse Dans la pourpre de Pair s'altere avec lenteur.

Laissant dans Ie champ pur battre toute l'idee, Les travaux du couchant dans la sphere videe Connaissent sans oiseaux Ieur entiere grandeur.

L'Ange frais de l'oeil nu pressent dans sa pudeur, Haute nativite d'etoile elucidee, Un diamant agir qui berce la splendeur . . .

*

O soir, tu viens epandre un delice tranquille, Horizon des sommeils, stupeur des coeurs pieux, Persuasive approche, insidieux reptile, Et rose que respire un mortel immobile Dont l'oeil dore s'engage aux promesses des cieux

*

Sur tes ardents autels son regard favorable Brule, l'ame distraite, un passe precieux.

Il adore dans l'or qui se rend adorable Batir d'une vapeur un temple memorable,

they throw into question, indeed refute, the only other critical interpretations we have of the poem: Charles Whiting's in " 'Profusion du soir' and 'Le Cimetiere marin,' " PMLA vol. LXXVII, no. 1 (1962), where "Profusion" is understood as an early and inferior version of "Le Cimetiere marin" and Giancarlo Fasano's in " 'Profusion du soir': Genesi di alcune strutture poe-tiche," Saggi e ricerche di letteratura francese, vol. 4 (1963), 279-321, where it is understood as a precursor to La Jeune Parque.

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Suspendre au sombre ether son risque et son recif, Et vole, ivre des feux d'un triomphe passif, Sur Tabime aux ponts d'or rejoindre la Fortune; —Tandis qu'aux bords lointains du Theatre pensif, Sous un masque leger glisse la mince lune. . . .

*

. . . Ce vin bu, l'homme bailie, et brise Ie flacon. Aux merveilles du vide il garde une rancune; Mais Ie charme du soir fume sur Ie balcon Une confusion de femme et de flocon . . .

—O Conseil! . . . Station solennelle! . . . Balance D'un doigt dore pesant Ies motifs du silence! O sagesse sensible entre Ies dieux ardents! —De l'espace trop beau, preserve-moi, balustre! La, m'appelle la mer! . . . La, se penche l'illustre Venus Vertigineuse avec ses bras fondants!

*

Mon oeil, quoiqu'il s'attache au sort souple des ondes, Et boive comme en songe a l'etemel verseau, Garde une chambre fixe et capable des mondes; Et ma cupidite des surprises profondes Voit a peine au travers du transparent berceau Cette femme d'ecume et d'algue et d'or que roule Sur Ie sable et Ie sel la meule de la houle.

Pourtant je place aux cieux Ies ebats d'un esprit; Je vois dans leurs vapeurs des terres inconnues, Des deesses de fleurs feindre d'etre des nues, Des puissances d'orage errer a demi nues, Et sur Ies roches d'air du soir qui s'assombrit, Telle divinite s'accoude. Un ange nage. Il restaure l'espace a chaque tour de rein. Moi, qui jette ici-bas l'ombre d'un personnage,

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 231

Toutefois delie dans Ie plein souverain, Je me sens qui me trempe, et pur qui me dedaigne! Vivant au sein futur Ie souvenir marin, Tout Ie corps de mon choix dans mes regards se baigne!

*

Une crete ecumeuse, enorme et coloree Barre, puissamment pure, et plisse Ie parvis.

Roule jusqu'a mon coeur la distance doree, Vague! . . . Croulants soleils aux horizons ravis, Tu n'irais pas plus loin que la ligne ignoree Qui divise Ies dieux des ombres ou je vis.

*

Une volute lente et longue d'une lieue Semant Ies charmes lourds de sa blanche torpeur Ou se joue une joie, une soif d'etre bleue, Tire Ie noir navire epuise de vapeur. . . .

*

Mais pesants et neigeux Ies monts du crepuscule, Les nuages trop pleins et leurs seins copieux, Toute la majeste de l'Olympe recule, Car voici Ie signal, voici l'or des adieux, Et l'espace a hume la barque minuscule. . . .

*

Lourds frontons du sommeil toujours inacheves, Rideaux bizarrement d'un rubis releves Pour Ie mauvais regard d'un sombre planete, Les temps sont accomplis, Ies desirs se sont tus, Et dans la bouche d'or, baillements combattus, S'ecartelent Ies mots que charmait Ie poete. . . .

Les temps sont accomplis, Ies desirs se sont tus. *

Adieu, Adieu! . . . Vers vous, ü mes belles images, Mes bras tendent toujours !'insatiable port!

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Venez, effarouches, herissant vos plumages, Voiliers aventureux que talonne la mort! Hatez-vous, hatez-vous! . . . La nuit presse! . . . Tantale Va perir! Et la joie ephemere des cieux! Une rose naguere aux tenebres fatale, Une toute derniere rose occidentale Palit affreusement sur Ie soir spacieux. . . .

Je ne vois plus fremir au mat du belvedere Ivre de brise un sylphe aux couleurs de drapeau, Et ce grand port n'est plus qu'un noir debarcadere Couru du vent glace que sent venir ma peau!

Fermez-vous! Fermez-vous! Fenetres offensees! Grands yeux qui redoutez la veritable nuit!

Et toi, de ces hauteurs d'astres ensemencees, Accepte, feconde de mystere et d'ennui, Une maternite muette de pensees. . . .

Lawler interprets the poem as a fully developed contem-platio, "a solemn meditation on a sacred space, the confron­tation of the eye with nature at its most bounteous, in which the self drinks deeply of transcendence":87 . . . "the whole process of contemplation . . . from beginning to end . . . the construction of a mind tracing out the rhythms of light and darkness, sunset and stars, the eternal return of birth and death."88 He identifies the "presiding notion" as the powerful image of the angel in stanza six, "L'ange frais de l'oeil nu," a self "wholly divorced from the contingent," and sees the opening sonnet as a kind of musical overture containing in condensed form the themes and tonal shifts of the poem as a whole.

It is undeniable that the privileged moments evoked in stanza six and in the sestet of the sonnet represent a crucial stage when perception is translated into a figurative abstraction; but since the poem as a whole stresses the loss of that moment as much, if not more, than it does its realization, there exists

87 Lawler, The Poet as Analyst, p. 73. 88 Ibid., p. 78.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 233

here, more obviously than in any poem so far, a critical sub­structure which places even the ideal of self-transcendence in a slightly ironic light. The least one can say is that by including the temporal self as principal actor in the drama of creation, Valery clearly gives priority to process itself over any one stage in that process. The notebook entry which Lawler cites as a key for understanding the angel imagery in the sonnet and in stanza six would suggest that by the time Valery began seri­ously composing for the publication of the Album, that is, sometime after 1912, he no longer viewed man's will to au­tonomy and originality with the same kind of blind optimism he may have around the turn of the century:

Te rappelles-tu Ie temps ou tu etais ange? Ange sans Christ, je me souviens. C'etait une affaire de regard et de volonte, l'idee de tout traverser avec mes yeux. Je n'aimais que Ie feu. Je croyais que rien a la fin ne resisterait a mon regard et desir de regard—ou plutot je croyais que quelqu'un pourrait etre ainsi et que moi j'avais l'idee nette et absolue de celui-la. (1912, C. IV, p. 705)89

In "Profusion du soir" nature even more explicitly than in "Ete" is figured as the larger theatre within which the theatre of the mind performs its transfigurative act ("—Tandis qu'aux bords lointains du Theatre pensif, / Sous un masque leger glisse la mince Iune...," 11.13-14). The pattern of temporal imagery definitively links the poet's creative powers to his rootedness in the natural world. As in "La Fileuse" the poem begins with the brilliant setting of the sun:

Du Soleil soutenant la puissante paresse Qui plane et s'abandonne a l'oeil contemplateur, Regard!. . .

and ends with the arrival of the night:

Fermez-vous! Fermez-vous! Fenetres offensees! Grands yeux qui redoutez la veritable nuit!

85 Cited by Lawler, ibid., p. 79.

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but here the poet's constitutive glance is determined by the duration of natural light. The self which casts its shadow on the ground ("Moi, qui jette ici-bas Pombre d'un personnage," 1. 39) is, then, a necessary player in the drama of transfigu­ration and represents the factor which determines the duration of that drama. When the speaker can no longer see with his natural eye, the profusion of images inspired by his perception of the shifting forms of the natural world disappears:

Adieu, Adieu! . . . Vers vous, ό mes belles images, Mes bras tendent toujours l'insatiable port! Venez, effarouches, herissant vos plumages, Voiliers aventureux que talonne la mort! Hatez-vous, hatez-vous! . . . La nuit presse! . . . Tantale Va perir! . . .

As long as the sun remains in the sky, throughout the first half of the poem, ending with stanza six, the seeing self ex­periences a kind of divine control and claims the power to reverse the natural order of things through the constitutive force of that seeing. In an Icarian surge upward, the clear eye of consciousness changes places with the falling sun (last tercet of the sonnet). From that identification and exchange with the natural principle of order and lucidity another universe is born, an architecture or theatre of the mind ("Laissant dans Ie champ pur battre toute I'idee," 1. 9 of the sonnet) in which the self sees itself as an actor within a play which he is di­recting: "Tout Ie corps de mon choix dans mes regards se baigne!" 1. 43. Past and future are collapsed into the creative present, "Vivant au sein futur Ie souvenir marin," as the tran­scendent angel-self defines the limits of a new space through the athletic articulation of the mind imposing figuration on the universe, "Un ange nage. / Il restaure l'espace a chaque tour de rein."

From stanza seven on, however, after the sun sinks below the horizon into the night of pastness ("Vague!... Croulants soleils aux horizons ravis," 1. 47), the perspective is normal­ized. The ocean below, principle of disorder, rather than a figure of self-imposed risks created out of the clouds by the

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 235

contemplative self ("Suspendre au sombre ether son risque et son recif," 1. 10), takes over as the controlling force, and the poetic vessel is reabsorbed into that disorder: "Et l'espace a hume la barque minuscule . . . ," 1. 58. Throughout the first half of the poem, even at the epiphanic moments of ideal constitutive control, the speaker never allows us to forget the determining role of time in the creative drama. He constantly interrupts to remind us of impending night and of the return to darkness and disorder symbolized by the rising tides. In­deed, this poem, more than any other in the collection, is characterized by striking discontinuities of tone and perspec­tive from beginning to end, as if Valery wished to use the shift in perspective from lyrical to critical voice that we have iden­tified as one of the principles of his mature poetics as a prin­ciple of fragmentation within and between each individual stanza of "Profusion du soir."

The drama of self-transcendance is thus always mediated by the knowledge of its transiency. In the opening sonnet, for example, the appearance of the autonomous angel-self in the tercets is preceded by the metaphor of the sun as fading mon­arch in purple robes, suggesting the old Romantic dream of divine inspiration through union with nature ("Je bois Ie vin celeste") which is now going bad or getting used up ("s'al-tere") like wine when exposed to the air. The first stanza following the opening sonnet begins with a reminder of the imminence of evening and a recognition of man's mortality at the very moment that the eye glowing with reflected light begins to perform its transformative miracle:

O soir tu viens epandre un delice tranquille, Persuasive approche, insidieux reptile,

Et rose que respire un mortel immobile Dont l'oeil dore s'engage aux promesses des cieux.

Throughout the first part the speaker must exort conscious­ness to maintain its control, to guard against the temptation of giving into the call of the purely sensual self figured by the seductive form of Venus rising out of the sea. A true freshening

236 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

of poetic vision would seem to require the sacrifice of the past: "Sur tes ardents autels son regard favorable / Brule, Pame dis­traite, un passe precieux." Yet its determining force can never be fully effaced. Seduction and loss of control are presented in terms of the pastness of Valery's own creative experience as lyric poet and even more specifically and ominously of "La Naissance de Venus," one of the introductory poems of the Album. But whereas the sonnet placed at the beginning of the Album evokes the definition of form out of formlessness, the memory of the sonnet intruding upon the new theatre of the mind evokes the dissolution of Beautiful Form—"Une con­fusion de femme et de flocon . ."Venus Vertigineuse avec-ses bras fondants!" Lines thirty to thirty-one,

Cette femme d'ecume et d'algue et d'or que roule Sur Ie sable et Ie sel la meule de la houle,

transform the image of the sea as generative structure, "Mou-Iins marins" from the preceding poem, "Ete," to stress the destructive, pulverizing force of the same element. During the course of "Profusion du soir" the seductive object of the lyrical speaker's metaphorizing gaze shifts from the sun and its as­sociation with lucidity ("Je caresse / Le grain mysterieux de l'extreme hauteur / Je porte au sein brulant ma lucide ten-dresse") to the sea and its suggestion of loss of control ("Venus Vertigineuse"), to the storm clouds ("Des deesses de fleurs feindre d'etre des nues / Des puissances d'orage errer a demi nues") which bring about, from stanza seven on, the intrusion of the familiar nineteenth-century topos of the shipwreck marking the end of the drama of poetic creation and the quest for originality:

Les nuages trop pleins et leurs seins copieux, Toute la majeste de l'Olympe recule, Car voici Ie signal, voici l'or des adieux, Et l'espace a hume la barque minuscule. . . .

(11. 55-58)

As sleep and exhaustion begin to overtake the lyric voice, pastness in the voice of his most immediate predecessors makes

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 237

itself heard more and more clearly. The exhausted boat—"la barque minuscule"—receding from the speaker's vision is reminiscent of the toy boat at the end of Rimbaud's "Bateau ivre"—"Un bateau frele comme un papillon de mai"—and the imagery of the poet's final devastating farewell to the figures of his imagination suggests that he is bidding farewell to the great lyric challenge posed by Baudelaire as well:

Je ne vois plus fremir au mat du belvedere Ivre de brise un sylphe aux couleurs de drapeau, Et ce grand port n'est plus qu'un noir debarcadere Couru du vent glace que sent venir ma peau! Fermez-vous! Fermez-vous! Fenetres offensees! Grands yeux qui redoutez la veritable nuit! . . .

Here Valery reverses Baudelaire's strikingly original image announcing the beginning of the imaginative quest:

Notre ame est un trois-mats cherchant son Icarie: Une voix retentit sur Ie pont: "Ouvre Poeil!" 9 0

Rather than identifying with the departing vessel, the speaker knows himself as absolutely separate, not man as imaginative center ("Notre ame"), but man as lonely body ("ma peau") shivering on the shore. In one last powerful image reminiscent of the landscapes of Baudelaire's own bleakest visions, he pronounces himself empty of images, "noir debarca­dere / Couru du vent glace." 9 1

90 Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes, p. 199. 91 The image of the self as a deserted port signifies a state of non-being for

Valery. In Inspirations Miditerraneennes he identifies his own birthsite with a port, the sight of which always fills him with a sense of well being:

Je commence par mon commencement. Je suis ne dans un port de moyenne importance, etabli au fond d'un

golfe. . . . Tel est mon site originel, sur lequel je ferai cette reflexion naive que je suis ne dans un de ces lieux oil j'aurais aitne de naitre. . . . Il n'est pas de spectacle pour moi qui vaille ce que Ton voit d'une terrasse ou d'un balcon bien place au-dessus d'un port. (Oeuvres I, p. 1084)

The port is always in his writing the symbol of an ideal place where one can observe the transformation of natural disorder into order through the intervention of human consciousness—the poetic site par excellence:

238 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

Valery brings the lyric voyage to an imperative end when he can no longer see with his natural eye and hence understand with his reason the processes of figuration inspired by that seeing. He demystifies the image of seduction itself, a "sylphe" dancing in the wind, by pointing to its origin in phenomenal reality, a wind-tossed flag on a masthead. This kind of self-ironizing dimension is present throughout "Profusion du soir" and recalls the critical dualism which Valery saw as charac­terizing Baudelaire's own best poetry. The tension between metaphoric and naturalistic levels of expression characteristic of all of the poems in the Album de vers anciens, is perhaps most finely integrated into the dramatic texture of this late addition to the collection. Throughout "Profusion du soir" a non-lyrical mode of thought governed by logic ("Tandis que," 1. 13; "Mais," 1. 17; "quoique," 1. 25; "Pourtant," 1. 32; "Toutefois," 1.40; "car," 1. 57, for example) seems to struggle against the impulse for giving into figurative language signi­fying untroubled lyric flight (bird and ship imagery specifi­cally). The speaker consistently includes the empirical source which motivates his poetic figuration as if to discredit once and for all idealistic theories of poetic creation. Venus or Beautiful Form, for example, is made up of "ecume," "algue," "or," "que roule / Sur Ie sable et Ie sel la meule de la houle." She is "confusion de femme et de flocon." "L'oeil dore," re­sponsible for the transfiguration of sky into ocean in stanza two, suggests both the golden eye of the sun god, the auton­omous monarch whose movements govern the universe, and a natural eye blinded by the reflection from the sun, that is, blinded by the power of its own imaginative vision. The in­ternal rimes of 1. 8, "II adore dans l'or qui se rend adorable," suggest a solipsism which Valery associates with the blindness

Il n'est de site delectable . . . qui vaille a mon regard ce que l'on voit d'une terrasse bien exposee au-dessus d'un port. . . . N'est-ce point ici la frontiere meme oil se rencontrent 1'etat eternellement sauvage, la na­ture physique brute, la presence toujours primitive et la realite toute vierge, avec I'oeuvre des mains de Thomme, avec la terre modifiee, Ies symetries imposees, Ies solides ranges et dresses, l'energie deplacee et contrariee. . . ." ("Regards sur la mer," Oeuvres II, pp. 1339, 1340)

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 23 9

of Romantic idealism. Even the lines directly preceding the appearance of the transcendent angel-self in stanza six:

Je vois . . . Des deesses de fleurs feindre d'etre des nues, Des puissances d'orage errer a demi nues,

lay bare the self-deluding nature of the metaphorizing process by troping Baudelaire, who figures the naive first stage of lyric in just such terms:

Mais Ies vrais voyageurs sont ceux-la seuls qui partent Pour partir; . . .

Ceux-la dont Ies des irs ont la forme des nues, Et qui revent, ainsi qu'un conscrit Ie canon, De vastes voluptes, changeantes, inconnues, Et dont l'esprit humain n'a jamais su Ie nom!

("Le Voyage," my italics)

Valery ends his poem, then, with full awareness of the ephem­eral nature of poetic vision as well as of the treacherous nature of figurative language. When he can no longer see the world with his natural eye, authentic poetic expression ends:

Les temps sont accomplis, Ies desirs se sont tus, Et dans la bouche d'or, baillements combattus, S'ecartelent Ies mots que charmait Ie poete . . .

Les temps sont accomplis, Ies desirs se sont tus.

In the beautiful coda he echoes the end of "Narcisse parle" ("Adieu, adieu ..as he watches these figurative renderings of the world disappear into the night. All of the legends, images, myths of Occidental civilization disappear with them. For Valery the world literally comes to an end when con­sciousness is extinguished: "Tantale va perir!. . . . Une toute derniere rose occidentale / Palit affreusement sur Ie soir spa-cieux...." Yet with that death, the poet as Tantalus reaching toward the seductive but unattainable ultimate poetic word is finally relieved of his torment.

240 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

"ANNE"

"Profusion du soir" provides a useful perspective for reading the last two poems in the collection, "Anne" and "Air de Semiramis," both of which strike one as such extreme expres­sions of familiar Valeryan themes as to suggest self-irony. Indeed, the hyperbolic rhetoric of these concluding poems invites one to interpret the end of the Album as a reflection of the despair Valery felt in 1893 when he abandoned the writing of poetry for solitary meditation of another sort ("une maternite muette de pensees"). 9 2 The change Valery made on the title page from the historically correct Album de vers an-ciens, 1890-1900, to the historically incorrect Album de vers anciens, 1891-1893, for all of the editions subsequent to 1920 would confirm the desire on his part to reflect this early crisis. There is no doubt that the end-of-the-world imagery of the introductory poem ("le dernier arbre brule") becomes an in­creasingly dominant theme toward the end of the Album. It is present in the speaker's despair in the coda of "Profusion du soir" as he watches the light fade ("Une toute derniere rose occidentale / Palit affreusement . . ."), it is suggested by the speaker's perception of the muse as a dead body in "Anne" ("Plus jamais . . . la vieille . . . ne viendra t'arracher"), and finally it is felt in the ruthlessness with which Semiramis de­scribes her own enterprise. ("Ces fourmis sont a moi! Ces villes sont mes choses, / Ces chemins sont Ies traits de mon autorite!")

As we have seen in numerous other poems in the Album ("La Fileuse," "Au bois dormant," "Ete," for example), as long as the subjectivity remains unconscious, it is no more than an empty vessel ("cruche" of "Ete") through and around which the inchoate elements pass indifferent and unordered. But in "Anne" Valery presents the sleeping psyche in the most

92 Francis Scarfe very cautiously proposes a similar connection between Valery's intellectual biography and the pessimistic tone he detects in both " P r o f u s i o n d u s o i r " a n d "Ai r d e Se m i r a m i s . " The Art of Paul Valery: A Study in Dramatic Monologue. Melbourne, London, Toronto: William Heinemann Ltd., 1954, pp. 165 and 159 respectively.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 24 1

fallen terms possible, as an exhausted prostitute ("bouche brisee," "levre violee"), more dead than alive, a figure remi­niscent of the cadaver which Baudelaire names "femme Iu-brique" in "Une Charogne." Even her name has a muted tone suggesting, as Charles Whiting has pointed out, "plutot un etat anonyme qu'une identite quelconque."93 The addition of stanzas seven, eight, nine, and twelve, to the Stols edition of the A lbum in 1926 underscore the theme of prostitution and make Valery's allusion to Baudelaire unmistakable:

Anne

a Andre Lebey

Anne qui se melange au drap pale et delaisse Des cheveux endormis sur ses yeux mal ouverts Mire ses bras lointains tournes avec mollesse Sur la peau sans couleur du ventre decouvert.

