Paul Valéry represents an exceptional moment in the history of literature : the moment when a writer, more and better than any other before him, became aware of his art and its psychological and physiological, social, historical, economic and cultural conditions of practice.
What does it mean to create ? This is the big question, one that Paul Valéry never ceased to explore in all its facets at the Collège de France, where he was professor from 1937 to 1945. Now that his Cours de poétique (Gallimard, 2023, 2 vols.) has been published, it's time to revisit the content of this free, intense, demanding and multifaceted reflection, and consider what it means for us today.
Lifted to the pinnacle by some, violently attacked by others both during his lifetime and after his death, Valéry's work and thought never cease to scandalize and provoke, by their intellectual intransigence and their refusal of all easy ways out. Yet Valéry had no need of enemies : he was his own most ardent adversary, always anxious to think against himself and his first impulses, sometimes celebrating literature, sometimes putting it at a radical distance. In " Valéry ou la Littérature ", the or is no less exclusionary(ou bien) than it is equivalential(c'est-à-dire), since to speak of Valéry is to speak either of Literature itself (with the capital of the absolute), or of its reverse.