Abstract
Some famous writers have attacked Valéry's work. In particular, Jules Romains criticized his " creative mystification ". In Les Hommes de bonne volonté (tome XII, chapter 14), the character of Strigelius is modeled on Valéry : he is a litterateur composing a purely formal poem in which one recognizes a pastiche of " Cimetièremarin ". Jules Romains's literature was interventionist, based on the ideal of" unanimisme ", in total opposition to the liberated character of Valéry's poetry.
In 1947, as she sought to make a name for herself in literary circles, it was Nathalie Sarraute who attacked Valéry in " Valéry et l'enfant d'éléphant ", published in Les Temps modernes to the great displeasure of Valéry admirer Jean-Paul Sartre. It used the same arguments as the critics of 1920 : preciosity, cheap hermeticism (" Mallarmé rayon calicot "). Falsely naive, the tone adopted was intended to make fun of Paul Valéry, who had been dead for two yearsat the time.) This criticism, made up of cruel, cookie-cutter judgments on isolated verses, failed to take into account the fact that Paul Valéry wanted to build a general effect with his poems, not write a series of admirable verses taken individually. Valéry relied on length to create a poetic state. To take a line out of context is to betray a construction in progress.
To criticize Valéry for, at best, making a pastiche of classical poetry, as Sarraute does, is also to misunderstand his project. By asserting that" there is nothing more new than the obligation to be new " (" Remerciement à l'Académie française ", 1927), by denouncing in the Cours de poétique the " neo-mania " in force, Paul Valéry expressed his admiration for the great writers, such as Bossuet or Racine, who did not seek novelty or originality. By writing La Jeune Parque in the midst of war, he was already creating a postmodern work, in which he sought to resist the destruction of the world through the work of memory.