Elle vide, elle enfle d'ombre sa gorge lente, Et comme un souvenir pressant ses propres chairs, Une bouche brisee et pleine d'eau brulante Roule Ie gout immense et Ie reflet des mers.

Enfin desemparee et libre d'etre fraiche, La dormeuse deserte aux touffes de couleur Flotte sur son lit bleme, et d'une levre seche, Tette dans la tenebre un souffle amer de fleur.

Et sur Ie linge ou l'aube insensible se plisse, Tombe, d'un bras de glace effleure de carmin, Toute une main defaite et perdant Ie delice A travers ses doigts nus denoues de l'humain.

Au hasard! A jamais, dans Ie sommeil sans hommes Pur des tristes eclairs de leurs embrassements, Elle laisse rouler Ies grappes et Ies pommes Puissantes, qui pendaient aux treilles d'ossements,

Qui riaient, dans Ieur ambre appelant Ies vendanges, Et dont Ie nombre d'or de riches mouvements

9 3 V a l e r y , je u n e po e t e , p. 133.

2 4 2 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

Invoquait la vigueur et les gestes etranges Que pour tuer l'amour inventent les amants. . . .

*

Sur toi, quand Ie regard de leurs ames s'egare, Leur coeur bouleverse change comme leurs voix, Car les tendres apprets de Ieur festin barbare Hatent les chiens ardents qui tremblent dans ces rois. .. .

A peine effleurent-ils de doigts errants ta vie, Tout Ieur sang les accable aussi lourd que la mer, Et quelque violence aux abimes ravie Jette ces blancs nageurs sur tes roches de chair. . . .

Recifs delicieux, lie toute prochaine, Terre tendre, promise aux demons apaises, L'amour t'aborde, arme des regards de lahaine, Pour combattre dans l'ombre une hydre de baisers!

*

Ah, plus nue et qu'impregne une prochaine aurore, Si 1'or triste interroge un tiede contour, Rentre au plus pur de l'ombre ou Ie Meme s'ignore, Et te fais un vain marbre ebauche par Ie jour!

Laisse au pale rayon ta levre violee Mordre dans un sourire un long germe de pleur, Masque d'ame au sommeil a jamais immolee Sur qui la paix soudaine a surpris la douleur!

Plus jamais redorant tes ombres satinees, La vieille aux doigts de feu qui fendent les volets Ne viendra t'arracher aux grasses matinees Et rendre au doux soleil tes joyeux bracelets. . . .

Mais suave, de l'arbre exterieur, la palme Vaporeuse remue au dela du remords, Et dans Ie feu, parmi trois feuilles, l'oiseau calme Commence Ie chant seul qui reprime les morts.

Line twelve, "Tette dans la tenebre un souffle amer de fleur," signals the literary source (Les Fleurs du mal) from which

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 243

Valery's central figure derives its antithetical energy. Echoes from Baudelaire's lyric poetry can be heard throughout "Anne." Indeed, this penultimate work is saturated with allusions to the predecessor whose influence Valery never acknowledged. For a poet who would burn the past on the altars of the present, the dominance of specific literary reference in this poem is striking:

"Anne," Stanza 2:

"Au Lecteur": (Baudelaire, p. 81, op.cit.)

"Une Charogne": (Ibid., p. 106)

"Un Voyage a Cythere": (.Ibid., p. 188)

"Anne," Stanza 6:

"Le Voyage": (Baudelaire, p. 202)

"Anne," Stanzas 7 and 9:

Elle vide, elle enfle d'ombre sa gorge lente, Et comme un souvenir pressant ses propres chairs, Une bouche brisee et pleine d'eau brulante Roule Ie gout immense et Ie reflet des mers.

Ainsi qu'un debauche pauvre qui baise et mange Le sein martyrise d'une antique catin, Nous volons au passage un plaisir clandestin Que nous pressons bien fort comme une vieille orange.

Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague, Ou s'elan§ait en petillant;

On eut dit que Ie corps, enfle d'un souffle vague, Vivait en se multipliant.

Et ce monde rendait une etrange musique, Comme l'eau courante et Ie vent. . . .

Je sentis, a l'aspect de tes membres flottants, Comme un vomissement, remonter vers mes dents Le long fleuve de fiel des douleurs anciennes,

Devant toi, pauvre diable au souvenir si cher. . . .

Qui riaient, dans Ieur ambre appelant Ies vendanges, Et dont Ie nombre d'or de riches mouvements Invoquait la vigueur et Ies gestes etranges Que pour tuer l'amour inventent Ies amants . . .

. . . "Par ici! vous qui voulez manger Le Lotus parfume! c'est ici qu'on vendange Les fruits miraculeux dont votre coeur a faim";

Sur toi, quand Ie regard de leurs ames s'egare, Leur coeur bouleverse change comme leurs voix, Car Ies tendres apprets de Ieur festin barbare Hatent Ies chiens ardents qui tremblent dans ces rois.

Recifs delicieux, lie toute prochaine,

244 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

"Hymne a la Beaute": (Baudelaire, pp. 99; 100)

"Une Charogne" (Ibid., p. 106)

XXIV: (Ibid., p. 102)

"Un Voyage a Cythere": (Ibid., pp. 187; 188)

"Une Martyre": (Ibid., p. 183)

Terre tendre, promise aux demons apaises, L'amour t'aborde, arme des regards de la haine, Pour combattre dans l'ombre une hydre de baisers!

Le Destin charme suit tes jupons comme un chien;

L'amoureux pantelant incline sur sa belle A l'air d'un moribond caressant son tombeau.

Derriere Ies rochers une chienne inquiete Nous regardait d'un oeil fache,

Epiant Ie moment de reprendre au squelette Le morceau qu'elle avait lache.

Je m'avance a l'attaque, et je grimpe aux assauts, Comme apres un cadavre un choeur de vermisseaux, Et je cheris, ü bete implacable et cruelle! Jusqu'a cette froideur par ou tu m'es plus belle!

Quelle est cette tie triste et noire?—Cest Cythere, Nous dit-on, un pays fameux dans Ies chansons, Eldorado banal de tous Ies vieux gar^ons. Regardez, apres tout, c'est une pauvre terre.

Un desert rocailleux trouble par des cris aigres.

Dans ton lie, ü Venus! je n'ai trouve debout Qu'un gibet symbolique ou pendait mon image . . . —Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et Ie courage De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans degout!

L'homme vindicatif que tu n'as pu, vivante, Malgre tant d'amour, assouvir,

Combla-t-il sur ta chair inerte et complaisante L'immensite de son desir?

In Baudelaire's apparently idealistic poems placed at the beginning of Les Fleurs du trial the muse is figured sometimes as an angelic sister-self, but more often as her opposite, a powerfully aggressive, even threatening belle dame sans merci (murderess, giantess, tiger, flame, poison) whom the en­thralled masculine speaker contemplates in a state of intense erotic excitation. Through some aspect of her being—hair, make-up, skirt, perfume, jewels, but most frequently eyes—

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 245

he is transported beyond the narrow confines of the erotic situation ("alcove obscur" of "La Chevelure," for example) to a superior level of spiritual awareness, where the world assumes, for a moment at least, through metaphoric figura­tion, a character of sonorous, rhythmic, prelapsanan order and permanence.94 At this moment the muse often is replaced by an androgynous figure or an idealized masculine form—a kind of original Adam, and the eroticism which inspires the lyric impulse is displaced into nature. From these works one is tempted to assume a concept of poetic language as an in­strument for the ultimate recuperation of the past and sal­vation of the self caught in a crass, materialistic world from which spiritual value has disappeared. In the poems placed in positions (introductory and concluding) which give Les Fleurs du mal its distinctive, self-critical structure, however, the muse as a medium of transcendence is explicitly discredited (in "Al-legorie" she is called "vierge infeconde"; in "Un Voyage a Cythere," "desert rocailleux"; or in "Au Lecteur," "catin," for example) and her continuing attraction for the poet-lover is a sign of his degeneracy:

Ce gueux, cet histrion en vacances, ce drole, Parce qu'il sait jouer artistement son role,

("La Beatrice," p. 187)

54 See, for example, the following stanzas from "La Chevelure," Oeuvres completes, p. 101.

J'irai la-bas ïà l'arbre et l'homme, pleins de seve, Se pament longuement sous l'ardeur des climats; Fortes tresses, soyez la houle qui m'enleve! Tu contiens, mer d'ebene, un eblouissant reve De voiles, de rameurs, de flammes et de mats:

Un port retentissant ïà mon ame peut boire A grands flots Ie parfum, Ie son et la couleur; Ou Ies vaisseaux, glissant dans l'or et dans la moire, Ouvrent leurs vastes bras pour embrasser la gloire D'un del pur ïý fremit l'eternelle chaleur.

For Baudelaire, as for Valery, the port is a privileged site, a symbol of plen­itude, harmony and well-being.

246 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

The muse is figured as the self-deluding project of the poet's imagination, an objectification of his inauthentic desire to escape from his doomed, temporal condition. A closer look at any one of the poems in Les Fleurs du mal reveals, however, that no clear-cut distinction between idealism and skepticism applies. Most of the poems in "Spleen et Ideal" as well as those in key structural positions have a self-problematizing dimension far more obvious than Valery's own. Indeed, the ironic voice of a detached, philosophical self capable of ob­jectifying the discovery of its permanently exiled temporal condition in an imagery striking for its concreteness and im­mediacy characterizes all of Baudelaire's most achieved works and presents him as a formidable predecessor for a poet who conceived of his own originality in terms of his critical con­frontation with all forms of nineteenth-century idealism. Moreover, the range of poems from Les Fleurs du mal alluded to in "Anne," the addition of stanzas seven through nine supplying a prolonged metaphor suggesting the poet's destruc­tion at the hands of his own muse, and the addition of stanza twelve with its ironic deflation of Romantic themes ("La vieille aux doigts de feu" is the concierge bringing Anne breakfast, Valery playfully informed Henry Charpentier) 95 indicate Va­lery's appreciation of the complexity of Baudelaire's challenge to his own project.

The most directly mediating text behind "Anne," the one which contains all of the major tropes of Valery's poem, is Baudelaire's "Les Bijoux." One of the poems destined for a place in "Spleen et Ideal" before being censured, one of the "epaves" of Les Fleurs du mal, it confirms the lack of clear-cut distinction between Baudelaire's seemingly idealistic poems and those which explicitly thematize their blindness. Double vision characterizes the Baudelairean stance generally and ac­counts for the uncanny force of his poetry which always leaves the reader ill at ease regarding his own critical position:

95 See Walzer, La Poesie . . . , p. 102.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 247

Les Bijoux ("Anne")

La tres-chere etait nue, et, connaissant mon coeur, Stanza 1 EUe n'avait garde que ses bijoux sonores, Stanza 12 Dont Ie riche attirail Iui donnait I'air vainqueur Stanzas 7-9 Qu'ont dans leurs jours heureux Ies esdaves des Mores.

Quand il jette en dansant son bruit vif et moqueur, Ce monde rayonnant de metal et de pierre Me ravit en extase, et j'aime a la fureur Stanza 12 Les choses ou Ie son se mele a la lumiere.

Elle etait done couchee et se laissait aimer, Et du haut du divan elle sourait d'aise A mon amour pro fond et doux comme la mer, Stanzas 8-9 Qui vers elle montait comme vers sa falaise.

Les yeux fixes sur moi, comme un tigre dompte, D'un air vague et reveur elle essayait des poses, Et la candeur unie a la lubridte Donnait un charme neuf a ses metamorphoses;

Et son bras et sa jambe, et sa cuisse et ses reins, Polis comme de l'huile, onduleux comme un cygne, Passaient devant mes yeux clairvoyants et sereins; Et son ventre et ses seins, ces grappes de ma vigne, Stanzas 5-6

S'avan^aient, plus calins que Ies Anges du mal, Pour troubler Ie repos ou mon ame etait mise, Et pour la deranger du rocher de cristal Ou, calme et solitaire, elle s'Stait assise. Stanzas 7-9

Je croyais voir unis par un nouveau dessin Stanza 10 Les hanches de l'Antiope au buste d'un imberbe, Tant sa taille faisait ressortir son bassin. Sur ce teint fauve et brun, Ie fard etait superbe!

—Et la lampe s'etant resignee a mourir, Comme Ie foyer seul illuminait la chambre, Chaque fois qu'il poussait un flamboyant soupir, Il inondait de sang cette peau couleur d'ambre!

(op.cit., pp. 217-18, my italics)

248 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

"Les Bijoux" suggests itself as an antithetically generative text for "Anne" because, although the dramatic situation of the two poems is ostensibly the same—a fully lucid masculine figure stares or gazes at the nude body of a woman wearing only her jewelry and lying on a couch in a provocative pose (poses)—the attitude of the speaker toward the woman, and hence the implicit imaginative stance of the poet, in the two poems are entirely different. The titles announce that differ­ence immediately. For Baudelaire the muse figure is significant for the symbolic potential she carries with her as part of her physical being, not only for the beauty of her earthly form. It is the play of lamplight on her jewels and against her tawny, animal-like skin which excites desire in the speaker. Rather than as specific woman ("Anne"), his title, as in the case of so many of Baudelaire's poems ("Le Poison," "Le Beau na-vire," "La Beatrice," "La Chevelure," etc.), proposes her as transcendent potential. Unlike Valery's speaker, who ad­dresses the woman in the present tense as if he had just come upon her sleeping form at the moment the poem begins, Baudelaire's speaker is recounting in the past tense an event which holds a kind of fetishistic value in his conscious mem­ory, one which he has recounted before ("Elle etait done cou-chee .. .") and will recount again to stimulate his erotic fan­tasy. "La tres-chere..." is an intimate of the speaker's creative imagination; Valery's speaker, on the other hand, seems to have no relationship with Anne. Her eyes are closed, and he observes her coldly as he would any other "objet trouve." In "Les Bijoux" lover and woman stare at each other with wide-open eyes, giving the impression that they exist in a state of specular dependency. The body of the woman is described as a polished surface, "Polis comme de l'huile," and her eyes are those of a hypnotized beast, "Les yeux fixes sur moi, comme un tigre dompte." Her seductive movements and seemingly endless potential for metaphoric transformation ("Esclaves des Mores," "falaise," "tigre," "cygne," "Anges du mal," "Antiope au buste d'un imberbe") can only be interpreted, then, as projections of the lover's will. She is the vessel in whom he even discovers his own origins. In Valery's poem,

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 249

on the other hand, the sleeping woman lets go, abandons the very aspects of reality which he seems to cherish. She has lost contact with the natural world and to follow her would be to lose oneself, like the lovers who cast themselves on the reefs of her flesh in stanzas eight and nine. In unpublished sketches for stanzas eight and nine, much more ferocious for their evocation of the degradation of the lovers, Valery specifically identifies these lovers as deluded followers of Mallarme:

Ivres de Ie savoir, fous de se meconnaitre, O travaux ruisselants, ecume des baisers! Eux, sur Ieur propre abime eleves par ton etre, D'un long frisson vetus tenant Ies bras croises

A la mortelle crime, ils atteignent la hache, lis gemissent! Mais Pame aux doux dilapides, Par un tressaillement d'ou la foudre s'arrache L'arme triste a la mort crache 50« coup de des.

(my italics)96

The intensely solipsistic relationship of Baudelaire's specular subject is confirmed by the shift in imagery as "Les Bijoux" continues. Whereas in stanza three the lover is figured as the ocean and the woman a fortress on a cliff toward which he rises, in stanza six, their positions are reversed: his female psyche ("mon ame," "elle") is seated on a crystal rock as the muse, now multiplied into a host of figurative possibilities, advances toward him/her. Her ultimate transformation into the hermaphroditic half-woman, half-boy figure appears to resolve the tension of male/female polarity on which the pat­tern of imagery has developed thus far at the same time that it releases the lover from the contingencies of time, place, and physical identity. To the body of the woman is attached the bust of a beardless boy:

Je croyais voir unis par un nouveau dessin Les hanches de l'Antiope au buste d'un imberbe.97

96 Ms., B.N., Album de vers anciens, f. 149. 97 Antiope is a particularly suggestive reference for a poem structured around

specular imagery. In Ovid VI, Zeus in the form of a satyr impregnates An-

250 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

But at this point, just when separation between desire and object of desire seems to be overcome, the poem returns abrupdy to the temporal situation it seeks to overcome, "—Et la lampe s'etant resignee a mourir." The speaker's tone of self-irony which dominates the beginning of the poem ("La tres-chere etait nue. . . . Elle etait done couchee . . .") returns to usurp the role of the metaphorizing lover. Rather than translating the woman into figures from some primitive past, however, the speaker transforms the lover himself into embers from a dying fire, symbol of exhausted physical passion. The lamp, of controlled reflection, has gone out, and only the glow from the fire remains. This is a cruel exchange which figuratively kills its object at the moment it illuminates her as pure physical reality: "II inondait de sang cette peau couleur d'ambre." Thus Baudelaire's poem is structured around a double vision as the detached philosopher gazes back into his memory to recreate in full consciousness of its transiency the deluded but gener­ative vision of the Romantic idealist. It is a poetry which acknowledges its own failure at the same time that it pays nostalgic tribute to the ideal motivating its inception, and it does so in precisely the same temporal terms which we have seen govern the drama of creativity and loss in Valery's "Pro­fusion du soir."

In "Anne" Valery recognizes Baudelaire's insight into his own dilemma by adopting his predecessor's tropes for failure in stanzas seven through nine but adopts an ambiguous per­spective for viewing the self-deluding nature of the artistic process. The return of daylight at the end of "Anne" spells both an ending of the sleeping prostitute's escape into the deluded world of innocent sleep and a reprieve for the speaker who is rescued, so to speak, from the temptation of sinking into the dream world of the corpse-like sleeping figure. As long as creativity is understood as a radically unique (self-contained) experience, the imaginative project is doomed to solipsism and degenerative repetition: "Ainsi qu'un debauche

tiopus with twins. The word itself—Anti op —suggests "against sight," that which is opposite from one's eye.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 25 1

pauvre qui baise et mange / Le sein martyrise d'une antique catin." In Valery's poem the muse is shown to have no inherent potential for renewal as long as she remains shut off from the natural theatre within which her empirical and perceiving self exists. She is an emptiness rather than a fullness: "Elle vide, elle enfle d'ombre sa gorge lente / Et comme un souvenir pres-sant ses propres chairs...." Her inwardness blinds her to the vibrant forms of the real world ("La dormeuse deserte aux touffes de couleur . . . / Elle laisse rouler Ies grappes et Ies pommes / Puissantes, qui pendaient aux treilles d'osse-ments, / Qui riaient, dans Ieur ambre appelant Ies vendanges") and exemplifies the kind of unseeing vision nourishing itself on pastness, absence, and deadening habit which Valery de­scribes at length in the essay on Berthe Morisot:

L'homme vit et se meut dans ce qu'il voit; mais il ne voit que ce qu'il songe. . . . lis ne regoivent de leurs sensations que 1'ebranlement qu'il faut pour passer a tout autres choses, a ce qui Ies hante . . . Ie souvenir chasse Ie present... la signification des corps chasse Ieur forme. . . . (Oeuvres II, p. 1303)

. . . Pourquoi veut-on que Ie fond, Ie pretendu fond de nous-memes, l'apparence de fond que nous trouvons en nous . . . soit plus important a observer . . . que la figure de ce monde? Cet abime ou s'aventure Ie plus inconstant, Ie plus credule de nos sens, ne serait-il pas au contraire Ie lieu et Ie produit de nos impressions Ies plus vaines, Ies plus brutes, Ies plus grossieres, etant celles dont Ies appareils sont confus et Ie plus eloignes de la precision et de la coordination qui se trouvent dans Ies autres, desquels ce que nous appelons Ie Monde Exterieur est Ie chef-d'oeuvre? (p. 1305)

As I have already pointed out, Valery's title denies his sub­ject any symbolic potential. He presents her literal condition as a body asleep on a bed—"cheveux endormis," "yeux mal ouverts," "peau sans couleur," "ventre decouvert"—whose attributes hold none of the otherworldly promise of Baude-

2 5 2 · T HE TRA NS FORMATIVE DRAMA

laire's dark-skinned and musky muse. Her eyes are closed. She is present, not as a projection of the speaker's self, but as an independent form. Metaphoric figuration is distinctly ab­sent in the opening stanza. She is nothing more than the phys­ical reality of her body with no self-awareness: "tiede contour . . . ou Ie Meme s'ignore," as she will be described in stanza ten. When metaphor is applied, its function is to embellish her physical description, rather than to propose her as some kind of guide figure.

But Valery's speaker expresses no horror regarding the emp­tiness of the poetic form, as Baudelaire's does in "Un Voyage a Cythere," for example. As an emblem for an inauthentic creative stance—poetry turned inward, sucking on a dream-flower like an infant—Anne is charged with negative value, but as simple object of the speaker's gaze, she is as worthy a subject as any other. The speaker exhorts her to remain as she is, pure exteriority, "Rentre au plus pur de l'ombre ou Ie Meme s'ignore / Et te fais un vain marbre ebauche par Ie jour!" Reversing Baudelaire's "harvest" trope in stanza five, Valery has the sleeping form let go of the fruits symbolizing access to forbidden mysteries ("... Par ici!, vous qui voulez manger/ Le Lotus parfume! c'est ici qu'on vendange / Les fruits mi-raculeux dont votre coeur a faim," "Le Voyage"), and as she does so the literary reference is naturalized, transformed into metaphors for parts of her body, draped in abandon on the bed, and recalling the beautiful form of the female body in "Ete." Satisfied with a visual evocation of her reality as sen­suous form, Valery rejects Baudelaire's seductive Romantic muse in order to recreate her in the light of natural reality. The speaker's eye is synonymous not with the lamplight shin­ing on the jewels, but with the natural light of day which sketches her outline ("un vain marbre ebauche par Ie jour"). Renewal lies outside that room, and perhaps outside poetic discourse, in the precision of the bird's song perched among three leaves of a wind-blown palm tree. The last stanza of "Anne" seems to answer the question posed at the end of the essay on Berthe Morisot:

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 253

Imaginons que la vision des choses qui nous entourent ne nous soit pas habituelle, qu'elle ne nous soit concedee que par exception, que nous n'obtenions que comme d'un miracle la connaissance du jour, celle des etres, des cieux, du soleil, des visages. Que dirons-nous de ces revelations, et en quels termes parlerions-nous de cet infini de donnees merveilleusement ajustees? Que dirions-nous du monde net, complet et solide, si ce monde ne venait que par instants exceptionnels traverser, eblouir, ecraser Ie monde instable et incoherent de l'ame seule? ( I bid., p. 1306)

The flower from which Valery would draw sustenance is not Baudelaire's literary bloom transfigured: a vegetative form obscurely absent as language inherited from the past and yet present through its inevitable evocation of the world of phys­ical reality:

Je voulais faire concevoir qu'une vie vouee aux couleurs et aux formes n'est pas a priori moins profonde, ni moins admirable qu'une vie passee dans Ies ombres "inte-rieures," et dont la matiere mysterieuse n'est peut-etre que l'obscure conscience des vicissitudes de la vie vege­tative, la resonance des incidents de l'existence viscerale. (.I bid . )

Despite the positive note on which "Anne" seems to end, however, one is struck by the unusual weight of literary al­lusion in this poem and by the generally negative implications of its imagery. Valery has never expressed the nature of lyric invention in such fallen terms as he does in "Anne," even going so far as to figure himself or dawn, the principle re­sponsible for lyric renewal, as an old "entremetteuse" ("vieille aux doigts de feu"). When Anne sleeps, she loses herself to one kind of beautiful delusion, but when she awakes, she resumes her activities as prostitute mechanically plying her trade. More than any other poem in the A l bum, "Anne" sounds a biographical note, recalling the disillusionment of the Valery of Oct. 1892, who decided to abandon the writing of poetry altogether. It is almost as if in rejecting Baudelaire's project

2 5 4 · THE T RA NSF O R MATI VE D RA MA

Valery has lost or used up his own enthusiasm for lyric expres­sion. The final stanza rings false, an afterthought once the real poem is over. The poem as a whole seems devitalized— too explicit, too literal, at times even didactic. Ironically the stanza most striking for its figurative energy is the one which looks back at a dynamic engagement between lover and muse reminiscent of the idealized moments in Baudelaire's poetry and no longer accessible or acceptable to this speaker.

Elle laisse rouler Ies grappes et Ies pommes Puissantes, qui pendaient aux treilles d'ossements,

Qui riaient, dans Ieur ambre appelant Ies vendanges, Et dont Ie nombre d'or de riches mouvements Invoquait la vigueur et Ies gestes etranges Que pour tuer l'amour inventent Ies amants. . . .

It is the stanza which transforms "ossements" into "ven­danges," the harvest trope from "Les Bijoux" and the only stanza written in the nostalgic past tense.

Significantly, Valery does not choose to end the poeticized history of his creative development on the passively negative tone struck by the figure of the exhausted muse in "Anne," but on a strident demand for autonomy spoken in the first person by Semiramis, the Queen of Babylon, who would build a monument out of the elements of her own body. Together "Anne," the absent, sleeping psyche, and "Semiramis," the awakened will to power, form a kind of self-ironizing diptych representing the two poles of the creative cycle dramatized in "Profusion du soir" or emblematized by the divided body of "Baignee," and they bring the Album to an end on a decidedly ambiguous note.

"AIR DE SEMIRAMIS"

Air de Semiramis

A Camille Mauclair.

Des l'aube, chers rayons, mon front songe a vous ceindre! A pleine il se redresse, il voit d'un oeil qui dort

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 255

Sur Ie marbre absolu, Ie temps pale se peindre, L'heure sur moi descendre et croitre jusqu'a l'or. . . .

*

. . . "Existe! . . . Sois enfin toi-meme!" dit l'Aurore, "O grande ame, il est temps que tu formes un corps! Hate-toi de choisir un jour digne d'edore, Parmi tant d'autres feux, tes immortels tresors!

Dej a, contre la nuit lutte l'apre trompette! Une levre vivante attaque l'air glace; L'or pur, de tour en tour, eclate et se repete, Rappelant tout l'espace aux splendeurs du passe!

Remonte aux vrais regards! Tire-toi de tes ombres, Et comme du nageur, dans Ie plein de la mer, Le talon tout-puissant l'expulse des eaux sombres, Toi, frappe au fond de l'etre! Interpelle ta chair,

Traverse sans retard ses invincibles trames, Epuise l'infini de l'effort impuissant, Et debarrasse-toi d'un desordre de drames Qu'engendrent sur ton lit Ies monstres de ton sang!

J'accours de IOrient suffire a ton caprice! Et je te viens offrir mes plus purs aliments; Que d'espace et de vent ta flamme se nourrisse! Viens te joindre a l'eclat de mes pressentiments!"

*

—Je reponds! . . . Je surgis de ma profonde absence! Mon coeur m'arrache aux morts que frolait mon sommeil, Et vers mon but, grand aigle eclatant de puissance, Il m'emporte! . . . Je vole au-devant du soleil!

Je ne prends qu'une rose et fuis . . . La belle fleche Au flanc! . . . Ma tete enfante une foule de pas . . . lis courent vers ma tour favorite, ou la fraiche Altitude m'appelle, et je Iui tends Ies bras!

Monte, ü Semiramis, maitresse d'une spire Qui d'un coeur sans amour s'elance au seul honneur!

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Ton oeil imperial a soif du grand empire A qui ton sceptre dur fait sentir Ie bonheur. . . .

Ose l'abime! . . . Passe un dernier pont de roses! Je t'approche, peril! Orgueil plus irrite! Ces fourmis sont a moi! Ces villes sont mes choses, Ces chemins sont Ies traits de mon autorite!

Cest une vaste peau de fauve que mon royaume! J'ai tue Ie lion qui portait cette peau; Mais encor Ie fumet du feroce fantome Flotte charge de mort, et garde mon troupeau!

Enfin, j'offre au soleil Ie secret de mes charmes! Jamais il n'a dore de seuil si gracieux! De ma fragilite je goute Ies alarmes Entre Ie double appel de la terre et des cieux.

Repas de ma puissance, intelligible orgie, Quel parvis vaporeux de toits et de forets Place aux pieds de la pure et divine vigie, Ce calme eloignement d'evenements secrets!

L'ame enfin sur ce faite a trouve ses demeures! O de quelle grandeur, elle tient sa grandeur Quand mon coeur souleve d'ailes interieures Ouvre au ciel en moi-meme une autre profondeur!

Anxieuse d'azur, de gloire consumee, Poitrine, gouffre d'ombre aux narines de chair, Aspire cet encens d'ames et de fumee Qui monte d'une ville analogue a la mer!

Soleil, soleil, regarde en toi rire mes ruches! L'intense et sans repos Babylone bruit, Toute rumeurs de chars, clairons, chaines de cruches Et plaintes de la pierre au mortel qui construit.

Qu'ils flattent mon desir de temples implacables, Les sons aigus de scie et Ies cris des ciseaux, Et ces gemissements de marbres et de cables Qui peuplent l'air vivant de structure et d'oiseaux!

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Je vois mon temple neuf naitre parmi Ies mondes, Et mon voeu prendre place au sejour des destins; Il semble de soi-meme au ciel monter par ondes Sous Ie bouillonnement des actes indistincts.

Peuple stupide, a qui ma puissance m'enchaine, Helas! mon orgueil meme a besoin de tes bras! Et que ferait mon coeur s'il n'aimait cette haine Dont l'innombrable tete est si douce a mes pas?

Plate, elle me murmure une musique telle Que Ie calme de l'onde en fait de sa fureur, Quand elle se rapaise aux pieds d'une mortelle Mais qu'elle se reserve un retour de terreur.

En vain j'entends monter contre ma face auguste Ce murmure de crainte et de ferocite: A l'image des dieux la grande ame est injuste Tant elle s'appareille a la necessite!

Des douceurs de l'amour quoique parfois touchee, Pourtant nulle tendresse et nuls renoncements Ne me laissent captive et victime couchee Dans Ies puissants liens du sommeil des amants!

Baisers, baves d'amour, basses beatitudes, O mouvements marins des amants confondus, Mon coeur m'a conseille de telles solitudes, Et j'ai place si haut mes jardins suspendus

Que mes supremes fleurs n'attendent que la foudre Et qu'en depit des pleurs des amants Ies plus beaux, A mes roses, la main qui touche tombe en poudre: Mes plus doux souvenirs batissent des tombeaux!

Qu'ils sont doux a mon coeur Ies temples qu'il enfante Quand tire lentement du songe de mes seins, Je vois un monument de masse triomphante Joindre dans mes regards l'ombre de mes desseins!

Battez, cymbales d'or, mamelles cadencees, Et roses palpitant sur ma pure paroi!

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Que je m'evanouisse en mes vastes pensees, Sage Semiramis, enchanteresse et roi!

"Air de Semiramis" begins where "Anne" ends, with the arrival of dawn commanding the queen's return to conscious­ness and to creative activity. One is invited to read the poem's dramatic event as an analogue for the project which it con­cludes, that is, for the creation of the Album de vers anciens itself, the work which represented Valery's return to poetry after some twenty years of symbolic sleep. The sea of pastness in which Anne floats is the element which Semiramis struggles resolutely to leave behind. In stanzas four and five Dawn, the old entremetteuse of "Anne," commands her,

Remonte aux vrais regards! Tire-toi de tes ombres, Et comme du nageur, dans Ie plein de la mer, Le talon tout-puissant l'expulse des eaux sombres, Toi, frappe au fond de l'etre! Interpelle ta chair,

Et debarrasse-toi d'un desordre de drames Qu'engendrent sur ton lit Ies monstres de ton sang!

And as she surges upward toward the sun, constitutive prin­ciple of the universe, she answers in a figurative language reminiscent of "Anne":

Je reponds! . . . Je surgis de ma profonde absence! Mon coeur m'arrache aux morts que frolait mon sommeil.

Yet despite the triumphant note on which the poem ends, where Woman, Queen, Tower, and Sun merge into one splen­did entity testifying to the creator's inventive powers, "Battez, cymbales d'or, mamelles cadencees, / Et roses palpitant sur ma pure paroi!" most of the poem focuses on the cost to the realm below which building the tower requires rather than on the splendor of the achievement. Indeed, the singularly un-self-critical Semiramis seems to derive a kind of sadistic pleas­ure from looking back at the ruins out of which her authority is constructed rather than upward toward the future of her imaginative project: "Ces fourmis sont a moi! Ces villes sont

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 259

mes choses, / Ces chemins sont Ies traits de mon autorite!"98

Most of the queen's analogizing activity demonstrating the power of human consciousness to transform inchoate phe­nomena into constructs which defy entropy is centered on the instruments of her enterprise, what she calls, using a scriptural term, "les traits de mon autorite." And, if we continue the analogy between Valery's and Semiramis' projects, these fig­ures for the act of figuration are seen as both victims and potential assailants, ready to attack her from behind at the very moment that she proclaims her autonomy. As blind as she appears to be to her own limitations, the queen is, never­theless, obsessively preoccupied by the potential power of be­trayal which her temporarily subdued kingdom possesses. In stanza eleven, for example, she proclaims her people, "une vaste peau de fauve," yet, at the same time, the smell of the smoke from the lion's slaughter carries with it the reminder of the lion's power. Indeed, the smell of the burning body is so strong that it serves to guard the new, apparently subdued people, now figured as "troupeau." The transformation of

98 The violence inflicted on the world from such an example of deluded self-worship is much more apparent in Valery's re-working of the Semiramis legend into a melodrama in three acts with music by Arthur Honnegger, presented at the Paris Opera House in 1934:

PREMIER ACTE

LE CHAR

Decor

Une salle immense. Portes massives. A gauche, enorme idole de la Deesse Directo, figure du style Ie plus barbare, visage de femme et corps de poisson. A droite, face a I'ldole, un trone en forme de divan, dont Ie meuble se compose de groupes de colombes d'or . . .

ENTREE DE SEMIRAMIS

La musique doit creer une atmosphere de puissance et d'orgueil sou-verain. La Reine parait sur un char leger ou depouilles et tetes coupees sont suspendues, et qui est traine par huit rois captifs enchaines d'or.

Elle est en armure noire ecaillee. Une sorte d'egide d'or, avec colombes d'or eployees aux epaules. Casque qui masque Ie bas du visage, surmonte d'une tres haute defense d'ivoire. Carquois en forme de poisson. Elle t i e n t Ie fl e a u d ' u n e m a i n ; d e l ' a u t r e , s o n g r a n d a r c . . . . (Semiramis, Oeuvres I, pp. 182-83)

260 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

lion into smoke, nevertheless, creates a new kind of threat, "feroce fantome," a reminder of the power of the figure to rise out of the ashes to attack its master in unexpected ways. In stanza thirteen the kingdom as smoking beast becomes an orgiastic meal on whose power the queen gorges herself to acquire strength for her flight upward toward her own orig­inality.

In the second half of the poem the master/slave relationship of queen to people undergoes a threatening reversal. In stanza fifteen Semiramis sees herself as an immense, but empty idol, "Poitrine, gouffre d'ombre aux narines de chair," a figure again reminiscent of the corpse-like prostitute of "Anne." The smoke of the sacrificed lion has become both the incense made of her subject's destruction that the grotesque idol breathes and the sea rising around the base of the monument she is building to her own glory. Stanzas sixteen through eighteen, which evoke the activity of the city below are characterized by sounds offensive to the ear, noise rather than music, and in stanza nineteen Semiramis cries out in angry frustration over her dependence upon these increasingly powerful "slaves," for an instant even questioning her own identity as she won­ders how it would be not to love one's hatred and sense of dominion over them. And with this question the slaves on whom she walked as if they were a royal rug in stanza eleven come alive as hydra, the many-headed monster born of Se-miramis' own restlessly analogizing mind.

Peuple stupide, a qui ma puissance m'enchaine, Helas! mon orgueil meme a besoin de tes bras! Et que ferait mon coeur s'il n'aimait cette haine Dont Pinnombrable tete est si douce a mes pas?

For the remainder of the poem, the realm below, whose strength Semiramis harnassed to build her tower, assumes the character of the sea of chaos which at the beginning of the poem she had so determinedly left behind. For the moment it is calm enough and carries the queen like a great ship of state, but the inevitable storm, bringing with it the inevitable shipwreck,

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 261

is brewing as the poem moves toward the end. Semiramis simply refuses to heed the warning:

En vain j'entends monter contre ma face auguste Ce murmure de crainte et de ferocite: A !'image des dieux la grande ame est injuste Tant elle s'appareille a la necessite!

Out of these figures of chaos or, rather, the chaos of figuration, then, Semiramis builds the monument to her permanence.

Thus, although the building of the tower as symbol of the constitutive subject's authority can be seen as an analogue for the writing of the Album as a whole, Valery's imagery suggests the potentially destructive and self-deluding nature of such a project." Semiramis is not the angel-self of "Profusion du soir" ("Te rappelles-tu Ie temps ou tu etais ange..."), purified of all contingency, but rather the ruthless Queen of Babylon,

99 The eye that gazes at the sun is a blinded eye. In "Nage," Valery speaks of the power the sun must have exerted over primitive man as a symbol of transcendence, and he implies that such a vision is deceptive. He compares a period m his own life ("dans mes temps heroiques"—late '90's?) with this naive stage in human history:

Je viens de parler du soleil. Mais avez-vous jamais regarde Ie soleil? Je ne vous Ie conseille pas. Je m'y suis risque quelquefois, dans mes temps heroiques, et j'ai pense perdre la vue. . . . Je ne parle pas ici du soleil de l'astrophysique, du soleil des astronomes, du soleil agent essentiel de la vie sur la planete, mais simplement du soleil sensation, phenomene sou-verain, et de son action sur la formation de nos idees. . . . Imaginez l'impression que la presence de cet astre a pu produire sur Ies ames primitives. Tout ce que nous voyons est compose par lui, et j'entends par composition un ordre de choses visibles et la transformation lente de cet ordre qui constitue tout Ie spectacle d'une journee: Ie soleil, maitre des ombres, a la fois partie et moment, partie eblouissante et moment toujours dominant de la sphere celeste, a du imposer aux premieres reflexions de l'humanite Ie modele d'une puissance transcendante, d'un maitre unique." (Oeuvres I, pp. 1094-95)

Both James Lawler and Charles Whiting have proposed interesting readings of this poem in which they see Semiramis as the incarnation of an heroic and sublime will, a symbol of the ideal Valeryan consciousness. See James A. Lawler, "Existe! Sois enfin toi-meme," op.cit., and Charles G. Whiting, "Va-Iery: Development of a Poet," Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. IX, 1972, pp. 161-66.

262 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

and her particular ruthlessness seems to be motivated by her repressed awareness that her reign is both dependent upon and doomed by the very elements through which and in op­position to which she would define herself. The reordering of the world into a new creation through figuration is no longer a manifestation of man's power to save himself and the world from chaos, but a sign of his will to power and autonomy at any cost.

Marcel Raymond has pointed out100 that after World War I and the abuse of scientific thought by the Germans, Valery became increasingly skeptical of the very principles of disci­plined rational control he had idealized in the late '90's.101

During the winter of 1918-1919 he wrote two letters to an English journal for a piece entitled "La Crise de Pesprit," in which he seeks to analyze the causes for the destruction threat­ening Western civilization. The first letter begins with the devastatingly simple observation, "Nous autres, civilisations, nous savons maintenant que nous sommes mortelles," and goes on to evoke the end of the Western world in terms rem­iniscent of the conclusion of "Profusion du soir" or of the setting of "Air de Semiramis." It is interesting to note that in this passage Baudelaire is the writer chosen to represent the tragic loss of French literary genius!

Nous apercevions a travers l'epaisseur de l'histoire, Ies fantomes d'immenses navires qui furent charges de ri-chesse et d'esprit. Nous ne pouvions pas Ies compter. Mais ces naufrages, apres tout, n'etaient pas notre affaire.

Elam, Ninive, Babylone etaient de beaux noms vagues, et la ruine totale de ces mondes avait aussi peu de si­gnification pour nous que Ieur existence meme. Mais France, Angleterre, Russte . .. ce seraient aussi de beaux noms. Lusitania aussi est un beau nom. Et nous voyons

100 Paul Valery et la Tentation de I'Esprit (Neuchatel: A la Baconniere, 19 6 4 ), pp. 1 3 9ff.

1 0 1 In Une Conquete methodique originally entitled La Conquete alle-mande, published in The New Review in 1897 and republished in the Mercure de France in 19 1 5, for example. Oeuvres I, pp. 971-87.

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maintenant que Pabime de l'histoire est assez grand pour tout Ie monde. Nous sentons qu'une civilisation a la meme fragilite qu'une vie. Les circonstances qui enverraient Ies oeuvres de Keats et celles de Baudelaire rejoindre Ies oeuvres de Menandre ne sont plus du tout inconcevables: elles sont dans Ies journaux. (p. 988) . . . Nous avons vu, de nos yeux vu, Ie travail consciencieux, !'instruction la plus solide, la discipline et !'application Ies plus serieuses, adaptes a d'epouvantables desseins. (Oeuvres I, p. 989)

L'oscillation du navire a ete si forte que Ies lampes Ies mieux suspendues se sont a la fin renversees. (p. 991)

At the end of the A l bum de vers anctens Valery's triumphant celebration of the power of the intellect to lift itself out of the sea of chaos and history is sung with a kind of stridency which undermines its own validity.102 The altar on which the Valery of 1920 has sacrificed the past ("Sur tes ardents autels son regard favorable / Brule, Pame distraite, un passe precieux") for the sake of "La liberte, la purete, la singularite et Puni-versalite de Pintellect" is figured in "Air de Semiramis" as the monument of a self-obsessed consciousness who will inevi­tably become, like Menander or Keats or Baudelaire, a relic of ancient history, destroyed by the forces of time and the authority of other men's visions.

Elam, Ninive, Babylone etaient de beaux noms vagues, et la ruine totale de ces mondes avait aussi peu de si­gnification pour nous que Ieur existence meme.

Thus Valery brings the A l bum to a close with works which present themselves, to some extent, as ironic commentaries on his introductory poems. The exhausted prostitute of "Anne," who "a travers ses doigts nus denoues de 1'humain . . . laisse rouler Ies grappes et Ies pommes . . . ," reflects as caricature

1 02 Scarfe reads the end of "Semiramis" and the end of the A l bum in a similar way: "Thus the poem reflects on intellectual disillusionment with human works, perhaps indicates even Valery's growing distrust of poetry. But it goes beyond this into a distrust of the human condition itself." ( T he Art of Paul Valery, p. 159.)

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the dozing girl in "La Fileuse," who, "Innocente," lets the thread slip through her fingers as the natural world disappears into the darkness of her unconscious. The imperious queen of Babylon, who builds a monument to her authority out of the suffering of her slaves and the destruction of entire civi­lizations, is an exaggerated version of Helene, the Greek prin­cess, who amuses herself by conjuring forth the monarchs of Greece and Troy who destroyed themselves for her beauty. One could say that Valery organizes his work as a specular structure, but, rather than paralyzing enslavement, reflection upon his earlier works brings with it creative insight which leads to greater and greater experimentation with the faces of the past. By inscribing a critical devaluation of his own project into the very structure of that project, he replaces the anon­ymous and appropriating public, "L'homme du hasard," with a critical reader of his own creation. His presentation of the individual works in the Album as stages in an ongoing dia­lectical process not only ensures the myth of the unfinished work necessary to his sense of freedom, but also realizes what for Valery was the highest aim of writing: self-modification through self-knowledge. "Les oeuvres, dans mon systeme, de-venaient un moyen de modifier par reaction l'etre de Ieur auteur, tandis qu'elles sont une fin, dans !'opinion generale" ( · Oeuvres I, p. 1465). If the myths of absolute autonomy and originality have been discredited, writing as an independent and powerful source of creative energy has not.

"L'AMATEUR DE POEMES"

Thus the ferociousness of Semiramis' project represents as much a strategy of self-defense as an ironic depiction of her creator's own overwhelming drive for appropriation of his past and sense of self-sufficiency. Seen in this light, the self-critical note which concludes the collection of verse poems lends the unmitigated confidence, indeed, almost rhapsodic enthusiasm expressed in the prose poem, "L'Amateur de poemes," which serves as an epilogue to the work as a whole,

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 265

a n ir o n i c to n a l i t y . In ele g a n t l y ca d e n c e d ph r a s e s th e spe a k e r as rea d e r of th e pre c e d i n g wo r k co m p a r e s th e eph e m e r a l , fr a g m e n t e d na t u r e of th o u g h t un f a v o r a b l y to the wri t i n g of po e t r y , wh i c h he ext o l s fo r its imp r e s s i o n of au t o n o m y , it s in t e r n a l ne c e s s i t y , an d mos t sig n i f i c a n t l y it s ab s o l u t e co n t r o l ov e r th e rea d e r wh o mus t re l i n q u i s h hi s wil l to fol l o w wh e r ­e v e r it lea d s :

L'Amateur de poemes

S i je re g a r d e to u t a cou p ma ver i t a b l e pe n s e e , je ne me con s o l e pa s de dev o i r su b i r ce t t e pa r o l e in t e r i e u r e sa n s pe r s o n n e et san s or i g i n e ; ces fi g u r e s ep h e m e r e s ; et cet t e in f i n i t e d' e n t r e p r i s e s in t e r r o m p u e s pa r Ieur pr o p r e fa c i -l i t e , qu i se tra n s f o r m e n t l' u n e da n s l' a u t r e , sa n s qu e rie n ne cha n g e av e c el l e s . Inco h e r e n t e sa n s Ie par a i t r e , nu l l e in s t a n t a n e m e n t co m m e el l e es t sp o n t a n e e , la pen s e e , pa r sa nat u r e , ma n q u e de sty l e .

MAIS je n' a i pas to u s Ies jou r s la pui s s a n c e de pro p o s e r a mon at t e n t i o n qu e l q u e s et r e s ne c e s s a i r e s , ni de fei n d r e Ies obs t a c l e s sp i r i t u e l s qu i fo r m e r a i e n t un e ap p a r e n c e de com m e n c e m e n t , de ple n i t u d e et de fin , au lie u de mon in s u p p o r t a b l e fu i t e .

UN poem e es t un e du r e e , pe n d a n t la q u e l l e , le c t e u r , je re s p i r e un e Ioi qui fu t pre p a r e e ; je do n n e mo n sou f f l e et Ies mac h i n e s de ma voi x ; ou seu l e m e n t Ieur po u v o i r , qu i se con c i l i e av e c Ie sil e n c e .

JE m'ab a n d o n n e a l'a d o r a b l e al l u r e : li r e , viv r e ou me-n e n t Ies mo t s . Le u r ap p a r i t i o n est ec r i t e . Le u r s so n o r i t e s co n c e r t e e s . Le u r eb r a n l e m e n t se com p o s e , d' a p r e s un e me d i t a t i o n an t e r i e u r e , et ils se pre c i p i t e r o n t en gro u p e s ma g n i f i q u e s ou pur s , da n s la res o n a n c e . Me m e mes et o n n e m e n t s so n ass u r e s : il s so n t cac h e s d' a v a n c e , et fon t pa r t i e du nom b r e .

MU par l'e c r i t u r e fa t a l e , et si Ie met r e to u j o u r s fu t u r en c h a i n e sa n s re t o u r ma mem o i r e , je re s s e n s ch a q u e pa ­r o l e da n s to u t e sa for c e , po u r l' a v o i r in d e f i n i m e n t at t e n -

266 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

due. Cette mesure qui me transporte et que je colore, me garde du vrai et du faux. Ni Ie doute ne me divise, ni la raison ne me travaille. Nul hasard, mais une chance ex­traordinaire se fortifie. Je trouve sans effort Ie langage de ce bonheur; et je pense par artifice, une pensee toute certaine, merveilleusement prevoyante,—aux lacunes cal-culees, sans tenebres involontaires, dont Ie mouvement me commande et la quantite me comble: une pensee sin-gulierement achevee.

Yet the second paragraph, beginning with the characteristic sign of the self-critical writer, "Mais ...," suggests that such a passive yielding to the autonomous power of poetic language is a path of evasion open only to the reader who is willing to forget for the duration of the poem the arbitrary nature of its being, a reader willing to adopt the myth of originality and plenitude, "feindre Ies obstacles spirituels qui formeraient une apparence de commencement, de plenitude et de fin"—in a word, a reader willing to stop thinking so as to protect himself from the disquieting truth of the unendurable "flight" which authentic thought, "Ma veritable pensee," represents. Follow me and let my writing seduce you. "Je m'abandonne a l'ado-rable allure ...," he seems to say to us, let it still your creative doubts, enter the dream-world of my construction, which will lock you into itself.

Having confronted all of the major poets of the post-Ro-mantic nineteenth century, assimilated and rewritten them to discredit them, and having secured his own position against assault by questioning his own recreations through the col­lection's internal dialogue, Valery swerves to categorically as­sert the unassailable nature of the writing he has just written. Inviting us to join him, he disingenuously projects himself into this poem about poetry as a passive reader, who yields vo­luptuously to the writing which carries him according to the currents determined by its creator's absolute control. None of the critical doubt which generated his revisionist enterprise, none of the insight into the arbitrary nature of language and the elusiveness of the Mallarmean ideal, which constitutes

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 2 6 7

Valery's true modernism, assails this fictional reader whom he would propose to us, his unknown public. Valery thus concludes a project whose complex structures eloquently tes­tify to a poetics of process and self-questioning over the per­fection of closed form with an arbitrary and contradictory assertion of the unity, the singularity, and the completion of that project, as if once and for all sealing himself off from the threat of those others who would subvert the "grand dessin de mener notre moi a l'extreme de son desir de se posseder."

. . . et je pense par artifice, une pensee toute certaine, merveilleusement prevoyante,—aux lacunes calculees, sans tenebres involontaires, dont Ie mouvement me commande et la quantite me comble: une pensee singulierement ache-vee.

CONCLUSION

The revisionist and increasingly self-questioning dimensions of the various editions of the Album de vers anciens reveal more convincingly than any of his explicitly theoretical essays the complexity and depth of Valery's thought on the writing of poetry. When he considered publishing his early poems in 1912, he conceived of his project as anything but a conven­tional collection of lyric poems, each to be read and admired for its own qualities. The work was rather to be a form of imaginative investigation, and its organizing structures of self-reflection, in effect, translate into poetic form Valery's inten­tion to engage critically with the most fundamental processes of poetic creation and the problematic character of literary discourse in general. The collection bears traces of every stage in his career as a poet. It ranges in tone from the early opti­mism of 1890 and 1891, stimulated by the innovations of the younger generation of Symbolists and the striking example of Mallarme's originality, to the disenchantment which led to his rejection of lyric poetry in the later 1890's as a pointless diversion from the great task of probing the functioning of the mind through the private, discontinuous meditations of the notebooks.

As we have seen, the poems in the first half of the volume, all of which were written originally during the "optimistic" years before the crisis of 1892, were revised in such a way as to create the effect of a rnise en abyme which places their stability as autotelic objects into question. "Narcisse parle," a rendering of the specular myth which would haunt the self-critical Valery throughout his life, occupies the center of the collection, and the poems which bring the Album to an end, invaded as they are by the pastness of literary reference, con­stitute to some degree distorted reflections of his opening works. The Narcissus model of the voice seeking an impossible union with its illusive bodily image stands as a figure for the arbitrary structure of figurative language itself, as well as for the doomed effort on the part of the thinker to translate thought into an adequate representation of itself in writing. Thus, the organ­ization of the Album, which places at its conclusion the poems written after 1895 that admit to their inevitable contamination

2 72 · THE TRANS FORMATI VE DRAMA

by predecessor texts, reveals Valery's grasp of the complex semantic structure of his medium as much as it does certain psychological anxieties about his personal status as a modern writer. Yet, recognizing the mediated nature of language par­adoxically meant for Valery a certain control of and liberation from the tyranny of the past.

In the years following World War I, Valery was not alone among French writers in his concern for the vitality of a lan­guage and a civilization based upon the worship of a past which blinded men to their present condition and threatened their autonomy. His younger contemporaries, the Dadaists and the Surrealists, considered that nothing short of the total annihilation of the repressive social, cultural, and political order, epitomized by the French Third Republic and classical literature, could recover the unifying and genuinely creative values buried deep in the human psyche. For these writers, however, poetry continued to be a privileged form of expres­sion because it permitted the free association of images dic­tated by the unconscious and through that association had the power to jar the reader into an awareness of a superior order of reality—a surreality—beyond the barriers erected by reason and the physical limitations of the natural eye.

Valery did not share the Surrealists' revolutionary zeal be­cause he did not consider the phenomena which presented themselves to his gaze as illusions or obstacles to be overcome. In his opinion the real obstacle to authentic seeing and know­ing was his own interiority, beclouded as it was by the illusions of others and by the memory of former experiences. To place one's faith in the visions produced by dreams, as the Surrealists did, was to abdicate all responsibility and to yield willingly to the tyranny of anteriority. Although Valery recognized that the language through which one thinks inevitably imposes constraints upon the thinker, he came to believe that a knowl­edge of its structure would permit the critical writer to use language against itself, so to speak, by laying bare and even exploiting its self-questioning nature. Thus Valery never min­gled with the Surrealists, who abandoned critical thought in

THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA · 273

the name of some imaginary, Utopian ideal. He expressed nothing but disdain in his private writings for what he con­sidered a regressive and self-indulgent form of Romanticism which, if it were to have its way, would destroy the only value left—the power of individual reason to understand and su­pervise its own expression.

Valery stands alone and isolated in the period between the two World Wars in France. But one might say, in answer to his detractors, who accuse him of refusing to emerge from the ivory tower of an outdated Symbolism, that the originality of his vision rather than its belatedness accounts for that isola­tion. His profound suspicion of inspiration as a source of creativity, his efforts to grasp the relationship of the structures of language to the structures of thought, his preoccupation with the philosophical implications of figurative expression, and most especially his interest in the work of art as a mode of production, link him to some of the most contemporary trends in French poetry and criticism. If poets such as Francis Ponge with whom Valery has clear affinities reject him in favor of Mallarme, it may be because they are skeptical of the au­thority he continues to invest in the constitutive subject, de­spite his recognition of the independent power of language. Yet most living poets, even those who are repelled by what they perceive as the coldly scientific nature of his vision, feel compelled to acknowledge his important contribution to French letters. The ambiguous importance of Valery's work can be felt in Yves Bonnefoy's grudging, backward glancing recog­nition in an essay which begins: "II y avait une force dans Valery, mais elle s'est egaree." Bonnefoy appends a single footnote to the final sentence in the essay where he considers the nature of his own claim to originality:

* Ai-je 'critique' Valery? Je l'ai pris au serieux, me semble-t-il, c'est un honneur que l'on ne peut faire qu'a un bien petit nombre d'ecrivains. Et ceux-la existent en nous. Nous avons a lutter contre eux, comme nous avons a choisir, et aux fins d'etre. C'est une lutte privee. C'est peut-etre

274 · THE TRANSFORMATIVE DRAMA

un parti, dans Ie sens un peu grave que Ton a donne a ce mot.1

Recent structuralist and post-structuralist critics such as Tzvetan Todorov,2 Stefano Agosti,3 Jacques Derrida,4 and Gerard Genette,5 for example, have, on the other hand, been less willing to relegate Valery to the past. The fact is that they are discovering in him a highly sophisticated "post-modern­ist" thinker. It may well be that the impact of Valery on his successors will be recognized ultimately not by the poets whose debt to him has been so consistently denied, but rather by the new criticism which, fascinated as it is by the most profound structures of thought and their puzzling relations to their lin­guistic formulations, cannot fail to find an intellectual pred­ecessor in the poet who dedicated inexhaustible energies to the scrutiny of his mind in the notebooks and embodied that very scrutiny into his most neglected collection of lyric poetry.

1 L'Improbable (Paris: Mercure de France, 1959), p. 146. This essay was first published with other commentaries by contemporary poets on Valery's importance in "Valery et nous" Lettres nouvelles, September, 1958, but without the footnote.

2 "Valery's Poetics," Yale French Studies, op.ctt. See also Bertil Malmberg, "Paul Valery et Ies signes," op.ctt.

3 Il testo poettco: Teorta e prattche d'anahst. (Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 1972).

4 "Les Sources de Valery* QuaI, Quelle," op.ctt. 5 "La Litterature comme telle," Figures I., op.ctt.

APPEN DI X

POEMS BY VALERY DESTINED FOR THE PROJECTED

CHORUS MYSTICUS

Elevation de la Iune

L'ombre venait, Ies fleurs s'ouvraient, revait mon Ame, Et Ie vent endormi taisait son hurlement, La Nuit tombait, la Nuit douce comme une femme, Subtile et violente episcopalement!

Les Etoiles semblaient des cierges funeraires Comme dans une eglise allumes dans Ies soirs; Et semant des parfums, Ies Iys Thuriferaires Balangaient doucement leurs freles encensoirs.

Une priere en moi montait ainsi qu'une onde Et dans I'immensite bleuissante et profonde, Les astres recueillis baissaient leurs chastes yeux! . . .

Alors, Elle apparut! hostie immense et blonde Puis elle etincela, se detachant du Monde Car d'invisibles doigts l'elevaient vers Ies Cieux! . . .

(Le Counter libre, November 1889)

Fleur mystique

Lys mystique! Elle avait la ferveur des Elus! Et Vierge! Elle adorait Ies pieds calmes des Vierges; Dans l'etincellement des metaux et des cierges, Sa voix douce tintait comme des Angelus.

Une couleur de Iune ondulait sous son voile. Et dans sa chair, semblaient fuir Ies reflets nacres Du petit jour, luisant sur Ies vases sacres, Aux messes du matin, vers la derniere etoile.

Ses yeux etaient plus clairs que des astres naissants! Indicible parfum de cires et d'encens, Son vetement sentait !'antique sacristie!

2 78 · APPENDIX

Et c'est en la voyant que Ie regret me vint De n'etre pas Ie Christ de ce reve divin, Car mon visage pale etait comme une hostie!

(L'Ermitage, January 1891)

L'Eglise

Parmi l'Immensite pesante du Saint lieu Dans l'ombre inexprimable, effrayante, doree, Solennelle, se sent la presence de Dieu Dans Ie recueillement de la chose adoree.

L'obscurite confond Ies pourpres et Ies ors Et Ies lampes d'argent gardiennes des Reliques Et dans ce sombre eclat plane sur ces tresors L'apre mysticite des dogmes catholiques.

Le Grand Christ, constelle de pleurs en diamants Et de rubis saignants, coulant du coup de lance, La-haut semble rever fermant ses yeux aimants Dans ce vague parfum d'encens et de silence!

La Vierge byzantine et de massif argent Demeure hieratique en sa chape orfroisie Fixant ses yeux de perle aux Cieux, comme songeant Aux Azurs lumineux et lointains de l'Asie.

(1889)

Mirabilia Saecula

Il fut un age ou tout etait grand dans Ie monde Les livres amusaient Ies plebes et Ies rois La guerre engloutissait Ies races comme une onde Et Ies vainqueurs clouaient Ies vaincus sur des croix.

Les peuples enfantaient d'ardents visionnaires Et descendaient de monts lointains au son du cor Des Cesars entoures de leurs legionnaires Passaient dans l'or des soirs couverts d'armures d'or!

APPENDIX · 27 9

L'encens fumait. Le sang ruisselait dans Ies fetes. Les tonnerres roulaient dans l'horreur des tempetes. Sous l'arc-en-ciel planaient Ies aigles des grands Dieux

Jusqu'a l'heure ou montant dans l'aube symbolique Le doux christianisme eploye dans Ies Cieux Surgit dans I'ombre immense, oiseau melancolique.

(1889)

Le Cygne

Au rire du soleil pose sur une branche Et sous sa plume un flot limpide se plissant Le Cygne file en plein saphir carene blanche Et l'eau miroir Ie fait deux fois eblouissant.

Neige sur l'onde! un souffle insensible Ie pousse Comme un vaisseau fantome enfui parmi l'azur Puis il va s'echouer sur la rive de mousse Et dort dans la lumiere idealement pur!

Vase de chastete symbolique et splendide Avant d'un monde vil oublie Ie Destin O Cygne immacule tu fuis dans Ie matin

Baiser de la lueur sur ton aile candide Vers la Rive celeste ou dans l'Eternite Se confondent l'Amour et la Virginite

(October 1889)

PURS DRAMES

Les sites sont ornes de pudiques bijoux, qui scintillent. Au silence, au soleil, a I'ombre, si Ie Monde se retourne dans son vaste sommeil, l'eclair d'une parure illumine ce geste obscur.

Ecumes,—aventureuses nues qu'effleure une plume, avec des gouttes dans l'eau qui Ies mire,—mains ailees, nichees dans Ies roseaux, mains claires dont Ie desir d'abeilles ou d'astres a chiper, entrouvre et re-ferme Ies calices, ne capture que du ciel epars,—et pierreries,—et,

2 8 0 · APPENDIX

parmi Ies tiges longues d'herbe aux graces de radieuses pluies, parfois la douce figure humaine, errante . . . tous ces beaux debris d'une verite tot disparue par la foudre, Ie Poete Ies distingue, matinal, y posant la lueur lustrale d'un oeil pur.

(Oeil, dont la vertu d'enfance serait ephemere, s'il ne ruisselait chaque aurore sur son miroir, a cause de quelque souriant mensonge, une eau discrete de larme.) Axicienne vanite! que de ranimer Ie spec­tacle angelique et maintenant maudit ou ces nudites se jouaient de vivre. 11 Ies faut aimer surprises dans une flaque celeste, dont la glace mince imite l'ether absolu, ou lucidement Ie pense.

Abusons notre heure de ces precieux Etres,—puisqu'il n'y a plus, pour amuser Ies ombres, de Theatre,—et pour paraitre au seuil de cette platonicienne caverne, personne, sous Ie luminaire deja presque ideal.

D'une touffe de joncs sensibles, chevelure vegetale ou vibrent des insectes, jaillit dans Ies atomes d'or, joyau anonyme, enigmatique et seul, un bras de rose, fleuri d'une reveuse main, dont a peine Ies doigts blancs s'agitent, d'un plaisir sous Ies verdures, ou d'un voeu, ou par la brise.

Sur Ies bouches sans parole d'une foule rose de corolles, pas emues de cette indifferente course, des Pieds purs, ornements inferieurs d'un simple couple inapergu, dont l'un fuit l'autre, feminin. Je desire Ie profil des fleurs et des membres tres rapide; l'orteil figure vaguement en volute.

Une main d'eau, (on voit la glauque matinee derriere), s'allonge; et Ies deux premiers doigts, Ies seuls, presentent vers l'orient un joyau frele, tige dont l'extreme . . . papillon bat des ailes, pour vouloir toujours tomber dans un rien oii bleuit ce geste—odorante neige. D'une eau de rosee froide qui ne tremble plus en la coupe usee avec harmonie sur la roche, par Ies longues pluies, s'evapore au calice du ciel, une nue. La grande lumiere l'allege.

Et voici l'aube des formes. Elle va s'eveiller, peut-etre, pour inventer une pudeur ...—abriter

ses douceurs d'un coude? Le sais-je? Mais,—simplement—c'est une nue. Ces phalenes divines, infideles bientot a chacune des joyeuses touffes

brillant sous la figure de la croisee, me font peur pour ce paysage. On dirait que Ie jardin tremblant s'envole,—et, si Ies fleurs d'une minute jouent des ailes pour fuir, ou irons-nous, Idees ? . . .

Elle se pose sur un calice, elle palpite a travers Ies petales, petite lampe fee.

APPENDIX • 281

Ah! que de nuit!—la saisir, la couver dans le creux des mains pueriles, courir, et rire de la tenir captive—une Etoile!

Toutes ces images sont corrompues encore par la certitude de leurs elements. L'harmonie solitaire offre a I'ame ivre d'elle-meme une liberte plus delicieuse. II n'y a que les lignes simples pour faire pleurer le dur artiste, sans remords. Impur! qui desire une grimace ou la brutalite de cris; il n'importe que de deviner, et de mourir.

Aimer done le Drame pur d'une ligne sur I'espace de couleur celeste ou vitale. Elle n'existe qu'en mouvement beau. Elle est la plus sure de toutes les choses, I'ornement de toutes les vies. Devine! Elle eternise les siecles du sourire, elle se penche ensuite avec melancolie, se noue, se concentre en spire—ou songe; file, et se laisse enfuir dans la joie d'une direction superieure, se recourbe, habitude ou souvenir, puis rencontre au dela de tous les astres, une Autre que d'inconnus destins distraient vers le meme Occident, et ne terminera plus de fleurir, de disparaitre dans la merveille du jeu,—eprise, diverse, monotone,— mince et noire."

JOSE-MARIA HEREDIA

La Fileuse

Elle est morte Platthis, morte la bonne vieille Qui, tout le long des jours anciens et des nouveaux, A file, devide, roule les echeveaux De laine blanche dont debordait sa corbeille.

Si parfois s'inclinait la tete qui sommeille, Les doigts de la fileuse actifs et sans rivaux D'un geste inconscient poursuivaient leurs travaux: Seule la Mort a pu mettre un terme a sa veille.

A peine fut trouvee en son pauvre taudis L'obole qui, glissee aux doigts enfin roidis, Paya le dur nocher de la derniere barque;

Et Platthis a franchi le fleuve aux sombres eaux, Curieuse de voir si, mieux qu'elle, la Parque Savait tordre le fil et toumer les fuseaux.

282 · APPENDIX

HENRI DE REGNIER

Prelude

Je t'ai laissee en l'ombre d'or du vieux Palais Ou Ie chanvre roui pend a la poutre rude, Assise comme un songe a Tatre ou tu filais,

Hotesse du seuil morne et de la solitude, Seule ombre passagere au gel des purs miroirs Que ta face de n'y sourire plus denude!

Du fond des murs epais et des ebenes noirs Ton regard m'a suivi comme un oiseau, fidele A mon sang hasarde dans Ie peril des soirs.

Qu'il coule, s'il ne doit fleurir une asphodele, Qu'il coule glorieux dans Tecume et Ie vent Pour toi qui restes en la maison qui te cele

Jalouse seulement de la Mort qui souvent —Elle I'imprevue, elle, helas, une autre amante— Baise en l'ombre Ies levres pales du vivant.

Cendres ou fut jadis la flamme vehemente! Le foyer violet suggere Ie tombeau, Presage a qui ta foi veille qui Ie demente.

Tu files a ton rouet Ie triste echeveau Monotone et sans fin comme I'annee, Omphale, Mais de l'Automne renaitra TEte plus beau.

Le luxe parera ta tete triomphale Selon un ordre ouvre de pierres et de fleurs, O pale a t'endormir qui t'eveillais plus pale!

Etoile de Tamant parti vers Ies ailleurs, Toi sa pensee etrange et l'ombre de son ame, Toi qui restes Tabsente en la gloire des pleurs,

Toi pour qui Ie glaive rutile et la nef rame Et la main plonge au poil fauve de la toison Qu'a la proue a lavee une ecume de lame.

A P P E N D I X • 2 8 3

Ouis! I'Hydre a saigne ses tetes de poison, Les oiseaux saccageurs que ia fleche transperce Tombent lourds, un a un, au lac de I'horizon;

Le taureau frustre du rapt beugle et se renverse, Le sanglier resiste au Belluaire et lui Songe au troupeau rue des monstres qu'il disperse.

L'aurore est pale encor d'avoir ete la Nuit Et des mufles crispes ont mordu I'herbe grasse En leurs crinieres ou de I'or s'effile et luit.

Le mal mysterieux agonise et trepasse; Les douze Epreuves ont purge I'ombre et void La massue et le glaive au poing nu qui terrasse.

La campagne est salubre et le bois eclairci D'oii I'apre survivant des griffes et des haines Par les routes s'en vient de la-bas jusqu'ici.

II a lave le sang de ses bras aux fontaines Et laisse avec orgueil trainer sur les cailloux La toison du belier et les peaux nemeennes;

II vient a toi I'Omphale, ame de ses courroux, Toi son ame vivante et qui gardes, 6 douce, Le songe du soleil mort en tes cheveux roux.

Voici le tribut pris aux beaux jardins ou pousse L'arbre de I'Hesperide qu'un monstre gardien Regardait s'effruiter parmi I'herbe de mousse.

Quitte le noir parvis du Palais ancien Qui claustra ton exil de la terre mauvaise Et leve-toi devant Celui qui se veut tien!

II a foule le mal de son pied nu qui pese Sur la gorge etouffee et la gueule qui mord Jusqu'a ce que le dernier cri rale et s'apaise;

Dans le sombre Hades il a vaincu la Mort Par qui le long sanglot emplit la maison vide, Et le voici maitre du Sceptre et du Tresor.

284 • APPENDIX

De grandes fleurs ont refleuri la terre aride Qui sera mere a ton sourire puenl, Herioer medeen des philtres de Colchide.

Ton honneur est le prix que voulut son peril! Pends la peau leonine a tes epaules nues Sous les griffes que joint un fermoir de beryl.

Les monstres accroupis se crispent dans les nues En songes tristes accules au fond du soir, Et la quenouille est douce aux porteurs de massues.

Au trone qu'il dressa royal et pour t'y voir, Sois son ame eternelle, 6 son ame ephemere, Toi qu'a survivre belle a force son espoir,

Et si son coeur, helas, mordu par la chimere Durant le dur travail de ton nom illustre Elude sa tristesse en quelque cendre amere,

Laisse le bucher d'or fumer au ciel sacre!

Motifs de Legende et de Melancohe

I

L'essieu des chars se brise a Tangle dur des tombes Ou nos ames de jadis reviennent s'asseoir Et des gestes qu'ont fui des exils de colombe Jettent a pleines mams des roses au ciel noir.

Le crepuscule pleut un deuil d'heure et de cendre Qui courbe les fronts pales de cheveux trop lourds Dont le poids mur s'effondre et croule et va s'epandre Sur la dalle ou dorment les songes des vieux jours.

L'etemelle Toison, par dela les mers sombres, Au fond des soirs, se dresse, etrange en son poll d'or. Et les comes d'email allongent leurs deux ombres Sur le flot fabuleux qui gronde et saigne encor.

APPENDIX • 285

Le flot saigne a jamais de l'eperon des proues Qui coupaient Ie reflet des etoiles dans l'eau; Le roc rompt la carene et la pierre Ies roues, Et Ie vent a l'ecueil pleure comme au tombeau.

Les Arianes, aux lies de fleurs et d'astres, Qui veillaient dans la nuit sur Ieur sommeil fatal, Attendent Ie Heros de leurs tristes desastres Qui Ies doit reconduire au vieux Palais natal.

La Chimere accroupie aux gorges de l'attente Crispe ses ongles durs ïà Iuit Ie sang des forts, Et notre ame a tente l'aventure eclatante Du mensonge immortel pour qui d'autres sont morts.

Dormez, Princesses au manoir, nul cor, ü Mortes, N'eveillera vos reves et nul glaive clair Ne heurtera de son pommeau vos hautes portes Ou Ie beryl magique incruste son eclair.

Le vent de la Mer vaste a dechire Ies voiles Des nefs que l'albe aurore egara vers la nuit, Et l'essieu s'est brise dans l'ombre sans etoiles; La Licorne vers la foret, d'un bond, a fui!

La Memoire pleure sur la pierre des tombes, Gloriole eternelle et tres antique espoir, Et ces songes sont comme un exil de colombes Emportant a leurs bees des roses au ciel noir.

II

«Ef la Belle s'endormit»

La Belle, dont Ie sort fut de dormir cent ans Au jardin du manoir et dans Ie vaste songe Ou Ie cri ne des clairons sacres se prolonge Pour sonner son sommeil jusqu'a l'aube des Temps!

La Belle, pour l'eveil victorieux d'antans Que son intacte chair proclamera mensonge,

2 8 6 · APPENDIX

A charge de joyaux sa main qui git et plonge En un flot de criniere ou Ies doigts sont latents.

Et tandis que des toits, des tours et des tourelles Les Colombes ont pris essor et qu'infideles Les Paons mysterieux ont fui vers la foret,

Couchee aupres de la Dormeuse, la Licorne Attend l'heure et la-bas guette si reparait L'annonciateur vol blanchir I'aurore morne!

«Et Ie Chevalier ne vint pas»

Les paons bleus l'ont cherche dans la foret. Nul soir N'a rougi son cimier d'ailes et de chimere; Les Colombes blanches dont I'aurore est la mere Ont vu la tour deserte et vide Ie manoir.

Et Ies Ai'eux, des jadis morts, n'eurent pas d'hoir Avide d'aventure etrange et de mystere, Nul heros a venir, pour l'honneur de la terre, Vaincre d'un baiser Ie magique sommeil noir.

L'endormie a jamais etale ses mains pales Ou verdit une mort annulaire d'opales; Et la Princesse va mourir s'il ne vient pas.

Plus n'a souci, Nul, de dissoudre un sortilege, Et la Licorne hennit rauque au ciel lilas Ou frissone une odeur de mort, d'ombre et de neige

«Et la Belle mouruU

La Licorne ruee en fuite hume et croise Les vents qui du midi remontent vers Ie nord, Et sa criniere eparse ruisselle et se tord Que nattait de rubis la Princesse danoise.

Loin des glaciers et des neiges roses que boise La verdure des pins ou gronde comme un cor L'echo du marteau lourd des Nains qui, forgeurs d'or, Fasonnent Ie hanap ou Ton boit la cervoise,

AP PE NDIX · 2 8 7

La Princesse aux doux yeux de lac, d'astre et de mers, Est morte, et la Bete fabuleuse a travers Les gels glauques, la nuit vaste, l'aurore morne,

Folle d'avoir flaire Ies mains froides de mort, Se cabre, fonce et heurte et coupe de sa come Les vents qui du midi remontent vers Ie nord!

III

Ce fut par dela Ie fleuve aux rives d'iris Que Ie vent agite en papillons d'hyacinthe En un silence doux que je la conduisis, Joyeuse du grelot d'un bracelet qui tinte.

L'etonnement de son regard parmi l'aurore Etait au fleuve clair tout violet d'iris Ou s'aile en vol de fleurs la nuit pour fuir l'aurore, Et la ville etait belle ou je la conduisis:

Aux escaliers d'onyx un Ie d'antique soie, Des paons veilleurs rouant des gloires de saphyr, Des textes graves et des legendes de joie Aux banderoles brusques de pourpre de Tyr!

La maison vide etait sonore comme en reve Et j'entendais battre son cceur, tout bas, de joie D'etre vetue ainsi selon un voeu de reve De robes d'or ouvre de rosaces de soie.

IV

Errantes aux greves des mers parmi Ies roches, Leur grace puerile minaude en reproches:

«Nous avons dans la mer trempe nos mains comme des folks Et cueilli des bouquets d'ecume et d'algues rousses; Nos amants ont glane Ies fleurs de nos paroles Et vont la-bas humant Ie miel des levres douces Dont Ie parfum flotte au soir pavoise de nos paroles!

Voici toute la mer qui croule aux plages douces En floraison d'ecume eparse et d'algues folks.

288 · APPENDIX

Nos beaux amoureux sont vetus de soie et d'ecarlate, lis ont des colliers d'ambre et des bagues d'opales

Et l'orgueil par un rire a leurs levres eclate D'avoir cueilli l'aveu de nos avrils, fleurs pales Qu'ils portent en grappes aux pans de Ieur robe ecariate.

La mer deferle et pleure au long des greves pales Et Ie rire des flots aux dents des rocs eclate.

Nous n'irons plus au bord des mers, nous n'irons plus, ä folles, Sur Ies sables stelles de lagunes d'opales . . . Les oiseaux de passage ont vole nos paroles Qui parfumaient Ie soir ainsi que Ies fleurs pales, Les infideles sont partis, nous n'irons plus, Ies folles!

Les saphyrs de nos yeux s'attristent en opales Et l'echo des coeurs morts est sourd a nos paroles.»

#

lis ont heurte Ies portes d'or Du pommeau rude de leurs glaives Et leurs levres etaient encor Ameres de l'embrun des greves.

Il entrerent comme des rois En la ville ou la torche fume Au trot sonnant des palefrois Dont la criniere est une ecume.

On Ies regut en des palais Et des jardins ou Ies dallages Sont des saphyrs et des galets Comme on en trouve sur Ies plages;

On Ies abreuva de vin clair, De louanges et de merveilles; Et l'echo grave de la mer Bourdonnait seul a leurs oreilles.

APPENDIX · 289

Elles diront quand, las des jardins de la ville, Leurs amoureux appareilleront vers quelque lie:

«Leur nef rasa de pres les rocs du promontoire Ou ne plus rire fut toute notre tristesse Et d'etre assises en cette pose qui laisse Pendre ses mains avec des brisements de lis, Et leur depart hesite aux rocs du promontoire Et s'enfonce en voguant aux Occidents palis.

Vogue, ü Navire, et va sans nous chercher des ties Mysterieuses ou les greves sont desertes; Nos chevelures valaient les algues inertes Que tressera, la-bas, 1'ennui de leurs doigts las D'avoir si loin rame vers Ie port et les iles Ou les fruits doux mordus ne leur suffiront pas.

Et si quelque tempete un soir te desempare, Tu n'auras pour franchir Ie piege des parages Nos lourds cheveux a tordre en guise de cordages Et nos chants pour calmer Ie tumulte des flots Submergeurs des vaisseaux que Ie vent desempare, Ni nos yeux pour guetter l'embuche des ilots.

Plus tard il reveront en l'exil miserable A des retours vers nous vogues a toutes voiles, Et nous serons pour eux des souvenirs d'etoiles En Ie passe stelle du feu de nos yeux clairs. Il pleureront vers nous dans l'exil miserable Comme on pleure a des levers d'astres sur les mers!»

V

La Vie etrange et douce et lente va mourir En vigne qui s'effeuille au temps des grappes mures. La chevelure est toute aux prises du saphyr Et Ie desir s'entrave aux boucles des ceintures.

La voix du vieil amour qui riait a l'aurore Sanglote dans Ie soir et suffoque et larmoie,

290 · APPENDIX

Et Ia fontaine pleure en Ia foret sonore Encore des echos de notre antique joie.

La ceinture agrafe son etreinte mauvaise Et de sa boucle griffe Ies robes meurtries, L'aile du vent s'acharne en Ies cheveux ou pese L'emprise d'ongles d'un joyau de pierreries.

Oh! dans l'aurore, apres l'affre de la vigile Ou mon atne saigna son angoisse au desert, La robe s'allongeait en rite d'Evangile A l'entour des pieds nus et laves par la Mer.

La terre d'ocre et de sterile Samarie Feta Celle qui vint, par miracle, sa joie! Et Ie pli de sa robe etalee et fleurie Secoua des roses prises parmi la soie.

Crispee en amas roux aux griffes d'un saphyr Ruissela du joyau maitre la chevelure Et Ies seins divulgues jaillirent pour s'offrir Au desir qui s'irrite au nceud de la ceinture.

Et I'amour a dormi sous l'averse des roses Et nue et douce et plus rieuse qu'une enfant En qui revit l'ame grave d'antiques choses Qu'apporte du fond des vieux royaumes, Ie vent.

Le vent charge d'exils, de songes et d'annees Et de voix mortes aux oublis de la memoire . . . Elle a dormi selon Ies vieilles destinees Qui la voulaient soumise au gre de ma victoire.

Pour railler par echos la clarte de ses rires Sourdirent des douceurs de flute et de fontaines; De glorifiantes et laudatrices Lyres Chanterent par dela Ies arbres de la plaine.

A travers ses cheveux epars dans Ie soleil, J'ai vu monter des forets hautes et des terres

APPENDIX · 291

Ou passait dans Ie soir violet et vermeil La harde des Desirs cabres en Sagittaires,

A travers l'odeur chaude dont sa chair endort, J'ai vu des dels dairs ou grimpaient des fleurs etranges A vaincre d'un parfum la folle et vieille Mort Titubant du vin bu de ses tristes vendanges.

La rumeur des grands flots aux caps des peninsule Apaises sous Ie soir et sous Ies vols d'oiseaux, Fut au rythme de ses seins, et des crepuscules Stellerent vaguement ses yeux larges et beaux.

L'antique Samarie ou pria ma vigile Sur la terre deserte et sous Ies oliviers, A fleuri son miracle a la voix d'Evangile Qui vint du pays des Songes emerveilles.

Le vent a balaye Ies roses ephemeres Au marais par Ie soir elargis dans Ies nues; Les joyaux aigus sont des griffes de Chimeres Et Ies boucles des dents de Betes inconnues;

La robe lourde et longue et grave est une armure Et l'or des cheveux roux un casque de guerriere; Le desir s'entrave aux boucles de la ceinture Qui s'agrafe en rigueurs d'etreinte meurtriere.

L'ample robe a vetu d'un mystere vorace La chair nue a jamais pour mon reve et reprend Sa rigidite de hieratique cuirasse Ou darde Ie soleil futile et fulgurant;

Et Ie vent de l'Automne exfolie et saccage La vigne nue et jusques vers la Mer emporte Le sanglot eperdu qui pleure Ie passage De Celle qui s'en va parmi la Foret morte

VI

Les fleurs sont mortes sous ses pas De la plaine aux collines pales

292 · APPENDIX

Et Ie ciel est d'un rose las Comme Ies roses automnales;

Les fleurs sont mortes en ses mains De la maison aux jardins pales Et Ie vent chasse a pleins chemins Un tiede sang de purs petales.

La void seule et nue en Ie soir de mon songe. Les oiseaux en passant sur sa tete ont pleure, Le vent en emportant sa voix douce a pleure, La source en refletant son visage a pleure; Elle va seule et nue en Ie soir de mon songe.

La porte est fermee et Ies fenetres, Et nul phare de lampe aux vitres mortes Et la maison, parmi Ies vieux hetres, A la tristesse des demeures sans maitres, Et dans Ie puits on a jete la clef des portes.

Les grands Cerfs roux viendront flairer aux serrures Et fuir au bruit leger des fatnes sur Ie toit, Et Ies oiseaux mangeront seuls Ies grappes mures Comme de lourds rubis au manteau d'un vieux roi.

Je sais la foret sombre ou s'en va l'enfant nue; Sa main est froide encor du cuivre du heurtoir, Etrangere qu'ont meconnue La maison taciturne et l'hote sans espoir.

Les vents accroupis comme des chiens voraces Du seuil des antres sourds hurleront sur ses pas Et pour la Fille en pleurs des royales terrasses Les Portes du palais ne se rouvriront pas;

Ses las cheveux en proie aux souffles du ciel morne Flotteront dans l'aurore et Ie soir, a jamais! La foret et Ie mont ou la Iune s'ecorne Ignoreront Ie prix de leurs ors parfumes.

APPENDIX · 293

Le triste Maitre de la maison deserte pleure; La hetraie immobile ou folk, selon l'heure, Se balance ou s'endort, s'apaise ou murmure; Une a une Ies faines tombent sur Ies toits, Les grappes s'egrenent dans l'herbe miire, Et par la vitre, vers Ie bois Et la plaine et Ie jardin que la mousse ronge, Le triste Maitre en deuil du mal de quelque songe Regarde et songe:

«En l'antique foret des hetres et des houx Sur qui Ie crepuscule expire en mort de mauves, Les arbres bercent sur Ies branches des hiboux Dardant une pierrerie etrange d'yeux fauves.

Foret vaste qui croit sur ma terre de songe, Cache au moins dans ta vie un pan du dur tombeau Ou git ce que mon ame a cru du vieux mensonge Et mele l'aube et l'ombre a mon reve plus beau.

Si Ies anciens desirs volent de cime en cime Avec de longs cris doux de tristesse et de nuit, Epanche la douceur de tes voix unanimes Sur la maison deserte a qui quelque astre a nui.

Helas! Ies arbres sont hantes comme mon ame Et des yeux vigilants s'irritent dans Ie soir, Et voici par Ie bois ou Ie cerf rode et brame Luire des griffes d'or en Ie feuillage noir.»

VII

Que t'importe? Je sais Ie mot, Ie charme et Ie signe! Les bois clairs sont oisifs de brises et d'oiseaux Et Ies grappes des hautes vignes S'egrenent, une a une, dans Ies eaux Tranquilles ou dans Ies roseaux Dorment Ies cygnes.

Les loups mechants dans Ies chemins de ma foret Fuiront furtifs et roux comme mes vieilles haines;

2 9 4 · APPENDIX

Ma raemoire pareille aux fontaines Oubliera Ie passe qui s'y mirait Pour y pleurer ses peines Avec sa pale face de Genevieve aux tristes Ardennes Parmi l'exil de la foret.

Les biches blanches qui broutent l'ache et Ie cytise Et grimpent aux rochers de mousse et sont rieuses De gaites mysterieuses Viendront, selon tes clairs regards qui Ies motivent, Manger en mes mains oisives A l'ombre des saules ensoleilles et des yeuses.

Ton regard n'est-il pas tous Ies passes en moi, Ta voix tous Ies oiseaux du bois qui dort Et garde un lac de mort Sous Ies grappes s'y egrenant, une a une, en rides d'emoi? Celui qui t'exila dans Ies grottes du Nord C'etait Moi, Puisque je sais Ie mot, Ie signe et l'endroit Ou paissent dans la nuit Ies palefrois, Nous reviendrons un jour vers Ie Palais du Roi!

VIII

Ce vent triste qui vient du fleuve et des prairies En aromes de fleurs, d'iles et d'oseraies, Et qui passe a travers Ies arbres des futaies, Ou veut-il done mourir las de ses roderies, Vent de pres et d'arbres Qui chuchote aux levres de mousse des vieux marbres, Voix en exode, voix en peine et vague?

Il etait un bois noir, comme une ame, ombre et songe.

Les mille feuilles en coeurs vivants des lierres, Jour d'antan clairs et brefs comme des clairieres, Mousses du vieux silence aux levres qu'elles rongent, Ruisseaux qu'on suit longtemps sans Ies voir A Ieur murmure sous Ies branches, Chenes plus vieux que Ie manoir

APPENDIX · 2 9 5

Au bout de l'avenue issu, dormant et noir, Avec Ies filles du vieux Seigneur en robes blanches!

Le vent aux feuilles deja rousses papillonne, Le vent aux feuilles a des soupirs de vierge, Les glai'euls defleurissent Ieur flamme de cierge; Le vent va-t-il mourir en la foret d'automne?

Il courbe Ies fleoles et Ies hautes herbes Et semble une main qui flatte des cheveux fins. Ah! notre meule etait toute de bonnes gerbes Et nos greniers d'hiver lourds d'orges et de grain Et Ies gais etains clairs riaient a notre faim.

Le vent agite follement Ies campanules De la fenetre ouverte aux fievres du lit blanc. Souvenances des passes en fleurs carillonnant, Troupeaux du doux jadis au gue belant, Et Ies voix de la barque nous helant. . .

Du fond du vent et de parmi Ies crepuscules.

IX

Un si pale pastel qu'il semble etre un miroir Ou tu fus rose et blonde et douce, et qu'un espoir De sourire illumine en sa poudre ancienne; Une fleur en un cristal noir Ou semble avoir brule par la magicienne Le vieux philtre d'amour qui rend pale au miroir.

Un satin froid qui meurt sa flore cueillie En des Jardins que savaient Ies Tisseurs du vieux temps Casse a ses grands plis durs Ies Iys et Ies glaieuls Au dossier des fauteuils Etoffe vaine, faux printemps Dont s'etait paree, ü Jolie, Ta folie D'avoir ri de ces levres de fruits eclatants.

Un fin collier qui pleure en perles, une a une, Sur Ie tapis et roule en grele jusqu'au parquet

2 9 6 · APPENDIX

Ou miroite un lac de cygnes enfuis la lune, Et Ie fard, l'eventail, la mule et Ie bouquet.

Pastel, fleurs et satin, collier, et la memoire Des roses de la barque eparses sur l'eau noire Qui mire Ie tombeau de bronze et de basalte, Cest tout ce qui demeure et tout ce qui s'exalte Du grand delice mort par qui mon ame est chaste.

X

Au royaume oublie des Nefs et des Vigies, Les grands Oiseaux plus lents que Ies vagues Rasent la cote avec des ailes elargies Et cherchent la Morte dont Ies bagues Luisent au sable qui couvre ses mains palies.

Le flot de la Mer n'a plus d'ecume, Les roses s'ouvrent comme des levres mortes Sans espoir de quelque Avril posthume Ou refleurir encor Ies vitres et Ies portes Du palais perdu parmi la brume.

Flot sans ecume et crepuscule aux ailes lasses Dont l'ombre est legere aux greves d'ombre Et flute suraigue a l'angle des terrasses, Dont l'ombre deborde aux jardins d'ombre Ou Ies clefs sont aux serrures des portes basses.

XI

Des songes du plus beau des soirs Rien ne survit en l'aube aride Qui ne montra dans Ies miroirs Que sa morte paleur d'Armide.

Jardins, portiques de portor, lies, eaux, fleurs, grottes, prairies Ou Ies paons gardaient un tresor Dont ils semblaient Ies pierreries.

Le sortilege enseveli, Cendres sans phenix par la flamme,

APPENDIX · 2 9 7

Isole sous Ie ciel pali La face triste de la femme.

Voici mort Ie royaume faux Croupir en la nuit ancienne. Tombez, sourires triomphaux Et fard de la Magicienne.

Des songes du plus beau des soirs, O victime et depositaire, Confronte a tes mornes miroirs Un eveil d'Amant solitaire!

VICTOR HUGO

Le Ro uet d' O m p h a le

U est dans l'atrium, Ie beau rouet d'ivoire. La roue agile est blanche, et la quenouille est noire; La quenouille est d'ebene incruste de lapis. Il est dans Tatrium sur un riche tapis.

Un ouvrier d'Egine a sculpte sur la plinthe Europe, dont un dieu n'ecoute pas la plainte. Le taureau blanc l'emporte. Europe, sans espoir, Crie, et baissant Ies yeux, s'epouvante de voir L'Ocean monstrueux qui baise ses pieds roses.

Des aiguilles, du fil, des boites demi-closes, Les laines de Milet, peintes de pourpre et d'or, Emplissent un panier pres du rouet qui dort.

Cependant, odieux, effroyables, enormes, Dans Ie fond du palais, vingt fantomes difformes, Vingt monstres tout sanglants, qu'on ne voit qu'a demi, Errent en foule autour du rouet endormi: Le lion nemeen, l'hydre affreuse de Lerne, Cacus, Ie noir brigand de la noire caverne, Le triple Geryon, et Ies typhons des eaux, Qui, Ie soir, a grand bruit, soufflent dans Ies roseaux; De la massue au front tous ont Tempreinte horrible

298 · APPENDIX

Et tous, sans approcher, rodant d'un air terrible, Sur Ie rouet, ïý pend un fil souple et lie, Fixent de loin, dans l'ombre, un ceil humilie.

(Juin 18) (Les Contemplations)

FRANCIS VIELE-GRIFFIN

Heure Mystique

I

«Jejuna Corda» LIVRES D'HEURES

Les roses du chemin evoquent d'autres roses; L'avril imperieux evoque un autre amour; Cet avenir, joyeux espoir, que tu proposes, Rappelle du passe l'ombre d'un autre jour; Les roses du chemin evoquent d'autres roses.

Le catafalque virginal—ü roses blanches!— Les cierges dans la nuit des crepes; Ie pas lourd Des hommes; I'orgue lent—comme de nos dimanches D'autrefois—; et la foule indifferente autour Du catafalque virginal aux roses blanches.

Ces jours sont morts; ta vie, appareillant vers l'aube, Sombrait avant l'aurore eblouie ou je vais, Reveur ambitieux de la victoire improbe Et defiant Ie souvenir des jours mauvais: Ces jours sont morts; l'aurore a refoule cette aube.

Dis-moi, toi qui revais la harpe de l'archange, Ce soir de causerie intime, si Ie Dieu Des jours d'alors t'a pris au sein de la phalange Harmonieuse de ses choeurs, et dis Ie Lieu Tres-Saint ïý chante vers son Christ ta voix d'archange . . .

Sans doute, et tu connais Ies Rythmes et Ies Songes, Et quelque Amour inapaise des ames soeurs; Et tu prends en pitie notre art et ses mensonges

APPENDIX · 299

Aimes, et la banalite chere des coeurs; Et tu connais l'Amour, Ies Rythmes et Ies Songes.

O Doux mort, ü fievreux enfant, mort de l'ivresse Que donne aux coeurs choisis Ie Vin sanglant; et nous, Malgre qu'au carrefour de tous chemins se dresse La croix prestigieuse et qu'on baise a genoux, Nous avons prefere la Vie a cette ivresse.

Fous de desirs emancipes et d'amour jeune Vers l'univers conquis a nos voeux timores Nous marchions, abreuvant d'esperance Ie jeune Des coeurs; et nous allions vers des buts ignores Dans la joie ivre et dans l'enfievrement du jeune.

Et cependant que nous allions parmi des roses Blanches, au gre du sender vert, ce jour d'avril, Le souvenir m'a pris du tertre ou tu reposes Endormi dans l'espoir du reve pueril; Les roses du chemin evoquant d'autres roses. . . .

Si bien que, dans Ie soir qui vient, mon ame est triste Vaguement, sans regret, si ce n'est d'un espoir Et que mon coeur impetueux et doux resiste Aux promesses de l'ombre aimante, et, dans Ie soir Qui vient tres lentement sur nous, mon ame est triste.

II

Ite missa est. OFFICE DIVIN.

O futile joueur de lyre, evoque une ombre; Car ton ame pleurait de joie au soir de grace, Avant ce long chemin que ta mine encombre.

A prier maintenant, ta langue s'embarrasse; L'heure est funebre; c'est en vain que ton ceil fouille La noire immensite de l'Occident sans trace.

Il n'est rien que savoure ton ame que souille Le desaveu quotidien de chaque veille; L'ennui ronge ton coeur ainsi qu'une apre rouille.

3 0 0 · APPENDIX

Ne redo u t e pl u s qu e ta vo l o n t e s' e v e i l l e De l'a s s o u p i s s e m e n t qu e to n me p r i s im p o s e Et don t , pa r f o i s , to n es p r i t me m e s' e m e r v e i l l e .

Ne dai g n e pl u s qu i t t e r l' i n d e f e c t i b l e po s e Ou se ra i d i t l' a l l u r e al t i e r e de ta vie , O toi , do n t la pi t i e s' e t e n d su r to u t e ch o s e .

Ca r l' o r g u e i l et a y e u r du rev e qu i de f i e Depui s Ie sai n t am o u r ju s q u ' a u de s i r de va i n c r e T' e n s e i g n e Ie ded a i n qu i se v r e et dei f i e

Ta sc e p t i q u e ra i s o n qu e ri e n n' a pu co n v a i n c r e .

Il efi t su f f i po u r t a n t de ce de u i l mo n i t o i r e Pour avi v e r en to i la cr o y a n c e ma g i q u e Et plo y e r te s ge n o u x de v a n t Ie Sai n t - C i b o i r e .

Re p r e n d s ta lyr e et ry t h m e a nou v e a u la su p p l i q u e D'un cha n t hu m i l i e qu i pl a i g n e et glo r i f i e , Du seu i l , ve r s I'Agnea u sa i n t de la Mes s e tr a g i q u e .

Dis: «Ch r i s t , mo n cc e u r es t la s et ma ba r q u e de v i e Au gre de l' o u r a g a n ve r s la mo r t et e r n e l l e , Du fes t i n de la ch a i r mo n am e es t as s o u v i e . »

Dis enc o r e : «C h r i s t Dieu, mo n am e ne va u t - e l l e Pas une go u t t e du Vr a i Sa n g qu ' u n pr e t r e ep a n c h e , Et n'a s - t u pa s so u c i de mo n am e im m o r t e l l e ? »

Gr i s e - t o i de l' e n c e n s cr o u l a n t en av a l a n c h e Du cho e u r ve r s Ie par v i s ou da n s Pombr e tu pr i e s , Et voi c i qu e so u d a i n to n am e es t to u t e bl a n c h e !

Ju s q u ' a u ci b o i r e d' o r ge m m e de pi e r r e r i e s , Ou gi t Ie Pain viv i f i a n t , av a n c e et ma n g e : Ca r Ch r i s t ne pe r d r a pa s Ce l l e s qu ' i l a nou r r i e s .

Se n s au fo n d de to n et r e ab j e c t s' e v e i l l e r l' a n g e , Entre v o i s , un in s t a n t , Ie Cie l po u r qu i Ies sa g e s On t dd d a i g n e la te r r e et l' a m o u r de sa fa n g e ;

A P P E N D I X · 3 0 1

Et des Voix te diront d'extatiques messages . . .

*

O vision d'un soir et la royale escorte Des archanges joueurs de harpe et des cent vierges . . . Mais Ie ciel des elus a referme sa porte;

C'est dans l'aube d'argent la mort lente des cierges . . . Et la banalite des choses et des hommes, Cloaque ou pour jamais, pauvre coeur, tu t'immerges.

Brise ton crucifix, seme aux vents Ies atomes De !'Ideal futile et suis la tourbe lente; Car nous ne savons pas meme ce que nous sommes.

Elle est bien morte, va, ta belle foi vaillante; Ta barque a tout jamais cargue sa double voile; Dans la stagnation passive d'une attente,

Et sur toi lentement Ie firmament se voile, C'est I'heure douloureuse ou s'entenebre l'ame, Le regret sans espoir et la nuit sans etoile,

Et c'est l'obscurite qui pese comme un blame.

Ill

La penombre languit dans Ies Cimes du Pinde; Un lac noir sourd au creux du val—et c'est la nuit; L'axe des cieux tourne vers nous Ies feux de I'lnde.

Jette ton arc, siffle ton limier qui poursuit Jusqu'en la nuit sa chasse vaine—l'ombre est morne; Sieds-toi, ton corps est las, pres de l'eau qui bruit.

La Iune a l'orient dresse sa double corne; La treve choit d'en haut au songe audacieux; Voici pour t'accouder Ies mousses d'une borne.

Fixe un astre, connais Ie vertige des cieux; Dissous-toi vers l'Espace ainsi qu'une fumee, Et, dans la volupte du Rien, ferme Ies yeux.

302 • APPENDIX

II chante maintenant des voix sous la ratnee, Un vent leger frissonne parmi I'herbe ou tu gis! Qu'allais-tu pourchassant la fauve renommee?

C'est peu que toi—malgre ses horizons rougis, Malgre I'aube et la mer, ce monde est peu de chose; Et Part n'est pas la peine—6 rythme—et tu vagis.

La priere est absurde alors meme qu'on I'ose; N'as-tu pas honte aussi de ton Dieu qui pieurait? Le temps est mort des Christ et de I'apotheose.

Quelle fatuite naive te leurrait D'un espoir enfantin et d'un songe impossible, Prometteuse de gloire a ton reve epeure?

Toume encor longuement vers le del impassible Tes yeux—: la Gloire unique est d'etre I'lnfini! Certes tu ne voudrais d'une gloire accessible?

Abdique d'etre roi,—le saurais-tu, banni— Sachant que rien ne vaut que ta volonte livre Le joumalier combat vers quoi I'orgueil hennit.

Tais-toi; ne reve plus la splendeur qui t'enivre: Cette joie impuissante est pire—une heure a fui— Que saurais-tu vouloir, toi qui dedaignes vivre . . .

Le grand ciel etoile revolve dans la nuit.

STEPHANE MALLARME Prose

pour des Esseintes

Hyperbole! de ma memoire Triomphalement ne sais-tu Te lever, aujourd'hui grimoire Dans un livre de fer vetu:

A P P EN D I X · 3 0 3

Car j'installe, par la science, L'hymne des coeurs spirituels En 1'oeuvre de ma patience, Atlas, herbiers et rituels.

Nous promenions notre visage (Nous fumes deux, je Ie maintiens) Sur maints charmes de paysage, O coeur, γ comparant Ies tiens.

L'ere d'autorite se trouble Lorsque, sans nul motif, on dit De ce midi que notre double Inconscience approfondit

Que, sol des cent iris, son site, lis savent s'il a bien ete, Ne porte pas de nom que cite L'or de la trompette d'Ete.

Oui, dans une lie que l'air charge De vue et non de visions Toute fleur s'etalait plus large Sans que nous en devisions.

Telles, immenses, que chacune Ordinairement se para D'un lucide contour, lacune, Qui des jardins la separa.

Gloire du long desir, Idees Tout en moi s'exaltait de voir La famille des iridees Surgir a ce nouveau devoir,

Mais cette soeur sensee et tendre Ne porta son regard plus loin Que sourire et, comme a l'entendre J'occupe mon antique soin.

304 · APPENDIX

Oh! sache l'Esprit de litige, A cette heure ou nous nous taisons, Que de lis multiples la tige Grandissait trop pour nos raisons

Et non comme pleure la rive, Quand son jeu monotone ment A vouloir que Pampleur arrive Parmi mon jeune etonnement

D'ouir tout Ie ciel et la carte Sans fin attestes sur mes pas, Par Ie flot meme qui s'ecarte, Que ce pays n'exista pas.

L'enfant abdique son extase Et docte deja par chemins Elle dit Ie mot: Anastase! Ne pour d'eternels parchemins,

Avant qu'un sepulcre ne rie Sous aucun climat, son a'ieul, De porter ce nom: Pulcherie! Cache par Ie trop grand gla'ieul.

Sainte

A la fenetre recelant Le santal vieux qui se dedore De sa viole etincelant Jadis avec flute ou mandore,

Est la Sainte pale, etalant Le livre vieux qui se deplie Du Magnificat ruisselant Jadis selon vepre et compile:

A ce vitrage d'ostensoir Que frole une harpe par l'Ange

APPENDI X · 3 0 5

Formee avec son vol du soir Pour la delicate phalange

Du doigt que, sans Ie vieux santal Ni Ie vieux livre, elle balance Sur Ie plumage instrumental, Musicienne du silence.

Les Fenetres

Las du triste hopital, et de l'encens fetide Qui monte en la blancheur banale des rideaux Vers Ie grand crucifix ennuye du mur vide, Le moribond sournois y redresse un vieux dos,

Se traine et va, moins pour chauffer sa pourriture Que pour voir du soleil sur Ies pierres, coller Les poils blancs et Ies os de la maigre figure Aux fenetres qu'un beau rayon clair veut haler.

Et la bouche, fievreuse et d'azur bleu vorace, Telle, jeune, elle alia respirer son tresor, Une peau virginale et de jadis! encrasse D'un long baiser amer Ies tiedes carreaux d'or.

Ivre, il vit, oubliant l'horreur des saintes huiles, Les tisanes, l'horloge et Ie lit inflige, La toux; et quand Ie soir saigne parmi Ies tuiles, Son ceil, a l'horizon de lumiere gorge,

Voit des galeres d'or, belles comme des cygnes, Sur un fleuve de pourpre et de parfums dormir En bezant l'eclair fauve et riche de leurs lignes Dans un grand nonchaloir charge de souvenir!

Ainsi, pris du degout de l'homme a l'ame dure Vautre dans Ie bonheur, ou ses seuls appetits Mangent, et qui s'entete a chercher cette ordure Pour l'offrir a la femme allaitant ses petits,

306 • APPENDIX

Je fuis et je m'accroche a routes les croisees D'ou I'on toume I'epaule a la vie, et, beni, Dans leur verre, lave d'eternelles rosees, Que dore le matin chaste de I'lnfini

Je me mire et me vois ange! et je meurs, et j'aime —Que la vitre soit I'art, soit la mysticite— A renaitre, portant mon reve en diademe, Au ciel anterieur oil fleurit la Beaute!

Mais, helas! Ici-bas est maitre: sa hantise Vient m'eccEurer parfois jusqu'en cet abri sur, Et le vomissement impur de la Betise Me force a me boucher le nez devant I'azur.

Est-il moyen, 6 Moi qui connais I'amertume, D'enfoncer le cristal par le monstre insulte Et de m'enfuir, avec mes deux ailes sans plume —Au risque de tomber pendant Teternite?

L'Azur

De I'eternel azur la sereine ironie Accable, belle indolemment comme les fleurs, Le poete impuissant qui maudit son genie A travers un desert sterile de Douleurs.

Fuyant, les yeux fermes, je le sens qui regarde Avec I'intensite d'un remords atterrant, Mon ame vide. Oii fuir? et quelle nuit hagarde Jeter, lambeaux, jeter sur ce mepris navrant?

Brouillards, montez! Versez vos cendres monotones Avec de longs haillons de brume dans les cieux Que noiera le marais livide des automnes Et batissez un grand plafond silencieux!

Et toi, sors des etangs letheens et ramasse En t'en venant la vase et les pales roseaux.

APPENDIX · 307

Cher Ennui, pour boucher d'une main jamais lasse Les grands trous bleus que font mechamment Ies

[oiseaux. Encor! que sans repit Ies tristes cheminees Fument, et que de suie une errante prison Eteigne dans l'horreur de ses noires trainees Le soleil se mourant jaunatre a l'horizon!

—Le Ciel est mort. —Vers toi, j'accours! donne, L'oubli de l'Ideal cruel et du Peche [6 matiere, A ce martyr qui vient partager la litiere Ou Ie betail heureux des homines est couche,

Car j'y veux, puisque enfin ma cervelle, videe Comme Ie pot de fard gisant au pied d'un mur, N'a plus Part d'attifer la sanglotante idee, Lugubrement bailler vers un trepas obscur . . .

En vain! ÃAzur triomphe, et je I'entends qui chante Dans Ies cloches. Mon ame, il se fait voix pour plus Nous faire peur avec sa victoire mechante, Et du metal vivant sort en bleus angelus!

Il roule par la brume, ancien et traverse Ta native agonie ainsi qu'un glaive sur; Ou fuir dans la revolte inutile et perverse? Je suis hante. L'Azur! l'Azur! l'Azur! 1'Azur!

Cantique de Saint jean

Le soleil que sa halte Surnaturelle exalte Aussitot redescend

Incandescent

Je sens comme aux vertebres S'eployer des tenebres Toutes dans un frisson

A l'unisson

308 · APPE NDIX

Et ma tete surgie Solitaire vigie Dans Ies vols triomphaux

De cette faux

Comme rupture franche Plutot refoule ou tranche Les anciens desaccords

Avec Ie corps

Qu'elle de jevmes ivre S'opiniatre a suivre En quelque bond hagard

Son pur regard

La-haut ou la froidure Eternelle n'endure Que vous Ie surpassiez

Tous ï glaciers

Mais selon un bapteme Illuminee au meme Principe qui m'elut

Penche un salut.

Victorieusement fui. . .

Victorieusement fui Ie suicide beau Tison de gloire, sang par ecume, or, tempete! O rire si la-bas une pourpre s'apprete A ne tendre royal que mon absent tombeau.

Quoi! de tout cet eclat pas meme Ie lambeau S'attarde, il est minuit, a I'ombre qui nous fete Excepte qu'un tresor presomptueux de tete Verse son caresse nonchaloir sans flambeau,

La tienne si toujours Ie delice! Ia tienne Oui seule qui du ciel evanoui retienne Un peu de pueril triomphe en t'en coiffant

APPENDIX · 309

Avec clarte quand sur Ies coussins tu la poses Comme un casque guerrier d'imperatrice enfant Dont pour te figurer il tomberait des roses.

La Chevelure . . .

La chevelure vol d'une flamme a l'extreme Occident de desirs pour la tout deployer Se pose (je dirais mourir un diademe) Vers Ie front couronne son ancien foyer

Mais sans or soupirer que cette vive nue L'ignition du feu toujours interieur Originellement la seule continue Dans Ie joyau de l'ceil veridique ou rieur

Une nudite de heros tendre diffame Celle qui ne mouvant astre ni feux au doigt Rien qu'a simplifier avec gloire la femme Accomplit par son chef fulgurante l'exploit

De semer de rubis Ie doute qu'elle ecorche Ainsi qu'une joyeuse et tutelaire torche.

L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune Eglogue

LE FAUNE

Ces nymphes, je Ies veux perpetuer.

Si clair, Leur incarnat leger, qu'il voltige dans l'air Assoupi de sommeils touffus.

Aimai-je un reve? Mon doute, amas de nuit ancienne, s'acheve En maint rameau subtil, qui, demeure Ies vrais Bois memes, prouve, helas! que bien seul je m'offrais

310 · APPENDIX

Pour triomphe la faute ideale de roses. RefIechissons . . .

ou si Ies femmes dont tu gloses Figurent un souhait de tes sens fabuleux! Faune, l'illusion s'echappe des yeux bleus Et froids, comme une source en pleurs, de la plus chaste: Mais, I'autre tout soupirs, dis-tu qu'elle contraste Comme brise du jour chaude dans ta toison? Que non! par Pimmobile et lasse pamoison Suffoquant de chaleurs Ie matin frais s'il lutte, Ne murmure point d'eau que ne verse ma flute Au bosquet arrose d'accords; et Ie seul vent Hors des deux tuyaux prompt a s'exhaler avant Qu'il disperse Ie son dans une pluie aride, C'est, a l'horizon pas remue d'une ride, Le visible et serein souffle artificiel De !'inspiration, qui regagne Ie ciel.

O bords siciliens d'un calme marecage Qu'a l'envi de soleils ma vanite saccage, Tacite sous Ies fleurs d'etincelles, CONTEZ "Que je coupais ici Ies creux roseaux domptes Par Ie talent; quand, sur I'or glauque de lointaines Verdures dediant Ieur vigne a des fontaines, Ondoie une blancheur animate au repos: Et qu'au prelude lent oil naissent Ies pipeaux Ce vol de cygnes, non! de naiades se sauve Ou plonge..."

Inerte, tout brule dans l'heure fauve Sans marquer par quel art ensemble detala Trop d'hymen souhaite de qui cherche Ie la: Alors m'eveillerai-je a la ferveur premiere, Droit et seul, sous un flot antique de lumiere, Lys! et l'un de vous tous pour l'ingenuite.

Autre que ce doux rien par Ieur levre ebruite, Le baiser, qui tout bas des perfides assure, Mon sein, vierge de preuve, atteste une morsure Mysterieuse, due a quelque auguste dent;

APPENDIX · 311

Mais, bast! arcane tel elut pour confident Le jonc vaste et jumeau dont sous l'azur on joue: Qui, detournant a soi Ie trouble de la joue, Reve, dans un solo long, que nous amusions La beaute d'alentour par des confusions Fausses entre elle-meme et notre chant credule; Et de {aire aussi haut que l'amour se module Evanouir du songe ordinaire de dos Ou de flanc pur suivis avec mes regards clos, Une sonore, vaine et monotone ligne.

Tache done, instrument des fuites, ü maligne Syrinx, de refleurir aux lacs ou tu m'attends! Moi, de ma rumeur fier, je vais parler longtemps Des deesses; et par d'idolatres peintures, A Ieur ombre enlever encore des ceintures: Ainsi, quand des raisins j'ai suce la clarte, Pour bannir un regret par ma feinte ecarte, Rieur, j'eleve au ciel d'ete la grappe vide Et, soufflant dans ses peaux lumineuses, avide D'ivresse, jusqu'au soir je regarde au travers.

O nymphes, regonflons des SOUVENIRS divers. "Mon aeil, trouant Ies joncs, dardait chaque encolure Immortelle, qui note en I'onde sa brtilure Avec un cri de rage au ciel de la foret; ( Et Ie splendide bain de cheveux disparait Dans Ies clartes et Ies frissons, ü pierreries! J'accours; quand, a mes pieds, s'entrejoignent (meurtries De la langueur gotitee a ce mal d'etre deux) Des dormeuses parmi leurs seuls bras hasardeux; Je Ies ravis, sans Ies desenlacer, et vole A ce massif, hat par I'ombrage frivole, De roses tarissant tout parfum au soleil, Ou notre ibat au jour consume soit pareil." Je t'adore, courroux des vierges, ü delice Farouche du sacre fardeau nu qui se glisse Pour fuir ma levre en feu buvant, comme un eclair Tressaille! Ia frayeur secrete de la chair: Des pieds de l'inhumaine au coeur de la timide

312 · APPENDIX

Que delaisse a la fois une innocence, humide De Iarmes folks ou de moins tristes vapeurs.

"Mon crime, c'est d'avoir, gat de vaittcre ces peurs Traitresses, divise la touffe echevelee De baisers que Ies dieux gardaient si biert melee: Car, a peine j'allais cacher un rire ardent Sous Ies replis heureux d'une seule (gardant Par un doigt simple, afin que sa candeur de plume Se teignit a I'emoi de sa saeur qui s'allume, La petite, naive et ne rougissant pas:) Que de mes bras, defaits par de vagues tr0pas, Cette proie, a jamais ingrate se delivre Sans pitie du sanglot dont j'etais encore ivre."

Tant pis! vers Ie bonheur d'autres m'entraineront Par Ieur tresse nouee aux cornes de mon front: Tu sais, ma passion, que, pourpre et deja mure, Chaque grenade eclate et d'abeilles murmure; Et notre sang, epris de qui Ie va saisir, Coule pour tout l'essaim eternel du desir. A I'heure oii ce bois d'or et de cendres se teinte Une fete s'exalte en la feuillee eteinte: Etna! c'est parmi toi visite de Venus Sur ta lave posant ses talons ingenus, Quand tonne un somme triste ou s'epuise la flamme. Je tiens la reine!

O sfir chatiment. . .

Non, mais Pame De paroles vacante et ce corps alourdi Tard succombent au fier silence de midi: Sans plus il faut dormir en l'oubli du blaspheme, Sur Ie sable altere gisant et comme j'aime Ouvrir ma bouche a I'astre efficace des vins!

Couple, adieu; je vais voir l'ombre que tu devins.

APPENDIX · 313

ARTHUR RIMBAUD

Le Bateau Ivre

Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles, Je ne me sends plus guide par Ies haleurs: Des Peaux-Rouges criards Ies avaient pris pour cibles, Les ayant cloues nus aux poteaux de couleurs.

J'etais insoucieux de tous Ies equipages, Porteur de bles flamands ou de cotons anglais. Quand avec mes haleurs ont fini ces tapages, Les Fleuves m'ont laisse descendre ou je voulais.

Dans Ies clapotements furieux des marees, Moi, l'autre hiver, plus sourd que Ies cerveaux d'enfants, Je courus! Et Ies Peninsules demarrees N'ont pas subi tohu-bohus plus triomphants.

La tempete a beni mes eveils maritimes. Plus leger qu'un bouchon j'ai danse sur Ies flots Qu'on appelle rouleurs eternels de victimes, Dix nuits, sans regretter l'oeil niais des falots!

Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures, L'eau verte penetra ma coque de sapin Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin.

Et des lors, je me suis baigne dans Ie Poeme De la Mer, infuse d'astres, et lactescent, Devorant Ies azurs verts; ou, flottaison bleme Et ravie, un noye pensif parfois descend;

Ou, teignant tout a coup Ies bleuites, delires Et rhythmes lents sous Ies rutilements du jour, Plus fortes que l'alcool, plus vastes que nos lyres, Fermentent Ies rousseurs ameres de l'amour!

Je sais Ies cieux crevant en eclairs, et Ies trombes Et Ies ressacs et Ies courants: je sais Ie soir,

314 · APPENDIX

L'Aube exaltee ainsi qu'un peuple de colombes, Et j'ai vu quelquefois ce que Phomme a cru voir!

J'ai vu Ie soleil bas, tache d'horreurs mystiques, Illuminant de longs figements violets, Pareils a des acteurs de drames tres antiques Les flots roulant au loin leurs frissons de volets!

J'ai reve la nuit verte aux neiges eblouies, Baiser montant aux yeux des mers avec lenteurs, La circulation des seves inou'ies, Et l'eveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs!

J'ai suivi, des mois pleins, pareille aux vacheries Hysteriques, la houle a l'assaut des recifs, Sans songer que Ies pieds lumineux des Maries Pussent forcer Ie mufle aux Oceans poussifs!

J'ai heurte, savez-vous, d'incroyables Florides Melant aux fleurs des yeux de pantheres a peaux D'hommes! Des arcs-en-ciel tendus comme des brides Sous l'horizon des mers, a de glauques tropeaux!

J'ai vu fermenter Ies marais enormes, nasses Ou pourrit dans Ies joncs tout un Leviathan! Des ecroulements d'eaux au milieu des bonaces, Et Ies lointains vers Ies gouffres cataractant!

Glaciers, soleils d'argent, flots nacreux, cieux de braises! Echouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns Ou Ies serpents geants devores des punaises Choient, des arbres tordus, avec de noirs parfums!

J'aurais voulu montrer aux enfants ces dorades Du flot bleu, ces poissons d'or, ces poissons chantants. —Des ecumes de fleurs ont berc£ mes derades Et d'ineffables vents m'ont aile par instants.

Parfois, martyr lasse des poles et des zones, La mer dont Ie sanglot faisait mon roulis doux

APPENDIX · 315

Montait vers moi ses fleurs d'ombre aux ventouses jaunes Et je restais, ainsi qu'une femme a genoux . . .

Presque lie, ballottant sur mes bords Ies querelles Et Ies fientes d'oiseaux clabaudeurs aux yeux blonds. Et je voguais, lorsqu'a travers mes liens freles Des noyes descendaient dormir, a reculons!

Or moi, bateau perdu sous Ies cheveux des anses, Jete par l'ouragan dans l'ether sans oiseau, Moi dont Ies Monitors et Ies voiliers des Hanses N'auraient pas repeche la carcasse ivre d'eau;

Libre, fumant, monte de brumes violettes, Moi qui trouais Ie ciel rougeoyant comme un mur Qui porte, confiture exquise aux bons poetes, Des lichens de soleil et des morves d'azur;

Qui courais, tache de lunules electriques, Planche folle, escorte des hippocampes noirs, Quand Ies juillets faisaient crouler a coups de triques Les cieux ultramarins aux ardents entonnoirs;

Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre a cinquante lieues Le rut des Behemots et Ies Maelstroms epais, Fileur eternel des immobilites bleues, Je regrette l'Europe aux anciens parapets!

J'ai vu des archipels sideraux! et des iles Dont Ies cieux delirants sont ouverts au vogueur: —Est-ce en ces nuits sans fonds que tu dors et t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, ü future Vigueur?

Mais, vrai, j'ai trop pleure! Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute Iune est atroce et tout soleil amer: L'acre amour m'a gonfle de torpeurs enivrantes. O que ma quille eclate! O que j'aille a la mer!

Si je desire une eau d'Europe, c'est la flache Noire et froide ou vers Ie crepuscule embaume Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses, lache

316 · APPENDIX

Un bateau frele comme un papillon de mai.

Je ne puis plus, baigne de vos langueurs, ü lames, Enlever Ieur sillage aux porteurs de cotons, Ni traverser l'orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes, Ni nager sous Ies yeux horribles des pontons.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY VALERY

Valery, Paul. The Art of Poetry, trans, by Denise Folliot, with an Introduction by T. S. Eliot, in The Collected Works of Paul Valery, Bollingen Series, XLV, 15 vols. N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 1958, 7.

. Cahiers, vols. 1-XXIX. Paris: C.N.R.S., 1957-1961.

. Cahiers, 2 vols., ÝÜ. Judith Robinson, Coll. Pleiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1973, 1974.

et Fourment, Gustave. Correspondattce 1887-1933, Introd., notes, et documents par Octave Nadal. Paris: Gallimard, 1957.

et Gide, Andre. Correspondance 1890-1942, ed. Robert Mal­let. Paris: Gallimard, 1952.

. Lettres a Quelques-Uns 1889-1943. Paris: Gallimard, 1952.

. "Methodes," Le Mercure de France, Tome XXV, Janvier-Mars, 1898.

. Oeuvres, 2 tomes, ed. Jean Hytier, Coll. Pleiade. Paris: Gal­limard, 1957, 1960.

CRITICAL WORKS ON VALERY

Austin, L. J. "The Negative Plane Tree," L'Esprit createur, IV, 1964, pp. 3-10.

Barbier, Carl B. "Valery et Mallarme jusqu'en 1898," Colloque Paul Valery: Amities de jeunesse. Influences-lectures. Universite d'Edinbourg, Nov. 1976. Paris: Nizet, 1978.

Bellemin-Noel, Jean. "Le Narcissisme des 'Narcisses,' " Litterature, No. 6, Mai 1972, pp. 33-55.

Bonnefoy, Yves. "Paul Valery," L'lmprobable. Paris: Mercure de France, 1959.

Brentman, John. "Narcissus in the Text," Georgia Review, 30.3, 1976, pp. 293-327.

Breton, Andre. Entretiens 1913-1952 avec Andre Parinaud. Paris: Gallimard, 1952.

Catalogue de {'exposition Paul Valery. Paris: Bibliotheque litteraire Jacques Doucet, 30 Octobre, 1946.

Cioran, E. M. VaUry face a ses idoles. Paris: L'Herne, 1970.

318 · BIBLIOGRAPHY

Crow, Christine. Paul Valery, Consciousness and Nature. Cam­bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

. Paul Valery and Maxwell's Demon: Natural Order and Human Possibility. Hull: University of Hull, 1972.

Derrida, Jacques. "Les Sources de Valery* Qual, Quelle," Modern Language Notes, May 1972, Vol. 87, No. 4, Special issue, "Paul Valery," pp. 563-99.

Duchesne-Guillemin, J. Etudes pour un Paul Valery. Neuchatel: A La Baconniere, 1964.

Eliot, T. S. From Poe to Valery. N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace, & Co., 1948. Fasano, Giancarlo. " 'Profusion du soir': Genesi di alcune strutture

poetiche," Saggi e ricerche di letteratura francese, Vol. 4, 1963, pp. 299-321.

Franklin, Ursula. The Rhetoric of Valery's Prose "Aubades." To­ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. . "Valery's Reader: 'L'Amateur de poemes,' " The Centennial

Review. Vol. XXII, 1978, pp. 389-99. Gaede, Edouard. Nietzsche et Valery: essai sur la comedie de I'esprit.

Paris: Gallimard, 1962. Genette, Gerard. "Valery and the Poetics of Language," Textual

Strategies, ed. Josue V. Harari. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979.

Giaveri, Maria Teresa. "L'Album de vers anciens" di Paul Valery: studio sulle correzioni d'autore edite ed inedite. Padova: Liviana Editrice, 1969.

Grubbs, Henry. "Nuit magique de Paul Valery," Revue d'histoire litteraire de la France, Vol. 60, pp. 199-212.

. Paul Valery. N.Y.: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1968. Guiraud, Pierre. Langage et versification d'apres I'oeuvre de Paul

Valery. Paris: Klincksieck, 1933. Hartman, Geoffrey. The Unmediated Vision: An Interpretation of

Wordsworth, Hopkins, Rilke, and Valery. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.

Hoffmann, Claude. "De quelques sources a Paul Valery," Entretiens sur Paul Valery. Paris: Mouton, 1968.

Hytier5Jean. La Poetique de Valery. Paris: Armand Colin, 2e edition, 1970.

Ince, Walter. "Etre, connaitre, et mysticisme du reel selon Valery," Entretiens sur Paul Valery. Paris: Mouton, 1968.

. "Valery et Heredia," Colloque Paul Valery: Amities de jeu-nesse. Influences-lectures, op.cit.

BIBL IOGRAPHY · 319

Kohler, Hartmut. Poesie et profondeur simantique dans "La Jeune Parque" de Paul Valery. Nancy-Saint-Nicolas-de-Port. Impri-merie V. Idoux, 1965.

Laurent, F. "Interpretation d'un poeme de Valery, 'La Fileuse,' " Les Etudes classiques, Tome XXVI, No. 3, Juillet, 1958.

Laurette, Pierre. "La Notion d'influence chez Valery et Goethe," Actes du IV' Congres de I'Association Internationale de Litte-rature Comparee, Friebourg, 1964, rediges par Fransois Jost. Paris: Mouton, 1966.

. Le Theme de I'arbre chez Paul Valery. Paris: Klincksieck, 1967.

Lawler, James. Lecture de Valery: Une etude de 'Charmes.' Paris: P.U.F., 1963.

. The Poet as Analyst. Essays on Paul Valery, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1974.

. "The Technique of Valery's 'Orphee,' " Journal of the Aus­tralasian Universities Modern Language Association, October, 1956, pp. 54-64.

. "Valery et Mallarme: Le Tigre et la gazelle," Colloque Paul Valery: Amities de jeunesse. Influences-lectures, op.cit.

. "Valery's 'Un Feu distinct,' " French Studies, Vol. XXVIII, April 1974, pp. 169-76.

Lussy, Florence de. La Genese de "La Jeune Parque" de Paul Valery: essai de chronologie. Paris: Lettres modernes, 1975.

Malmberg, Bertil. "Paul Valery et Ies signes," in Signes et symboles: Ies bases du langage humain. Paris: Editions A. Sc J. Picard, 1977.

Millan, C. Gordon. "Valery et Pierre Louys," Colloque Paul Valery: Amities de jeunesse. Influences-lectures, op.cit.

Mondor, Henri. L'Heureuse rencontre de Valery et Mallarme. Paris-Lausanne: Editions de Clairefontaine, 1947.

Monod, J. P. Regard sur Paul Valery. Lausanne: Editions des Ter-reaux, 1947.

Miiller, Marcel. "La Dialectique de l'ouvert et du ferme chez Paul Valery," dans Poetiques. Theorie et critique litteraires, ed. Floyd Gray. Michigan Romance Studies, Vol. 1, 1980.

Noulet, Emilie, ed. Entretiens sur Paul Valery. Paris: Mouton, 1968. Paul Valery, essais et temoignages, inedits, recueillis par Marc Ei-

geldinger. Neuchatel: A La Baconniere, 1945. Pistorius, Georges. "Le Probleme de !'influence selon Paul Valery,"

320 · BIBLIOGRAPHY

Actes du IV* congres de I'association internationale de litterature comparee, op.cit.

Raymond, Marcel. Paul Valery et la tentation de I'esprit. Neuchatel: A La Baconniere, 1964.

Robinson, Judith. L'Analyse de I'esprit dans Ies "Cahiers" de Paul Valery. Paris: LibrairieJose Corti, 1963.

. Rimbaud, Valery et "l'incoherence harmonique." Paris: Lettres modernes, 1979.

. "Valery, Pascal, et la censure de la metaphysique," Colloque Paul Valery: Amities de jeunesse. Influences-lectures, op.cit.

Scarfe, Francis. The Art of Paul Valery: A Study in Dramatic Mon­ologue. Melbourne-London-Toronto: William Heinemann Ltd., 1954.

Schmidt-Radefeldt, Jiirgen. Paul Valery, linguiste dans Ies "Cahiers." Paris: Klincksieck, 1970.

. "Valery et Ies sciences du langage," Bulletin d'etudes va­lery ennes, No. 8, Jan. 1976.

Sorensen, H. La Poesie de Paul Valery: etude stylistique sur "La Jeune Parque." Copenhagen: A. Busck, 1944.

Spitzer, Leo. "La Genese d'une poesie de Paul Valery," Renaissance, Vol. 2-3, 1944, 1945, pp. 311-21.

Suckling, Norman. Paul Valery and the Civilized Mind. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1954.

Sutcliffe, P. E. La Pensee de Paul Valery. Paris: Nizet, 1955. Todorov, Tzvetan. "Valery's Poetics," Yale French Studies, No. 44,

1970. Valery, Claude. "Lectures scientifiques anglo-saxonnes de Valery,"

Colloque Paul Valery: Amities de jeunesse. Influences-lectures, op.cit.

Walzer, Pierre-Olivier. La Poesie de Paul Valery. Geneve: Pierre Cailler, 1953.

Whiting, Charles. " 'Profusion du soir' and 'Le Cimetiere marin,' " PMLA, Vol. LXXVII, No. 1, 1962.

. "Valery: Development of a Poet," Australian Journal of French Studies, Vol. IX, 1972, pp. 161-66.

. Valery, jeune poete. Paris: PUF, 1960. Wills, Ludmilla. Le Regard contemplatif chez Valiry et Mallarme.

Amsterdam: Rodopoi NV, 1974. Wilson, Edmund. Axel's Castle. N.Y.: Charles Scribner's & Sons,

1931.

BIBLIOGRAPHY · 321

SPECIAL ISSUES ON VALERY

Australian Journal of French Studies, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 1971. Cahiers du sud. "Paul Valery vivant," Marseille: 1946. Modern Language Notes, "Paul Valery," May 1972, Vol. 87, No.

4. Yale French Studies. "Paul Valery," No. 44, 1970.

GENERAL WORKS

Agosti, Stefano. Il Testo poetico: Teoria e pratiche d'analisi. Milano: Rizzoli Editore., 1972.

Bate, W. Jackson. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970.

Baudelaire, Charles. Correspondance generate, 4 tomes. Paris: Co-nard, 1948.

. Oeuvres completes, ed. Le Dantec, Coll. Pleiade, Paris: Gal-limard, 1954.

Blanchot, Maurice. L'Espace litteraire. Paris: Gallimard, 1955. . Le Livre a venir. Paris: Gallimard, 1959. . La Part du feu. Paris: Gallimard, 1949.

Block, Haskell M. "The Concept of Influence in Comparative Lit­erature," Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, VII, 1958.

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence, a Theory of Poetry. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1973.

. A Map of Misreading. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1975. Breal, Michel. Essai de semantique. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie.,

1897. De Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of

Contemporary Criticism. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1971. Friedrich, Hugo. Die Struktur der modernen lyrik von Baudelaire

bis zur Gegenwart. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956. Frye, Northrop. The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and

Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970. Genette, Gerard. Figures I. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966. Gide, Andre. Oeuvres completes, ed. L. Martin-Chauffier, Tome 1,

Paris: Nouvelle Revue Fraru^aise, 1953. Greene, Robert. Six French Poets of Our Time: A Critical and His­

torical Study. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Heredia, Jose-Maria de. Les Trophees. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, n.d. Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contem-

322 · BIBLIOGRAPHY

porary Rhetoric of Reading. Baltimore-London: TheJohns Hop­kins University Press, 1980.

Kuhn, Reinhard. The Return to Reality. Paris: Librairie Minard, 1962.

Leconte de Lisle. Oeuvres de Leconte de Lisle, ed. E. Pich, 4 Tomes. Paris: Belles lettres, 1977-78.

Le Guern, Michel. Semantique de la metaphor et de la metonymie. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1973.

Louys, Pierre. Journal intime. Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1929. . Poesies. Paris: Les editions G. Cres et cie., 1927.

Mallarme, Stephane. Oeuvres completes, ed. Henri Mondor et G. Jean-Aubry, Coll. Pleiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1945.

Mondor, Henri. Vie de Mallarme. Paris: Gallimard, 1941. Poe, Edgar Allan. Collected Works, ed. T. O. Mabbott. Cambridge:

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969. Raymond, Marcel. De Baudelaire au surrealisme: essai sur Ie mouve-

ment poetique contemporain. Paris: Correa, 1933. Regnier, Henri de. Poemes 1887-92. Paris: Mercure de France, 1913. Riffaterre, Michael. Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington & London:

Indiana University Press, 1978. Rimbaud, Arthur. Oeuvres, ed. S. Bernard. Paris: Gamier freres,

1960. Smith, Barbara Hernstein. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems

End. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968. Stevens, Wallace. Opus Posthumous. N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957.

. The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination. N.Y.: Vintage Books, 1951.

Symons, Arthur. The Symbolist Movement in Literature. London: William Heinemann, 1899.

Viele-Griffin, Francis. Poemes et poesies. Paris: Societe du Mercure de France, 1917.

INDEX

Adam, 245 Agosti, Stefano, 274 Alain, 28-30, 32, 45, 49 Albert, Henn, 90n Ambroise, 66 Antiopus, 249n, 250n Aphrodite, 154 "Anthmetica universalis," 102, 103 Austin, L. J., 94n, lOln Ayer, Alfred Jules, 90

Babel, 100, 106, 251 Banville, Theodore de, 41n Barbier, Carl B., 4, 64n, 80, 8 In,

196n, 207n Baroque, 177 Bate, W. Jackson, 22n Baudelaire, Charles, 3, 5n, 16, 38,

39, 39n, 42, 43n, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51-63, 68, 78, 82, 91, 93, 95, 103, 123, 166, 177, 238, 253, 254, 262, 263; L'Art rotnan-tique, 54; "La Chambre double," 58; Le$ Fleurs du mal, 53, 55, 57n, 242, 244, 245, 246: "Alle-gone," 245; "Au lecteur," 243, 245, 251; "La Bfetrice," 245, 248; "Le Beau navire," 248; "Les BIJOUX," 246-50, 254; "Une Charogne," 241, 243, 244; "La Chevelure," 123-24, 174, 245, 245n, 248; "Hymne a la Beauce," 244; "Une Martyr," 244; "Le Poison," 248; "Reve parisien," 93; "XXIV," 244; "Le Voyage," 223-25, 237, 239, 243, 252; "Un Voyage a Cythere," 243, 244, 245, 252; Htstotres ex-traordtnaires, 39, 54; Paradts ar-ttficiels, 93

Berrichon, Paterne, 47n

Blake, Wilham, 148 Blanchot, Maurice, 29n Bloom, Harold, 22n, 155n Boes, Karl, 61 Bonnefoy, Yves, 273 Bonnieres, Robert, 81 Bonniot, Edmond, 5n Borges, Jorge Luis, 37 Breal, Michel, 97-100, 102, 103,

104 Brenkman, John, 193n, 194n Breton, Andre, 33, 33n, 34n

Catholicism, 65 Le Centaure, 14, 207, 218n, 221 Charpentier, Henri, 246 Chrisoamty, 67, 219 Classicism, 34 Claudel, Paul, 213, 228n Cohen, Gustave, 25-27, 29 La Conque, 6n, 8n, 14, 27n, 126,

127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 136, 141, 164, 165n, 168, 180, 180n, 182, 183, 185, 187, 191

Coppee, Francois, 41n, 142 Corot, Jean Bapuste Camille, 93 La Coupe, 208n, 211 Le Coumer Itbre, 61 Crow, Christine, 87n, 94n, 95n,

205n

Dadaist, 22n, 33 Davies, Ronald, 27n Decadent, 7n, 22n, 36, 37, 41,

42n, 43n, 58, 65, 67, 84, 184 Decadentisme, 36 Degas, Edgar, 226n Delacroix, Eugene, 93 De Man, Paul, 22n, 29n Demodoce, 145 Demda, Jacques, 205n, 274

324 • INDEX

Descartes, Rene, 88, 88n Dickens, Charles, 38 Dugrip, Albert, 141, 158

Echo, 193-95, 205 Eldorado, 223 Ehot, T. S., 16, 17, 32, 45 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 81 entropy, 91 VErmttage, 6n, 14, 158 Eryximachus, 109 Europa, 121, 159

Fabre, Lucien, 164 Fasano, Giancarlo, 229n Le Ftgaro, 207 Fontainas, Andre, 80 Fourment, Gustave, 58, 59, 61, 67,

68, 74, 75, 76, 82, 87, 102, 182 France, Anatole, 39-41, 41n Frankhn, Ursula, 78n, 170n French Academy, 35, 40 Frye, Northrop, 148 Futurists, 33

Gaede, Edouard, 89n, 90n Gallimard, Gaston, 23 Le Gaulois, 43 n Gautier, Theophile, 52, 54, 57n,

58, 60, 143 Genes, 63, 75, 87 Genette, Gerard, 37, 274 Giaveri, Maria Teresa, 6n, 7n, 8n Gide, Andre, 3, 4, 6, 15, 18, 22n,

23, 88, 107, 126, 127, 129, 132, 165, 182, 183, 187, 206n, 225n, 226n; Tratte de Narctsse, 182

Grubbs, Henry, 6n, 157n, 158n Guiraud, Pierre, 96, 96n, 106n

Hartman, Geoffrey, 106n Helen of Troy, 142-49, 264 Hercules, 117-22 Heredia, Jose-Mana de, 3, 61n, 68,

141, 142n; "La Fileuse," 122,

124-25, 281; Les Trophees, 122, 144; "La Conque," 146-48, 149n

Hoffmann, Claude, 38n, 39n Honnegger, Arthur, 259 Hugo, Victor, 38, 43n, 46, 47, 48,

51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 60, 61n, 68, 122, 133; "Le Rouet d'Om-phale," 119n, 120-21, 297-98

Huysmans, Jons Karl, 85; A Re-bours, 85, 142; L'Art moderne, 142; Durtal, 221

Hytier, Jean, 3n, 7n, 8n

Ince, Walter, 94n, 142n

Jesus, 65n Johnson, Barbara, 214n

Kahn, Gustave, 218 Keats, John, 263 Kohler, Hartmut, 104n, 106n Kuhn, Remhard, 219, 220, 220n,

221n

La Fontaine, Jean de, 101 Laforgue, Jules, 142 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 61 Lamm, Martin, 87 Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis de,

226n Laurent, F., 131 Laurette, Pierre, 94n Lawler, James R., 7n, 8n, 64n,

80n, 82, 82n, 95n, 163, 168, 178n, 203n, 207n, 208n, 209n, 210, 210n, 217, 228, 228n, 232, 232n, 233, 233n, 261n

Lazarre de Nime, 81 Leautaud, Paul, 131 Lebey, Andre, 241 Le Guern, Michel, 99n Levaillant, Jean, 104 Lisle, Leconte de, 43n, 52, 61n,

142, 143n; Les Poemes antiques,

INDEX • 325

143, 144-46; "Helene," 144-47, 150; "La Source," 204n, 205n

Louys, Pierre, 9, 9n, 10, 11, 27n, 36, 37, 60, 61n, 65, 65n, 66, 68, 84n, 85n, 117n, 126, 127, 135, 141, 165n, 177n, 180n, 182, 185

Lussy, Florence de, 9n, 149n

Maeterlinck, Maurice, 80-81 Maleine, 81 Mallarme, Stephane, 3, 4, 5, 12,

16, 17, 18, 43n, 46, 47, 47n, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 60, 61, 61n, 63-83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 91, 91n, 93, 95, 96, 96n, 98, 137, 142, 144, 153, 167, 172, 173, 174, 180, 185, 187, 189, 195, 200, 201, 205-17, 218, 219, 220, 226n, 249, 266, 271, 273; "A la nue accablante tu . . . , " 207n; "L'Apres-midi d'un faune," 41n, 87, 195-97, 201-04, 209, 215, 216, 220, 309-12; "L'Azur," 216, 306-07; "Cantique de Saint Jean," 173, 307-08; "La Cheve-lure vol d'une flamme . . . , " 173, 174, 309; Un coup de des, 48n, 82, 83, 206, 211; "Crise de vers," 72n; "Les Fenetres," 123, 305-06; Herodiade, 5n, 51, 86, 172, 173, 174, 188, 193, 195-96, 201, 203, 216; Les Mots an-glais, 71; "Le Nenuphar blanc," 76, 76n, 214, 214n, 215; Ouver-ture anctenne d'Herodtade, 77n; "Petit air," 207n; Poestes, 4, 82; "Propos sur la poesie," 209; "Prose pour Des Esseintes," 78-80, 302-04; "Sainte," 122, 127, 129, 304-05; "Salut," 140; "Ses purs ongles . . . , " 77n; "Toute I'ame resumee," 207, 209, 213; Vers de ctrconstances, 207; "Vic-torieusement fui . . . , " 173, 174, 308-09

Malmberg, Bertil, 98n Mathieu, P. L., 142n Matthew VI, 28, 129 Mauclair, Camille, 81, 81n, 254 Mauron, Charles, 207 Maurras, Charles, 4 Maynadier, Patrick de, 275 Maynadier, Philippe de, 276 Mehsande, 81 Menander, 263 Menad, Louis, 142 Le Mercure de France, 4, 98, 221 Merrill, Stuart, 85n Metternich, Clemens, furst von, 55 Michelet, Jules, 39n Millan, C. Gordon, 9n, 68n "Mme. R.," 73, 76 Mochel, Albert, 81, 211 Mondor, Henri, 41n, 210n Monet, Claude, 95 Monnier, Adrienne, 11, 14 Monod, Juhen, 181, 228 Moreas, Jean, 218 Moreau, Gustave, 142 Monsot, Berthe, 92 Musset, Alfred de, 61

Nadal, Octave, 57, 67n, 75n, 78n Napoleon, 55 Narcissus, 3, 12, 13, 74-77, 79, 86,

97, 156, 169, 170, 180-97, 205, 271

Naturalism, 116 Neo-Chnstian, 219 Neo-Symbohst, 157 Nietzsche, 89, 89n, 90n Novahs, 81

Omphale, 117-22, 129 Ovid, 182, 187, 193n, 194n, 195,

249n

Parinaud, Andre, 33 Pans, 145 Parnasse, 34, 52, 60

326 • INDEX

Parnassian, 37, 42, 43n, 61, 63, 73, 77, 124, 125, 141-44, 146, 149, 151, 157, 180

Pamassiamsm, 116, 158, 170 Pascal, Blaise, 35, 88n, 101 Peirce, C. S., 146n Phaedrus, 109 Les Phalanges, 4 Pistonus, George, 49n La Plume, 14, 63 Poe, Edgar Allan, 16, 38, 51, 52,

53, 54, 55, 60, 61, 61n, 62, 82, 220, 226n

Poetes d'aujourd'hut, 131 Ponge, Francis, 273 Proserpine, 159 Pseudo-Parnassian, 157

Racine, Jean, 35 Raymond, Marcel, 16n, 262 Regnier, Henri de, 38, 117-20,

122, 133, 142, 218; Cite des eaux, 117n; Poemes anciens et romanesques, 117, 165; "Motifs de legende et de melancolie," 165-69, 284-97; "Prelude," 117-20, 129, 282-84; "Le Songe de la foret," 152n

La Revue des deux mondes, 122 Riffaterre, Michael, 146n Rimbaud, Arthur, 33, 34n, 36n,

47n, 54, 55, 61n, 226n; "Le Ba-teau ivre," 61n, 224-27, 237, 313-16

Rivifere, Jacques, 26 Robinson, Judith, 23n, 47n, 61n,

88n, 90, 91n, 226n Rodenback, Georges, 81 Romantic, 39, 52, 55, 57n, 67, 90,

91, 108, 120, 121, 130, 134, 138, 141, 144, 146, 147, 148, 148n, 235, 239, 246, 250, 252, 266

Romanticism, 34, 42n, 53, 60, 116, 143, 144, 273

Russell, Bertrand, 90

Saint Jean, 65n Samain, Albert, 142 Scarfe, Francis, 240n, 263n Schraidt-Radefeldt, Jurgen, 97n Semiramis, Queen of Babylon, 254,

258-64 Shakespeare, William, 35 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, 118n Socrates, 109 Souza, Robert de, 81 Spitzer, Leo, 122, 127, 128 Stevens, Wallace, 96n, 110 Surrealist, 22n, 33, 92, 272 Sutchffe, P. E., 87 Symbolic, 138, 152 Symbohsm, 67, 73, 116, 150, 170,

219, 272 Symbolist, 6, 7n, 15, 36, 37, 40,

41, 42, 44, 63, 75, 77, 90, 91-92, 103, 108, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 125, 127, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137n, 141, 142, 152n, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 163, 167, 168, 177, 180, 183, 184, 185, 212, 219, 271

La Syrinx, 6n, 14, 173

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 55 Tantalus, 239 terza rtma, 118 Thetis, 155 Thibaudet, Albert, 78 Thorel, Jean, 220 Todorov, Tzvetan, 30n, 3In, 274 Trojan War, 146

Valery, Claude, 87n Valery, Paul; L'Album de vers an-

ciens-. "Air de Semiramis," 7n, l ln , 14n, 63, lOOn, 198, 240, 240n, 254-64; "L'Amateur de poemes," 14n, 140, 170n, 264-67; "Anne," 7n, l ln , 13, 14n, 33n, 50, 63, 63n, 100, 179n, 198, 226, 227n, 228, 240-54, 258, 260; "Au bois dormant,"

INDEX • 327

7n, 8n, 13, 14n, 63, 132n, 141, 157, 163-69, 198, 240; "Bai-gnee," 13,14n, 169-75,176,179, 201, 205, 254; "Le Bois ann-eal," 14n, 75, 141, 157, 177, 177n; "Cesar," 14n, 141, 141n; "Episode," 14n, 73, 169, 180, 197-205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 215, 226, 228; "Ete," 14n, 198, 199, 215, 217-28, 233, 236, 240, 252; "Feene," 6, 14n, 72, 141, 157-60, 161, 162; "Un Feu dist inct . . . , " 7n, 14n, 170, 175-80; "La Fileuse," 7n, 8n, 14n, 73, 100, 115-41, 142, 149, 154, 156, 157, 163, 171, 172, 178, 179, 199, 222, 233, 240, 263; "Helene," 14n, 72, 141-49, 150, 150n, 151, 153, 157, 162, 199; "Meme Feerie," 14n, 141, 141n, 160-63, 177; "Naissance de Ve-nus," 14n, 63, 63n, 72, 100, 141, 149-57, 162, 199, 236; "Narcisse parle," 14n, 72, 86, 169, 171, 180-97, 198, 199, 201, 239, 271; "Orphee," 7n, 72, 141, 141n; "Profusion du soir," 7n, 14n, 141n, 198, 199, 228-39, 240, 240n, 250, 254, 261; "Les Vaines danseuses," 14n, 141, 141n; "Valvins," 7n, 14n, 75n, 80, 180, 199, 206, 208n, 210-17, 226; "Vue," 14n, 80, 80n, 180, 198, 199, 205-10, 213, 218n; L'Ame et la danse, 108, 109, 110; "Attente," 132n;

"Au sujet d'Euraka," 88n, 91, 108; "Au sujet du 'Cimetiere mann,' " 26-28; "Autour de Corot," 93; "Berthe Morisot," 92, 251, 252-53; "Blanc," 157-60, 161; Cahters, 23n, 25, 32, 33, 34, 52n, 63, 148, 170, 177, 233; "Calepin d'un poete," 69-70; Le Cantate de Narctsse, 180; "Celle qui sort de I'onde," 151-

55; Charmes, 6, 7n, 8, 9n, l ln , 45, 49, 111, 164, 170, 180; "Au platane," 93, 101, 111; "La Ceinture," 107, 111; "Le Cime-tiere mann," 25, 103, 104-06, 107, 111, 219; "La Dormeuse," 13, 106n, 107n, 164-65; "Frag-ments de Narcisse," 180, 181; "Les Grenades," 93; "Le Vm perdu," 107; Chorus mysticus, 66-67, 126, 277; "Le Cygne," 279; "L'Eglise," 67, 103, 278; "Elevation de la lune," 58, 61, 67, 103, 126, 137, 277; "Fleur mystique," 67, 277-78; "Mirabi-ha saecula," 67, 278-79; Chases tues, 21; "Commentaires de 'Charmes,' " 21, 28-30; "La Conqu^te allemande," 262n; "Une Conquete methodique," 262n; Conte vratsemblable, 59, 62, 63; "Un Coup de des," 48n; "La Crise de I'esprit," 262-63; "Dermere visite a Mailarme," 47, 64, 65, 68, 211, 212; Etudes pour Narctsse, 180, 181; Eupah-nos, 44, 94n, 109; "Existence du Symbohsme," 42, 43n, 66n; "Fragment d'un Descartes," 79; "Fragments," 198, 200n; "Frag-ments des memoires d'un poeme," 3, 4, 6, 11, 12, 15, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 35, 43, 44, 45, 109, 110, 125-26, 140-41, 163, 178, 264; "L'Homme et la co-quille," 93, 94n, 179n; L'ldee fixe, 38; "Inspirations mediterra-neennes," 237n; "Intermede," 80; Introduction a la methode de Leonard de Vmct, 45, 87, llOn, 111; "Je disais quelquefois a Ste-phane Mailarme," 51, 70-71, 71-72, 82; La Jeune Parque, 4, 6, 8, 9n, 11, 12, 13, 13n, 16n, 17, 27n, 39n, 86n, 103, 108, 111, 122, 139n, 149n, 153, 162,

328 • INDEX

Valery, Paul {cont.) 229n; "Letter on Lord Kelvin," 98; "Lettre sur Mallarme," 46, 48, 49-50, 65, 69, 71, 72, 95, 154; "Luxuneuse au bam," 85, 85n; "Mallarme," 82-83; "Ma nuit," 13; "Le Matin sur la ville," 57n; "Nage," 261n; "Le Navire," 149n; Paraboles, 180; "Passage de Verlaine," 43n, 47n, 71n; "Pessimisme d'une heure," 56, 57n; "Petit discours aux peintres graviers," 94; "Poesie et pensee abstraite," 31, 93, lOln, 107; "Propos me concernant," 60; "Psaume sur une voix . . . ," 203n; Purs drames, 78-80, 87, 279-81; "Questions de poesie," 30, 31, 32, 46, 93; "Regards sur la mer," 238n; "Remerciement a I'Academie fran^aise," 35, 36, 40, 41; "Le Saltimbanque," 57n; Semtramis, 259n; "Situation de Baudelaire," 34, 35, 39, 51-63; La Sotree avec M. Teste, 33n, 84, 87; "Solitude," 56-57; "Ste-phane Mallarme," 69, 72; Sur le Narcisse, 183n; "Swedenborg," 88; "Victor Hugo, createur par la forme," 47; "Le Voyage," 57n; "Une Vue de Descartes, 88

Van Bever, Adolphe, 131 Vanier, Leon, 5, 5n Venus, 63, 145, 152, 154-56, 235 Verhaeren, Emile, 68, 220, 221 Verlame, Paul, 3, 5, 5n, 43n, 54,

55, 68, 71, 71n, 182; Hommes d'Aujourd'hui, 5n; Pokes mau-dits, 5n; Paralldement: "Lunes," 162n

Vers hbre, 37, 222 Viele-Gnffin, Francis, 218-23; An-

caeus, 220; Cuetlle d'avrth "Heure mystique," 219, 298-302

Vigny, Alfred de, 5n, 68 Virgil, 35

Wagner, Richard, 93 Walzer, Pierre-Ohvier, 6n, 7n, 8n,

109n, 126n, 128n, 151n, 157n, 246n

Whistler, J. MacNeil, 81 Whiting, Charles, 8n, 86n, 156n,

178n, 200n, 208n, 227n, 229n, 241, 261n

Whitman, Walt, 218 Wills, Ludmilla, 91n Wilson, Edmund, 16n, 27n, 84, 87 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef, 90

Young, Edward, 182

Valvins, 75, 81, 210-17 Zeus, 249n

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Nash, Suzanne.

Paul Valery's Album de vers anciens. Bibliography: p. Includes index.

1. Valery, Paul, 1871-1945. Album de vers anciens. I. Valery, Paul, 1871-1945. Album de vers anciens.

1982. II. Title. PQ2643.A26A6836 1982 841'.912 82-47606

ISBN 0-691-06526-8